Anyone who can read the many examples in the article cited and believe all that flagrant copying was just "honest error" has a capacity to disregard evidence which rivals that of an O.J. juror.
After reading the passages closely, I think Crowley should have been disqualified just for the God-awful quality of her writing. Sounds like the sort of slack, wordy hash I'd expect to find in some local school board document.
I am not defending Monica Crowley and I have not read her dissertation or anything else she has written, so I honestly don't know if the passages classify as plagiarism or not. I certainly do not condone plagiarism.
But let me play devil's advocate Are the talking points and phrases lifted and posted word for word that we see members repeating again and again and again plagiarism? They don't source where they got it or admit they are repeating other people's words.
If I repeat the well known and oft quoted line from Adam Smith's work:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." without specifically attributing it to Adam Smith, have I plagiarized? Or is the quotation so well known that it doesn't need notation. . .sort of like quoting a line for effect "We hold these truths to be self evident. . ." or "When in the course of current events, it becomes necessary. . ."
In a thread I started recently, in the OP I provided three analogies and, while I rewrote them into my own words, I prefaced them with the disclaimer that they didn't originate with me. And one of them did contain a phrase that is oft repeated and I was accused by another member of plagiarizing it. Was my disclaimer sufficient to avoid being a plagiarizer?
I write and teach adult curriculum and do a LOT of research of other people's work, making notes as I go, and many of these notes include the other's words verbatim. And sometimes when I am hurriedly preparing a lesson, I don't always take the time to note what is somebody elses words and what is mine. Then months later when I am rewriting those notes into publishable form, I can't always remember what is somebody else's words and what is mine. So I have to go back and diligently check every line to be sure I am not using somebody else's words verbatim and in truth, I find some lines in my work that are very similar to what somebody else wrote--somebody that I didn't use as a source at the time.
And is it possible that one or more of those lines could make it into a completed manuscript without being notated or included in my bibliography? It is a real fear of mine. Would it be plagiarism? Certainly not intentionally but I could see myself being accused if by some weird stroke of fate I found myself in a high profile position in which every aspect of my life was being scrutinized in an effort to disqualify me.
So what is the deal with Monica? No clue. She is a very competent commentator when I have watched her in that role. But did she plagiarize? I suspect she might have. Did she intend to? I doubt that she did.