An economics and finance professor at Kean University has resigned after being accused of copying large parts of her doctoral dissertation from a dissertation written six years earlier at Louisiana Tech University, according to today’s New York Times. Jacqueline R. Griffith, who had tenure at the New Jersey institution, received her doctorate from Nova Southeastern University, in Florida. Both Kean and Nova Southeastern are investigating the matter.
Academic plagiarism is more common than is commonly believed, as a special report by The Chronicle revealed a few years ago. What’s particularly odd about this latest case, however, is that Ms. Griffith’s father, a business-school professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, another New Jersey institution, was accused of plagiarism in the early 1980s. Maybe it runs in the family?
