Plagiarist escaped Birmingham penalty

I heard from colleagues that the person who chaired the tribunal was also the very same person who chaired the Sociology Review.

How can any self-respecting University find a senior member of its staff guilty of multiple counts of plagiarism and then give him his old job back, with management responsibilities? No wonder staff relations in the Department were poor given that senior management failed to support those members of staff who took a principled stand against serious professional misconduct.

The first such case on my memory, where a thief of the intellect of others got away with it, happened in Michigan. Marion Perlmutter stole the ideas of a junior colleague and was found by the court guilty of fraud. She was not fired; the university said that they did not consider her guilty. I have no knowledge of how she did socialize with her co-workers after that, but the inescapable conclusion would be that she had such firm support from the above that apparently no one could dare to show any reaction. Such cases are rare. However, universities have the best millieau for the open and shameless corruption. It's all about personal relationships, arbitrariness and unlimited power of administration. Add to this the arcane language capable of making a mockery of accountability, actually designed to make a mockery of accountability. Add the underground currents emanating from what is called special interest groups and the resulting fear of clashing with that particular group to which the boss of your boss belongs. Add the rules of confidentiality designed to hide the truth from the public. Add the completely fraudulent but ever present pretext of the fear of a lawsuit. Add to this the *omerta* - the rule of silence taken from the criminal world. And add here science journalism - people who get paid for not getting inside that vertep. ------------ University of Birmingham was lucky - Tahir Abbas never had a real power. But, even the little power that he had in this vertep was enough to cause resignation of Professor Holmwood. Isn't that crazy?

Speaking as a non-white person, all I can say is that evidence against plagiariam is totally black and white, racial vicitmisation is not.

@Asian Reader The cynical use of the race card in this case is truly problematic. Not least in that it potentially deters others who have actually suffered from race victimisation from reporting their concerns, but also because it undermines the seriousness of the charge in the wider community. If one person cries wolf, and is found to have lied, then the consequences of not being believed are suffered by all those subsequently who do suffer from such problems. I write this myself as someone who has been discriminated against on the basis of race. There is no evidence whatsoever to support Tahir Abbas's claim of being racially victimised. He was found to have plaigiarised and in a desperate attempt to save his career he falsely claimed race victimisation. Shame on him and those who supported him for 'political' reasons while knowing the charges to be false.

Hang on a minute - all does not seem well in the state of Denmark here.... The article claims that Holmwood resigned after his position was made untenable. However, he was already gunning for a post at the University of Nottingham's Sociology Dept. He got this job (Gawd help that Sociology Dept now!!!!). The Bham Sociology insider story is that Holmwood told his managers at Bham re this and wanted to leave a semester later. Bham uni said 'no thanks', they wanted him to leave at his earliest. Where is this aspect in the news story? Clearly Holmwood is not all pure and white in all this - irrespective of the race claim.

Race was definitely NOT an issue in this case until it was made one by Tahir Abbas and others. The case was - and is - completely about plagiarism - it's about academic fraud.

@ Academicus The article is about the extensive plagiarism committed by Tahir Abbas across a number of publications and the failure of senior management at the University of Birmingham to properly address the case. If, as it appears, John Holmwood was forced to leave the University as a consequence of this case then that is another instance of serious senior mismanagement.

@Academicus. I brought the evidence of potential plagiarism forward in November 2007, prior to the RAE submission (it was discovered as part of that process). TheTribunal completed its report in January 2009, but declared that it would keep the findings of serious plagiarism confidential and would not inform authors who had been plagiarised, or publishers in which the plagiarised material had been found. Nor would they inform other members of the Department that Dr Abbas had been found guilty of serious professional misconduct. In January, I informed the University that I would be seeking advice from an external body about its handling of research misconduct and breach of its responsibilities to the wider academic community. Professor Peck, among other senior managers, was also aware that accusations of race victimisation had been made from as far back as November 2007 suggesting that the charges of plagiarism were trivial. Dr Abbas first made formal notification to senior managers of these charges in August 2008, and again in November 2008, while the Tribunal process was ongoing. He signed off formal charges against me on the day he received the Tribunal report when he knew that he could do so under the cover of confidentiality. In offering the cover of confidentiality, the University took no steps to protect me (as the person instigating the complaint against Dr Abbas) as they are required to do under their own code of practice for Public Interest Disclosure. Dr Abbas left the University under a confidentiality agreement after further plagiarism was discovered, again enabling him to claim continued victimisation from me. I applied for the position at the University of Nottingham in July 2009 ,after it was clear that senior managers would take no action to protect my position and were handling the review in sociology in a way that did not protect the interests of my colleagues. I made no attempt to delay my leaving of the University after I was offered the position in September. I was on research leave and making no contribution to teaching in the Department, and at the same time, the Head of College had already withdrawn vacant posts from the Department creating a potential crisis in meeting teaching obligations. With two members of staff on fixed-term contracts that had come to an end, my early departure enabled their appointment to meet urgent teaching needs. The reference to the 'Bham Sociology insider story', however, rather makes my point that my position was undermined by the University not providing information to the Department about the circumstances under which Tahir Abbas was returned to it and then finally left. However, the real story here is that of the University in failing to take seriously its obligations with regard to research governance and the wider academic community, its failure properly to support Heads of Department when they report academic misconduct, its willingness to jeopardise the careers of academics in the Department of Sociology, and its dishonesty in publicly stating that there were problems of PhD supervision, of the direction of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, and of strained relations in the Department, but not the single cause of those problems.

Has anyone looked at Abbas's PhD thesis, to determine whether it was plagiarised? Was that part of the investigation begun in 2007?

Following on my question above: his PhD thesis is freely available at the following link: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1130/1/WRAP_THESIS_Abbas_2000.pdf

@ John Holmwood: are you really saying that this issue was "the single cause" of the problems identified in the review of the department which is now threatening its closure? Or were other issues at stake, too? If the former, then what you seem to be suggesting is that the University is trying to close a department to save its own reputation after a botched disciplinary procedure poisoned said department.

@Lee Jones. Yes, other issues were at stake, as explained in the documents made available by the Department at www.keepsociologyatbirmingham.com. However, the Department did seek to engage with the review constructively and did identify problems that needed to be addressed as well as propose solutions. The misconduct case was, however, the cause of the supposed 'strained relations' in the department that meant that the Head of College decided that the review would take place without any representation from members of the department (this was despite the fact that he had responsibility for bringing about those strained relations). I must also assume that the confidentiality agreement was the reason why external advisers were not allowed to meet with the department and had such a limited engagement. This is part of the reason why the review report and recommendations are so flawed - the review group had no expertise in sociology and was made up entirely of administrative staff or members of senior management teams in the University and College, so that even its independence from the bodies to which it has reported is seriously at issue. The Chair of the Review Group, Professor Shute, was the Acting Dean of the then Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences to whom the prima facie evidence in the plagiarism case was initially brought. In other words, the University seemd to believe that issues of confidentiality compromised its ability to involve members of staff and external experts, but that no member of management was similarly compromised. Now that flaws in the report and its recommendations have been identified, it is stating that there will be a process of 'consultation' with the department. However, it is proposed that 'consultation' be made up of groups chaired by members of the College Executive Board and takes place under the university's ordinances for compulsory redundancy.

So -- what happened at the Birmingham council meeting today??

As a PhD student from Department of Sociology, University of Birmingham, I chose Department of Sociology over other university is because of Prof. John Holmwood’s professional expertise. This stigma puts my degree in bad light. Prof. John Holmwood was a very professional HoD in Birmingham. He was the real victim of Tahir's misdemeanors. Prof. Holmwood is never a racist, it is no dobut to say.

In 2005, I enrolled for a PhD in the Dept and flagship CSEC which Dr Tahir Abbas directed. I am shocked to discover the truth about an academic I had respect for - on the basis of his research contributions which are now tainted. Professor John Holmwood was a well-respected academic and HoD. To suggest that he is racist is a travesty.

To accuse John Holmwood as a racist is far from the truth. As an asian student, I even find Holwood in personal level is more friendly than Tahir Abbas. I am talking about friendship. The University of Birmingham misconduct on handling this issue is a real shame. To close the department is also really odd. I just can not believe how the University of Birmingham's management treat the best lecture I ever have in the last three years in this university.

Interesting case of revisionism going on here. Having seen for myself the disgraceful treatment of Dr Abbas by so-called colleagues I am frankly convinced by his accusation of racism, albeit in a rather remote and cold institutional form that I would assume sociologists would recognise as being a prime topic in their discipline. Dr Abbas was subjected to various forms of lame middleclass hostility within the department - a line was drawn, sides were taken, and actually another member of the department took on the role of acting head and lasted all of one week (back in January! Where is this information in the very biased version of events reported by The Times? As for the issue of plagiarism, the practice of sealing a judgment of misconduct under confidentiality is not, in any way, standard. It would, I think, be fair to assume there is a great deal more to these events than some key players would have us believe ...

What an odd post. Abbas was asked to comment; he declined -- which means he declined the opportunity to set the record straight, as it were, on the plagiarism issue. We're told that Citizenship Studies will retract an article. Perhaps, then, he *did* plagiarize & got caught, and this is the reason for hostility from his colleagues. Sometimes hostility is deserved.

@ Amused-yet-saddened. Hang on - lame middle class hostility; are you serious? In a department that is chock-full of people whose work has extensively engaged with classed identities - post-Marxist philosophy and working class gender identities. Allied to these are career-spanning bodies of work, not to mention the status of other staff members whose biographies are certainly not middle class. You're dead right - someone would have noticed. Fact is, they didn't, because nothing was there to notice. If you get caught you pay the price, because anyone else who works with you is at the very least placed at considerable moral hazard. From my own experience as an undergrad, when Holmwood was at Birmingham he treated students, whatever background, with the utmost professionalism. No one got an easy ride; he'd be challenging you in supervisions for your dissertation, but was interested and concerned to help students and oftentimes went out of his way to be supportive. The guy's reputation is going to tell on this one - just wait for the torrent of former students lining up to back him - unless all of them are secret members of the middle class mafia I doubt whether your point is even remotely tenable. One wonders - as the security guard said the fish in a man-suit - 'Are you Abbas in Disguise?'

A glossary for Birmingham: Holmwood = academic showing integrity. Abbas = cheating academic, plays the race card. Cheats again. [Wonder what kind of references he was given?] Management = "Who can I shift the blame on to?"

Perhaps the most important part of this correspondence is that John Holmwood and Louise Brown have had an opportunity to present the facts as they found them. Unlike most of the people on this thread, they've posted under their own names. I've no personal connection with either of them, but it seems to me that their reward for behaving properly has been vilification by some of their colleagues, a great deal of personal disruption and unpleasantness, and - in the end - the elimination of their department.

The core issue seems to be a case of deliberate plagiarism in several instances over a period of years and the nature of the university's response to it and manner of dealing with it. It is perhaps instructive to have a look at http://www.sociology.bham.ac.uk/postgrad/Modules/PGFRAMEWORKS2007.pdf and refer to page 3, where students are even threatened with expulsion for plagiarism in an internal essay. This is stated to be University policy. Surely it is not too much to expect the University to apply its own policy with consistency and rigour when the miscreant is a member of staff AND TO BE CLEARLY SEEN TO BE DOING SO, instead of hiding behind confidentiality clauses. To be re-closing a department that was only re-opened in 2002 is no testimony to the long-term commitment and management skills of the University administration and a betrayal of the students, who should now have their fees refunded.

wish somebody like the THE supplement would investigate all these rumours about sociology, also those that were doing the rounds with the previous story on the poor relations in the departments. Like I've also heard that staff plagiarise the work of postgraduate students and that this is like an open secret in their subject because they borrow freely from each other. Perhaps this is why neither students nor staff are expelled, they collude or something, and then this results in the bitter personal struggles that eventually make depts. implode with issues like race and sexism being used as ammunition?

frankly i find this whole thing quite appalling. the victimisation of tahir abbas in particular and the way in which he is being scapegoated for the RAE failure of the dept is quite ridiculous. anyway who knows how academic departments work knows that the HoD carries the responsibility for the RAE (and now the REF) - how is it even possible for TA to be responsible for the failure of the department as such? Something in this whole affair stinks - and the HoD has to take the can for the RAE failure (the whole timetable of events seems to be far too late in the RAE cycle to be significant). Are we supposed to believe that members of the department were 'so traumatised' that they were rendered incapable of doing anything? i also find it odd that the university would find TA guilt of professional misconduct and yet allow him to continue working. btw declining to comment is not any form of admission but probably an indication that the whole affair is about to move into a legal process.

Heads will roll

Did TA secure any external income while he was still working? I don't know but might explain some things if he did. There was the big spread about him in the Guardian when this case was being investigated internally - presumably cleared with the marketing department.............

