Tag: universities

Columbia University Hospital DEI Chief Accused Of Plagiarizing Wikipedia, 27 Others In Dissertation

In the continuation of a trend rocking “elite” institutions, Columbia University Medical Center’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officer has been accused of massive plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation — to include copying content from Wikipedia and poaching the work of 27 other writers.   

The accusations against Alade McKen came via a 55-page complaint anonymously submitted to the New York City Ivy League school this week and first published online by Washington Free Beacon. McKen’s dissertation was submitted in 2021at the Iowa State University School of Education. It’s title: “UBUNTU I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization.”  

McKen took his post at Columbia in September. The job was created in 2021 as part of a Columbia quest to vanquish “structural racism” in health care. Just two weeks ago, McKen was quoted in a university profile as declaring that “everyone” in the DEI office is “committed to doing the work.”

Maybe the work of setting race relations back decades by imposing counterproductive DEI doctrine on Columbia Medical Center, but apparently not the work of doctoral dissertations. 

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DEI Disaster: Harvard Plagiarism Scandal Deepens with Allegations Against Diversity Administrator

Harvard’s plagiarism problem continues as the spotlight shines on other faculty members at the Ivy League university in the wake of the school’s former president, Claudine Gay, being ousted amid dozens of plagiarism allegations being unearthed and multiple antisemitism scandals.

Plagiarism allegations against Harvard Extension School DEI administrator Shirley Greene involving more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation have been filed with the Ivy League institution, according to a report by City Journal.

This comes after disgraced president Claudine Gay resigned earlier this year in the wake of a slew of plagiarism allegations that resulted in her having to make seven corrections across two articles and her Ph.D. dissertation.

Moreover, Harvard University Chief Diversity Officer Sherri Ann Charleston was also accused of plagiarism in a new complaint, which alleges that Charleston claimed credit for her husband’s work.

Additionally, top cancer researchers at Harvard have been recently accused of scientific fraud affecting 37 studies. The researchers are also accused of manipulating data images with simple methods such as copy-and-paste and Adobe Photoshop.

As for the latest allegations against Greene, who is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity, she has worked to advance the concept of so-called “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.”

The full complaint, obtained by City Journal, raises serious questions about Greene’s scholarship and academic integrity.

In one instance, Greene appears to take words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim directly from academic Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, “Chinese American Female Identity,” without including appropriate attribution or quotation.

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Biden Admin Wants To Spend Around $1 Million on University “Disinformation” Monitoring Program

The White House’s latest initiative to carry out its brand of combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (which is now referred to by the handy “MDM” initial) continues to co-opt the education sector.

The Department of Justice agency the National Institute for Justice (NIJ) is behind the funding effort that is said to be designed to study and research “effective technologies and tools for identification, moderation, and/or removal of extremist content.”

A grant worth $1 million will be spent to come up with a dashboard featuring an MDM tracker, which is supposed to surveil the internet for both speech, and narratives, and do so in real time. The project’s official name is, “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns.”

And reports say that the targeted speech coincides with “contentious political events.” Critics say that the taxpayer dollars here are in reality going towards suppression of conservative and religious groups, rather than as declared, violent extremists.

The recipient of the grant is South Carolina-based Clemson University. Researchers there are expected to come up with computer models that will keep an eye on accounts singled out as MDM peddlers and identify people associated with allegedly spreading MDM.

Eventually, the effort should produce the real-time tracking dashboard.

Regular citizens may not benefit from this project – considering the “fluid” nature of the very definitions of misinformation and its companions (some reports mention the initial, and subsequent treatment of the Covid origin and Hunter Biden laptop stories as examples of this.)

But the grant does specify who will benefit: law enforcement and policymakers.

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University mistakenly leaks names and phone numbers of virgin female students in Kazakhstan

It has been revealed that one of Kazakhstan‘s largest universities mistakenly leaked the personal information of female students who were virgins.

The names, ages, phone numbers, tax codes, and virginity status of women studying at Al-Farabi Kazakhstan National University in the capital, Almaty, were somehow released and quickly disseminated by other students via social media chat groups.

According to AKIpress, a nurse at the institution’s medical center sent a list of female students who had not undergone fluorography via WhatsApp to the dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. The data somehow also ended up on other WhatsApp groups on campus.

“A nurse from Smart Health University City LLP, which provides medical services to the university, sent documents with a list of third- and fourth-year students to the specialist of the dean’s office on February 6 to ensure that they undergo a fluorography,” the university wrote in a statement, “however, in addition to the names of the students, the documents also contained personal medical information.”

The university added that “an appeal was sent to the Almaty city prosecutor’s office with a request to take action on this fact on February 14,” and that it is “considering terminating the contract with Smart Health University City LLP.”

