Bruce Kirmmse: Translator of Suspect Book
[Editor's Note: Historian Bruce Kirmmse translated Joakim Garff's Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, 2005). Garff has been accused of plagiarism. Kirmmse has been accused of either hiding the alleged plagiarism or somehow missing it. The accusations have been made by M.G. Piety, who teaches philosophy at Drexel University.]
Kirmmse, a history professor at Connecticut College, should have caught the mistake. He is a purported expert in 19th Danish history. Not only that, he had already translated Bukdahl's correct characterization of the rumors that circulated about Lindberg. It's possible, of course, that he had simply forgotten what Bukdahl had written. What is harder to understand is that, as an historian, he would have forgotten the facts surrounding the Lindberg case. There is, as I pointed out in my earlier article, a big difference between being exiled and being executed. Could it be that Kirmmse did recognize the mistake, but failed to correct it out of a fear that the corrected text would be more easily identifiable as having been lifted from Bukdahl?
Read entire article at M.G. Piety in Counterpunch
Kirmmse, a history professor at Connecticut College, should have caught the mistake. He is a purported expert in 19th Danish history. Not only that, he had already translated Bukdahl's correct characterization of the rumors that circulated about Lindberg. It's possible, of course, that he had simply forgotten what Bukdahl had written. What is harder to understand is that, as an historian, he would have forgotten the facts surrounding the Lindberg case. There is, as I pointed out in my earlier article, a big difference between being exiled and being executed. Could it be that Kirmmse did recognize the mistake, but failed to correct it out of a fear that the corrected text would be more easily identifiable as having been lifted from Bukdahl?