Dem Senator Plagiarized His War College Thesis

[rangerrebew]

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -



Dem Senator Plagiarized His War College Thesis

Posted By Scott Greer On 4:34 PM 07/23/2014 In | No Comments




Montana Democratic Sen. John Walsh is in deep water after revelations surfaced that he copied the work of others for his U.S. Army War College thesis without proper attribution — a practice otherwise known as plagiarism.

The New York Times reports that the former National Guard general’s thesis contained at least a quarter of work that was not attributed to the original authors.

Additionally, all six of the recommendations he places at the conclusion of his paper were lifted entirely from another article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Times points out that the entirety of one recommendation was exactly the same as it was printed in the original source. He did not cite the article at all in his thesis.

Walsh also extensively copied material from a paper published by a Harvard research institute without citing or footnoting it. Both papers are easily accessible through the internet.

Walsh’s paper, entitled “The Case for Democracy as a Long Term Strategy,” dealt with America’s Middle East policy and was conducted as a “strategy research project.”

Walsh responded to The Times’ accusations with assertions that he did nothing intentionally wrong.

“I didn’t do anything intentional here,” he told The Times, adding that he did not believe he had plagiarized anything in this case.

A Senate aide further clarified that Walsh was going through a difficult time while at the War College and did not deny that he may have plagiarized his work.

Walsh is a veteran of the Iraq War, where he received a Bronze Star for his service, and formerly served as the head of the Montana National Guard. He stepped down from that position after being elected as the state’s lieutenant governor, before being appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Steve Bullock in February after Max Baucus resigned to serve as Obama’s ambassador to China.

His War College degree was used to support his competency to serve as the head of the Montana National Guard, which in turn boosted his resume when he ran for office. The War College manual explicitly warns against plagiarism and demands its students to not engage in it.

 
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URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/23/dem-senator-plagiarized-his-war-college-thesis/

[mountaineer]

Lame.

Democratic senator cites PTSD in apparent thesis plagiarism
Published July 23, 2014
FoxNews.com

A Montana senator who is running for re-election suggested Wednesday that medication he took for post-traumatic stress disorder after service in Iraq may have been responsible for apparently plagiarized passages in his thesis.

Montana Sen. John Walsh's thesis, which was written to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College, contains unattributed passages taken word-for-word from previously published papers.

The Democrat also said he was dealing with the stress of a fellow veteran's recent suicide.

Walsh said he made an unintentional mistake and did not intend to plagiarize.

"I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor," Walsh told The Associated Press. "My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment."

A spokesperson for Walsh's campaign said the apparent plagiarism was "unintentional."

"There were areas that should have been cited differently but it was completely unintentional," Lauren Passalacqua said in a statement.

The senator is running against Republican Rep. Steve Daines to keep the seat Walsh was appointed to in February when Max Baucus resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China, and national Democrats said Wednesday they remained "100 percent behind Sen. Walsh."

The apparent plagiarism in Walsh's 2007 thesis, titled "The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy," was first reported by The New York Times in a story posted online Wednesday afternoon. Walsh submitted the paper to earn his Master of Strategic Studies degree nearly two years after he returned from Iraq and about a year before he became Montana's adjutant general overseeing the state's National Guard and Department of Military Affairs.

The paper, reviewed by the AP after the Times posted its story and graphics online, includes a series of unattributed passages taken from the writings of other scholars.

The first page borrows heavily from a 2003 Foreign Affairs piece written by Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a 2009 book by Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer called "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror."

Sharansky is a former Soviet dissident and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Dermer is the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

All six of the recommendations that Walsh lists at the end of his paper are taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie paper written by Carothers and three other scholars at the institute.

One section of the paper is nearly identical to about 600 words from a 1998 paper by Sean Lynn-Jones, a scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a research institute at Harvard.

Lynn-Jones said Walsh appears to have received a degree on the basis of work that was not entirely his, and that anyone seeking credit for an academic degree "needs to acknowledge where the material is coming from."  ...

Rest of story at FOX News

[mystery-ak]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213316-us-army-war-college-to-investigate-sen-walsh-plagiarism

July 25, 2014, 07:45 am
War College probes Walsh plagiarism claim

By Rebecca Shabad

The U.S. Army War College said Thursday that it would investigate plagiarism allegations against Sen. John Walsh (D-Mont.), according to NBC Montana.

The college said in a statement to media outlets that it had been informed Wednesday night about the plagiarism claims against Walsh and looked into whether it should convene an academic review board (ARB).

“We decided today to convene an ARB, and have communicated that to Sen. Walsh who will have the opportunity to submit material for the board's consideration,” Army War College spokeswoman Carol Kerr said in the statement. 

The board will conduct a legal review of the matter, she added, which will then be reviewed by the dean, who can recommend whether to disenroll the student or revoke his or her graduation status. The deputy commandant makes the decision.

“We hold our students responsible for academic integrity. Then and now, we trust them to uphold high standards of academic integrity unless there is reason to believe otherwise,” Kerr said. 

The decision by the college to investigate the claims further came a day after the New York Times reported Walsh had plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis before he graduated from the college in 2007.

Walsh told the Associated Press that he had post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, which he had developed while serving in Iraq.

The original report said Walsh had copied sections verbatim from a paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a 2009 book called The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror and a paper from a Harvard research institute.

Walsh was appointed to his Senate seat in February after former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) resigned to become the U.S. ambassador to China.

He faces Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) in his election bid this November.

[Oceander]

Will they revoke his degree?

[rangerrebew]

PTSD my ass.  I wrote my Masters Thesis while struggling with severe depression and anxiety and it would never have crossed my mind to cheat on it.

[Formerly Once-Ler]

“I didn’t do anything intentional here,” he told The Times, adding that he did not believe he had plagiarized anything in this case.

I didn't intend to get caught, and it wuzzunt me.