Read Miranda's War for Free Online Page B

leave it in his briefcase for a year.Gradually, under Miranda’s prodding, he began to use it, first to call her from his car, and eventually the boys and his secretary. He looked good in a suit, and tended to wear one every day to work unless he wasn’t seeing students. At forty-eight, his brown hair was full, the lines fanning out from his eyes and across his forehead were still barely detectable, and his weight was a steady 180. He was nice looking but asexual. Miranda never noticed him eyeing other women.
    â€œHi, Hutch,” he said when he reached the kitchen.
    â€œI’m not sure I accept that sobriquet.”
    â€œGood, I’d like to bury it.”
    â€œRight, so tell me about your day in the upper echelon.”
    They went back to the living room, and she mixed him a Manhattan at the bar.
    â€œWe had the hearing on the plagiarism case. Remember, Roger Fantini, one of my best students?”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œHalfway through the hearing he admitted to plagiarizing three pages of his thesis from an old thesis in the library. He was hoping for clemency.”
    â€œDid he get any?”
    â€œAfraid not. We expelled him. The vote was unanimous, and I’ve already dictated the letter.”
    â€œYou know I never understand that about you academics, you believe plagiarism is the ultimate sin. But that’s it. Everything else is relative.”
    â€œHow can a university tolerate plagiarism?”
    â€œHow can a university tolerate being wrong? I mean if a scholar spends years working on a theory, and publishes his work, and then other scholars debunk him, then why isn’t that scholar expelled?”
    â€œWe’re all wrong at points in our careers. And we all get criticized for it by our peers. We have academic freedom to be wrong.”
    â€œBut there are degrees of being wrong. Mack Taylor’s entire thesis about exchange theory in the First Bank of the United States was discredited.”
    â€œTotally. He basically had to issue a mea culpa last year.”
    â€œAnd why should he be forgiven for that? He did sloppy work, and some young kid without tenure came along and discredited five years of his work. Why wasn’t Mack expelled?”
    â€œBecause if we did that, everyone would be chilled, afraid to publish anything novel.”
    â€œThere’s wrong, and there’s wrong. Mack was discredited for using poor methodology, relying on graduate students to do his regressions. I told you that three years ago when I read his first article.”
    â€œAnd you were right. It took me too long to realize it, but I do. And I think less of Mack. He’s never going to be Chairman of the department.”
    â€œBut he’s still got tenure, and all the sabbaticals to Europe and his speaking gigs, right?”
    â€œHe sure does.”
    â€œAnd he’s still in our social circle. I replenished his tumbler of scotch five times at our last party.”
    â€œWhat would you do with him?”
    â€œIf someone should be expelled from the academy, let it be him, not the plagiarist. The plagiarist is young. He’s actually brilliant and won’t do it again. All you need to do is put an asterisk on his diploma and at the bottom say this student committed plagiarism on his thesis. Then anyone dealing with him in the future will know, and watch him like a hawk.”
    â€œLike being a registered sex offender?”
    â€œBasically, but don’t cut off his genitals.”
    Archer sipped his Manhattan and thought. Miranda had a glass of Bordeaux and put the bottle back into the five-bottle cooler built into the wall behind the bar.
    She saw Cody come down the stairs and motioned for him to join them. He sat on the couch across from them.
    â€œDo I get a Manhattan?”
    â€œNo, I wanted you to know I read your essay on Proust, and I’m really impressed. It’s so much better than the last go-around. I emailed it to