Oh, Madonna Constantine.  When will you learn?  Columbia does not want you.  They do not like you.  And most of all, they want you to go away.  For reals.  And, like, not appeal shit and sue them and stuff.

That's right, Columbia University Teacher's College Professor Madonna Constantine, she of the noose-beribboned door and plagiarism scandals, she of the appeals to reverse Columbia's firing her sorry ass (and revoking her tenure) has decided that, since she's done everything else, she might as well sue the school.

According to the Associated Press, Ms. Constantine filed papers today with the state Supreme Court.  She contends that her dismissal from the faculty of Teachers College was "arbitrary, irrational and unauthorized."  Columbia University spokespeople have so far declined to comment.

Our only comment is to roll our eyes, snigger, and wonder why she's still trying.  But, you know, maybe she felt she had nothing left to lose?

Hello no, she will not go!  At least, not if she has anything to say about it.  Madonna Constantine, the Teacher's College professor who found a noose on the door of her office and months later was fired for plagiarism, is fighting back in a deliciously-absurd appeal.  The Columbia Spectator reports that Constantine, in a last-ditch effort to hold onto her tenure, has appealed her termination to the Faculty Advisory Committee at Teacher's College:

This latest appeal, announced in a letter addressed to TC president Susan Fuhrman from Giacomo’s office, claimed that Constantine’s termination, when considered on top of previously imposed sanctions, was retaliation against Constantine’s appeal of the first decision. The letter demands a fresh investigation into all charges of plagiarism as well as calls for the removal of Barry Farber, a professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, from the FAC due to a conflict of interests.

Um...what?  Yesterday, IvyGate contacted Prof. Farber, who declined to comment.  Constantine could not be reached for comment.  A TC spokesperson also declined to comment.  According to the Spec, at least one member of the Faculty Advisory Committee had removed herself before the first appeal.  Well, good luck accomplishing the impossible, Constantine.  We'll be here, trying to figure out exactly what's going on, and also quietly mocking you as you rise from the dead like a very determined, (plagiarizing) zombie.

Last year the Daily Princetonian caught China's Renmin University using an unauthorized rub-off of Princeton University's homepage web design. Today an intrepid reader tips us off to another eery homepage similarity, between Jinan University (also in China) and Cornell's homepage.

Some will argue creative dishonesty; others, cultural relativity; still others, feigned and/or apologetic innocence (at least, that is how we imagine the Jinan folks will react). All I know is, if it's the same copycat mentality that enables 50-cent bootlegs in Chinatown, it's fine by me.

Full-size screenshots for your comparative pleasure, here and here.

It's not easy being a Republican at Brown these days. Dessert-tossing anarchists and child pornographers abound. Brigades of Speedo-clad men roam the campus with impunity. Residence hall kitchens, once reserved for late-night snacking and polite conversation about Reagan's legacy, are pioneered for unspeakable X-rated acts. Surely, then, it was only a matter of time before the small but now very angry cabal that is the Brown conservative movement took to the Internets with something like this.

Proudly awarding “demerits” to their liberal enemies for their recent debauchery (and, of course, “merits” to themselves), a spunky group of traditionalists calling themselves the Nathanael Greene Society make it clear that they have had enough. On the Web site, the mysterious group writes (in verse!) about the campus’ loss of “Faith” and “Reason” (capitalizing plenty of nouns along the way) and goes batshit over opinion columns in the Brown Daily Herald and other outrages no one else quite, um, noticed.

Taking few hints from political correctness, the society (named for the dashing Revolutionary War general pictured above) even bestows the “Order of Robert Mugabe” (this already can’t be good, right?) on a black columnist for the BDH. Clever, indeed.

The secret e-society does have some sense of humor (those seeking pecuniary grants form NGS must compose rhymed couplets), but whoever is behind the site apparently wants to remain anonymous, going so far as to register the domain name through a special "private registration" company -- whose existence indicates that, apparently, that's something you can do.

Click through the site, and find out why a pro-choice activist gets a demerit named for Adolf Eichmann, and serial plagiarist and hero Zachary Townsend is likened to Rasputin.

Ain't it always the case that when something seems too good to be true, it is? So it was for The Dartmouth's April 16 cartoon from Bora Kem '08, which defied the low standard we usually set for college toons (click for enlargement):
That is until it was brought to our attention that the entire things was ripped off from a piece by the Investor's Business Daily Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Michael Ramirez:
 
All ya gotta do is take the clothes off the character and put the on the rack and nobody will ever know!

Except us. Which might explain why, despite being published in The Dartmouth last Wednesday, the comic hasn't been uploaded to The Dartmouth's comics page. In fact, one student claims to have e-mailed the EIC about these uh... similarities and received no response.

