Professor Accused of Plagiarism Quits for $200,000

Matthew Whitaker has agreed to resign his tenured position as a faculty member at Arizona State University under an agreement in which he will be paid $200,000 over the next 16 months, plus $25,000 in legal fees, The Arizona Republic reported. In July, after a plagiarism investigation, the university demoted Whitaker from full professor to associate professor. While Whitaker had denied wrongdoing before that time, in July he released a statement admitting to using "unattributed and poorly paraphrased material" in a book and said, "I accept responsibility for these errors." Whitaker was also the subject of a controversial plagiarism investigation in 2011, which found some instances in which he was "careless." Some professors criticized that investigation as inadequate.