UMKC dean’s speech plagiarized columnist

? A university dean’s commencement speech containing the uncredited words of a prominent scholar also included passages similar to those from a speech that columnist and author Russell Baker made in 1995.

On Tuesday, Bryan LeBeau, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, acknowledged what he called a “stupid mistake” for using material from a speech given in 1993 by Cornel West without attribution to him.

West is a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University.

The similarities, first reported Monday by The Chronicle for Higher Education, were discovered by an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina who was doing an Internet search for the source of a quote.

LeBeau made his speech in December 2003 at a UMKC commencement, not long after he joined the university staff.

The Kansas City Star reported Thursday that there also were passages in that speech nearly identical to one that Baker made in a commencement address in May 1995 at Connecticut College in New London, Conn.

Baker was a longtime reporter and columnist for The New York Times before retiring.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for his “Observer” column as well as for one of his books, the autobiographical “Growing Up.”

Stephen Lehmkuhle, interim chancellor at UMKC, has said the university is evaluating the situation.