---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Thomas Pfau <pfau@duke.edu>

Date: Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM
Subject: Millett: Durham North Carolina - Alleged Plagiarism of Susan Dench
To: senrebeccamillett@gmail.com


The following message has been sent to you via the Maine Senate web page.

Thomas Pfau wrote:

Subject: Alleged Plagiarism of Susan Dench

Dear Senator Millett:

As a former resident of Maine who is still deeply attached to the continued well-being of the place and its
people, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed appointment of Susan Dench to the
Univ. of Maine Board of Trustees. Any reasonably literate reader will be forced to conclude that Ms.
Dench did indeed plagiarize (with only minor and trivial adjustments in phrasing) the contents, argument,
and phrasing that she had found in a blogpost from the Free Republic (posted in 2003). Given the
current, volatile and controversy-laden debate over the future of public higher education in Maine, one
cannot think of a worse time to appoint as trustee (!) a person as manifestly lacking in intellectual
accomplishments, credentials, and personal integrity as Ms. Dench. If there is to be any future
whatsoever for meaningful public higher education in Maine, all political parties and their representatives
ought to examine their motives when proposing future members for the Board of Trustees for the UM
system. The creeping politicization of decisions that should obviously be based on personal integrity and
professional competence will only accelerate the decline of public institutions, as well as erode what little
trust there still is among the citizens of Maine in their public institutions and their political representatives.

No doubt, you know that the proposed appointment of MS. Dench is indefensible on the merits of it. I
hope you will have the political courage to act accordingly.

Sincerely,

Thomas

Thomas Pfau
Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English
Professor German
Faculty Member - Duke Divinity School








---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Perry, Curtis <cperry@illinois.edu>
Date: Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 8:17 PM
Subject: Dench case
To: "Justin@justinalfond.com" <Justin@justinalfond.com>, "senrebeccamilillet@gmail.com"
<senrebeccamilillet@gmail.com>


Resending--had your email typed incorrectly in the original attempt.

-----
Dear Senators Alfond and Millett,

A colleague of mine has recently brought to my attention the controversy surrounding Susan Dench's
column in the Bangor Daily News and Professor Jane Kuenz's testimony accusing her of plagiarism. I
have read the original Free Republic piece, Ms. Dench's initial use of it with attribution on her blog, and
the column in question in the Bangor paper. Since the column clearly makes unattributed use of
another's writing and--equally importantly--misleads its readership by pretending to represent its author's
original research and expertise, I can say definitively that the column is plagiarized. In any university
setting this would be unacceptable, and at my current university such a violation of academic integrity on
the part of a student would result in failure and possibly in further sanctions.

I am a professor of English at the University of Illinois, where I have also served as Head of the English
Department. I have been teaching English at universities for more than 20 years, and have also served
on faculty committees for adjudicating student discipline issues including plagiarism cases. This is not a
difficult judgment call, I have to say.

I should say, too, that this case is important to me because I care about academic integrity, but also
because I come from a Maine family and care about the public educational system in your state.

Respectfully,

Curtis Perry
Professor of English and Classics
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign













From: "Markley, Robert" <rmarkley@illinois.edu>
Date: September 27, 2014 at 12:15:51 PM EDT
To: "Justin@JustinAlfond.com" <Justin@JustinAlfond.com>
Cc: "senrebeccamillett@gmail.com" <senrebeccamillett@gmail.com>
Subject: Susan Dench plagiarism

Dear Senators Alfond and Millett:

I am one of many faculty members at universities and colleges across the country who have been altered
to the testimony by Professor Jane Kuenz that Susan Dench plagiarized at least one of her columns in
the Bangor Daily News. Having reviewed the evidence submitted to the Senate Committee on Education
and Cultural Affairs, I can assure you--with absolute certainty--that this is a case of flat-out plagiarism. I
have been a university professor for more than thirty years, and I have dealt with far more cases of
plagiarism than I care to remember. There is no question in my mind that Susan Dench deserves an "F"
for plagiarism. And you can quote me on that.

Respectfully,


Robert Markley
W.D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor
Editor, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
Department of English
608 S. Wright Street
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801