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TC Professor Suspended Following Plagiarism Investigation
By Lydia Wileden and Joy Resmovits
PUBLISHED JUNE 23, 2008
After a tumultuous year characterized by suspicions of plagiarism and a hate crime that stunned campus, Madonna Constantine, Teachers College professor of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, has been suspended from her tenured position. Her termination will be made effective December 31, 2008, pending an appeal.
A letter sent Monday by TC President Susan Fuhrman and Provost Tom James informed faculty of the decision made by the Faculty Advisory Committee. The decision will take effect following a hearing before a faculty committee, and Constantine has been suspended, effective immediately, until that hearing is completed. Monday’s letter denied Constantine’s appeal to the law firm Hughes Hubbard and Reed’s determination of plagiarism, as announced in February via a letter to TC faculty.
The TC letter circulated in February said the 18-month-long investigation “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.” The investigation focused specifically on 36 passages found in pieces of work published by Constantine that shared many similarities with the work of her former students, Tracy Juliao and Karen Cort, and former TC faculty member Christine Yeh. That investigation found Constantine's explanation for the similarities “not credible.”
Since first taking action, the College has not specified exactly what sanctions were imposed, but a statement released Monday by the lawyer representing Constantine, Paul Giacomo, revealed that the sanctions included suspension without pay and firing pending an appeal. In the statement, Giacomo condemned actions against Constantine as being “retaliatory and hostile,” and called the FAC Report “fatally flawed” for insubstantial consideration of evidence. The FAC report allegedly did not analyze the “plethora of documentary evidence” presented by Constantine and verified by third parties, including Teachers College records.
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The letter TC distributed on Monday, as obtained by the New York Sun, said the FAC “confirmed the administration’s decision to accept the Hughes Hubbard investigative report’s findings that Professor Constantine had committed plagiarism and acted to obstruct the investigation.” In particular, the letter mentioned Constantine’s response to her sanctioning—by accusing those she plagiarized from of having stolen her own work—as an attempt to obstruct the investigation and a reason for the accelerated increase of her penalty. Giacomo’s statement said that it is Constantine’s constitutional right to “defend her reputation,” and comments to the press can therefore not be used to bring forth her termination.
TC’s notice went on to say that the FAC concluded on June 4 that “the sanctions against Professor Constantine were not only justified, but required.”
Giacomo has long been positive he can “prove prior authorship of all of the passages that...are claimed…to have been plagiarized.” In the statement, Giacomo said his firm presented evidence showing Constantine’s prior journal submission of questionable passages to the FAC, which claimed that the documents were “not verifiable,” despite the fact that the firm allegedly took pains to ensure that documents were verified by third parties. The statement expressed ire that “unverified documents used against our client have been accepted as proof for prior authorship.”
Giacomo further claims that FAC never interviewed witnesses whose documents were marked unverifiable, showing that the information the investigation relied on was “demonstrably false.”
The statement pinpoints Fuhrman, saying “the President of Teachers College has chosen to ignore this important verifiable information and, instead, has proceeded to carry out her threatened termination of our client, as well as her stated intention to disseminate further statements defamatory to our client.”
The case has long been a point of conflict among TC faculty, one of whom would only comment that she was “enormously relieved for the young people to see some sort of justice come of this.” The professor said the Constantine case has forged a rift among the faculty. The case caused one professor to vocally jump to Constantine’s defense and condemn her detractors for racism, while others have loudly called for her ouster.
Constantine is entitled to request a hearing before the FAC or the Faculty Executive Committee to further contest the matter. Constantine may now choose to file an Article 78 proceeding of New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules, which would challenge the ruling as being “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable” under state court. Giacomo’s statement also said that Constantine could seek payment for “job actions taken against her” under federal and state employment law. The firm is not ruling out lawsuits against Constantine’s detractors, claiming they have inflicted “enormous damages.”
According to an anonymous source close to the situation who did not have clearance to speak on the record, Constantine is “keeping all her options open,” and “plans on doing everything she can to get out the truth as she sees it.”
