Many American universities have internal review processes for scientific
and academic misconduct.  Because of the level of research funding in
American universities, they must have internal procedures in place to
deal with research misconduct such as the fabrication of research
findings.  In the 1990s this was a widely recognized problem and
received national attention.  In many universities, the internal
procedures put in place to deal with misconduct in science often extend
to plagiarism by faculty and staff.

There was a case of non-academic plagiarism here at UNH a few years ago.
If my memory is correct, a faculty member in the humanities published a
short piece in a newspaper that was mostly copied from some one else's
article.  UNH took this quite seriously even though it was a
non-academic form of publication.

There have been other noted cases of plagiarism.  I believe a dean at
one of the universities in Boston used most of someone else's speech at
a public ceremony.  That dean had to resign.

More recently there was an article on plagiarism about a Yale ecology
and biology professor teaching in China, Stephen Stearns.  Stearns sent
an email to his class about his outrage over plagiarism.  The email
gained a broad audience beyond his class.  Chinese academic authorities
apparently welcomed Stearns's remarks.  See Yale Alumni Magazine,
March/April 2008, p. 16.  I have a copy of the article, but copyright
laws might prevent attaching an electronic copy for mass circulation.

Jim Wible