Theodore D. "Ted" Pappas is executive editor and chief development officer of ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...

.'' He has been with the company since 1998. He was managing editor of the paleoconservative magazine '' Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture''. His books include ''True Grit: Classic Tales of Perseverance'' (2018), ''Encyclopaedia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence (1768-2018),'' ''Britannica Brainbusters: Challenging Puzzles for the Curious-Minded (''2015), and ''Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Other Prominent Americans'' (1998)''.'' He contributes to Britannica's PR activities and media relations. Pappas' first publication was his undergraduate thesis at

Beloit College Beloit College is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, when Wisconsin was still a territory, it is the state's oldest continuously operated college. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and has ...

on the missionary Arthur Henderson Smith, who had a long career in China and himself graduated from Beloit in 1845.

Martin Luther King's plagiarism controversy

The

Rockford Institute The Rockford Institute was an American conservative think-tank associated with paleoconservatism, based in Rockford, Illinois. It ran the John Randolph Club and published the magazine ''Chronicles''. In early 2019, the Rockford Institute merged wi ...

published ''Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Other Prominent Americans'' in 1994, and a revised and enlarged edition came out in 1998, with a Preface by

Eugene Genovese Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and s ...

. The political scientist David J. Garrow wrote in evaluation of Pappas' preliminary article in ''Chronicle'' that "nothing can be gained by attempting to minimize or understate either the amount of King's plagiarism or the seriousness of the academic wrongdoing that it represented." He continued that "those who are either uncomfortable with or downright hostile to King and the movement's larger political legacy," in particular Pappas, " are hard at work to amplify and emphasize" the pirating." D.D. Murphey, however, welcomed the expanded argument presented in the 1994 book.

Criticism of Wikipedia

in 2004, Pappas disparaged the

reliability of Wikipedia The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online ...

. He was quoted in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' as noting that "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection" but "that premise is completely unproven..." He continued that "with many of the pieces you don't know who it's written by, and who the administrators are...," and concluded that "hyperlinks, bulletpoints and cut-and-paste press releases do not an encyclopedia entry make.""Who knows?", ''The Guardian'' October 26, 2004

Selected publications

* Theodore D Pappas,
Arthur Henderson Smith and the American Mission in China
" The Wisconsin Magazine of History 70.3 (1987): 162-186. JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/4636056 * --- , "A Doctor In Spite of Himself: The Strange Career of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dissertation," ''Chronicle'' 15 (January 1991): 25-29. * ---
Plagiarism, Culture, and the Future of the Academy
''Humanitas'' 6.2 (1993): 66-80 * ---
Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Other Prominent Americans
(Rockford Institute, 1994; 2nd ed, revised and enlarged, with a Preface by

; Tampa, Florida: Hallberg, 1998. Internet Archive
HERE

References

* . * .

Notes

External links

EB corporate site mentioning Pappas

Pappas criticizing Wikipedia

Articles by Pappas published in Chronicles
Encyclopædia Britannica American book editors Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American encyclopedists Place of birth missing (living people) American political writers Beloit College alumni {{US-academic-bio-stub