German plagiarism scandal ousts a would-be chancellor
I burst my pimples at you and show you the soles of my shoes! Photo from Der Spiegel.
In Germany, Uproar Over a Doctoral Thesis
by Michael Kimmelman
. . .The trouble started last month when this country’s most popular cabinet minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a handsome, media-savvy, conspicuously pomaded 39-year-old baron widely presumed to be a leading candidate to succeed Angela Merkel someday as chancellor, tried to brush off charges that he had plagiarized parts of his 2006 thesis.
“Absurd,” was his initial response. And many Germans wanted to believe him. “Well-born, well-spoken and well-groomed,” as The Economist observed about the baron, he had “seemed blunt where others prevaricated, principled where they plotted. Alone among German leaders,” the magazine went on, referring to the gray, proficient bureaucrats who tend to run the country, he made “voters’ hearts quicken.” . . .
Funny how the article says the Germans are so. . .German. We could use some German-style intellectual rigor in our institutions.
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March 16th, 2011 at 22:50
Mass action over a thesis! I wonder how they would react to corruption exposes we endure on a daily basis.