The University of Maryland is conducting a review of Darryll Pines’s scholarship, at his request.
University of Maryland, College Park
As the University of Maryland, College Park, reviews the scholarship of President Darryll Pines, who faces plagiarism allegations, the author of the piece from which Pines is accused of lifting text has weighed in, telling Inside Higher Ed that he believes his scholarly work was clearly copied.
The conservative website The Daily Wire accused Pines of taking 1,500 words from a tutorial website written in 1996 and using them without attribution in a 5,000-word paper he co-authored in 2002; he reused the same section for another paper in 2006, the site alleged.
Pines has previously said he does “not believe there is merit to these claims.”
‘Clearly Plagiarism’
When Joshua Altmann first wrote the text in question, Surfing the Wavelets, in 1996, he was a graduate student in engineering at Monash University in Australia. Now employed by the oil industry, Altmann said earlier this month he was not aware of the plagiarism allegations or familiar with Pines’s work.
But when provided with a copy of the 2002 paper and links to media coverage about the controversy, Altmann told Inside Higher Ed by email that he saw it as a clear case of plagiarism.
“I must say that it is disappointing that any academic would copy a website like that,” he wrote. “Even though the copying is limited to the less important part of their paper, it is clearly plagiarism. As it was just a website and I do not hold any [intellectual property] related to it, I will not be taking any action on this. However, I do consider it to be plagiarism, and not worthy of an academic.”
Altmann also said that the University of Maryland had not contacted him, but added that officials may not know how to.
College Park officials offered few details, noting that the review of Pines’s work is ongoing and being conducted in accordance with system and university policies. Updates will not be provided until the investigation concludes.
“On September 18, 2024, President Pines called for an independent and impartial review following an accusation of an alleged missing citation. The accusation is limited to two separate versions of a co-authored paper, one of more than 250 that President Pines has published throughout his scholarly career,” a university spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed by email.
Liming Salvino, the co-author of the 2002 paper, did not respond to a request for comment.
A ‘Bad-Faith’ Investigation
Jonathan Bailey, founder of the website Plagiarism Today, said that while the original author’s belief that his work was copied “obviously has some weight,” it is unclear to what degree the University of Maryland will consider his remarks, given that review processes vary by institution.
Bailey, who has written about the Pines case, believes that while Altmann’s view will likely be discussed by the committee tasked with conducting the review, it won’t shape their decision.
“It plays in, but it’s not going to be a leading factor in this case,” Bailey said.
Instead, the focus will be on what happened and the intent of Pines and his co-author. Members of the review committee will likely interview Pines and Salvino, and request research notes, if available; Bailey noted that could be a challenge when examining a 20-plus-year-old work.
“A lot of those notes are not going to be there; a lot of memories will have faded,” Bailey said.
The review is likely to be lengthy. The university initially gave a 60-day timeline, but Bailey said that is unusually quick and such cases sometimes take years to resolve. But amid a national spate of plagiarism charges, he believes colleges are moving faster to address concerns.
Bailey also questioned the motives behind some of the allegations, including in the Pines case. While he believes it is likely that Pines or his co-author plagiarized, Bailey noted that numerous scholars accused of violations of academic integrity over the past year have been Black and/or proponents of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In particular, he called The Daily Wire’s allegations against Pines the result of “a bad-faith investigation.” Even so, he said it “showed that there were significant issues with that paper.”
The likely fallout of the case is hard to predict, Bailey said. Arguably the most high-profile plagiarism case in recent months was that of former Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who was accused of lifting parts of her dissertation as a graduate student, prompting her to later submit corrections.
But Gay was also besieged by missteps in a disastrous congressional hearing last December in which she and two other college presidents waffled on a hypothetical question about calls for genocide against Jewish students on their campuses. She stepped down amid a firestorm of controversy exacerbated but not started by the plagiarism allegations.
Given the “bad-faith” nature of some plagiarism allegations against Black academics and DEI scholars, Bailey believes universities have tended to rally around the accused as they await the results of internal reviews—particularly in cases that appear to be driven by political motivations or racial animus.
“I think schools have been reluctant to remove people for these types of allegations in general,” Bailey said.