After that clearing, one scholar allegedly plagiarized by Jackson told The State News that MSU never consulted him as part of its internal review. That revelation raised questions among plagiarism experts about the review’s veracity and the methods it employed.

And, one expert said that aside from that scholar’s not being contacted, he was curious to know more about the university’s exonerating internal review given that evidence of Jackson’s plagiarism was rather cut-and-dry to him, and therefore "troubling."

"It does look like there is some substantive and fairly extensive replication of the original work," said John Budd, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri who has studied plagiarism extensively. "Some of the replication is a word here and there, and that can be dismissed easily, but some of it is entire sentences and maybe even paragraphs."

MSU redacted the information, citing a FOIA carve-out providing for the withholding of "Information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy."

The decision raises questions about whether MSU is fairly processing the requests, according to an expert on the Freedom of Information Act, a statute allowing the public to request documents from government agencies like MSU. 

The State News has appealed the decision to President Kevin Guskiewicz. Under Michigan’s FOIA law, he will have 10 days to review the initial redactions and decide whether to uphold them or release the information. 

Steve Delie — a FOIA attorney and director of transparency and open government at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — said the sweeping redaction is a "classic example of the privacy exemption being overapplied."

With the complete redaction, Delie said the university is "claiming that every word" of the document is private.

While he said it’s possible the document could contain some "confidential, embarrassing, private, personal or intimate" nature that would be covered by the privacy exemption, it’s "highly unlikely" that all of the material is private. 

Delie also pointed out that FOIA law "inherently requires a balancing test," wherein public bodies must prove in using the privacy exemption that the need to protect an individual’s privacy outweighs the public’s interest in the information. 

But given that the redacted material would "shed a light" on the inner workings of the university, he said, "the public interest here is strong" and justifies release of the information. 

"It certainly does show a lack of transparency," Delie said. "This to me shows either a misunderstanding of FOIA or a failure to apply it in a careful way."