Update: Tuesday, June 24
On Tuesday, a representative from Giacomo’s law firm sent Spectator a computerized copy of a spreadsheet detailing the circumstances of all 36 allegations of plagiarism. Next to each allegation, the sheet included the date of submission of the material in question to different journals; a notation of obtaining a letter of rejection or letter of submission from the editors in response to Constantine’s or her accuser’s submission of the passage; and the text of the passage itself.
For instance, under the first allegations, the spreadsheet indicated that the firm has a letter of rejection addressed to Constantine from January 1996 by the editor of Applied and Preventive Psychology for an article entitled “Facilitating Adjustment to College: Considerations in Counseling Ethnic Minority and International College Studies.” The next column indicates that the firm has a copy of a letter of submission in May 1997 from the editor of the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development. The 5th column lists that the firm could not verify proof or the date of Yeh and her co-workers’ submission of the analogous text to the journals Asian American Psychological Association, and National Institutes of Health.
Most contested passages contain citations to and summaries of other texts.
Juliao stands by her accusation. “An independent law firm and a faculty committee at TC both found MC guilty of plagiarism based upon documentation provided by myself (and others), as well as MC,” she wrote in an e-mail. “In fact, the faculty committee reviewed the evidence twice and upheld their initial determination, in response to MC's appeal. … I can tell you that the documentation I provided indicates that MC, as a faculty member in the department where drafts of my work were filed, had access to my work long before it was published.”
Check back for continuous updates.
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Dear anonymous: No wonder you stayed anonymous. You are a bunch of racist. You are a cow turd. Can I borrow your feather duster?
I agree with the reviewer mentioning Chichilnisky. Because that woman [Chichilnisky] is so genuinely brilliant she didn't need that brunch of trendy liberals to come to her rescue. She won on her own right, rightly. But what excuse does a plagiarist have?? weather black, white, yellow or whatever, if you did something as wrong as this, there is absolutely no place for you here!
MC should have left Columbia a long time ago. The woman is brilliant regardless of what you people say. It is "whether" NOT "weather" I hope you are not a CU student!!!! Blacks are always dragged through the media more harshly than ANY other race because of their history in America. They were the only minorities who did not come to this country willingly and it shows in every aspect of life (employment, education, tenure at universities, health care, etc.). Dude the list endless. Why don't you consider taking a diversity course? that is if Columbia even offers such a thing.
the list be endless?
It is extremely disturbing and most unfortunate that the institutionalized racial discrimination and harassment of Blacks and other minorities, including the sexual harassment of Black/Colored women, at Columbia University and its sister colleges continues as though we are still in the 1950s and 60s. In their quest for obstructing justice and suppressing the civil rights and the constitutional rights of the Blacks and other minorities, the Columbia executives have ruthlessly fired and permanently ruined the professional careers and livelihoods of numerous highly qualified Blacks and other minorities and they have been aggressively fighting the lawful organization of any anti-discrimination "Minority Employees Association." It is time for all the decent people of Columbia University to unite and end the continuing racial atrocities at this 250-years old Ivy League University.
Racial Equality Struggles For Columbia University Employees Ad Hoc Committee
RESCUE_Columbia_University@Yahoo.com
Agreed, I think the more Columbia puts out in the media the more pissed off people get. Well, except the racist out there who believe that Black people deserve this kind of treatment. You do not see anyone dragging the prof that sued Columbia twice through the mud. She's also a star professor. Most institutions including Columbia are superficial with their so called"multiculturalism" movements. It's clear that this prof probably stepped on the toes of some of those real conservation White people. I love Dr. Constantine's books and her articles. I hope she does not let this stop her plight. She is a powerhouse in the field of psychology and quite honestly Columbia has yet again made a fool of themselves. The woman is a genuine! Despite all of this, people still love and respect her. Our only hope is that she does not let this bring her down. Stay true to the cause and keep speading realities and truth about cross cultural counseling. All of your mentees and people who love you are counting on you NOT to give up.
"mentees," or manatees?
