This evening at a reception for our new professors Michael Heine, the president of our school, the University of Applied Sciences HTW Berlin, presented me with an award as the school's "Science Communicator" of the year for my work with the press about the plagiarism scandals in Germany this year.The press secretary collected up the original clippings from her clippings file for the year to date (only making copies for herself) and put them in a folder - a big folder. And they gave me a megaphone, painted in the school colors, that is to travel each year to the current prize holder.
They told me that they had quite a time locating one, as they are no longer in general use. This is an old one from the Bavarian police, still usable, and painted up in a local body shop.
I tried to spread out all the clippings on the dining room table, but it really wasn't large enough. And oh my, the Bild-Zeitung article was on the front page of every single edition of the paper, country wide.
I thanked the president - my school has really been great over the past 10 years. Not every school would find it cool to be associated with plagiarism. I've enjoyed a sabbatical, in which I developed Fremde Federn Finden (that is dated and needs a chapter on zu Guttenberg & Co), and has often given me student researchers for getting the work done and lets me run my plagiarism site off of the school servers.
The good thing is that the press now gets the name of the school spelled right - best advertising you can get for free!
Posts
Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteThe world wide web provides new temptations and opportunities to "cut and paste" but it also provides the means by which to keep this in check.
Ultimately, of course it depends on how - as a species - our sense of ethics evolves.
ktwop
Very nice - Congratulations!
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