This Just In – In May, Duke University was caught in a tornadic storm of controversy over the plagiarism committed by 2022 student commencement speaker Priya Parkash. The University had no less than the Wall Street Journal commenting on this sloppy cut-and-paste hackery and under the white heat of landing on the CNN ticker for a bad reason, the university promised accountability.
That term – accountability – gets thrown around a lot. To be effective, actual accountability should be transparent, swift and FAIR. In this case, fairness is due Parkash AND to the thousands of Duke students who work hard and sign the honor pledge with commitment that any work submitted is theirs and theirs alone.
There would be “an investigation.” There would be corrective measures to protect the university from a repeat of this easily avoidable problem. There was a two-level screening process, for example, that did not include running the speech through the same software that professors use routinely to check for plagiarism.
The Director of Communications for the President’s Personnel Office was responsible for the selection of the student speaker and review of her speech, so let’s start with him … Lawrence Kluttz. Yes … really.
One supposes that any investigation might examine Kluttz’s role in this and in how many ways did he “drop the ball.” It’s not difficult to imagine that a person in that job, having facilitated an incident that did this kind of damage to Duke’s reputation, might be re-assigned to a less prominent role.
Nope. He’s still in the same job.
Perhaps Duke would in 90 days’ time – more than enough time to investigate the matter – produce a report with recommendations including changes to the honor code to include prohibiting students who are graduating from stealing the material for their speeches. I mean apparently you have to expressly prohibit such things.
Nope. No announcement as to who is conducting such an investigation, what it will cover and when a report of findings will be produced.
As an employment matter, this might take two weeks. I’ve worked in corporate communications. If I had sullied my employer’s reputation like this, I’d be cleaning out my desk the day the news broke, hoping I could resign so fast I couldn’t be fired for my incompetence.
Let’s talk about Priya Parkash. Aside from all the nonsense she said about this when the story broke (that she was shocked to hear about it, etc) what has happened to her since graduating? She is still featured on Duke’s “SPIRE Fellows” page on the University’s website.
The SPIRE program is described this way:
“The Duke SPIRE Fellows Program is an actively engaged mentoring and academic support system for high-achieving undergraduates from diverse backgrounds with an interest in pursuing a major and/or career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.”
Parkash is featured elsewhere on the Duke website describing the research project she conducted after winning the Bass Connections Student Research Award. This happened before her stolen speech, but the point remains … the University should, at a minimum, use an annotation similar to that used by The Chronicle in stories that were published before the commencement speech:
“Since publication, The Chronicle has reported that this speech bears striking resemblance to a student Commencement speech at Harvard University in 2014.”
But I know what you did this summer, Duke. Absolutely nothing.
(featured image via duke.edu)
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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