Graciela Chichilnisky, the economics professor who sued Columbia, wasn't pulled through the mud because she wasn't a plagiarist like Constantine. Dr. Constantine's actions tarnished the careers of several of her own graduate students. Read the Village Village series (http://www.villagevoice.com/ne...).
Constantine is a genuine plagiarist and there's no place at Columbia for someone like that, black, white or green.
The first thing Professor Constantine did wrong was take a job at Teachers College. The programs in Psychology had been placed under probation by the American Psychological Association before she was hired, and the Counseling Program was not functioning properly years before her first day of work there, which means she was walking into a bad situation to start with. To come into a conservative school that has multicultural courses to "appear liberal" and discuss race was the other mistake. Third, the programs in psychology at Teachers College are not true preparation or at all relevant for what awaits a professional once he/she graduates. They do not focus on any of the skills
that are relevant to the field or to the world of work in general (current and prospective students: buyer beware). The non-education programs at Teachers College are mere moneymakers for the school. I hope Professor Constantine will take what was a bad situation, that got worse the longer she stayed there, and go on with her professional and personal life. In academia, for black professors or black students the way they discredit you, or stop you is to accuse you of plagiarism.
Perhaps this is the lesson she and others can take from her experience at Teacher College
A CONSERVATIVE school? FIND THYSELF A GRIP AND APPLY ADHESION! And what reputable university is going to employ someone found guilty of plagiarism? CUNY and the community colleges may be in the mix since there is no one there worth copying.
Why does anyone have to prove anything to YOU? Do some research, if you're capable of doing your own. If not, make copies of someone else's research on the topic. Just don't try to publish it in your own name. You are not part of the solution; you are the problem.
Teachers College sent an email to everyone (students, faculty and staff ), BUT NO PROOF was attached. Just because they said they had evidence, didn't mean they have evidence. Why didn't they quote the articles and the source of the work that was supposed "plagiarized." I think they are covering up something and are trying to clean their tracks. Sorry, I need to see PROOF.
Why is this story fishy, because they never emailed their entire population when they fired anyone else. Is the person who put the noose up is the same up person who found her guilty. If so, she was HUNG twice!
***SORRY COMPUTER FROZE - TEXT CORRECTED***
Teachers College sent an email to everyone (students, faculty and staff ), BUT NO PROOF was attached. Just because they said they had evidence, didn't mean they have evidence. Why didn't they quote the articles and the source of the work that was supposedly "plagiarized?" I think they are covering up something and are trying to clean their tracks. Sorry, I need to see PROOF.
Why is this story fishy, because they never emailed their entire population when they fired anyone else. Is the person who put the noose up the same person who found her guilty? If so, she was HUNG twice!
I personally believe TC didn't want her to last that long, and when the noose story hit the public they were afraid they would be stuck with her. What kind of college waits until a person plagiarizes who 36 publications later? This fish stinks.
I truly love this professor. She is the nicest person in the world. I do not believe any of these allegations. It is all too fishy for me. The only thing that Constantine is guilty of is trying to make her students more professional and ready for the field of psychology. All of this sucks. My only hope is that she does not allow all of this to stop her. The devil has a way to trying to stop you from reaching your destiny. Constantine is powerful in that she has brought so much attention to racism in the fields of psychology and counseling. She is a icon you can not take that away from her. I hope she leaves Columbia inspired and more willing to keep writing and spreading the message. Columba's loss. The reason why the other prof that sued Columbia is not getting all of this attention because she's well lets just say not a person of color. Dr. Constantine is loved and admired by many and always will be.
University must have practices and policies with dealing with women in interesting ways!
PROF HITS COLUMBIA WITH 2ND BIAS SUIT
By DAREH GREGORIAN
SUIT U:Graciela Chichilnisky says Columbia is retaliating for a previous suit.
June 16, 2008
An internationally renowned Columbia professor is going to court to teach the school a lesson in gender equality.
Opening arguments begin today in Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky's multimillion-dollar discrimination and retaliation suit against her employer of 30 years.