This is the third time in its history that Birmingham has sought to close its sociology department which suggests a deeper and more engrained management ambivalence towards it as a subject than immediate issues suggest, however demanding of action they are. The present department was only created in 2003, after the fiasco of the closure of the long established and world renowned sociology and cultural studies department. The unjustifiable sacking of that department's staff, on the pretext of their unexpectedly "bad" RAE result, left a huge number of undergraduate and postgraduate students without support. Initially, the university management were extraordinarily cavalier about this, but were forced under criticism from all quarters to recreate a new sociology department - the one now threatened with closure. Until moving to a new post in Scotland in 2005, I was a member of that new department, brought in internally from social work, to help teach the abandoned undergraduates. A significant number of new, very talented young sociologists were also recruited to the department who, with time and good management within and outside the department itself would undoubtedly have added lustre to their discipnline and the university's reputation. It is never easy to work at one's best in a department as crisis ridden as this one became and it is tremendously unfair that their jobs should now be at risk because of the failings of one of their number and their subsequent political consequences. Tahir Abbas was/is a bright man deeply and genuinely concerned with sociology of Islam issues, and I am shocked, saddened and angered that he committed plagiarism - I am sure he was smart enough to succeed without resorting to this. Given Birmingham's chequered history with sociology I doubt however if this is the biggest issue in the decsion to close the new department , however convenient a peg it is on which to hang the decision. Everyone, from the HoD down, sems to be been undersupported, put in a position where no one can work really effectively. There are some immensely talented people in the sociology staff group, and good teachers to boot, whom no sensible university would risk losing. Third time round, the university should think twice before closing sociology down.

@ Asian reader; The fact that you started your statement with 'speaking as a non-white person' shows how limited and prejudicial your own understanding of racism is. Go ask the Irish, Poles or Jewish communities if a lower level of melanin in your skin will save you from racism...

@ Jay I don't think Tahir Abbas is being victimised. The question is: did Tahir Abbas pass off the work of other people as his own without citation or reference? The answer is yes, and that he did this on a number of occasions across a range of his publications. A simple Google search of the content of his work is very revealing and confirms the extent of the plagiarism. The next question is: given that the University were informed of this and found him guilty of plagiarism at their own internal tribunal why was this covered up? Are the research governance procedures in the University of Birmingham so lax that they enable a confirmed plagiarist to be returned to supervision of postgraduate students? Also, why did the University not inform publishers or authors that they had been plagiarised? Why did the supposed interests of Tahir Abbas outweigh the obligations the University had to the academic community at large? Given the attempt to deflect attention away from Tahir Abbas's plagiarism, I have to wonder whether Jay is not a member of Birmingham University's senior management as s/he appears to fit the description given in the glossary earlier in the posts: Birmingham Management = "Who can I shift the blame on to?"

Abbas has quite a few publications accepted/in press/under review: http://www.tahirabbas.co.uk/#/publications/4534374007. If I were (for example) an editor at Sage, I'd be very interested in this particular news story.

There seems to be no right or wrong answer to this issue. It is surely going to jeopardize the university's reputation. My question is: why we, students have to pay for all this? It's going to be us, next to the academic staff, who will suffer most from this. Sad.

There clearly is a right and wrong answer to this issue, unless you think academic plagiarism is acceptable. I certainly do not: the overwhelming majority of academics certainly do not either. That's why Dr Abbas was found guilty of academic misconduct. Few other examples of such professional misconduct should be punished as severely as this one. Harsh penalties are available to discipline students found guilty of plagiarism, including being disqualified from one's Degree (just check the regulations on the Departmental website about the University's policy of identifying plagiarism in students' work). Dr Abbas was found guilty and then allowed to have his old job back. What self-respecting, research-intensive University would allow this to happen? Clearly, senior management at the University of Birmingham has let the Department, students and the profession down badly. As a result, they have lost the single, best asset the discipline of Sociology had at Birmingham: John Holmwood, an internationally recognized senior academic with the intellect and strategic understanding of what could have been built at Birmingham vis-a-vis a top, successful sociology program. Shame on the University of the Birmingham and good luck to Nottingham for recognizing his talents when they did.

As a student of the University of Birmingham, let me set the record straight, that it is a racist institution. It is atypical of a lot of prestigious Universities in this country, made up of middle-class white folk. Any ethnic minorities academics in these institutions are unfortunately rarely born/breed in the UK they tend to be from outside the UK. With this kind of background I would be very surprised if Dr Abbas was not faced with any racism, as a matter of fact we (black minority ethnic) tend to keep quiet about it purely because we don’t want to believe that we could be victims of it. Particularly in intuitions that ought to know better such as Universities. Shame on the University of Birmingham, in the light of all its equality/diversity statements it is nothing but a hypocrite. As far as Professor Holmwood is concerned, I don’t know if he is a racist but one thing I’m sure about that he is definitely a middle-class white elite and could not understand, how one could potentially be discriminating and yet not know one is doing it, purely because one has come from a more privileged background. As far as Dr Abbas being accused of plagiarism, well that is fine but surely he could not have singled handedly bought down the whole department.

@ Jay Sean "As a student of the University of Birmingham, let me set the record straight, that it is a racist institution. It is atypical of a lot of prestigious Universities in this country, made up of middle-class white folk." It would be impossible to rule out such a large institution having any sort of prejudicial incidents, but by the same token you obviously haven't been paying attention in lectures because your statements are so laughably general, full of arrogance and backed by such a dearth of evidence. Oh and the one incident I did see of prejudice when I was at Birmingham; young British Asian muslim men haranging the Jewish Society holocaust memorial stand. When a member of the Jewish Society pointed out that there purpose and literature drew attention to the plight of all victims of genocide, in different parts of the world (including Gypsies and homosexuals) - one of the men from the msulim group shouted 'Oh come on you can't agree with that' - in reference to the plight of homosexual victims of genocide (e.g: he didn't think they were worthy of concern). Prejudice is not just the preserve of the white middle classes, and you'd do well to get your evidence in order before embarrassing yourself and your teachers in this way.

@Jay Sean I have no doubt that individuals suffer from racism within institutions, including even at the University of Birmingham. The issue here is that Tahir Abbas falsely claimed racism to divert attention from the fact that he committed plagiarism. There is absolutely no substance to the claims for racism that he made. In using the 'race card' in this cynical manner, he makes it that much more difficult for any other person to then have their claims for racial discrimination taken seriously.

@Jay Sean -- no, Abbas didn't bring down the whole department, as you put it. What is bringing down the department is the contemptible failure of the university's management to deal properly with Abbas's plagiarism and other related issues, pretending that these issues are the failing of the department.

concerned observer - your evidence is anecdotal perhaps you should develop a better understanding of what does and does not constitute as evidence. One anecdotal reference does not make for evidence, clearly here discrimination is taking place. Discrimination takes place everywhere and even by those who may find themselves being discriminated against in certain situations. Welcome to the real world concerned observer. Concerned academic - Tahir Abbas was re-instated by the University - why was this done? Normally in these circumstances, academics are paid a fat cheque to disappear. There is more to the story then meets the eye. This blog is clearly being invaded by former academics and students of the sociology department. It just goes to show how poor the relationships in Sociology were. Please just stop it!!!! Move on....

Whether or not 'there is more to this story than meets the eye', as Jay Sean puts it, the simple facts of this story are that Dr Abbas was found guilty (and not just 'accused', as you put it) of serious professional misconduct when his work was discovered to have been serially plagiarized. This was the verdict of an internal Birmingham University tribunal but is now a matter of public record: the journal Citizenship Studies is now retracting an article of Dr Abbas' because it has been plagiarized from the work of another 'ethnic minorities' scholar. These facts are clear from the above article. The real question is: why did senior management return Dr Abbas to his old job, with management responsibilities, after he had been found guilty of plagiarism? If we give senior management the benefit of the doubt in making this judgment, we have to conclude that, at best, they were incompetent. The racism issue here is nothing more than a red herring - clearly, a distraction engineered by Dr Abbas to divert attention from his professional failings as an academic. That some in this discussion have devoured his line with such relish says more about those posting (i.e. their commitment to high professional standards in academia, which requires a strong line to be drawn in cases of professional misconduct) than it does about the prevalence or otherwise of racism at Birmingham.

When contacted "Dr Abbas declined to comment". Instead of putting any record straight, now it seems this article is "subject to an on-going legal action for defamation and breach of confidentiality - the newspaper and certain individuals are being sued" - according to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tahir_Abbas&action=history. Why can he not make clear his version of events?

@Wikipediafan: yes and it appears that Wikipedia are standing firm - this is in the public domain, it has a number of reliable sources to back it and there is as yet no legal basis to compel a withdrawal. Apart from the fact that the facts of the case are not in dispute - an enquiry into plagarism was launched, and the outcome is not in doubt.

@Jay Sean - rubbish, I told you the context in which I gave you the example and claimed nothing else above it; whilst you meantime are still making grandiose claims with no evidence to back them. This is self evident if you read the post properly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drtahir007#Temporarily_blocked_for_sock_puppetry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drtahir007#Temporarily_blocked_for_sock_puppetry Well spotted! He set the page up personally for his own self promotion, and now doesn't like the fact that his misdemeanors are being put up there too!

Wikipedia page is changing by the hour. Now, however, Citizenship Studies has retracted the paper.(http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/mpp/uploads/ccst_9_2_statement_of_retraction.pdf)

If the papers had been published on Open Access then the plagarism would have been identified almost immediately as the material would not be contained within subscription based journals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journals

This is a dirty business. But open access publishing wouldn't have been any more effective at identifying it than any other means. The truth is that plagiarism is the most foolish of academic crimes because it is likely to be detected - especially if, like this chap, you publish in an area in which there are a relatively small number of high profile authors.

Jay Sean.......please stop with this nonsense-this is an actual case with real people's professional reputations at stake. John Holmwood is not racist and it does you and your 'cause' no credit to make that 'argument.' This aspect of the Sociology at Birmingham case disturbs me most. It is so very unjust. For months-throughout the review-the discourse has been 'this is a dysfunctional department', the inference being that its clearly the fault of staff, who must be 'difficult' or 'dysfunctional' personalities and who are-therefore-largely the architects of their own misfortune. Absolute nonsense. The 'failure' of Sociology of Birmingham is a consequence of a series of poor judgments and decisions by management and a failure-over a long period of time-by management to intervene and set things right. The outcome has been to create an impossible situation in the Department. The front line staff are now blamed for this and might pay with their jobs. In the meantime-until this story broke-they were effectively gagged by the same management who were responsible for the myriad problems and failures in the first place. How spineless and cowardly is that? The reputation of Birmingham has and continues to take a hammering; time for the management to salvage whatever credibility they can from this hideous situation. Why not start by re-assessing Sociology from the perspective of what Social Science actually means in a Russell Group university-that is foreground 'the academic case' in the decision making process.

What i find interesting here is that so many sympathetic to those in Birmingham sociology and even Abbas continue to place the blame on the university and management. This is clearly a failure of sociology and its internal ways of operating. Abbas is the product of this culture. The student above one assumes who calls for sociology itself to be investigated and the other departments of this subject it seems is absolutely right. Now that this matter is in the public domain Birmingham should act vigorously and expell Abbas to save its credibility. Save also the value of degrees awarded there. Don't allow the superficial view to prevail which like sociology disperses racism, plagiarism and blame all over the system - and in this case away from itself, as usual. This is a smokescreen and Birmingham should set an example to other uiversities in Britain by asserting its authority over sociology and making it confom to the laws of the institution and of the land.

@public informant- oh right so you've clearly been paying attention then (Abbas has been gone for some time). I'm not entirely sure what your point is about 'sociology' and even less clear is the bizarre inference that 'it' has broken the laws of the land...

I think Public Informant has a point here. Bham Sociology as a Dept seem to have had problems long before the Abbas case. For example, who was supposed to mentor, support and oversee staff before and after the submission of the RAE (in which the Dept performed very badly)? The former Head of Dept and his appointed research officer/s have much to answer here then, irrespective of what the Uni structures were doing and saying, allegedly, as has been put forward here. The lead up to the RAE was a good few years in the making and staff I assume had sabbaticals and access to (albeit limited) pots of money to carry out work, so how did they produce such poor work? Work that was judged not by Bham uni but by peers and professionals in the field who gave it the grade it deserved. For a Russell group Uni to have such a poor performing dept is criminal! And no I'm not part of Bham uni powers that be.

I think Public Informant has a point here. Bham Sociology as a Dept seem to have had problems long before the Abbas case. For example, who was supposed to mentor, support and oversee staff before and after the submission of the RAE (in which the Dept performed very badly)? The former Head of Dept and his appointed research officer/s have much to answer here then, irrespective of what the Uni structures were doing and saying, allegedly, as has been put forward here. The lead up to the RAE was a good few years in the making and staff I assume had sabbaticals and access to (albeit limited) pots of money to carry out work, so how did they produce such poor work? Work that was judged not by Bham uni but by peers and professionals in the field who gave it the grade it deserved. For a Russell group Uni to have such a poor performing dept is criminal! And no I'm not part of Bham uni powers that be.

