ST. LOUIS
A day after MPI kicked off its World Education Conference, opening general session speaker Jonah Lehrer—a journalist, Rhodes Scholar and the author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, a new best-selling non-fiction book that explores how neuroscience explains creative genius—resigned from his prestigious job as staff writer at The New Yorker magazine after being slapped with plagerism charges.
MPI announced the shocking news during a session entitled “Conversation with MPI,” in which it invited feedback from members about what the association is doing right and wrong. The association came clean, it said, in the interest of transparency, but members had already heard the news and had taken to twitter to discuss it.
In his book, Lehrer attributes several quotes on the creative process to musician Bob Dylan, including this one: “It’s a hard thing to describe. It’s just this sense that you got something to say.” However, according to this article, Dylan never uttered those words.
In announcing his departure from The New Yorker, Lehrer said “Three weeks ago, I received an email from journalist Michael Moynihan asking about Bob Dylan quotes in my book ‘Imagine,’” Mr. Lehrer said in a statement. “The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.
"I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers," he said. "I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed."
In a statement, MPI COO and interim CEO Cindy D'Aoust said, "Jonah's resignation from The New Yorker is a very unfortunate coincidence but his message presented to our WEC attendees is still very relevant."
