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.

• Columbia: "'Rooster’s breakfast' is Slovenian slang for 'early morning sex.'"
• Columbia: Madonna Constantine demonstrates inability to cut losses.
• Harvard: Oh Harvard kids, so goddamn worldly.
• Yale: Would you believe these kids and their hats?
• Princeton: Construction workers go overboard trying to take Princeton's gobs of money.
• Dartmouth: "An officer assigned to detail a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority event at Everything But Anchovies arrested an underage male who brought liquor in a cup to the event." Gin and anchovies -- busted.
• Penn: Hillary Clinton owes everyone money.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the '60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are "less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate": 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as "liberal activists," versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, "My generation is not so ideologically driven" and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh man, our sanctified academic standards haven't been so betrayed by a member of the ivory tower since Kaavya Viswanathan did that thing that no one cares about anymore.

Madonna Constantine, a tenured professor at Columbia's Teachers College, was just fired for plagiarism. Background (for those of you who haven't been following our pretty extensive coverage): Constantine became infamous last fall after reportedly finding a noose on her office door, but some folks were a tad bit suspicious because her claim emerged in the midst of the university's 18-month investigation of her work. Constantine called out the TC community for stirring up a "conspiracy and witch-hunt" and, always down for a protest, hundreds of Columbia students and faculty rallied in her support. Anthony Kelley defended her in the batshittiest Columbia Spectator column you will ever read. In a nice Orwellian twist, Constantine's attorney said that her accusers, two former students and a former colleague, had plagiarized from her. It now appears that Constantine mooched from the trio in a dozen separate instances. Read the rest of this entry »

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?

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

An outside investigation has found Columbia / Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine guilty of numerous instances of plagiarism, says The Spec. You might be wondering: why is this important, except as yet another footnote to the Ivy League's plagiarism epidemic?

Well, as always, there's a twist: this is the selfsame Professor Constantine who found a noose - a very racist noose - on her door back in October, sparking all sorts of protests and recriminations about Columbia's racial insensitivity. It was a pretty big deal.

According to a Teachers College memo, Constantine is guilty of more than an isolated instance of plagiarism:

The investigation, which began in 2006, was prompted by complaints from students and one former faculty member who said language from materials they wrote was included without attribution in the articles…[We] found numerous instances in which she [Constantine] used others' work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years."

As insensitive jerks, we've got to ask the question: did Constantine hang her own noose (literally and figuratively) to take the heat off the plagiarism charges? Might we be seeing a redux of the Francisco Nava affair, except this time by someone on the Left?

A busy week for racists at Columbia: Amid the modicum of offensive bathroom-stall doodles inherent to public restrooms in New York, someone hung a noose on black Teacher College professor Madonna Constantine's door. And, you know how when you learn a new word, all of a sudden you start hearing it everywhere? Nooses are now materializing on lampposts and in lockerrooms city-wide (and in at least one burb). Expect ironic nooses at MisShapes any day now.

As much as we Ivy League hacks enjoy naming Columbia the source of all trends (good, bad, ugly, and  St. A's-related), Newsday suggests the more likely source is recent media attention on the Jena 6.

Oddly, CU TC officials resisted NYPD requests for security tapes of Constantine's building. Officials cited "policy" and "student privacy" (you know, the expectation of privacy one has when scaring the shit out of strangers in a public building). Those inclined to conspiracy theory suspect a nefarious Bollinger plot to turn hate-speech into free-speech (NYCLU is already salivating, say various rumormills). Cat-fight enthusiasts point to Constantine's ongoing book-credit battle with fellow TC Prof. Suniya Luthar. Is Columbia's derelection of crime-fighting duty a sign of taking sides? Could Luthar's desire for bylines have driven her to the proliferation of treacherous ropes? *

And, haven't we already seen this on Law & Order?

In the meantime, the Spec's cup runneth over with bias crime meta-talk: PrezBo interview, five op-ed headlines, and a handy-dandy Hate Crimes at Columbia timeline.

* No, says New York magazine, and stop spreading so many rumors. But seriously, what's the fun in that?