Public Informant didn't say that - but yours is a fair point that deserves an answer. If you look above you will see the comments by Louise Brown and John Holmwood. These are good starting point answers to your questions about the length of time before the RAE, events leading up to it, and the structure/leadership of the department from the time of its last reconstitution until now. If you want a more detailed account, go here www.keepsociologyatbirmingham.com - the site quite obviously has an agenda - which is why I invite you to examine the evidence they present for why the 'underperformance' in the RAE is nowhere near as clear cut as has been suggested. Key points are that the department didn't even have a permanent head until 2005; and also that the University executive's own advice from the time the department was reconstituted explicitly stated that they should not expect a fantastic performance in the next RAE due to the time and logistical constraints of constituting the research life of the department. Add to that the various issues relating to the Abbas case and you have the situation that you see before you. I am an ex-Birmingham Sociology student who went on to study elsewhere - when I was there the chief problem from a teaching point of view was that the department has very heavily theoretical, with little in the way of research methods training or empirical exploration going on in the UG course. The Masters level courses had also lost ESRC accreditation for training, following the reconstitution of the department (again, a management decision, not an academic failing). The quality of what was actually taught was very good (as reflected in external assessments); and it reflected the strengths and training of the staff that were there at the time - they cannot teach what they do not know - such are the consequences of reconstitution - you can't just magic up a well balanced department. When John Holmwood took over (just before I left) his agenda was to try and rebalance the department to give a more broadly based sociological education. The department also got back it's ESRC recognition, and currently has several ESRC-funded PGs who've come through the ranks at Birmingham.

Senior staff in Birmingham's Sociology department have reported here that they felt unsupported their managers when a colleague accused of plagiairism was reinstated. Mismanagement of an allegation against a member of staff may fit with the University's guidelines on plagiarism. It has recently revised, and softened, its Code of Practice on student plagiarism. There are three levels: low-level, moderate and serious. Penalties are: for low-level, "a reprimand, possible request to re-submit, but no reduction of mark or loss of credit" (inverted commas indicate a paraphrase of more complex text, not a direct quotation) ; for moderate, ranging from "resubmission of the work with the plagiarised bits removed as if for the first time" to "reduction of the mark for the whole module to 0"; for serious, ranging from "leaving the mark to stand" (i.e. no penalty) to "withdrawal from programme". So although the consequences of plagiarism are potentially very damaging, they are not automatically so. The definitions of the levels are (here directly quoted, but slighly shortened, from the Code of Practice): Serious plagiarism is an attempt by a Registered Student to deceive the marker by passing off as the Registered Student’s own work, work which the Registered Student has not done; Moderate plagiarism is plagiarism that arises from failing to follow guidelines on what is regarded as a Registered Student’s own work. The determination that a suspected case of plagiarism is moderate plagiarism should therefore normally be informed by the suspected plagiarism being most likely to derive from ignoring conventions and acceptable academic practice; Low-level plagiarism is plagiarism through lack of following academic conventions by a Registered Student who may not yet be familiar with the requirements of University-level assessment. These definitions are sufficiently indistinct to enable the most generous interpretation possible of any suspected instance. Only cases shown to involve 'deception' are to be treated as serious, and even then there is an option to impose no penalty. It is whispered that the threat of litigation and embarrassment is partly responsible for this overall "soft" approach to students, although I have no evidence for that myself. Whatever its origin, given this official thinking on student plagiarism, it is perhaps unsurprising that senior management was ill-equipped to deal with the allegation mentioned above. Whether other universities would have handled things better, and whether Sociology would have survived but for this incident are both very uncertain, but until we all confront the issue of plagiarism more systematically it will continue to undermine our credibility as academics.

None of this surprises me. I was on the Birmingham AUT committee for many years, before the University pushed me out. I became aware of terrible bullying by managers, and corupt practices by the organisation. A stress survey in several departments revealed the bullying to the personnel department, but nothing was done. How pleased I am to be out of the University of Bullying, less stressed and without the stench of corruption in my nostrils.

Now Tahir's even been banned by wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drtahir007

Everyone really needs to just calm down and take a breather... The case around plagarism was heard and it was resolved by the tribunal way back. There is no need for the media or anyone else to get involved with that now because its over!! Finito!! As for the issues around racism- we're discussing highly qualified intellectual people here, and i really don't think anyone is stupid enough to make allegations that have no substance. We haven't heard from Dr Abbas yet so at the moment this is just a one way playing field. I think he's doing the right and professional thing by not getting involved in media blogs. If Dr Abbas is considering legal proceedings then clearly his legal team have seen evidence of foul play!!! Fruit for everyone's thought- especially those who like to talk to much!!

@Roxy Sadly, not convinced by this, although it would be good if Dr Abbas did contribute to this debate. No-one has gained from the sequence of events that followed the discovery of his several incidents of plagiarism and his departure from the university as, it seems, a result of it. In fact, it seems to me that it damaged everyone who got caught up in it.

@Roxy - neither am I - there is a public forum here for discussion to take place - apart from the fact that (as K340 observes) no one gained from this but many were damaged, I can't see how any kind of 'foul play' will change the facts of the case. With respect I am not sure you realise how serious this is - it isn't one or two instants of plagiarism, that might be the result of dodgy citations - it's multiple instances over the course of a career. No one benefits from this - the fact that he plagiarised doesn't mean he doesn't know anything, or that he is incompetent in relation to his subject. What it means is that through his behaviour he has undermined the work of colleagues and counterparts, bought the research life of the department into disrepute and damaged a vital benchmark submission with implications for employment and education. No one needs to 'take a breather' - they need management structures to function when tested, and to do so honorably.

@concerned observer How exactly do three pieces out of several dozen published constitute multiple instances over a career? The simple point about the plagiarism is that only one or two who have commented here are privy to the details of the tribunal - everyone else (including me) is just guessing . It would be interesting to know who leaked all this material as well. Either way, unfortunately, sociology at Brum is screwed and it's a shame to see any major discipline treated this way.

@Jay: you're not an academic, are you. Here's the deal with plagiarism among academics: one is too many. FAR too many.

Some broader perspective on the matter of academic plagiarism might be useful. It is bemusing to read these sanctimonious, categorical, moralistic pronouncements about ‘plagiarism’, as if the matter is so simple, cut and dry, as if Professor Abbas is some malignant freak and lone perpetrator of the phenomenon. Contrary to popular wisdom on this thread, though, ‘plagiarism’ in academe is hardly unique to Birmingham. In that sense, there does seem to be a basic ‘fairness’, ‘equality of treatment’, and ‘discrimination’ issue in the treatment of Professor Abbas’s case with respect to consistency of practice throughout the UK and even within Birmingham itself. And in that sense as well, it would not surprise me that he should file claim of racial discrimination over the matter. In one Russell Group university, a white British male remains in his comfortable position for years after a national scandal of public exposure over his unequivocal and proven plagiarism. Another case resulted not in disciplinary charges/proceedings against the alleged plagiarist, but rather in the mounting of an exonerating, whitewash ‘investigation’ designed to discredit the external complainant. I cannot possibly be alone in recognising the wider context of the phenomenon and yet no one has mentioned it. 'Playing the plagiarism card' (to borrow a turn of phrase) against Professor Abbas when other, equally guilty white British perpetrators of academic plagiarism remain entirely unpunished does constitute discrimination (and possibly victimisation if his own complaints of racial discrimination predated the charges of plagiarism). I find it impossible to believe that he is the lone perpetrator of plagiarism in Birmingham's (or any university's) history. Plagiarism is the proverbial white elephant in the great hall of academe whose looming presence can and is often ignored, via a process of institutional self-protection, self-delusion, and self-interested coverup, when it suits the institution to turn a blind eye. One needs to ask why, when, and by whom it was decided to make such an issue in this case, and, more importantly, whether white British academics guilty of the same phenomenon have been or would be treated differently.

As the writer of the comment on Birmingham's revised code of practice on student plagiarism, I feel compelled to respond to Skeptic. By describing plagiarism as 'the proverbial white elephant in the great hall of academe whose looming presence can and often is ignored, via a process of institutional self-protection, self-delusion' and self-interested cover-up', Skeptic appears to agree with my point that that plagiarism is a serious problem undermining academic credibility - at all levels. Is it sanctimonious or moralistic to state this? Clearly not, or Skeptic wouldn't have said it so eloquently. The accusation of hypocrisy is thus presumably directed at alleged unequal treatment of proven plagiarists according to their background - white plagiarists escape, non-white plagiarists are victimised. We can of course trade individual cases - I could mention the case of a white lecturer driven from his post and shortly afterwards committing suicide - but that gets us nowhere. There may well be institutional racism in British universities; if so, that is extremely serious and it must be addressed. It could even be be that instiutional racism and plagiarism have intersected in the Abbas case - although that is hardly proven and most of the commentary on this site suggests otherwise. Even if it were so, it does not mean that action on racism should hinder or lessen the importance of action on plagiarism. They are both extremely serious issues. Whose interests does it serve to attempt to conflate them? Nobody's.

Despite what anon says, I'm afraid that it looks to me as if there at least THREE issues in this story. The academic view of plagiarism, which seems to be (and I hope is) uncompromising; practices adopted towards it by universities (plural), often influenced by a variety of contingent factors which we might be kind and call Realpolitik; and racism.

This story reminds me of two other recent stories. 1. The THE recently ran a story relating to Mark Brake from UoG who allegedly claimed to have a PhD (a qualification he does not have) on a grant application. 2. An academic from overseas was found to have plagiarized at least five papers (can't remember the exact number now) with them later appearing word for word under his name. It is disturbing that such cases as these and the one mentioned in this thread are appearing more and more regulary.

What comes out from this story is that while academics appear largely to be uncompromsing in their stance on plagiarism, the University of Birmingham has NOT been uncompromising in its dealings with plagiarism when this issue was brought to their attention. It has sought to hide the issue as opposed to deal with it openly and transparently, and we might ask why? Tahir Abbas went through an internal process which concluded that he had indeed plagiarised; this has been separately confirmed in the statement released by Citizenship Studies which has retracted one of his articles. What does his ethncity have to do with the fact that he DID plagiarise? The charge of racism is false and deflects attention away from the real issue: the research governance practices of the University of Birmingham and the failure of senior managers to deal appropriately with difficult issues brought to their attention.

Well, there seems to be some question as to whether 'academics' are 'largely uncompromising in their stance on plagiarism', at least if one reads beyond the limited scope of the THE article spawning this thread: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/oct/30/highereducation.uk Amazing, isn't it, how much more thorough and comprehensive the coverage from The Guardian is, compared to the THE article, which provides absolutely no context for the broader issue of academic plagiarism (despite there being a good deal of it easily available on the Internet). The THE article appears further to demonize 'the plagiarist' as if he were the UK's lone perpetrator and unique in having 'escaped' punishment. Indeed, one would be inclined to believe from the THE article that academic plagiarism amongst staff is a shocking and exceedingly rare phenomenon, which it demonstrably is not.

@Skeptic I have no problem with anything you just mentioned. What I am less clear about is why this is quite so relevant to this specific case? If racism was the issue, why was the complaint only filed after conclusion of the Tribunal? If unequal treatment/sanctions against plagiarists is the issue, we need strong evidence of the context for this discrepancy in order to deal with it. What I'm not seeing, in any way shape or form, is any form of support for a white middle class conspiracy - especially when a white middle class former HoD has not come off well from this in any way; and those who threw the cloak of confidentiality over Dr. Abbas's case (he's a Dr. btw, was never a Prof.) were (as far as I can tell) members of this same cohort.

Thats funny as Mark Brake is a Prof and was never a Dr!

@whippet - that's just scary (Mark Brake case) not least because another academic was reprimanded and then dismissed for making what appears to be a credible claim!

@whippet - that's just scary (Mark Brake case) not least because another academic was reprimanded and then dismissed for making what appears to be a credible claim!

We probably don't want to go down the Mark Brake route again, do we boys? Surely this is a more serious matter,

who says I'm a 'boy'? :-p

No one is arguing that plagiarism is not serious. But others factors are significant. And the issue of racism and bullying is separate again and predates the plagiarism. It is clear to me that the discussion in this thread is really going for TA and I really wonder if that would be the case for someone else (plagiarism as someone rightly pointed out is on the increase). It seems to me that the real issue concerns the university and its relationship with sociology and it makes little sense to argue that it comes merely down to one individual. I also repeat what I said before if the tribunal concluded there was gross professional misconduct why was TA not just dismissed? I also repeat: who has leaked this and who stands to gain from it? Incidentally on one small point, the new convention is that readers at most british universities can also use the title of associate professor and hence can be called professor. it's not a convention I prefer but it's one that has become the norm - I'm somewhat old-fashioned about this and always correct my american students who refer to me as professor.

