According to a recent study, almost 60% of college/university students in the United States admit to having cheated at least once during their studies. Around 15% of U.S. students admit to plagiarizing intentionally and, of those, less than 1 in 5 is caught or punished for academic dishonesty. Professors regularly report that cheating and plagiarism is on the rise; many blame remote learning for what feels like a “plagiarism pandemic.”

Meanwhile, plagiarism detection software has become BIG business, coercing academics to spend almost as much time surveilling and policing as they do researching and teaching. Who does this new, more martial and antagonistic focus on plagiarism help? And who does it hurt?

In this episode, we get to the root of higher education’s commitment to academic integrity and its increasingly pathological obsession with cheating.

Here’s a non-ironic bibliography of the thinkers, texts, ideas, events, etc. referenced in this episode:

• Gary Smith, “Turing Tests are Terribly Misleading” (MindMatters, 2022)
• 18th Street Brewery in Gary, Indiana
• Sweden’s non-response to COVID
• Leigh M. Johnson, “Why I Don’t Care About Cheating” (2009)
• Leigh M. Johnson, “Why I Won’t TurnItIn” (2010)
• Leigh M. Johnson, “Cold War in the Classroom” (2010)
• Cevin Soling, “Why I Think Students Should Cheat” (Wired, 2015)
• Debora Weber-Wulff, “Plagiarism detectors are a crutch, and a problem” (Nature, 2019)
• Zachary Goldman, “Why Do Students Cheat?” (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2016)
• Zoe Budrikis, “Growing citation gender gap” (Nature, 2020)
• “Information wants to be free”
•  Consequences of plagiarism
• Catherin Porter, et al., “The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers” (New York Times, 2022)
• Jack Schafer, “Why Historians Are at War with the New York Times” (NYT, 2022)
• Jon Allsop, “The Times, Haiti, and the treacherous bridge linking history and journalism” (Columbia Journalism Review, 2022)
• David Amsden, “The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Aaron Swartz” (Rolling Stone, 2013) 
• The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (documentary film)
• the Copyleft movement
• Jacques Derrida, Limited, Inc. (1988)
• John Tennant, “Elsevier are corrupting open science in Europe” (The Guardian, 2018)
• Zotero citation software

If you enjoy  listening to Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast and Facebook!

You can also help keep this podcast ad-free by supporting us financially on our Patreon page. We have several different levels of support available and every little bit helps!