Rector unworthy: The director of the University King Juan Carlos should resign immediately – Colloquium Digital (press Release)

The sorry spectacle starring Fernando Suárez, rector of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, refusing to resign from his position despite the evidence of the numerous plagiarism found in your work research, will not only fill him with discredit to him personally and professionally, but to his University and, by extension, to the Spanish university system.

in Front of the lightness with which some, including the interested party, dismiss the question of plagiarism, you must remember that the copy of the work of others is the biggest fault you can commit an academic. Appropriate without cite the work of others supposed to pervert the very essence of the university’s work, which is no other than the production of knowledge and its transmission to the society. This is not, therefore, a minor issue, or just a quote, but a violation of the central core on which is based the integrity and the respectability of an entire profession.

The company, which has been deposited in officials such as Fernando Suarez a responsibility as crucial as it is to produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, they may not allow under any circumstances a cheater accredited is on the cusp of the university system in their double condition of professor and, therefore, of the rector of a University.

it Is regrettable that, as has been shown these days, or the University concerned, or the department of Education of the Community of Madrid, of whom it depends for its funding, nor the Ministry of Education, responsible for ensuring the quality of the university system, and accreditation and evaluation of the teachers in it work, have been able to up to the date of held accountable to the rector for his unacceptable behavior.

With its passivity, the University casts a shadow of corporatism and clientelism extremely dangerous. The autonomy of the university, whose purpose is to help you achieve excellence, you can’t serve precisely to do the opposite: to protect the mediocre or, directly, to the cheaters.

For its part, the silence of the president of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, and his Education advisor, Rafael van Grieken (university professor at the same University that the professor Suárez), neither are acceptable. Your duty is to require the exemplarity of the public employees to those who manage and enable the mechanisms for this type of behavior does not go unpunished.

Neither can stand on the sidelines of the Education minister, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, with the awkward and otherwise false excuse that the topic is not of their competition when the fact is that your ministry is responsible for accrediting and evaluating the university faculty, which makes him the first one interested in knowing why we did not detect such plagiarism at the time of assessment and accreditation of the rector.

having regard to the facts, we do not find a single reason not to do urgent the resignation of the vice-chancellor either on his own initiative or because the sake of the prestige of the university education required to do so by firmly the president of the Community of Madrid or the minister of Education.

Source: The Nation / Editorial