Tahir abbas, what a tit. I hate cheaters.

@ Jay. 'It is clear to me that the discussion in this thread is really going for TA and I really wonder if that would be the case for someone else (plagiarism as someone rightly pointed out is on the increase).' I guess you have either failed to read my posts on this thread, or you are 'plagiarising' my arguments without credit. ;) (joke). I think I am the lone person on this thread besides yourself who has noted the wider context of plagiarism in academe and the extent to which TA appears to have been singled out for special scrutiny and persecution for a somewhat more rampant phenomenon. I too question whose interests were served by the 'leaking'. And may I also say that I find the breach of confidence by the former HoD unethical and inexcusable. I know nothing about this case, but if all UK HEI regulations are more or less the same, TA would (or should) have had the right to appeal against any finding of an internal tribunal. If he was reinstated then it seems possible that there is a good reason for that. I cannot fathom why it is anyone's business at Birmingham (or anywhere else, much less this thread) beyond TA himself as to what the 'findings' were. Internal processes are very often unfair and designed to deliver a preordained outcome. Moreover, internal processes are supposed to be strictly confidential. Birmingham is to be credited in upholding the principle of confidentiality in refusing to speak to THE, whereas the former HoD needed to unburden himself with leaking 'the truth'. Why, I wonder? @anon. Thank you for your kind response to my post. I agree that I have conflated the two issues of racism and plagiarism; and I agree both are serious. The facts though are nebulous at best and hardly illuminated by the reporting in THE article. And they do seem to be in dispute, as one party on this thread says the racism charge post-dated the plagiarism, another says it was the other way around. Whatever the facts, the scapegoating of a single person for the problems of an entire department does have a strong whiff of victimisation about it, and seems typical of the kind of polarisation mentioned in research on workplace bullying and discrimination generally.

I am someone who has contacts inside Birmingham University and am afraid to say that the chronology and details of this story as articulated by THES, based on the claims of the Soc Dept's HoD, are seriously problematic. The points raised by Skeptic pick up on the dissonances inherent in this story. Firstly, is the question of the findings of this internal tribunal. a) we are faced with the fact that the tribunal and its findings were supposed to be confidential. we have no way of discerning the real findings of the tribunal except for relying on the claims of HoD. the journalist as blithely accepted those claims at face value, and it hasn't yet occurred to commentators here as to *why* exactly these findings were kept confidential. b) this raises the following issue: so far, commentators here have assumed that the alleged plagiarism findings prove unequivocally that the sociology dept failed to discipline. the characterisations of Dr Abbas' alleged plagiarism here have been quite extreme - someone even asserting that it constitutes 'multiple instances' spanning 'a whole career', and then encouraging us to easily do a google search to verify it. apart from being very familiar with Dr Abbas' work well, i've also tried to do some google searching and haven't been able to verify it at all. the Citizenship Studies retraction refers not to plagiarism, but to "errors" where material wasn't properly attributed, for which Dr Abbas has apparently apologised for.... c) there is thus another way of reading this. one may ask that if the alleged plagiarism was really plagiarism on a scale as bad as the HoD now claims, why were the findings kept confidential, and why was Dr Abbas not sacked then and there? which leads to the possibility that perhaps the tribunal's findings are actually being deliberately misrepresented by Holmwood & Co. the fact that Holmwood has consciously broken the confidentiality imposed by that tribunal is already prima facie evidence of improper conduct on his part. it's hard to avoid the suspicion of a clearly political motive to impugne Dr Abbas' character. Secondly, my sources inside Birmingham uni contradict the Holmwood/THES story - they say that the race victimisation issue preceded Dr Abbas' return and actually involved up to five people. They say that after his reinstatement, this victimisastion continued in the form of further marginalisation, symbolic bullying, and other trumped up accusations. Thirdly, therefore, the plagiarism allegations need to be viewed a bit more skeptically at the moment, given that they arrive in the context of one naive reporter replying on unauthorised sources, all of them breaking a confidentiality agreement, and including someone who was clearly at the centre of Dr Abbas' allegations about discrimination (which apparently preceded the tribunal, contrary to the HoD). My question for everyone here is: apart from relying uncritically on the claims of the HoD and his colleagues, has anyone actually seen the material that is supposed to be plagiarised? Do they really know of the precise issues at stake raised in the tribunal? Rather than faffing around and repeating the claim of the grandness of the crime against scholarship here, is anyone able to actually stop pontificating and illustrate the claim? Fourthly, is it a coincidence that this article and the allegations behind it have emerged at the precise time of the uni's decision to close down the department? Fifthly, most of us involved in academia should be very familiar with the questions of institutional racism in the mass media. The knee-jerk coverage of Dr Abbas' case falls into a wider pattern over the last year in which Asian scholars have in particular been singled out as cheats. I'm thinking of Raj Persaud, Tony Antoniou of Durham business school, Hasmita Ramji... and now Tahir Abbas... To me it seems pretty obvious that far more is going on here than meets the eye, and that until we know more from Dr Abbas' side, we should suspend judgement. On that note, as one of the other commentators here observed, his absolute silence on the issue may well be a sign that he is under legal advice not to breach confidentiality. I would therefore be very careful at this point not to repeat claims that we can't verify ourselves.

If you want evidence of plagiarism have a look at the Citizenship Studies article, reference: Abbas, T 2005. ‘Recent Developments to British Multicultural Theory, Policy and Practice: The Case of British Muslims’ 9 (2) Compare Abbas p155 with Parekh pp1, 2, 8 Bhikhu Parekh ‘What is Multiculturalism?’ from India Seminar No 484, December 1999 at http://www.india-seminar.com/1999/484/484%20parekh.htm Then compare Abbas p156 with Treanor pp1, 2, 3 Paul Treanor ‘Why Multiculturalism is Wrong’. Dated 2003 on Treanor's website at http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/index.html Then compare Abbas p157 with a blurb from Amazon! Amazon.com book blurb for G. Betts The Twilight of Britain: Cultural Nationalism, Multi-Culturalism and the Politics of Toleration (2002) Blurb at: http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Britain-G-Betts/dp/0765800659 Then, if you're still not satisfied, compare Abbas p161 with Geaves pp66, 67 Ron Geaves ‘Negotiating British Citizenship and Muslim Identity’ in T. Abbas (ed) Muslim Britain: Communities Under Pressure (2005) How many more do you need? All this is in the public domain, because all these items are in the public domain. Here is the evidence of Tahir Abbas's plagiarism; where is the evidence to support any claim of racism? The accusations of racism do not predate the charges of plagiarism, they are an attempt to divert attention away from serious research failings by Tahir Abbas.

We keep hearing the question: why were the findings of the tribunal kept confidential -- doesn't it perhaps mean there wasn't plagiarism? Another answer might be: someone spent big $$ on lawyers and convinced certain other someones that not keeping confidentiality might prove very costly.

If you want me to believe Dr. Abbas is being discriminated against then give me some evidence. Concerned Academic has provided some clear verifiable evidence to back the plagiarism allegations - nothing has been put forward to demonstrate racism. Evidence please...

Tahir, or his associates, is certainly threatening legal action on wikipedia: 'subject to an on-going legal action for defamation and breach of confidentiality - the newspaper and certain individuals are being sued'.

Dear "Concerned Academic", are you actually serious? This is supposed to be the grand fatal super-evidence of plagiarism? I've looked very closely at your citations and compared them to the text of Dr Abbas' Citizenship Studies article. I'd welcome all other academics here to do the same and judge for themselves. What your examples illustrate is precisely that Dr Abbas' case is very obviously not a clear-cut case of plagiarism, but rather a case that could be interpreted in different ways depending on one's inclination. It's absolutely clear, first-off, that Dr Abbas explicitly and repeatedly cites *all* the authors that you mention, on those very pages that are supposed to have been plagiarised. There is not a single situation in which Dr Abbas seems to be deliberately trying to pass on any work as his own. What, presumably, is problematic is the paraphrasing that has gone on, where we find, as in the instances you've mentioned, some carrying over of phrases here and there. And to be honest, some of your claims are simply nonsensical. In the paragraph which supposedly plagiarises Geaves, for instance, Dr Abbas references Geaves explicitly, and quotes him, in quotation marks, and in the same reference, paraphrases him also outside of quotation marks. The Geaves article that Dr Abbas is quoting is, also, the same paper which forms part of Dr Abbas' own edited anthology, 'Muslim Communities Under Pressure'. Why would Dr Abbas plagiarise a contribution to his own book? Anyone who reads this would be able to see that this is not plagiarism. At worst, there is evidence of over-paraphrasing, which could be explained in different ways, depending on how much one wants to lynch the man. I'm far more inclined to understand these as errors resulting from too much copious reading and and note-taking. I can understand why they might be concern and that such errors when identified should be flagged up and dealt with. These sorts of errors can be frequent in academia, and I've found them fairly often in works of scholars I respect a great deal - it is when one can find consistent evidence of attempting to pass off other scholars' work, as one's own, that we are talking about plagiarism in a meaningful sense. If there was an inquiry whose findings were kept confidential, i'm afraid i'd still like to know what it really concluded. given that Dr Abbas was reinstated ater the tribunal findings, it seems far more plausible to me to suspect that the conclusion was that there was a series of errors made - sloppy certainly and requiring rectification - but so far i cannot see evidence of plagiarism requiring that the man's academic career be nullified. this would be consistent with the statement made by Citizenship Studies journal itself, to the effect that the article was redacted due to identifying several "errors" for which the author has apologised. the question remains. As for Herbert's observation about why the tribunal was kept confidential, no one is suggesting that anyone was talking about lawyers during the tribunal process. The question of why the tribunal was kept confidential raises the issue of the various politics going on at Birmingham's Soc Dept. To my mind, the reinstatement of Dr Abbas suggests that the plagiarism charge was not clear-cut, as is actually demonstrated in my view by the Citizenship Studies piece, and the breaking of confidentiality by Holmwood et. al seems to me to raise serious questions about his/their respect for ethics and legality, which frankly undermines all their claims about Dr Abbas in the first place. In response to "Concerned Observer": well, I don't "want" you to "believe" anything in particular. I'm merely pointing out the dissonances in the narrative that is being put out about Dr Abbas, clearly by a group of people around Holmwood. As I've said, many people at Birmingham confirm that discrimination allegations preceded Dr Abbas' reinstatement. Yours is really, given the subject at hand, an ad hominem request - assuming that racism did occur, what "evidence" would I be able to provide in the comments section of a newspaper website??! References to confidential documents!? I'm only acquainted with people at the university, I'm not a vested 'insider', like many commenting here clearly are...

@Concerned Academic - Dr.Ahmed appears to have a point - any response?

I fear Dr Ahmed is being rather disingenous in claiming that the issues arise from problems associated with paraphrasing. All the references given above are direct cut and paste jobs from the sources given. Neither Treanor nor the Amazon book blurb are referenced in this article - a simple glance at the bibliography would confirm that. But the issues of direct 'cut and paste' from other academics' work are also apparent in other of Tahir Abbas's work. Perhaps Dr Ahmed should acquaint him or herself with the definition of plagiarism as set out very clearly here: http://c.web.umkc.edu/cowande/plague.htm Again, however, I would state that the issue is wider than Tahir Abbas's plagiarism, it is about the University's failure to deal with the issue transparently and thus put other individuals (co-authors, many of them postgraduate students) and institutions (Exeter, Birkbeck) at risk. The assumption is that because the University reinstated Tahir Abbas that this means that the plagiarism was not clear cut. I would offer an alternative explanation: in light of the extensive plagiarism found, the University's reinstatement of Tahir Abbas was a serious breach in its processes of research governance. The focus on Tahir Abbas is a smokescreen to cover up the senior mismanagement at Birmingham in relation to its research governance procedures. As others have posted, it is an institution that bullies, harrasses, and intimidates - in this case, it is not Tahir Abbas whom it is bullying.

Any case of academic misconduct should result in dismissal, plagiarism should be regarded as very serious misconduct. However, it appears that some posting here, 'Dr Ahmed' and 'Skeptic' for example, think that plagiarism is somehow defendable in certain circumstances. I fear this is just another sign of the deterioration of standards in UK HE. There seems to be a constant stream of such stories these days. For example in November we had the sorry story, covered by THE, of Mark Brake of the university of Glamorgan who allegedly claimed to have a PhD and falsified a grant application. Many at the time jumped to his defensive in what if proven is a clear cut case for dismissal. However, I am informed that the police are looking into this case at present so maybe dismissal is imminent. My point is that academic misconduct needs to be taken seriously both by the institutions and the wider academic community.

