Episode 138 -- The Politics of Plagiarism-Hunting

In Bed With The Right

Adrian Daub and Moira Donegan

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Sexuality

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Adrian walks Moira through the strange politics of plagiarism hunting -- an (initially non-partisan) German preoccupation that became another line of attack in the right wing assault on higher education in the United States. The episode details how legitimate concerns about academic fraud were fused with a broader populist critique of "university corruption", which effortlessly fused with anti-woke and anti-"DEI" critiques of the university.

NOTE: As he feared, Adrian was indeed incorrect on one particular point: German dentists do not have to write a dissertation, though a surprisingly large percentage of them do.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, it's for homos.
0:01.1	Yeah.
0:01.7	PhDs are for homos.
0:02.8	Yeah, just leave it to us.
0:03.7	Yeah.
0:04.2	It's for women.
0:05.0	It's for homos.
0:06.0	Yeah.
0:06.3	All the rest of you can drop out.
0:08.6	I'm told that you're being passed over for jobs unjustly anyway.
0:21.0	Yeah. Just drop out. It's the fellas, every field discriminates against you, so you better leave all the high-paying, high-status ones to the women and the gays.
0:22.6	Is it gay to finish a dissertation?
0:24.0	Yes.
0:32.4	Yes. The answer is yes. Hello, I'm Adrienne Dob. And I'm Wymorne-Donovan. Whether we like it or not, we're in bed with the right.
0:42.7	So, Adrian, today we are talking about plagiarism.
0:43.4	That's right.
0:48.1	Today is a story of which I'm still not entirely sure it's a story,
0:51.7	in the sense that we're tracking a particular phenomenon with the beginning and middle and an end.
0:52.8	It's about a couple of things I've noticed.
0:56.0	And I think I can put them in a kind of narrative,
0:59.0	causal nexus, but there are places where I would love for someone
1:03.0	to openly say, yes, I got inspired by,
	...

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