Fending Off a Plagiarist

A doctoral student at Northeast Urban University — I’ll call him Mr. X — presented my dissertation as his own. He received a Ph.D. and took an excellent research job at Prominent African University. Through my subsequent efforts, he lost his degree, his job, and his reputation.

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Mr. X must have thought that he would get away with his theft because nobody reads dissertations. Was he correct? Was all that work simply a hoop to jump through to get the Ph.D.? What is the value of a doctoral degree if dissertation committees take as little care with their students as Mr. X’s did with him? —Kim LanegranFending Off a Plagiarist (Chronicle)

Post was last modified on 7 Jan 2012 10:14 pm

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  • Not your Mr. Tong. The plagiarist Kim Lanegran had to deal with was Marks Chabedi. You can confirm this by looking up their dissertation abstracts in Dissertation Abstacts Online. Chabedi took his Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research where his adviser was Ari Zolberg. He took Lanegran's thesis and put this title on it: "Making Democracy Work." So he not only stole the thesis from Lanegran, he borrowed the title from Robert Putnam.

    Lanegran's dissertation OCLC# AAG9801108
    Chabedi's "dissertation: OCLC# AAI9980001