He too has a point Dr. Ahmed - these are cut n paste jobs and there are multiple instances. If not passing off others ideas as his own he was certainly replacating work which calls into question the worth of the work in terms of originality. If he has made a habit of this it also means that he has used this trick to cut corners and get more publications out. Again, I see no evidence for the (I would argue more serious) allegation of racism. In addition, Tahir Abbas has been shown to be a plagiarist and must take the consequences. What he isn't is useless or bereft of knowledge about his subject. It would be to no ones benefit for him not to continue his academic work in some capacity. If we can rehabilitate murderers we can certainly extend plagiarists the same courtesy :-) the issue here seems neither to be with Holmwood or Abbas but with Birmingham management.

@Whippet. Almost no-one on the Mark Brake thread jumped to his defence. Instead, there was a continuous (about 500 posts) screeching for the poor man's head. In the end, THES pulled the whole thread, because it had become hysterical, childish and vindictive. In the present case, Dr Abbas is an intelligent and perceptive man who did interesting academic research on ethnicity. According to the THES article some of his published work has been found to include material authored by others, and this was on a scale sufficient to lead to investigation by the university. He was able to explain this on the grounds of personal problems. According to the THES article he left the university after further evidence of plagiarism was found. According to the THES article, after the plagiarism was investigated he made a complaint about racism. Later, he left the university and seems to have set a up a consultancy business. No doubt this will be a great success, I hope so anyway. But it has left the complaint about racism hanging in the air, for since he is no longer a member of staff and the department is to be closed, I doubt it will ever be fully investigated. Plagiarism is one of the easiest academic sins to discover and prove, and plagiarizing well known and often read texts in a field of research with a small network of luminaries makes discovery inevitable. So, I'm inclined to the view that he's been punished enough. In fact, so has everyone involved in this sad tale. The department is to be closed, staff are dispersed, and students' degrees disrupted. So, @Concerned Observer, it seems to me that pretty much everyone has taken the consequence....

@k340 -- what you appear to be missing is that some people *don't* deserve to be punished here. What have the rest of the staff in sociology done to deserve losing their jobs?? To the extent this is the consequence of the university administration failing to take responsibility for their own actions here, it is deeply unfair. As for "personal problems" excusing plagiarism -- that one doesn't work with my students, it certainly shouldn't work with an academic. And then it happened again -- so much for personal problems... The fact is, there are too many highly talented people searching for academic jobs, the vast majority of whom don't have the slightest problem avoiding plagiarism. I have no doubt what sort of choices I would make as a member of a hiring panel.

From what we can see of the Citizenship Studies article, it's clear that Dr Abbas was not trying to pass off others' work as his own. Whether the errors we can see in this case were due to a) serious misconduct resulting from a systematic procedure of deliberately cutting and pasting materials to maximise output OR b) misconduct resulting from working under pressure and using sloppy techniques like taking notes from summary sources to understand the ideas of scholars - is a question we cannot answer. It is quite conceivable that Dr Abbas did these things on purpose in which case this is a more serious issue; on the other hand, it's equally conceivable that he did these things in genuine error and was unaware of the results until the errors were identified. I just find it hard to believe, really, looking at the Citizenship piece, that these were calculated efforts as part of a generic technique to maximise publications output - they seem too basic and sloppy for that, and as i said, the Geaves piece in particular conveys a sense of unwittingness. Evidently, the Birmingham tribunal investigated this matter and came to a conclusion which clearly did not feel that the instances under review warranted that Dr Abbas be sacked. The THES article says that Dr Abbas pleaded mitigating circumstances, the details of which we simply don't know. Holmwood himself also concedes in his own comment posted above that the racism/discrimination allegations preceded the whole tribunal affair. It could well be that the errors we have seen here occurred in this context of various work/domestic pressures, we don't know. There's nothing inconceivable about the notion that Dr Abbas made these errors as a consequence of a combination of pressures which led to a degree of carelessness in dealing with sources and conveying the ideas of various scholars. We can argue over and over whether or not Dr Abbas deserved to be summarily sacked for errors such as those made in relation to the Citizenship Studies piece. I'm not suggesting that those errors are not reprehensible, but I'm suggesting that Dr Abbas' "mitigating circumstances", of which we're unaware, obviously played a key role in the tribunal's decision to see these as less than serious - it's also quite possible that the allegations of discrimination/racism were also discussed in the tribunal, were linked to Dr Abbas' plea of mitigating circumstances, and had a role to play in the tribunal's decision to reinstate Dr Abbas. What seems particularly odd, and revealing, is that Holmwood, the subject/centre of Dr Abbas' racism allegations both before and after the tribunal, was clearly a disgruntled figure in all this. Presiding over a failing dept nose-diving under RAE research standards, he disagreed with the tribunal's conclusions. That's fair enough, we're all entitled to our opinion, but the fact is that Holmwood not only disagreed with it, he also violated the legal and ethical obligations of his profession by breaking confidentiality and running to the newspapers, in order to pinpoint blame for the collapse of his entire dept on one man. It's simply unbelievable, as others here have noticed, that Dr Abbas could be responsible for this simply by making allegations which "strained relations" in the dept. Frankly, strained relations do tend to prevail in many academic depts, with and without race issues, without them being responsible for the collapse of entire depts and the inability to meet RAE standards! To my mind, Holmwood's own misconduct and nonsensical characterisation of the Abbas affair as the linchpin of the dept's downfall illustrates a basic detachment from reality; and lends credence to Dr Abbas' claims that he was victimised in the dept given that even now, he is being scapegoated for the dept's failings! My point being, i don't see pointblank evidence of a summary judgement of plagiarism; i do see evidence for reprehensible moments of sloppiness; i also see it plausible that the tribunal felt Dr Abbas' "mitigating circumstances" were genuine and explained these moments; i therefore see no evidence for Holmwood's position that Dr Abbas simply deserved to be sacked and should also be blamed for the Soc Dept's self-implosion, which is so ludicrous as to lend credence to allegations about racist discrimination, which we should remember can have very deleterious effects on a person's capacity to perform.

It's utterly bizarre and spurious of "skeptic" to compare this THES news item about a specific case of proven plagiarism, with an old feature about plagiarism in general by the Guardian. For an example of the "thorough and comprehensive" journalism in the Guardian, have a look at this hilarious embarassment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard

In particular, this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2009/dec/03/manger-chic-nativity-plays

@K340: What sort of personal problems could lead to one to plagiarise the work of others I wonder? Maybe he just forgot that he had done so, sounds a lot like the Brake case. Apparently he claimed to have forgotten that he failed to complete his PhD. Basically, there are no excuses when it comes to academic misconduct especially plagiarism.

Is the Dr Ahmed who writes at such length in defence of Tahir Abbas's plagiarism the same Dr Khurshid Ahmed CBE identified on Tahir Abbas's website as working closely with him?

Lol. Afraid not. I'm at the University of Sussex. And I wonder how many of the commentators here out to lynch the man are from the now defunct Birmingham soc dept...

Good to clear that up. I am opposed to lynching in any shape or form but if someone obtains promotion on the basis of plagiarism that has a serious effect on everyone else in the academic community. Incidentally Tony Antoniou formerly of Durham Business School is not Asian - his background is Italian/Greek.

Good to clear that up. I am opposed to lynching in any shape or form but if someone obtains promotion on the basis of plagiarism that has a serious effect on everyone else in the academic community. Incidentally Tony Antoniou formerly of Durham Business School is not Asian - his background is Italian/Greek.

i of course agree with u on the issue of the impact of plagiarism, and thanks for the note about Antoniou, which i should've clarified. well i won't bang on, i've already explained ad nauseum why i think caution is needed in this particular case...

what a disgrace! if ever there was an advert for staying well away from uni academia, then your postings are it! your messages are clearly full of hidden, and some not so hidden, messages of support for either Dr A or Dr H. don't insult the readers' intteligence by suggesting your comments are upholding the honour of the academic world. you are doing nothing of the sort! Plagerism is unnaceptable. To suggest (institutional) racism didin't occur in this case in unbelievable.

Hard not to fault the general line of critique here. That bad things have been done. That there is more to this than meets the eye. That no-one has come out of it undamaged. That there's a slightly nasty undercurrent to some of these comments (not unusual on THES comments thread, that last one).

A number of posts on this thread seem to have successfully confused the issues of this case. Examples of Dr Abbas' plagiarism are now a matter of public record (the retraction in Citizenship Studies is clear to any self-respecting academic). Although apparently subject to a confidentiality clause, neither Dr Abbas or the University of Birmingham have sought to deny the outcome of the internal tribunal into his academic misconduct. In other words, he must have been found guilty. For those in denial about this case, there is a simple question: who was the confidentiality clause designed to protect? If I had been accused of plagiarism and then found innocent of all charges by an internal disciplinary tribunal in my workplace, I would want to trumpet that outcome from the rooftops. In contrast, allegations of racism are just that: allegations that have never been proven or substantiated. Considerably more care should be taken by those contributing to this thread not to cast slurs on the characters of other individual players in this story (in the absence of any proof of racism): the target of these allegations is clearly Professor Holmwood. After all, there were three senior members of staff in the Department at the time of this case, two of them being Dr Abbas and Professor Holmwood, the third being a Professor who, by most accounts, remains close to Dr Abbas and the previous Head of Dept before Professor Holmwood (his predecessor, incidentally, set the current Dept up and, presumably, must be held partly responsible for not introducing the proper monitoring and mentoring of new staff mid-way through the RAE cycle). Any claim of institutional racism must surely extend to these other characters - that is, past (and presumably present) supporters of Dr Abbas - as well as senior management. But by introducing a confidentiality clause and returning him to his old job, senior management at Birmingham provided protection to Dr Abbas despite finding him guilty of serious academic misconduct. Asking why this happened is a legitimate question. But to conclude that Dr Abbas was found innocent is clearly the wrong answer. That senior management mishandled this case and that there remain many questions for which they should answer is obvious, contrary to the attempts of some on this thread to muddy the waters of this case.

Dr Ahmed really should get his or her story straight. First, it's not plagiarism it's having read sources too closely; then there may have been errors of citation, but that's not plagiarism; then those errors may be reprehensible, but personal circumstances should mitigate any consequences. This is the sort of convoluted defence that one gets into when one tries to defend the indefensible. Academic integrity is the bedrock of what we do as academics and passing off other people's work as your own or pretending that you hold positions in institutions when you don't is fraudulent behaviour that diminishes academia as a whole. The racism charges against John Holmwood do not predate the tribunal, but come afterwards. A lot is being made of the fact that Tahir Abbas was returned to the Department, but that doesn't mean that the Tribunal did not find him guilty of plagiarism on a number of counts; if Tahir Abbas or the University of Birmingham were to release the Tribunal statement this could be easily cleared up. And if John Holmwood had wanted to go running to the papers, he could have gone a lot earlier given that this case seems to have been going on for over two years. From the evidence of the story above it looks as if the Times Higher reporter asked him for a comment suggesting that the story was already out. This is hardly a surprise as all the plagiarised material - his published articles and the work from which he plagiarised - is all freely available in the public domain; and the Citizenship Studies was retracted prior to the story in THE. Let's not get hung up on the Citizenship Studies article either - go and check his chapter in the edited volume on John Rex or any other of his publications and you will see cut and paste jobs in all of them. Plagiarism is a plague as Irving Hexman as suggested and it needs to be addressed when it is discovered; not excused.

1) Sociology in Birmingham is NOT yet defunct and all options remain on the table. The University Council will decide on this matter in April 2010. 2) Professor John Holmwood blew the whistle only after he resigned from Birmingham. It was also because the University Management had cited 'strained relations' between staff as a reason to close the Dept. As the cause was confidential (viz. the guilty verdict from Tahir's plagiarism tribunal), the consequences should never have been cited. (Please refer to the Department of Sociology's response to the review at www.keepsociologyatbirmingham.com for their public statement on this matter). 3) Professor John Holmwood was never racist, please read his work. I can attest to this fact. As a HoD, he would never say no to any student who needed help and went out of his way to advise PhD students he was not responsible for supervising.

Why did the University of Birmingham find a senior academic gulity of plagiarism and then re-appoint him to his post? The University has refused to explain its behaviour in so doing, which is disgraceful. I was told that the person heading the tribunal was Pro-vice chancellor Professor Shute (from the Law School!) and that he ALSO headed the review into the Sociology Department. Does anyone know if that is true? If so, there is a serious issue of lack of accountability and transparency by the UB authorities here which no-one seems to be bothered about. Isn't this important?

