CNN: Sheriff David Clarke Plagiarized Portions Of His Thesis, His Medals Controversy
Controversial Sheriff David Clarke is reported by CNN News to have plagiarized sections of his 2013 thesis on national security. The ardent Donald Trump supporter announced earlier this week that he will be joining his administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.
However, according to a CNN KFILE review, his thesis “Making U.S. security and privacy rights compatible” is rife with improperly attributed sources, with 47 instances of this being evident. The following is an excerpt of the report.
“In all instances reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Clarke lifts language from sources and credits them with a footnote, but does not indicate with quotation marks that he is taking the words verbatim.
“According to guidelines on plagiarism posted on the Naval Postgraduate School’s website, ‘If a passage is quoted verbatim, it must be set off with quotation marks (or, if it is a longer passage, presented as indented text), and followed by a properly formulated citation. The length of the phrase does not matter. If someone else’s words are sufficiently significant to be worth quoting, then accurate quotation followed by a correct citation is essential, even if only a few words are involved.’
“The school’s honor code defines plagiarism as ‘submitting material that in part or whole is not one’s own work without proper attribution. Plagiarism is further defined as the use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person’s original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form(s).'”
Sheriff Clarke, however, dismissed this as a politically aggravated review and denied the plagiarism allegations in an email he sent to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, stating, “Only someone with a political agenda would say this is plagiarism.” The thesis has since been removed from the Naval Postgraduate School website.
Sheriff David Clarke is widely known for his controversial statements. In October of last year, he posted a controversial tweet on Twitter, right after Donald Trump stated that the election was going to be rigged, calling it “pitchforks and torches time.” The statement was widely regarded to be an incitement to violence if Hillary Clinton won. It read, “It’s incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time.”
Did you know that Sheriff David Clarke has been accused of wearing a uniform covered with false medals? Thoughts? More #AMJoy coming up. pic.twitter.com/hX2XjvZaAn
— Formerly 'AM JOY' on @MSNBC (@amjoyshow) May 21, 2017
In February, Sheriff David Clarke posted a picture on social media of him donning a T-shirt featuring Donald Trump standing on top on a tank. He captioned a message directed at Michelle Obama, saying that she was never proud of her country until her husband Barack Obama became president.
Sheriff David Clarke also recently talked about the Black Lives Matter movement, discrediting it as a hate driven, terrorist movement. He vented this via a column for Fox News. The following is an excerpt from his post in regard to this.
Sheriff David Clarke, who says he’s joining Homeland Security, plagiarized part of his master's thesis, KFile finds https://t.co/Di97LOnTg2 pic.twitter.com/Itp7xQogEz
— CNN (@CNN) May 21, 2017
“The violence and hate-filled messages pouring out of Black Lives Matter seek exactly this kind of bloody resolution, or revolution, though they cannot admit it in polite society.”
Just a few days ago, controversy surrounding Sheriff David Clarke’s medals began after Charles Clymer, an Army veteran discredited them as fake. The following were some of his tweets in regard to this.
“Okay, regarding Sheriff David Clarke, can I be petty for a second about something that’s always irritated me? (thread),” he tweeted.
“Look at this f**king guy’s uniform. You see all that s**t pinned all over his dress uniform jacket? That’s not supposed to be there.”
He also pointed out that the real medals took a lot of hard work, commitment and sacrifice to earn.
[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
