Plagiarism and investigation at the ESHCC

The merger plans between the ESHCC and the ESSB were already controversial. But shortly after interim dean Dymph van den Boom handed in her report sketching three scenarios for the future of the ESHCC, a report she was asked to make by the Executive Board to make the ESHCC more ‘robust’, she got accused of plagiarism in a NRC-article. At the end of 2019, an independent commission concluded that plagiarism wasn’t the case.

Someone from within the faculty would have ‘leaked’ the information, multiple employees speak of a culture of fear and an internal investigation is put in place which puts a lot of pressure on the confidence between the employees of the faculty and the Executive Board.

The merger is postponed, and from postponing comes cancellation. But the unrest within the ESHCC stays: twelve staff members of the History department say that they have lost confidence in the heads of the ESHCC. A cultural investigation is also announced. There is an insinuation that the NRC got tipeed about the plagiarism case, so that Dymph van den Boom needed to leave and a select company could control the faculty.

It has been quit for almost three months when the university announces that a forensic investigation agency will discover the plagiarism leak. ‘Outrageous’ says NRC-journalist Frank van Kolfschooten, and he isn’t the only one who thinks that this is a weird step. The investigation agency is allowed to look into the employees’ mail.

The University Council is not happy with the investigation by Hoffmann Bedrijfsrecherche. According to chairman Hans van den Berg, the University Board should have asked the Council for advice about the investigation. That didn’t happen, and the Council suspects that the rights of the Council are therefore violated.

Almost three hundred academics speak in an open letter against the involvement of Hoffmann Bedrijfsrecherche. Amongst them are prominent professors such as Young Erasmus member Alessandra Arcuri, Willem Schinkel of De Jonge Akademie and former rector magnificus Henk Schmidt.They push the Executive Board to suspend the forensic investigation immediately.

A month after a big group of academics opposed the internal investigation by Hoffmann Bedrijfsrecherche, it turns out that there will be no cautionary measures. There are however breaches of confidentiality and the debate about privacy and digitalisation is brought up again.

End 2019 the independent commission that investigated the plagiarism accusations agains Van den Boom concludes that she has been ‘sloppy’, but according to the rules of plagiarism at the time, she didn’t commit plagiarism.

According to Roel Pieterman, this statement undermines the very definition of plagiarism. Pieterman is Chair of the EUROPA trade union consultation body and former member of the Erasmus School of Law examination boar. He calls on EUR’s Executive Board and the examination boards to distance themselves from the statement.

The Executive Board does not want to respond to Roel Pieterman’s message. However, another message came out. “Nobody was happy with this situation”, says interim chairman of the board Hans Smits. “This will also negatively influence the atmosphere. As Executive Board, we then decided to offer our apologies.”