This is the same anon who has previously posted on plagiarism. A little remarked-on detail of Professor Holmwood's account of the Abbas case is that the problem with the Citizenship Studies article came to light just before the submission deadline for the 2007 RAE. For anyone not sure what that means, as Head of Department, Holmwood would have had responsibility for urging his colleagues on to get their "4 best publications" ready, and then, with others, would have formed a view as to whether they were submittable. Although we cannot be certain, it seems likely that this article was one of Dr Abbas's "best 4". Put yourself in Holmwood's shoes. He becomes aware that an article by one of his colleagues contains questionable sections. What should he do? If he ignores it, and it then comes to light, who will look as if they are either trying to cover something up or simply not knowledgable enough to spot plagiarism in his own back yard? Of course he has to do something about it. No amount of exculpatory rationalisation of how it happened will get round the fact that Holmwood had to act. Furthermore, it is a basic fact about plagiarism that once you find some, you look for more. You don't always find it, but you always look. I have followed Dr Ahmed's advice and studied the relevant passages. The strangest one is the section from an Amazon blurb. If you are interested enough, you can select small phrases from the section Abbas has used, and search for them on Google. Try something like: "The process began, Betts argues - Abbas". This will quickly show that the text of the blurb appears in at least two previous pieces of work by Abbas, one a presentation at the University of Surrey, and another a paper given in Belgium (both in 2004). These were probably developmental efforts before finally submitting the paper to Citizenship Studies for publication - normal enough academic pratice, but only if you are willing to be thorough in editing your final version for publication. (I suppose it is just possible that Abbas himself was the author of this blurb, or had permission from the author to borrow it, but I doubt it). Again, if you are interested, you can also see that Abbas cited a paper by the editor of a magazine called Prospect - Goodhart - but he cites him as Goddard in his text and as Godhart in his references. It's a relatively trivial, if revealing error which carries through all three pieces of work, into publication. We can conclude that what was originally a rather hastily put together presentation, in which he borrowed a blurb from Amazon (not the only borrowing of course), ended up as a published paper leading to all this trauma. The moral? Not, as Dr Ahmed seems to think, that we should overlook such matters as being not deliberately passing off someone else's work as your own. Some of us spend a long time trying to explain to students how to avoid precisely this sort of thing. Students who don't learn this can easily suffer badly (although as my earlier post made clear it seems that the University of Birmingham seems anxious to soften its stance). Sometimes they say: "I didn't mean it", or "I'm not dishonest" or "I'm not the only one who does this" or "I was under extreme pressure at the time" or "you are picking on me again". And I suppose these are all natural human responses, but it does not make them defensible. I feel really sorry for all parties in this fiasco, but most of all for students and remaining staff in that department.

The racial solidarity by "Dr Ahmed" really is pathetic and his defence of Abbas laughable. Of course, if white folks did this it would be beyond the pale and "proof" that Britain is akin to Germany, 1936. Laughable. Newsflash: Abbas is finished as an academic, although I note that he claims to be linked to Exeter now. So I guess Exeter has no academic standards these days either.

@ anon 'A little remarked-on detail of Professor Holmwood's account of the Abbas case is that the problem with the Citizenship Studies article came to light just before the submission deadline for the 2007 RAE. . . . He [Holmwood] becomes aware that an article by one of his colleagues contains questionable sections'. Holmwood admits above that he was the one who exposed the plagiarism. Since posters are demanding other seedy details, how about someone enlightening us on two rather critical ones: a) *how exactly*, one wonders, did Holmwood 'discover' the plagiarism, and b) *who exactly* 'discovered' it and/or informed him? The very timely 'discovery', just in the nick of time to exclude Abbas from the RAE, seems more than a little suspect. Here is where it becomes absolutely critical--from a legal standpoint--to know the timing of the racial discrimination complaint. The facts seem hotly contested on here. Why? What exactly is at stake? Well one thing that is surely at stake is that any complaint of race discrimination lodged against the HoD that took place prior to the 'discovery' would constitute a 'protected act' under RRA 1976. Not only Birmingham as the employer is subject to discrimination action in employment tribunals; in these cases, individual academics alleged to have perpetrated the discriminatory actions can also be named as respondents, and, far more importantly, be held personally accountable for damages. Someone mentioned 5 people involved besides Holmwood. Whatever the merits of Abbas' complaint, if it did in fact pre-exist the 'discovery', the subsequent exclusion could be seen as victimisation/detriment suffered in the aftermath of the complaint which is, incidentally, just as unlawful as any alleged direct discrimination itself.

Even though some on this thread continue to claim that the facts of this case are 'hotly contested', it would seem that even those purporting to support Dr Abbas' allegations of racial discrimination appear to accept that he has plagiarized the work of other academics. On that much, I am glad we can all agree. However, if I was Dr Abbas I would now be taking the view that with 'friends' like 'Skeptic' I certainly would not need enemies. Although I don't believe in the race victimization allegations from Dr Abbas, it is clear now that he has been exposed as a plagiarist that his career as a scholar is over - and rightfully so, given that there will always be question marks over the originality and quality of his work, as a result.

@distant observer. Clearly you have not read my post of 2 Dec 09. I don't agree that Dr Abbas is a 'plagiarist' any more than others equally guilty who have somehow been spared the rod. The extent to which Dr Abbas has been 'found guilty' of it anymore than others who have yet to be prosecuted or others who already have been and retain their positions, remains an open question. The whole scenario smacks of the Orwellian, wherein (to paraphrase) all are guilty but some are more guilty than others. This is where the racial issue comes in. I suspect that not only has Dr Abbas has been a victim of racial discrimination--and the 'plagiarism' issue drudged up to persecute and, above all, put an uppity (read: distinguished) man of colour in his place--but I also happen to believe that institutional racism is rampant in UK universities, and not just against people of colour. Further, given the frenzy leading up to the RAE and given some of the positively shoddy twaddle promulgated as lofty 'research' in the process, I do wonder how many UK academics' work would survive the kind of intense scrutiny that has been applied in this case. Don't get me wrong: I have myself been 'plagiarised' so many times I cannot count them all. But as a result, I long ago stopped bothering about it because in my view--contrary to many on here--plagiarism is not in the least unusual but rather epidemic in the international academy generally, and, dare I say it, especially in the UK. For one thing, UK academics are notorious internationally as being serial 'under-citers' (at best) of the work of other scholars. What baffles me, though, is that so many other people seem to get away with it, whilst certain others, like Dr Abbas, are singled out as targets for lynch mobs, as Dr Ahmed has already pointed out. Let's just stop the sanctimonious pontificating crap, and leave the man alone, shall we? It is sickmaking to witness the gloating Schadenfreude so many on here seem to be deriving from what by any standard of human compassion and decency (and whatever the actual truth of the matter), should be regarded as a very tragic case. I have never seen such a vicious lot of academics as the ones who populate THE threads. It is a disgrace to the international academy that so many British academics participate so gleefully in the public pillorying of a fellow academic. It is even worse that so many seem to accept uncritically, unthinkingly, and without any skepticism a one-sided, poorly researched article in what has become the tabloid rag of choice for promulgating malicious academic gossip.

I found this out of interest after Googling old friends and acquaintances. From Wikipedia to here, thence to his personal website. What a surprise! I worked with Tahir back in the late 1990s. We were doing PhD together at Warwick University at the Centre for Research In Ethnic Relations. I subsequently abandoned my research and looked for a job. With Tahir and our colleague Nusrat Shaheen we worked on a piece of research for the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia in the British Press. We got the grand sum of £3000 of which each of us had £900 and Tahir's supervisor, £300. During the research both Tahir and Nusrat elected me as research manager or leader, and we agreed that we would write two chapters each, I would top and tail and conclude and introduce. Both Tahir and Nusrat wrote one chapter each, I wrote two chapters and I put together the research, some very minor parts of it were later incorporated into the Trusts report Islamophobia a challenge to us all. Because I had done more work I suggested that they put my name at the top - e.g. as principal investigator. Seemed fair as I didn't want more money and we were all broke at the time as research students and of course in academia the currency of one's career is recognition. This prompted a flip out from Tahir, and we haven't spoken since although I did try and meet him back in 2001 for a drink (he didn't turn up) and offered him some work later on (his rates were too high). Anyway the research since disappeared into obscurity, probably rightly so, as it was the first research project I'd worked on and frankly not a lot was either new or useful. It was never published and there's probably very few copies around anyway. Possibly one in Warwick gathering dust. I forgot about it save for a few CVs. Which leads to tonights second surprise, to find the research cited on Tahir's personal website with himself as Principal Investigator and myself and Nusrat as Co-Investigators!

@ skeptic. Your defense of Dr Abbas seems to be based on the idea that he is a plagiarist who has been singled out amongst other plagiarists for cruel and unusual punishment because of his race. You then go on to defend plagiarism as endemic to academia. You may or may not be correct. But even if it was, it does not necessarily mean that plagiarism is therefore acceptable, in the case of Dr Abbas or anybody else. I do not know Dr Abbas personally but I agree with you that cases of academic plagiarism - especially amongst senior academics (Dr Abbas was a Reader and Director of a Research Center at Birmingham), who are supposed to set an example to their more junior colleagues - should be disciplined with consistency, regardless of their ethnic background. Rather than let people off the hook for plagiarism, which you seem to suggest, I believe there is no excuse for it in the academy. Moreover, I think your harking about racial discrimination and hounding of Professor Holmwood suggest that you have a vested interest in this case about which your priorities and understanding might equally be described as 'sick-making' (your word, not mine).

Alex Hall's comments are a real indictment in my view -- the actions described, if accurate, are those of a small man.

If Alex Hall's comments are correct - posting under what I assume is his real name - it's not looking good for Abbas, or his defenders...

Yes its my real name. I work from Transparency Research (Google it!) and indeed you'll find the same piece of research described in the portfolio section. And I still do research. Although I'm reluctant to expose my rough and ready budget-limited research using rapidly trained members of the community under study to scrutiny from a bunch of rabid academics who's only currency is how highly they are thought of (it does get the girls, doesn't it?), you can, if you wish, subject it to peer review and cries of howling methodological inconsistency and failure. I'll take it on the chin, and then apologise. But now as I am here I might as well stick another oar in. Racial discrimination claims are really blunt objects in these type of cases where there is no statistics, bruises, or other types of evidence and its a person to person thing. They are very hard to prove, and very hard to disprove. Essentially you are asking someone else to know someone's mind and deepest feelings better than anyone else. As Karl Popper said, the hypothesis has to be disprovable. This isn't. It really comes down to did so- and-so treat someone different because he/she is [insert relevant identity here] or because they were a tosser. How can you know?

When the question appears whether somebody is guilty or not, no one is ashamed to ask: But WHO he is? A Moslem, a Jew?, O, she is a female! And the fantastically obscene answers to the question Guilty of not? are made. They are obviously based on the gender/ethnicity, but how do you prove it? Well, if the institution has policies to promote females, and the female crook escapes, you look no further. There is no shame attached to making corrupt decisions when they are politically correct. But anyone pointing to what is essentially a political corruption will be persecuted. As far as I can see, the cases where an innocent person is found guilty for political purpose (discrimination) are very rare now. But the reverse cases, i. e. when some crook is found innocent for political purposes are spreading wildly in academia. How can you make a case for plagiarism if there is none? But, if there is plagiarism, there are "justifications" available to the crook and his gender/ethnicity supporters. In my case, the university investigator said that my PhD supervisor (who, as I said, stole my research) simply "salvaged" my research. Before she "salvaged" it, she took care to make a completely fraudulent "academic decision" terminating my research, so, at the time of "salvaging" I already was on the street. The university then said: "Indeed, due to the fact that Pyshnov spent five years in Dr. Larsen's laboratory, received considerable academic and financial support, Dr. Larsen had a responsibility to the sources of the research funding to salvage as much as possible from the paucity of work that Pyshnov had completed before his departure." The fact is that the "financial support" was my governmental scholarship (top in Canada) plus about $500 for research chemicals over 5 years. Another fact is that "the paucity" of my work was "salvaged" in 4 papers claiming "hundreds" done "in the course of the last six years" (i. e. when I was there) and claiming two important discoveries made by me (as admitted by Larsen in a letter to the journal). The third fact is that the university had admitted in two investigations that Larsen "repeated" and "replicated" my experiments. Well, the above is really enough to say that there is clearly something else, some political influence, bribes, something really untouchable about this plagiarist. Which I, after watching this process of decision making for 14 years, indeed said. The President of this university said, upon his inauguration, that Jews and females were discriminated in the past and need special support. I had no problem, watching the tricks of the "investigators" and the political atmosphere to say that the plagiarist is a Jewish female and that what makes her untouchable. However, I repeat that in the case where there is no plagiarism, to make it look as if plagiarism was committed, is hardly possible; I never heard of such discrimination, so to speak. If Dr. Abbas could quote his university giving preferences to Christians, he would have a real good case.