"They know this is a serious problem, and they have no interest in addressing it," the math and economics professor told The Post.
She filed a similar suit against the university in the early 1990s. The case was settled in 1995 with no admission of wrongdoing by Columbia, but with Chichilnisky's salary almost doubled, her office space and research resources greatly expanded and a $500,000 damages payment.
"I thought I had solved the problem - my problem, anyway - and then things got worse," she said.
In addition to her pay again lagging dramatically behind that of her male counterparts, Chichilnisky said the university has retaliated against her by breaching the terms of the settlement.
She filed her current suit in 2000 and Columbia filed counterclaims, charging that she violated school rules by failing to report that she had a second job as CEO of the multimillion-dollar corporation she founded, and that she breached the terms of the settlement.
Columbia's general counsel, Patricia Catapano, said, "The trial will demonstrate that Columbia fully supported and compensated Prof. Chichilnisky in her research and academic duties."
Columbia's general counsel, Patricia Catapano, said, "The trial will demonstrate that Columbia fully supported and compensated Prof. Chichilnisky in her research and academic duties."
Catapano is full of bluster as usual.
What's wrong? Can't by enough cheeseburgers? People are starving in the real world. Join it.
When i first heard the charges I started laughing. I guess that is all Columbia could come up with. I know zillions of profs who had students do work for them and NEVER gave them credit. White dudes have been doing this for years dude. I support Dr. Constantine and I hope she is not foolish enough to be silenced. I hope she continues to write books and articles on race and race relations in America. Race relations still SUCK! I came to America 10 years ago and realized quickly there is a culture of power that excludes minorities. It's embedded in the history of America.
She was one of two Blacks in the College. That really speaks volumes to Columbia's fake committment to diversity. I have been at CUNY for years and only once had a minority professor. Racism, biotry, elitism, and exclusion of minorities from higher education is real folks.
If you've been at CUNY for years, the "zillions" of profs there have never had a student who came up with anything worthy to steal.
na na na na
na na na na
hey hey hey
goodbye
I find ithis all business as usual. Oh, not the Constantine plagiarism situation! I mean the Al Sharpton one. It seems like he is the real enemy to many of the commentators.
Or is the real enemy any black person who stands up to power? Al is the straw man. The real enemy is black liberationism.
I think the commentators just want us to shut up and go away. They see us all as troublemaking, superficial, and self-serving.
I believe this is because, in fact, they are superficial and self-serving - wallowing in narcissism and intellectual idleness in the world's capital of superficialty and rantiing.
That Winter Roundtable Conference is doomed. The only reason many of the doctoral students from across the country flocked to that conference was to meet Dr. Constantine. If she leaves Columbia we'll never attend again. Guess she got too powerful for the department. She will always rock! Thanks for your contributions to Multicultural Counseling.
all of this is bogus!
She's an uppity, low-IQ she-boon.
I think what you have here are a bunch of angry evil time wasters. everybody has their enemy at work. there are nut cases on every job. I worked with Professor Constantine and she's no more evil than some of the other faculty in that department. simply put a lot of them have serious issues with arrogance. If she's let go they all should be dismissed for one thing or another. I highly doubt that she stole student's work. Better scenario. She has pitted alot of enemies on faculty and they wanted her gone. They devised a plan and got students involved. She did not have enough allies within the department to back her and she got canned BIG TIME. The noose was hung by a colleague to send a loud message that we are out for you. Just my take on what happened. employment is very political and if you cross the wrong set of fruites it could cost you big time.
By coincidence of spelling and punctuation, it becomes obvious that you have posted here a few times on this issue. And by coincidence of that same spelling and punctuation, if you worked "with Professor Constantine" at TC, it must have been in the capacity of a vacuum cleaner and feather duster attendant.
As an incoming TC student this Fall, I applaud Columbia's decision to fire Dr. Constantine for her repeated acts of plagiarism. Once or twice is bad enough, but 36? When was she going to decide enough was too much? Especially when the importance of "academic integrity" is consistently shoved down the throats of students. My only hope is that the ripping off of intellectual property is not rampant across the faculty.
