College Park President Cleared of Plagiarism Claims

University of Maryland College Park President Darryll Pines did not commit academic misconduct, an investigation determined, clearing him of plagiarism allegations that emerged last September.

A joint investigation that involved both the campus and the University System of Maryland but was led by an outside law firm “found no evidence of misconduct on the part of President Pines,” according to an emailed announcement from College Park and system officials sent on Friday.

Last fall, Pines was accused of lifting 1,500 words from a tutorial website for a 5,000-word paper that he co-authored in 2002, and of later reusing that same text for a 2006 publication, according to the initial allegations against him that first broke in The Daily Wire, a conservative website.

Pines disputed the claims from the start, stating that they had no merit.

However, Joshua Altmann, who wrote the text that Pines was accused of lifting, told Inside Higher Ed last year that “I do consider it to be plagiarism, and not worthy of an academic.”

The investigation, which concluded after more than a year, included three rounds of external reviews and was extended to other articles Pines wrote. While it found no evidence of misconduct, investigators noted attribution errors in some works.

“The committee did determine that the two works highlighted last year contained select portions of text previously published by another author in the introductory sections. In a separate text, a discrepancy in assignment of authorship was made. However, President Pines was not found responsible for the inclusion of such text in any of the three works, nor was he found responsible for scholarly misconduct of any kind,” College Park and system officials announced last week.

Officials also expressed confidence in Pines’s leadership going forward.