How does one discover plagiarism? By reading various pieces of work and discovering similarities that are unacknowledged. No great mystery there. It's funny how some people keep banging on about racism when the more important issue is why the University of Birmingham returned him to the same department to line manage junior colleagues and supervise PhD students when it was known to them that he had plagiarised the work of those junior to him? Contrary to 'skeptic', I still believe in the academic enterprise and believe that it's bedrock is research integrity. When a senior academic passes off the work of junior academics as his own, this deserves investigation. When a university refuses to act properly in that investigation, and puts junior colleagues and postgraduate students at risk, that requires further investigation. Spurious allegations of racism will not deflect attention away from two issues: Tahir Abbas plagiarised and the University of Birmingham appears not to care about research integrity.

@Concerned and naive Academic. But what if you make allegations and you present documents written, by the way, by the perpetrators themselves, i.e. by the plagiarist and by the university that mounted obscene "justifications" for the plagiarist, and of course you present the papers, but no one is doing that "further investigation"? And, when you turn to the last resort in a democracy - the press, the press is looking the other way; they have no interest in reading the documents. What do you do then? (The press is of course printing article after article stressing the need for openness and publicity.)

Is it just me or are the comments over 3rd and 4th Dec repetative of lthe last few days of Nov? Anyway, i reckon its time to call a conclusion to all this. Its getting boring... There's more pressing issues in the world. This really doesn't need this much attention and we're not getting any where...

Are you accusing the 3rd and 4th posters of plaigiarising the posters at the end of Nov?

Roxy makes good sense. There's nothing new in the story, and there's certainly a good deal of repetition of views.

Glad to see all this has come to an end.....

So was I, until you posted. I guess those on this thread who were intent of apologizing for Dr Abbas' plagiarism ran out of steam...

Hang on a min, it is far too early to end the story. So far, we've just heard Prof. John Holmwood and Dr. Louise Brown given the official account. Having read the story, did Dr Abbas get a chance to defend himself against discrimination?

I have often heard that in certain cultures plagiarism is not considered as serious.

@Roxy: ...“in certain cultures plagiarism is not considered as serious.“ No, but we ain’t living there! And it is taken very seriously, for example, when the Chinese turn up at Western trade fairs with their fakes and imitations. @The Textbook: Neither Holmwood nor Brown have given an “official account”, which surely must come from the university admin. My understanding is that a confidentiality clause no longer binds when the person has left the institution. If so then why has Abbas not yet given his version? (apart perhaps from some posts here that smack of puppetry). More background reading: go to www.rcuk.ac.uk, go to the right-hand side and click on “Governance of Good Research Conduct” under Research Councils UK Reviews, and read that through, paying particular attention to page 7. This came out after the Abbas affair but is basically nothing new nor a major jump in ethics. Just a clear delineation of what should really be blindingly obvious. It would be nice if the Brum Uni admin would drop their confidentiality stuff so we could have a really good debate with all the facts out in the open, but they are exhibiting the classical symptoms of a bureaucracy with its back to the wall. Jeez – there were student riots in Germany and France in 1968 about this sort of behaviour. Have we not progressed since? And there is still the wider debate about the future of sociology in Brum and the admin's role in that!

Properscientist has hit all the nails on the head here (thank God there are academics out there who still think like him!) That some continue to suggest that Dr Abbas is not guilty of academic misconduct and plagiarism is only possible because of the silence from the University of Birmingham and their ill-conceived confidentiality clause. The University should also come clean about the time-line of Dr Abbas' seemingly opportunistic and vengeful discrimination case. It it did, we would then be able to identify the real victims of Dr Abbas' misconduct and senior management's incompetence in this sordid episode.

@Roxy, why do you think plagiarism is ok in some culture? Is it because the recent high profile cases in Britain have been Asian? Another explanation is that different definitions of plagiarism are used for Asians and white people. We do need a wider debate to hear Dr. Abbas' explanation.

I don't know why we're talking of different cultures here. Tahir Abbas was brought up in the UK, did his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees here and has worked here all his life - check his Wikipedia page for a full biography. He should have been perfectly aware of the 'culture' with regard to plagiarism here - it is not acceptable to cut and paste from other people's work and pass it off as your own and it also is not acceptable to say that you have a position in an institution when you do not. Does Birkbeck know that Tahir Abbas is, according to him, a Visiting Professor there? And when did he get his professorship as is claimed here: http://www.josephinterfaithfoundation.org/currentAttachments/moreinfo_confronting09.pdf

@Roxy: I should have trademaked my name!!! Your comment about plagarism not being serious in other cultures is a silly one and a crafty attempt to keep this pointless discussion going... WORSE STILL YOU'RE TRYING TO PASS YOURSELF OFF AS ME!!!! Frankly i'd rather discuss identity fraud!! And i think this very clearly exposes some of the politics and conspiracies behind this thread. For me none of the blogs hold any weight any more. Who knows who's actually been writing! THE END, GOOD NIGHT

@THE Textbook. Abbas has not had the chance to defend himself against discrimination because he is the one levelling the charges - if all above is to believed. Followed this for a few days, so my apologies but permit me some comments on human nature. It seems to me Abbas is interested in prestige. And he will claw his way there when his talent is exhausted. I am sure that he is in many respects an intelligent and able man, but his ambition supersedes his ability hence he plagiarises, invents professorships, checks out how many letters he can put after his name and what he can get away with on the basis of a fellowship, schmoozes journalists, gets a few inches in the Guardian, anything for a name and a quote on your gravestone before you die! And when it all comes crashing down its *because* he is an intelligent and able man and not an *exceptional* man and then what makes him exceptional in these cases is the only thing he has left once his entire career has been flushed down the toilet of academia, is that he is slightly.... different. And then *that* becomes the reason he is not an exceptional man. Its because its someone else's fault. I'd like to see Andrew Carnegie's brother pull that one out of the hat.

Hello there, Upon further investigation, I discovered that there is, indeed, far more to this story than indicated by THES. I have written up my findings, based on sources inside Birmingham, here: http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2010/01/racism-in-uk-higher-education-case-of.html The piece has also been published here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Racism-in-UK-Higher-Educat-by-Nafeez-Mosaddeq-Ah-100106-829.html

@Dr Ahmed. I read your article with interest and was surprised to find that there was little, if any, discussion and criticism of the proven acts of plagiarism. You write about elephants in the room yet seem to keep a zoo yourself. Please understand that plagiarism is as disgusting and unacceptable to the vast majority of the community as racism is. I'm sure that the Abbas case is a complex one, which is all the more reason not to write in a one dimensional way on it. Furthermore, I'd question much of your interpretation of events and sources. You write about the "immense jealousy" colleagues showed towards Abbas due to his academic success. This is subjective and may well just be gossip and tittle-tattle. Perhaps his colleagues just thought, quite rightly as it turns out, that the plagiarist Abbas' academic success wasn't merited. Its unfortunate that your contribution suffers from the flaws of bias that you accuse the THE article of possessing. At least the THE article was centred on verifiable facts i.e. acts of plagiarism.

ps One thing as damaging and disgusting as racism is a false accusation of racism. Your article relies on anonymous sources and I have no way of verifying if its true or not. I have to trust you were responsible and unbiased when you prepared it and that you came to the story with an open mind. Is this the case ?

Having read your piece, I would have to question your claim of 'further investigation' - what further investigation? There is no claim in your article that is substantiated with documented evidence. It is highly unlikely that anyone other than Tahir Abbas could have provided you with the information you claim to have got from 'sources'. Tahir Abbas's dishonesty and plaigiarism are confirmed in the public realm, your smears of racism are not. This is truly despicable.

Lol. You guys really do have an axe to grind don't you? Plagiarism. Plagiarism. Plagiarism. Whatever Dr Abbas did or didn't do, the fact of the matter, and lots of dissenters in Birmingham Soc Dept know it, is that he had nothing to do with the collapse of the dept. The defamatory hate campaign that this blog has now turned into with a systematic emphasis on inflating his alleged various 'evil traits' - lying, plagiarising-ad-infinitum, seeking power and glory with no moral compass, anything for more space on the guardian, etc. etc. is prima facie "documented evidence" of exactly the "jealousy" and clearly subliminaly-racist sentiment that one of my inside sources mentioned. It is also absolutely clear that most of the commentators here all have a personal stake and agenda in this, and it's also absolutely clear reading closely the patterns of writing style and manner of engaging with the issues, that lots of what has been said could not have been said without having been part of the BIrmingham Soc Department. Bizarrely, you question my "independence" - my work and background speaks for itself. Since you're so keen to expose and insinuate the "dishonesty" or lack of independence/integrity of others, try applying the same standards to yourself and stop hiding behind the veil of anonymity "Concerned academic", "Ethics in academia", "Distant observer", etc. etc. Or perhaps not.

"You write about the 'immense jealousy' colleagues showed towards Abbas due to his academic success. This is subjective and may well just be gossip and tittle-tattle. Perhaps his colleagues just thought, quite rightly as it turns out, that the plagiarist Abbas' academic success wasn't merited." Ah. so you were one of the "jealous" ones i take it? Prove me wrong, please. Identify yourself.

Whatever Tahir Abbas did or didn't do ... he did commit plaigiarism and he did enter false charges of racism ... all the rest is inflated nonsense. If the charges you make weren't so serious, there would be no need to contest them, given how utterly ludicrous your claims are.

Dr Ahmed's commendable report documents nothing more than the very predictable pattern of academic bullying and mobbing amply documented both in Heinz Leymann's ground-breaking research, as well as that of Ken Westhues, which applied Leymann's model to academe. In this model of workplace behaviour, the pattern is absolutely standard: a high-achieving, superstar, internationally renowned 'Other' turns up in a dysfunctional department. This threatens the mediocre status quo (and can there be any doubt about the existing mediocrity of a department that was already threatened twice with closure before Abbas even arrived?), and whose constant attention by others extenral to the department (e.g. invitations to give prominent talks around the globe) make others 'deeply jealous'. In Abbas's case, the Otherness was race; in other cases of which I am personally aware, the difference has been race, gender, sexuality, disability and/or a combination of the same. Everything the person does is subject to excessive scrutiny, i.e. there is an active campaign to 'ferret out' wrongdoing. Publications are put under a microscope in a single-minded process that no other academic's research in Britain could possibly survive. The negative posters here who, as Dr Ahmed rightly points out, can only be those who were involved in Abbas's case, clearly do not know the considerable research on which these bullying/mobbing stories are based, the interactive patterns and dynamics at work, and, above all, how much their own excessively heated rhetoric and syntax (e.g. 'truly despicable', 'smears', etc) give them away as the very perpetrators involved in bringing down Abbas, or to put it more uncharitably, 'putting the uppity Other in his place' for daring to rise above his pre-ordained lowly station.

lololol "he did commit plaigiarism and he did enter false charges of racism ... all the rest is inflated nonsense. If the charges you make weren't so serious, there would be no need to contest them, given how utterly ludicrous your claims are" So how would you know anything about it "Concerned Academic"? The charges I make are serious. How on earth would you know that they are "ludicrous"? There's only one explanation for yours (and others') knee-jerk response, and that is that you are indeed part of the Birmingham cohort around Professor Holmwood with a vested interest in scapegoating Abbas for the implosion of the Soc Dept. If I'm wrong, prove it and identify yourself, you and the others here who seem to "know" that my report is "ludicrous"! The more you post here, the more you exactly vindicate my findings, sorry, "claims".

@Dr Ahmed. Its worrying that you're so dismissive of plagiarism. Your "plagiarism, plagiarism, plagiarism" taunt is unworthy of an academic. As I wrote earlier I'm happy to accept this is a complicated case. Dr Abbas may be a victim of racism and if so this should be exposed. However, your article was little more than a gossipy smear and did absolutely nothing to substantiate this serious charge. If you're going to accuse others of racism then prove it. To level an unsubstantiated charge of racism is as low a move as racism itself. Where is your evidence ?

By the way, can you please explain your chain of logic which implies that because I choose to remain anonymous then I must be part of a Birmingham-based conspiracy ? I'm a little baffled by it, not least since I'm a scientist based in Scotland.

Finally, if you can't provide any evidence then shame on you. Spurious accusations of racial discrimination affect the credibility of genuine victims and lessen the serious with which society should address this awful problem. You've made accusations, please provide evidence. Evidence, by the way, is not the same thing as writing "LOL, LOL" and "plagiarism, plagiarism, plagiarism" in response to anyone who is critical of your posts.

