OU, former prof Mehta await verdict in defamation trial
By Jim Phillips
March 27, 2008
A defamation trial in a case brought by an Ohio University engineering professor whom OU held partly responsible for a plagiarism scandal has concluded, with the parties offering closing arguments last Thursday.
Frederick M. Gittes, an attorney for plaintiff Bhavin Mehta, said he can’t predict when Ohio Court of Claims Judge Joseph T. Clark, who heard the lawsuit in a bench trial, may return a verdict.
Mehta was a contract administrator with teaching duties in the mechanical engineering department of OU’s Russ College of Engineering and Technology.
After OU discovered a number of past graduate theses in mechanical engineering apparently contained plagiarized material, the university had a faculty member and an administrator investigate the problem and write a report.
The Meyer-Bloemer report, named for its authors, faulted Mehta and two other faculty members for allowing the plagiarism by graduate students they advised. The faculty were not named, but their identities were ascertainable from context.
Mehta was let go from his OU position, though this apparently was not related to the plagiarism issue. Mehta and another professor cited in the Meyer-Bloemer report, Jay Gunasekera, sued OU in the Court of Claims for defamation.
In a post-trial brief in Mehta’s case, Gittes argued that by publicizing the Meyer-Bloemer report, OU “effectively destroyed the academic career and reputation” of his client. Yet, he said, the report was shot through with falsehoods.
While the report claimed that Mehta ignored his responsibilities as a graduate adviser, condoned plagiarism, and was to blame for plagiarism in the theses of 11 of his advisees, Gittes wrote, “All of these statements were false.”
In fact, he argued, most of the theses cited in the report “did not contain plagiarism at all.” In two cases, Gittes wrote, OU dismissed plagiarism charges against the students who wrote the theses. “The majority of the remaining theses contained, at worst, citation errors that were not plagiarism,” he added.
OU’s own adjudication system has confirmed that most of the suspect theses were not plagiarized, according to Gittes, and an expert called at trial by OU conceded that at least six of eight theses he examined were free of plagiarism.
In the single case in which a student advised by Mehta was found guilty of plagiarism and had his degree revoked, the attorney added, “the testimony was clear that no faculty member would have been expected to detect that plagiarism. The student involved took pains to disguise the fact that he had copied material from cited sources with which Mehta was not familiar.”
Making OU more culpable, according to Gittes, is the fact that the university disseminated the Meyer-Bloemer report, even though it should have known it was misleading.
“Meyer and Bloemer based their conclusions on fabricated, nonsensical standards that they had been told by (Russ College Dean Dennis) Irwin were not accepted by the academic community or OU,” Gittes alleged.
This included assigning equal blame to a student who copied another student’s material, and a student who had his or her material copied, the attorney wrote. It also included, he said, blaming a faculty member for allowing plagiarism “regardless of whether there was any way to detect it.”
In releasing the report, Gittes alleged, OU officials including the two report authors, Provost Kathy Krendl, Dean Irwin and Legal Affairs Director John Burns are guilty of “actual malice,” which included “fabricating standards and proceedings when they themselves knew their words were false or subject to serious doubt.”
Gittes went on to allege that when Krendl released the report, Irwin had already warned her it was “inflammatory and inappropriate, and that he would not stand by it.” Neither Krendl nor Irwin, he claimed, actually believed there was evidence to show Mehta knowingly condoned plagiarism. In fact, Gittes claimed, Krendl had even demanded changes in the findings of the report before it was made public, but when the authors refused, released the report anyway.
IN OU’S POST-TRIAL reply brief, a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office said the contents of the Meyer-Bloemer report were “honest and raw,” and that the authors strongly recommended that OU should “act swiftly to get this unacceptable conduct… behind us.”
But while OU officials, the media, students, alumni and taxpayers followed the plagiarism scandal with concern, wrote Randall Knutti, “Dr. Mehta – perhaps only Dr. Mehta – remained unconcerned about the scandal.”
Part of the dispute, Knutti suggested, has to do with how one defines plagiarism. While some universities say there must be intent to commit plagiarism, Knutti wrote, “others – like Princeton, Yale, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Vanderbilt and Richmond, to name just a few – do not.”
While it’s not the Court of Claims’ job to resolve this issue, Knutti wrote, Mehta should realize that when he “mocks” report author Hugh Bloemer for “using a broad definition of plagiarism,” not requiring intent, Bloemer “finds himself in very good company indeed.”
Any fair reading of the Meyer-Bloemer report, Knutti contended, “demonstrates that it represented only (the authors’) opinions. It suggested disciplinary action, which Dr. Krendl rejected. It proposed a variety of faculty rules.”
Krendl did not direct the report authors to use any particular methodology, Knutti suggested, because “she wanted honest opinions from respected, and uninvolved, members of the university community.”
Finally, Knutti stated, Krendl “‘published’ the report only in response to a pending public records request,” which under state public records law, clearly had to be honored.
“She and Dean Irwin would, as everyone agrees, rather have edited the report to make it less harsh and intemperate,” the attorney admitted. “But they could not have barred the public from viewing the report – in its unedited form – once it was written.”
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