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PLAGIARISM

Neuchâtel reinstates plagiarizing expat prof

The Neuchâtel government after lengthy deliberations said on Wednesday it has lifted the suspension of an expat Canadian university professor accused of plagiarism while issuing a reprimand against him.

Neuchâtel reinstates plagiarizing expat prof
Professor Sam Blili. Photo: University of Neuchâtel

Sam Blili, of the University of Neuchatel’s economics department, was found last spring to have plagiarized entire passages of a book he co-authored with another academic Francis Sermet.

The book, entitled “La Suisse qui gagne” was required reading for students of Blili, who has been a professor at the university since 2002 after moving there from Quebec.

An internal investigation concluded last September that Blili was guilty of “plagiarism by lack of riguor”.

The lifted passages appeared without attribution in 10 to 15 pages of the 400-page book.

But the investigation noted that editing by a third party had removed 100 footnotes to make the book easier to read.

On September 30th, Neuchâtel Education Minister Moika Maire-Hefti decided to suspend the professor for another reason — he had failed to disclose that he was the administrator of a real estate company, Le Temps newspaper reported.

Blili had been on sick leave for several months.

He earlier faced accusations from Le Matin that he had falsified his CV and had rocky relations with other members of faculty.

But on Monday, Neuchâtel government agreed to reinstate the professor with a reprimand.

Given the limited nature of the plagiarism, this did not justify removing Blili from the university, the government said in a statement.

“The government has also taken into account the opinion of the university’s administrators who believe that the confidence (in Blili) is not irreparably and that his reinstatement in the university is not impossible.”

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MINISTER

Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations

Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher resigned from her cabinet post in charge of labour, families and youth on Saturday following allegations some of her university work was plagiarised.

Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations
Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations. Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP
A conservative from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's OeVP party, Aschbacher said she had stepped down to “protect my family”, complaining of “hostility, political agitation and attacks… with unbearable force”.
   
Aschbacher's 2006 master's thesis displayed “plagiarism, incorrect quotations and lack of knowledge of the German language”, alleged blogger Stefan Weber, who specialises in sniffing out academic fraud.
   
At the time, she graduated with high marks from the University of Applied Sciences in Wiener Neustadt, south of Austrian capital Vienna.
   
Weber has levelled the same allegations at a thesis she submitted in May last year — in the depths of the first wave of coronavirus — to the Technical University of Bratislava in neighbouring Slovakia.
 
   
He claimed the work contained “never-before-seen depths of gobbledygook, nonsense and plagiarism” and that more than one-fifth of the text had been lifted from other sources without citations, in particular an article from Forbes magazine.
   
Under attack by the opposition, Aschbacher “rejected” what she called Weber's “insinuations”.
   
Kurz wrote on Twitter that he “respected” her decision to resign, after the scandal piled pressure on a government facing criticism for its management of the second wave of Covid-19, widely seen as chaotic.
   
The chancellor added that he would name a successor on Monday.
   
Academic plagiarism is a regular charge levelled at politicians in the German-speaking world, where leaders often brandish postgraduate qualifications.
   
In Germany, two conservatives, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Annett Schavan, stepped down from the defence and education ministries in 2011 and 2013 over similar scandals, while current centre-left Families Minister Franziska Giffey has been dogged by plagiarism allegations for years.
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