In pursuit of intellectual respectability
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News - An excessive deference to figures in authority and an unhealthy obsession with titles, especially academic ones, are traits not necessarily confined to the Caribbean. German education minister Annette Schavan resigned last week, after Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University found her guilty of plagiarism and stripped her of her doctorate. Ms Schavan maintains that she did no wrong and has vowed to clear her name. She is, however, the second member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to resign over such a scandal, following in the footsteps of defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who stepped down in 2011, after he was also found to have plagiarised large parts of his doctoral thesis. According to a BBC report on Ms Schavan’s resignation, “These cases occur in Germany partly because of the German obsession with titles. German politicians take them very seriously, seeing them as a mark of intellectual respectability. It is not uncommon, for example, for a professor with two doctorates to expect to be called ‘Professor, Doctor, Doctor.’
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