Top university sacks teacher for plagiarism By Li Jianmin (China Daily) Updated: 2004-08-05 21:29
China's prestigious Peking University has sacked a teacher of English
for plagiarism, The Beijing News Daily reported Thursday.
Huang Zongying, former associate professor of the Department of English
Language and Literature with the university's Foreign Languages School, was
accused of plagiarizing other scholars' ideas and expressions in his own
academic works from 1999 to 2003, including literary books and academic papers,
the newspaper said, citing an investigation report by the English Department.
"All his published works during the period have been found to have apparent,
grave and extensive plagiarism, totaling 20 articles," said the report.
In one of his literary commentary works, a book on American poet, critic and
editor T. S. Eliot, 74 per cent of the content was copied from other scholars'
academic achievements, the report said.
Huang pursued his doctoral studies in the English Department of Peking
University in 1993 and was later employed as an English teacher by the
department after graduation in 1996. He was promoted to associate professor just
a year later.
Huang, as chairman of the Labor Union of the Foreign Languages School, was
enthusiastic about public welfare and praised by his colleagues as "behaving
very well", the newspaper said.
"However, academic evaluation is different from moral evaluation", said You
Xiaoli, associate professor of Suzhou University in east China's Jiangsu
Province. "As a scholar, Huang's academic credit has problems, which directly
harm the credit of his school and university. Peking University is thus
fully justifiable to give him a severe penalty."
It is indeed a rare case in China for a university to sack its teacher for
plagiarism, as previous practice shows that many of the plagiarist scholars
still publish their papers and still work as professors, though their scandals
have been disclosed, said You.
"Plagiarism is one of the chronic illnesses of academic corruption that is
troubling current Chinese academic circles, as several such cases and famous
scholars have been uncovered for this scandal in recent years," said You, also
special commentator of The Beijing News.
You blamed the existing imperfect academic evaluation system, which puts more
emphasis on how many books a scholar writes and how many papers he publishes, as
the root cause that breeds academic corruption.
In fact, China has stepped up efforts to fight academic corruption this year,
as the Ministry of Education has just published a stipulation in June on
criteria of academic studies in the field of philosophy and social sciences in
higher institutions, involving many specific rules on writing academic papers
and books and on academic evaluation as well.
"It is the first 'Constitution' for China's academic circles," said Yang
Yusheng, a scholar well-known for fighting against academic corruption and also
initiator of the ministry's stipulation.
Yang suggested higher institutions draw up their own specific regulations in
this respect according to their own actual conditions to oversee and punish
those scholars infringing on others' intellectual property rights or violating
academic "moral standards".
Xu Zhihong, president of Peking University admitted here Thursday at the
ongoing second China-Foreign Presidents' Forum held from Aug. 4 to 10 that
cheating is an issue facing up to China's academic circles, science circles and
education circles.
"To build a world first-class university, a favorable academic atmosphere is
more important, in addition to the number of published academic papers," he
said.
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