First extracts from an AP report yesterday, then my comments below the star line along with a few questions for you.
The AP reported - - -
A Columbia University professor who drew widespread attention when a noose was discovered hanging from her office door has been fired over allegations of plagiarism.
Administrators at Columbia's Teachers College said in a letter to faculty Monday that Madonna G. Constantine also obstructed the school's investigation into the allegations and publicly made accusations of plagiarism against those whose work she had plagiarized.
Bill Anderson, a spokesman for Teachers College, said Constantine had been terminated but that she could challenge the dismissal.
Her attorney, Paul Giacomo, said she has until July 15 to decide. He called the firing "purely retaliatory." ...
She was sanctioned in February for plagiarism after the university determined she had used the work of others without attribution in papers published in academic journals over the past five years.
She was allowed to remain on staff and appeal the ruling, with her lawyer saying at the time that she was targeted because she is black.
The plagiarism investigation began in 2006, well before the noose — a symbol of lynchings in the Deep South — was discovered on her door Oct. 9.
The entire AP story's here.
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Comments:
In February I posted Is Columbia's "noose" prof a plagiarist?
Here's part of what I said:
Race – smace. Is Constantine a plagiarist? That’s the first question I’m asking.As far as I know, Constantine has never publicly presented evidence she didn't plagiarize. That's very telling.
And if she is, then race only enters into it because Constantine doesn’t want to seriously address Columbia’s finding she has plagiarized.
I doubt Columbia made its finding without having before it overwhelming evidence she plagiarized.
In any case, I plan to follow this story, in part to learn whether Columbia has released the material that convinced it Constantine did plagiarize.
For her part, Constantine, if she’s really convinced she didn’t plagiarize, should be presenting her evidence she didn’t, instead of crying “race.”
It can be hard to prove plagiarism, but it's usually very easy to refute plagiarism charges provided you haven't plagiarized.
The skunk at Constantine's picnic is she's been accused of plagiarizing from multiple sources oven many years; and she's been unable to refute the charges to the satisfaction of a university that's notoriusly PC. Who doubts Columbia bent over backwards to give her every benefit of the doubt; and perhaps even overlook a few things that shouldn't be overlooked.
We can be confident this isn't a case where "To be or not to be" showed up in one of Constantine's papers and now she's having to defend herself from charges she filched from The Bard of Avon.
That said, do any of you know of links to the documents and/or portions thereof Columbia has cited as plagiarized?
Do any of you know of links to any refutation(s)Constantine has made based on content analysis and other recognized means of disproving plagiarism charges.
I think all serious scholars will be interested in the answers to those two questions.
As for Constantine's cries of "race," what do they amount to in the absence of a chance for us to examine the documents in question?
Hat tips to many of you who've called the latest in the Constantine case to my attention.
8 comments:
An old country lawyer once said, "if you have evidence, pound on the evidence, if you have facts, pound on the facts, if you have neither, pound on the table", and in the case of so many blacks, cry "race", often and loudly. Steve in New Mexico
One press report that I read stated that CU hired a legal firm to run the investigation. CU would not pursue this incident unless their charges were absolutely air tight. The prof is in a tough situtation I think!
How many times will MSM and higher education get burned before they wise up? An intelligent person simply doesn't allow himself to fall for the same trick twice; I guess that says a lot about the relative smarts of our elites. Militant Blacks have learned well how to game the system and get themselves into controlling positions in many, if not most of our universities. We got a powerful example of this phenomenon during the Duke Frame-up. I'm at the point where my first reaction to reports of anti-Black racist graffiti, White-on-Black rapes, or noose-hangings is to doubt the report's accuracy. I guess MSM likes being embarrassed.
Tarheel Hawkeye
John -
Good posting and ditto to TH.
Jack in Silver Spring
Off topic, but I think the people in the Midwest exhibit what makes the USA so great. This was taken from an Iowa blog, and I don’t think the poster meant these questions to be humors in the least.
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On the net: Inquisitive Iowans want to know--
Comment by Anonymous
When will Louis Farrakhan accuse President Bush of blowing up the levees in Iowa?
When will Harry Reid write a memo telling Democrats that President Bush must not be allowed to look good handling this little water problem in Iowa?
When will Kanye West accuse President Bush of hating white farmers in Iowa, while a gang cheers-on his hateful words?
When will Spike Lee spend significant dollars and time filming a documentary about the tragedy of white people, and, ESPN promote it as a sports related story?
Where is Geraldo Rivera, he could be in Iowa crying for farmers, for cows, for pigs?
When will the gangs of looters be arrested and brought to justice?
When will Oprah exploit these poor white people on her TV show?
Jack in SS:
Thanks for the kind words.
Tarheel Hawkeye
Sweetmick says: Ms. Constantine has done a complete 180, standing on its head all reason and logic. As quoted in the NY Post, she now says,"So much of it is political, it is sick. Let them make it a racial issue."
Additionally, through her attorney, Ms. Constantine now claims that in all of the more than a dozen instances of plagiarism against her, it was in fact, she, Ms. Constantine, who had been plagiarized.
I think she would be quite a fit at the N&O.
Constantine has been exposed as a fraud, just like so many of the "group of 88" at Duke. When will American universities wake up and confront this cancer that is infecting their campuses? Too late? Probably.
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