I have already made my position on plagiarism, and on allegations of plagiarism concerning Tahir Abbas, very clear, ad nauseum, in previous comments above. Whatever the case, the Birmingham tribunal reviewed the charge and made a decision as to its seriousness and whether it warranted disciplinary action beyond temporary suspension. Meanwhile, according to my sources, Prof Holmwood had made sure that most of the dept knew, already breaching confidentiality. Some of the rumours that were flying around as a consequence bore no relation at all to even the charge under investigation, and were clearly malicious. One source said that one of the "Chinese whispers" was that Dr Abbas had plagiarised his own students! So there was a campaign, and when Dr Abbas was re-instated by the tribunal, Holmwood in his own words felt it "undermined his position" - well it would do after all that gossiping wouldn't it? That is the crux of it. Holmwood and some around him didn't like the tribunal outcome - fair enough but this was a process with its own ethical and legal procedures and it would have been done dusted. What isn't fair is that consequently he/others scapegoated Abbas for their own academic failings that led to the implosion of the Soc Dept - and people in the university confirm that Abbas was hounded and mistreated to the end. As for evidence, you don't seriously expect me to produce a paper trail? All the evidence about institutional racism that could be possibly brought to bear is described in the article based on my sources. This is known as "journalism". If you'd like to know more about the ethics and standards of journalism and using sources (and issues relating to the importance of protecting one's sources), there are many good courses you can go on. So, out of interest, what is your field? Where are you based in Scotland?

When you make claims of racism, you are expected to produce evidence, otherwise you are engaged simply in a smear campaign. Good journalists, and good academics, know that.

OK. Thanks for teaching me about the nature of "good journalists" and "good academics." In future I'll keep this in mind, particularly everytime I find a Times or Guardian report about racism, in which case I'll make sure to search for the attached reference list that must be attached containing the "evidence", without which I should auto-reject the report as "a smear campaign." Or, I could go on a journalism course to understand the nature of using primary sources in journalism, as I've done in this article, and further to understand protection of confidentiality (something Prof Holmwood seemed to have forgotten during his crusade over "research ethics"), and further to recognize that journalistic reports of this nature are themselves legitimate sources of evidence in historical research. But anyway, good journalists, and good academics, know all that.

Oh, and it's perhaps worth noting further in regard to evidence - it is precisely racists who insist that racism is not at work unless you can physically prove it. but anyone who knows anything about institutional racism, especially a "good journalist" or "good academic", knows that this isn't how it works, and that the citation of sources by an investigator with a track record of adhering to journalistic and academic standards (like any normal journalist) is itself a perfectly legitimate form of evidence.

@DrAhmed. There are two central themes to this story. One is plagiarism; this is proven. The other is racism, which is alleged. To the outside observer (at least) two scenarios plausibly explain the accusation. It could be that Abbas did suffer racial discrimination. It is also plausible that he invented the accusation as a means of distraction from the proven acts of plagiarism leading to, amongst other things, the portrayal of him as a victim rather than a sinner and a gagging clause conveniently suppressing the news of the proven plagiarism. You have failed to give me any reason to believe the former possibility is more likely than the latter. This is a pity because you have a responsibility to back up your allegations with evidence, something you've failed to do. Until such a time as you do so your allegations come across as being ill-informed slurs.

God, is this still going on? Can't you all think of something else to prattle on about? The man's career is in tatters, (but he did get a good pay-off - hence the gagging clause)

Hmmm -- why *did* he leave Birmingham? The article mentions only further plagiarism allegatinons. Perhaps, then, the fact that he was allowed to return to work after temporary suspension shouldn't be read as the tribunal having concluded that the plagiarism was minor. Like some of the others posting here, I'm willing to entertain the possibility of racism, but I have to agree that nothing anyone has posted here (or in Dr Ahmed's "opednews" article) constitutes evidence. I also figure that, if Holmwood *wasn't* racist, then being charged with it falsely would provide good incentive to fudge the confidentiality restriction (not that I see any evidence of his having done even that).

Have I actually accused anyone in particular of being a racist? Not at all. I've merely quoted people at Birmingham who give an account of events that fundamentally contradicts the account described in THES based on Prof Holmwood. It is they, not I, who say that the treatment of Abbas vindicated his charges of race-victimization. All I've done is summarise their account and put into the public record. That's all any journalist can do in a situation like this. Given the way the fecal matter has hit the proverbial rotary oscillator at the Soc Dept, I perfectly understand why my sources have no inclination to identify themselves and get embroiled in all the prattle. The point of my piece was to illustrate that the THES approach to the story was one-sided from the beginning. Sources were available in Birmingham to give a different picture, whatever you make of them, but THES wasn't interested in that angle. They wanted to do a hanging story, and a counter-narrative that stood in the way of doing so was simply ignored. This is precisely how institutional racism works. It is subtle and institutional. In that context, I've said specifically that we don't really know what happened at Birmingham. But given the reality of institutional racism in HE, the THES had a duty of care to explore this angle rather than completely ignore it. When I decided not to overlook it but to investigate it further, Dr Abbas' complaints were corroborated. As for the plagiarism thing, which you say is "proven", well the reality is that it is not as if the university was afraid of harsh disciplinary action - they suspended him immediately, not even waiting for the outcome of the investigation. When Dr Raj Persaud was found guilty of plagiarism, the investigatory panel suspended him for 3 months. Whatever the tribunal concluded about Abbas, plagiarism or not, they decided that the extent of the alleged crime did not warrant further punitive action beyond the suspension period. As I already said in a previous comment, the extent of the misattribution in Abbas' Citizenship Studies piece can be explained in lots of ways; it could be malicious rampant copying because he's that kind of guy; or one-off sloppyness such as misuse of lecture notes; overlooking shortcut mistakes of third-party researchers; whatever. The point is that, whatever it was, the tribunal clearly decided that the lesson was learned and further action was unnecessary. Obviously, Prof Holmwood didn't think so, and decided to take the law into his own hands, contributing to the implosion of his dept, and leaving us with this mess.

Your arguments make little sense (a) Its funny how you have such respect for a university tribunal when it makes a decision which you favour. On the other hand, however, you complain about institutional unfairness in HE. If the tribunal's decision went the other way I really have no doubt you'd contest the decision. The world disingenuous springs to mind (b) The plagiarism occurred on a number of occasions. There really is no excuse for it, ever.

You have no doubt that I'd contest the decision if it went the other way?? But you don't even know me! Why would you assume such a thing?? And how could you then describe me as "disingenuous" on the basis of an imaginary scenario which you yourself have concocted? I didn't say there is "institutional unfairness in HE". I said there is "institutional racism." This is not a fantasy, it's a reality. I've referred to only a fraction of the literature on this, particularly the excellent work by the Equality Challenge Unit. On the other hand, I see no reason to see the tribunal's decision on Abbas as a result of some peculiar "institutional unfairness" favouring BME academics. You say the "plagiarism occurred on a number of occasions." I see. So you're someone in the know then? Did you have access to the confidential tribunal process? I thought you said that you were a "scientist in Scotland"? Funny how a scientist in Scotland would know for a fact what is hidden behind confidentiality... Perhaps you'd care to identify your real connection to Birmingham here, rather than keeping up this charade? In any case, of course, there's no excuse for plagiarism in any form. No one is suggesting that. The issue is that it is not for Prof Holmwood or anyone else to take the law into their own hands and decide what the punishment should be - the punishment was decided and that was that. Repeating again and again that there is "no excuse" is, well, a banal truism.

Things in the public domain, by definition, cannot be subject to confidentiality. All the plaigiarism is a matter of public record - all you have to do is Google sections of Tahir Abbas's work and it comes up, time and time again. No need for access to confidential reports. Racism is a serious issue and the claims you make are undermined by the manifest falseness of the charge in this case. All you are doing is making it more difficult for individuals who DO suffer from racism to have their concerns be taken seriously.

@Ahmed: The reason for thinking of multiple instances of plagiarism is that the article here refers to Abbas' departing Birmingham after further allegations of plagiarism. As for the THES and journalistic slant: I suspect your premise -- that they wouldn't be interested in a story on racism (institutional or otherwise) -- is false. In fact I'm sure they could sell a lot of copies precisely by publishing such a story. I see no reason to believe that in general they are opposed to publishing stories of that sort.

I've googled Abbas' work over and over, and no, evidence of plagiarism doesn't come time and again, which probably explains the tribunal's decision in his favour. I don't see the "manifest falseness" of institutional racism in this case. I don't think anyone else would see the "manifest falseness" without ever-so-obviously being directly involved in the whole episode on the side of Prof Holmwood. You're giving yourself away again. In any case, I have spoken to Birmingham academics who totally disagree with you on the question of racism. I have left it at that without drawing any firm conclusions. I should note that "Ethics in academia" said this: "The plagiarism occurred on a number of occasions" - not there were "allegations" of multiple plagiarism. This was a knowledge-claim. That the THES "wouldn't be interested in a story on racism" was not my premise. It was my conclusion. This is known as "logic": 1. Easily available sources vindicated Abbas' claim of racism 2. THES overlooked them to focus on the account of only one person (Holmwood) although it knew of racism charge 3. Hence THES illustrated a failure of duty of care to ensure that it looked at the plagiarism and racism charges in balance 4. THES shouldn't do this. In any case, you're clearly ill-informed and perhaps need to get up to speed on the racism literature. Try starting with S. Cottle, (ed.) Ethnic Minorities and the Media (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002)

Dr Ahmed's obsession with this case and his repeated attempts to cast negative slurs on Professor Holmwood (you continue to allege institutional racism in an article that tiringly name-checks Holmwood - very much the pinnacle of disenguinity on your behalf) has turned this thread into something resembling idiocy. I am a member of staff in the School of Government and Society at the University of Birmingham and, while I do not know from whom Dr Ahmed has 'sourced' his information, it was not me and I can guess who they are: a group of disaffected academics who have their own axe to grind with Professor Holmwood. Moreover, I did not know Dr Abbas personally and was not involved in this case directly. Nor will I identify myself beyond what I have said here already, because we (Dr Ahmed's sources, myself and others) are still bound by an ill-conceived confidentiality clause. But I do know the facts of this case: (1) Dr Abbas was found guilty of plagiarism in an internal University tribunal, and (b) his allegations of racism against Professor Holmwood and others were never substantiated and proven. As for Dr Ahmed's Op Ed pieces, they are undermined by an intellectual laziness and fudging of fact of language that would make an American neo-conservative propaganizing in their 'war on terror' proud. For instance, the Departmental response (i.e. NOT Professor Holmwood's) to Professor Peck's report was that it is grossly unfair for senior management to cite 'poor staff relations' as a reason to close the Department if you do not explain the reason for such sour relations because they are subject to a confidentiality clause imposed by senior management. This reason was the mishandling (again by senior management) of the Dr Abbas case. Neither Professor Holmwood or anyone else has suggested that Dr Abbas is responsible for ALL the problems in the Department. Even this problem is not Dr Abbas' fault: it is the fault of senior management, which mishandled his case. A rigorous reading of the facts and a critical engagement with his 'sources' would have led Dr Ahmed to less sloppy conclusions in his piece.

One rather suspects that Dr Ahmed's conclusions were predetermined long before he spoke with the sources and looked at the facts.

Thank you DrAhmed for giving a balanced view on what is happening at Birmingham sociology department. It is obviously a complex situation. Independent people can clearly see from your informed analysis that Dr Abbas is been selected out to be blamed for the RAE failure. This does constitute discrimination against him.The very bad RAE result as Dr Ahmed suggests indicates that a significant number of staff at Birmingham must have had very poor RAE submission.

Lol Dr Ahmed has presented the first academic account of what is happening at Birmingham. Well, he does make an important point that many of the contributors are blaming Dr Abbas for the department's poor academic profile. Blaming on individual is not a credible position. In my experience of higher education. This is a classic case of setting up one individual to distract from the real situation in relation to poor RAE result. Dr Ahmed's account informs us that the department's low academic performance resulted from a number of staff. The evidence for this is available on the sociology department webpage. A number of staff, including some senior staff have very weak profle. Perhaps we can conclude from this and echo the point that 'jealousy' is part of the explanation for what has occured at Birmingham.

We clearly have different standards regarding what constitutes "balanced" and "academic".

Just wondered if its possible for someone to be victimised if they are an objectionable individual who's ambition exceeds their talent.

Read your piece Dr Ahmed. Its biassed. Your source within Brum is probably Abbas himself or a couple of close friends, and you refer to him as a “leading expert” which is not an established fact and say his books were “highly acclaimed”. No they weren’t. Reviews are few and far between. Of course he got some favourable reviews from colleagues (see tahirabbas.co.uk) but to say they are highly acclaimed is not a neutral journalistic or academic position and flies in face of the facts. If it was highly acclaimed you’d get a lot more reviews on Amazon and even in the mainstream press other than a few academic journals and from colleagues. You go on to cite the Guardian from 2007 where you say he is in great demand amongst media and government circles all over the world. The Guardian piece cites Azerbaijan, Pakistan and United States. That’s not all over the world, and its in 2007! You started from the position that Abbas is a goodie (and probably a mate of yours) and the rest of Birmingham are baddies. Oh and they are jealous. Whatever else it is your article is not a piece of journalism or academic or balanced. What drivel.

Is there any news about the legal action Abbas has brought against THE ?

No, this is news to me. Did he bring action against THE? If so, all I say is, kudos to him and good luck!