Letter to Graduate Faculty and Students

My name is Paul E. Germanos. I am a graduate student in Political Theory. I have asserted that employees of Northern Illinois University, a state institution of higher learning, have violated my civil rights: advanced degrees ought to be awarded upon a demonstration of professional competence, and not upon a demonstration of bias - political, sexual, religious, etc. - for which a faculty member has sympathy.

Since December of 2004 I have sought to obtain a fair reading of my Master's thesis, in order to complete my degree. Only after filing a complaint, and involving the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School, was I promised a remedy: The Chair of the Political Science Department would (1) distribute copies of my thesis; (2) require of the members of my committee a timely response; and (3) provide his opinion of the fairness of said response. It was suggested that I allow a month for this procedure to be completed.

Nearly two months have passed since my thesis was printed and delivered to the Political Science Department, in June of 2005. I have yet to receive comments from all the parties involved, or any further communication from the Department.

I have never suggested that my complaint was founded only upon an ideological quarrel with a student, or faculty member; for anyone to propose such a thing would be for him or her to misstate my position. Rather, I have been troubled, greatly, by the variance in the standards to which different graduate students have been held.

Many of the explanations and requests put to me, thus far, seem ridiculous: Larry Arnhart, who ought to have acted as my thesis director, did not see fit to read my work in December of 2004 because he received an e-mail link to the thesis on-line, instead of an e-mail attachment? Regardless of the form in which the thesis arrived, wouldn't a reasonable person have offered a reply of some kind? And the Chair of the Department, Daniel Kempton, has requested that I provide "tangible evidence" that I was not allowed to present certain ideas in seminar. Absent a surveillance camera and microphone, how would such a thing even be possible?

What I will provide here, now, is an example of the plagiarism and incompetence that has been accepted, and published, by the Department. Please see the work by Jeffery Neuzil, under the direction of Larry Arnhart, posted at the following address, on-line:

http://germz.org/theory/plagiarism.html

I await a written explanation from an appropriate party. I will not desist in my efforts until I obtain satisfaction. If anyone is interested in other examples of substandard work that has been accepted as evidence of professional competence, or the documentation of my lengthy correspondence with the University, I will post said items to the address that you provide. You may review a draft of my own thesis, on-line, here:

http://germz.org/theory/thesis.htm

I remain grateful to the senior professor in Political Theory, Gary Glenn; he appears to be the only person to have read, and understood, my thesis. His comments are available here:

http://germz.org/theory/glenn.JPG