Madonna Constantine is having a pretty bad semester. First someone hangs a noose on her doorknob, then she gets in trouble for plagiarism, then she suspects the whole thing is part of some university-wide institutionally racist conspiracy. And now a grand jury has authorized investigation into whether Constantine hung the noose herself or maybe with a li'l help from her friends. This is because symbolic nooses are basically Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards, the "quack quack seat back" of intellectual crime. I'm surprised James Frey hasn't tried it, yet! The New York Post reports:

The revelation that Constantine had been under university review provides a possible motive for a sympathetic friend to consider placing a noose on her door - thinking it could whip up support for her, sources said.

"Sympathetic friend"? Hmm... does Anthony Kelley have an alibi?

The weirdest thing about the most high-profile plagiarism scandal of the year is that copycat White House staffer Timothy Goeglein chose the Dartmouth Review to knock off. Dartmouth? sniffed incredulous student writers at the holy elitist trinity of HYP. If the White House is stealing from Dartmouth, surely somebody more important is stealing from us!

And since everyone knows the only American institution more revered than the White House is the New York Times, a tipster has connected the dots between NYT and the Yale Daily News. Specifically, NYT's article on "drunkorexia" (helpfully placed in the Fashion & Style section, lest we believe this is actually a disease or serious addictive problem) and a recent YDN article on sexually transmitted diseases. Besides the fact that long nights of drunk puking often lead to STDs, our tipster points us to the "lede/nutgraf similarities."

Now, we can never truly know who copied what, for what reasons, and how many chakras it will take to exorcise the plagiaristic demons. But you can judge the YDN-NYT "similarities" for yourelf after the jump.
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Remember Columbia / Teachers Colllege Professor Madonna Constantine, she of the noose-hanging fame and plagiarism charges? Well, did she really do it? As for the noose, we're not so sure. But what about the plagiarism? Yes, yes, yes she did! According to an outside report, Constantine stole work from no less than three different people in the past five years and did so in "numerous instances."

Not so fast, says a truly insane column in today's Spectator. According to a certain Anthony Kelley we can never really be sure:

No one aside from Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine will ever know whether or not she actually committed plagiarism.The ultimate truth of a situation cannot be attained through investigations, especially when they are clouded with accusations of bias and prejudice."

But can we ever even know that your name is Anthony Kelley, Anthony Kelley? What is truth, after all? 

Kelley is "drawn to" the view that "these allegations of plagiarism... are continuations of the historical devaluation of black womanhood and should be recognized as such."

Still, we've got to give Kelley some credit here. He is so academically open-minded that he's willing to play devil's advocate:

Let us assume for a moment that Professor Constantine plagiarized the work of others. Instead of punishing (or "sanctioning") her, we should be making special efforts to extend compassion to her and those who feel wounded as a result of her actions. We should be having community dialogues to emphasize the importance of academic honesty."

In this perfect world Kelley imagines, you can steal your friends' academic work so long as you're willing to sit around a campfire and "talk" about it at some later point.

After the jump: more insanity.

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It's not only Ivy League students who love plagiarizing. Sometimes even the White House gets involved. But White House aides don't plagiarize from just anyone! Nope, they get their source material from our right-wing buddies at the Dartmouth Review!

Timothy S. Goeglein, President Bush's chief liaison to religious groups, has admitted to plagiarizing a column he wrote for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel. 

"It is true," Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. "I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses." I guess Zac Townsend and his Brown cohort can sleep easier now.

According to the Washington Post, Goeglein "previously worked closely with Karl Rove and during the 2004 election was Bush's chief emissary to conservative political groups." Oh, how I tremble with glee! William F. Buckley would be shamed. Shamed!

Goeglein's column:

A notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College in the last century, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, expressed the matter succinctly. His wisdom is not only profound but also worth pondering in this new century. He said, "The goal of education is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization."

He meant that, I think, in quite a large sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of,

Jeffrey Hart in The Dartmouth Review:

A notable Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey often expressed the matter succinctly, "The goal of education," he would say, "is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization."

He meant that in quite large a sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of.

After the jump: more similarities.

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Plagiarist professor and symbolic-noose victim Madonna Constantine released a statement yesterday calling Columbia's discplinary action against her "premature, vindictive, and mean-spirited," the product of "institutional racism," "a conspiracy and witch-hunt." She writes,

I am left to wonder whether a White faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner.

It is my opinion that this investigation, along with other incidents that have happened to me at Teachers College in recent months, point to a conspiracy and witch-hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community. I believe that nothing that has happened to me this year is coincidental, particularly when I reflect upon the hate crime I experienced last semester involving a noose on my office door. As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.

Now, we love damning the man as much as the next 20-something pipsqueak, but when Columbia takes a fine-toothed comb to your oeuvre and finds five years' worth of academic dishonesty? Might be time to cut your losses, maybe update your resume and check out the listings on monster.com.

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