I'm sure MC will appeal the decision. It is surprising that good 'ole Reverend Al has yet to comment about this issue.
Easy to tell by the bad grammar, misspellings, irregular punctuation, and inability to put together a coherent sentence who is, and who is not, part of the University family, or the family of cogency, for that matter.
students at columbia and barnard are supposed be bright, indeed some of the smartest students in the country. and yet, in the presence of the concepts of race and gender you seem to loose all faculty of judgment. your simpering sympathy seems to extend carte blanch to anyone or category that has ever suffered any abuse at the hands of any Other. Do you plan to carry forth this overaught feeling into the world, like your alums circa 1968? Good luck, and before you sputter off any more self-righteous idiocy, take the time to look at what graduates of your ivy lead shit hole go on to do. if you really want the world to be a better place, kill yourself.
I've worked with Constantine on a conference. I've found her to be a very nice and thoughtful woman.
Maybe she made a mistake. Perhaps she's a masochist. But I don't think everyone should be so angry at her. She did something wrong perhaps, but that doesn't make her a horrible person or a criminal.
she deserves this. she has been nasty to everyone and this can be verfied the staff and students and faculty working in that department. people feel threatened by her as one can never know how she will react and jepardize their jobs. she has been nasty to so many people and no one has the guts to speak up. this is wonderful wonderful wonderful news and people like her who use the racism card to get their way should be fired and never be allowed in any profession. she is vindictive, dishonest and absolutely disgusting bitch. TC should give her the money and let her go to hell and that department will function in peace. congratulations to Karen, Christine and Tracy for picking up this war! Long overdue.
Bring on big ol' Rev Sharpton! This prof's staging of the noose incident is consistent with his antics. Glad to see the faculty take a solid stand against plagiarists and fakes!
See ya!!!!!
I am appalled at all of this hate mail! I truly hope these are not members of the Columbia University community. If so, I would most certainly be deeply saddened by this....
Columbia Spectator -- I challenge you to find out who are these people on this site?! Maybe its one of them that hung the noose...I say call the NYPD have them take a look into whose providing these racist postings!
I agree with "What happens to innocence until proven guilty", above - but she WAS found guilty of plagiarism. So, why shouldn't she suffer whatever the consequences are for that?
this is a case of a professor taking on the all might Columbia University. I hope she sues their pants off.
And what will she do when she get all these pants? Sew three hundred pair together to make a pair for herself?
TC grad's spelling and punctuation is pretty poor, no?
This is what happens when you hire trash from the quota receptacle. What will the school do with all those heavy-duty, reinforced chairs they bought for her? Maybe they could next hire Dumbo the Elephant from the pachyderm quota receptacle. They should rescind credits from everyone who has ever taken her "class."
It's utterly ridiculous for the reporters who wrote this piece to suggest that Prof Constantine's being found guilty of plagiarism (by an outside investigation and then by an elected faculty committee panel who met for months and examined all the evidence, and interviewed Prof Constantine and considered all the evidence given to them by her) has caused conflict among the faculty.
Quite the contrary: At the end of the last term, the faculty voted unanimously in favor (with one abstention) of a resolution condemning plagiarism in the strongest terms and recommending that the strongest sanctions be leveled against those found guilty of plagiarism.
I'd be willing to bet that she hung the noose on her own door...just to manipulate people and get sympathy, knowing this plagiarism investigation was underway. She's nothing but a lazy cheater who has tarnished the reputation of the school and has shown no remorse over her crime. She went so far as trying to blame the original authors of plagiarizing her! What a scum. I hope she's stuck flipping burgers for the next 5 years.
I originally doubted she planted the noose herself. Now, she is clearly a (the #1?) suspect. Now, we have a possible motive for planting the noose -- drumming up so much sympathy so that even if she was discovered to do misdeeds like plagiarism, she wouldn't be fired.
She doth protesteth too much. To me, the suspicious appearance of the noose as a Red Herring convinced me that they had caught her red handed (or red penned, if you will), and she felt her best way out was the playing of the much overused race card. Kind of sad if that was her best defense!
