Teachers College

In an effort to hold onto her position as a tenured faculty member at Teachers College, controversial Professor Madonna Constantine is grasping at the last shreds of internal process available to her.

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.

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High school newspapers have a reputation for attracting top-notch students, or so says Erick Gordon, director of the Student Press Initiative at Teachers College. With Gordon’s program reaching out to schools in underprivileged communities, more students now have the opportunity to show off their journalistic knack.

The noose found on Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine’s office door in October is up for a new round of close scrutiny in light of reports this week that a state grand jury has subpoenaed the school’s records concerning Constantine in an investigation of the noose.

A state grand jury has subpoenaed Teachers College records concerning Constantine in an investigation of the appearance of the noose her door, an official confirmed.

I do not know. In fact, no one aside from Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine will ever know whether or not she actually committed plagiarism. All we can do is make speculations based on evidence that has been provided to us.

Teachers College received its largest gift yet of $20 million last week, earmarked for private school leadership programs. According to a TC press release, trustee John Klingenstein and his wife Pat donated the money in support of the 30-year-old Klingenstein Center for Independent School Education.

Last week, Teachers College announced that professor Constantine had plagiarized the works of others. Surprisingly, the college has indicated that, though Constantine faces official sanctions, she will be allowed to keep her job. To impress upon students and faculty the gravity of Constantine’s actions, and to live up to its stated commitment to academic integrity, TC must explain its reasoning.

Although many Columbia and Barnard undergraduates cross-enroll in Teachers College courses, the financial mechanisms behind the process are more complicated than the far more common exchange between the undergraduate schools. When one of their students registers for a TC course, Barnard and Columbia add the fee to their own established tuition and later pay Teachers College the difference—a process that works in much the same way for Teachers College students taking courses at other schools.

A look at the 36 passages that served as the basis of Teachers College’s determination last week that Professor Madonna Constantine was guilty of academic plagiarism illustrates the similarities between her writing and that of her students. But Constantine and her lawyer continue to maintain that she had authored the passages in question.