Interesting!! Columbia didn't have the guts to yank the thugs who vandalized the minuteman speech, now at least it is getting some sense of free speech, race, diversity and integrity. Hopefully, it will grow!
The people who interfered with Gilchrist's speech were students, not faculty. And they were disciplined. You may not be satisfied with the discipline, but that's beside the point. Columbia had pre-existing rules in place for such things and had to abide by them. It would have been wrong to disregard the rules and impose harsher penalties just to mollify critics.
An affirmative-action(quota) hire who is widely believed to have staged the 'noose' event herself. Good Riddance! Maybe there's hope for Columbia Univ. after all.
It seems each of the responses so far have not read all of the available information closely. One of the major problems here is that the evidence that Prof. Constantine's lawyer provided was not fully taken into consideration before a judgment was rendered which arguably prompted a biased judgement. Why not consider all of the evidence equally? What's the harm? It could only strengthen the institution's case.. In any event, I really think everyone needs to step back and take a wait and see approach. To just jump to conclusions and villify her before all of the details are exposed would be a serious injustice. Moreover, as a former alumni of TC, I can attest to the fact there was definitley something fowl in that drinking water, and it was not until recently (late 90's early 2000) that some major changes were underway. In fact, it was not until President's Levin's last couple of years as president of the college that they established a Office of Diversity, despite years of complaints by minority staff, students, and faculty of racial insensitivity and low morale. So, let's pause and let the true wheels of justice complete itself. Columbia has clearly not been immune to racial or sexist intolerance. Although not as extensive as some, it does have a track record, and we cannot dismiss this as a possible reality, just because its "Columbia."
Prof. Constantine's evidence was "fully taken into consideration". It just wasn't believed.
Disagreeing with someone else's position is a far cry from not considering it.
An affirmative-action(quota) hire who is widely believed to have staged the 'noose' event herself. Good Riddance! Maybe there's hope for Columbia Univ. after all.
Suspicions of plagiarism were cited by the FAC ... If this "teacher" has the capacity to take credit of the work of others. Could not there be suspicions the "teacher" has the capacity to create an external issue by having a surrogate or even herself place the noose on the door knob. After all it's a tactic many individuals have employed in life to take focus off the real issue called "smoke and mirrors”.
i can't believe they are firing her despite having not found out who hung that noose on her door. moreover, why haven't any notable black faculty at columbia or elsewhere commented on this? are they "skerd?"
"i can't believe they are firing her despite having not found out who hung that noose on her door. "
Why does it matter who put the noose on her door?
She's not being dismissed for having a noose on her door, is she? No. She is being dismissed for the very serious academic/professional crime of plagiarism.
The two crimes, her plagiarism and the placement of the noose, are unrelated.
The idea that she should not be punished for the crime she committed, the plagiarism, because she was subsequently the victim of another crime, the noose, is misguided at best.
All blacks better be on the lookout because whitey is going to be out for revenge. Especially those blacks in the service industry whose means of making a living depend on tips from white folk. No more Mr. nice guy - my money stays in my pockets while the black man sweats trying to make ends meet. haha
Glad to see justice for Mrs Sharpton. You play with fire you get burnt and all eyes are on you
i hear the distant rumble of Al Sharpton and his posse heading in your direction.
Now the important question is how much is MC going to be able to extort from TC in order to make her go away? Six figures, minimum...
I'm glad to see that Columbia finally summoned the guts to do what had to be done to put an end to its mortification at the hands of a rogue "professor". I hope it will show comparable candor in providing a full and frank account of the "noose" incident. Will it still be a "hate crime" if the "victim" is found to be the perpetrator?
And why are they waiting until December to shovel her out the door?
I guess you all are a bunch of racist. What happens to innocence until proven guilty.
And you are a bunch of racist, too. Is that like a bunch of broccoli? Or a bunch of bologna?
Good riddance!
No wonder you stayed anonymous. You are a coward.
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