Before long, Kazakhstan’s minister of science and higher education, Sayasat Nurbek, stepped in and said he had “taken control of the issue,” adding, “those responsible will face punishment under our current legislation.”

“The transfer of personal data, especially of a medical nature, is a violation,” he noted.

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‘Total disgrace:’ LGBTQ nursing course called out for prioritizing activism over healthcare

A Missouri lawmaker recently criticized a new LGBTQ nursing class at the University of Missouri at Saint Louis where students wrote songs and books to raise awareness about the “disparities and injustices facing the LGBTQ community.”

The course, “Healthcare Within the LGBTQIAA+ Community,” was offered for the first time in the fall 2023 semester through the nursing and honors colleges, but there are no plans to offer it again in the future.

Missouri State Rep. Chris Lonsdale, a Republican from Liberty, described the course as “a total disgrace to the healthcare industry and Missouri” in a statement to The College Fix late last month.

In the class, students learned about “health disparities and injustices facing the LGBTQ community, including implicit bias, the lack of rights for same-sex parents and state laws targeting the queer community,” according to UMSL Daily, the school’s online news outlet.

“Universities are worried more about pushing political propaganda than delivering real healthcare to Missourians. It’s a total disgrace to the healthcare industry and Missouri,” Lonsdale said.

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Who’s To Blame For The Elite Extreme Left?

Many writers decry the American political scene as “too divisive.” But I don’t think this goes to the root of our political problems. A much more serious concern is that a very powerful minority of Americans reject the core principles upon which our Constitution and our society rest: principles of Western Civilization, republican government, and the Judeo-Christian heritage.

In the view of this minority, the American Founding was a crime, people should be judged largely on race and gender, elections should be manipulated (to protect “our democracy”), the traditional family structure should be abandoned, sexual mores should be perverted, and government should be nearly omnipotent.

These ideas resemble a variant of fascism in which everyone serves the state and individual rights—economic and political—are exercised only by the elite’s permission. This minority not only believe these things themselves, but they want to force you to accept them also. They’re authoritarian, even totalitarian.

When the rest of us push back against their agenda, it isn’t “divisiveness.” It’s self-defense.

The Power of the Elite

Despite our efforts of self-defense, this group has been remarkably successful in setting the national agenda. One example: From 1998 to 2014, there were 30 state referenda on the definition of civil marriage. The advocates of traditional marriage—that is, between a man and a woman—won all these referenda, and most of them by decisive supermajorities.

But the agenda-setters wanted same-sex civil marriage; therefore, now it’s imposed on every state, no matter what the voters might think. So much for “our democracy.”

Once same-sex civil marriage was secured, the agenda-setters proceeded to implement even more outré policies: critical race theory, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and, at least in some states, infanticide and the mutilation of children.

And despite the fact that most Americans think we have too much government and not enough freedom, under the guidance of the agenda-setters, government continues to grow.

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Northwestern students face criminal charges for pro-Palestinian newspaper parody

Students at Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburbs, woke up on October 25 to face an unexpected allegation. “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” declared the school’s venerable student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, in a front-page story.

The students, however, weren’t really looking at the Daily Northwestern. Instead, they had found the Northwestern Daily, a parody newspaper attacking the school’s stance on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The mock front page featured fake quotes from school officials, accusations of Israeli war crimes, and a fake ad for Birthright Israel — the travel abroad program that sends young American Jews to Israel — with the tagline “One man’s home is another man’s former home!” Overnight, someone had pinned the mock papers on bulletin boards, spread them on desks in lecture halls, and even wrapped the false front pages around roughly 300 copies of the Daily Northwestern itself.

The stunt quickly sparked a furor among Israel’s supporters online. One writer, at the conservative National Review, said the fake newspaper included an antisemitic “blood libel.” The university itself said the spoof “included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive.”

The parent company of the school paper, Students Publishing Company, or SPC, announced that it had “engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.” The results of the inquiry are just now coming to light.

Following the investigation, local prosecutors brought charges against two students for theft of advertising services. The little-known statute appears to only exist in Illinois and California, where it was originally passed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. The statute makes it illegal to insert an “unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical.” The students, both of whom are Black, now face up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

“I have never seen anyone charged with theft of advertising,” said Elaine Odeh, a lawyer who formerly supervised public defenders in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Evanston, where Northwestern is based.

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Revealed: The vindictive academics blasted by judge for hounding lesbian professor out of the Open University in a harassment campaign over her gender critical beliefs

These are the academics who were blasted in a stinging judgment by an employment tribunal after they hounded a lesbian lecturer out of her job.

Criminology expert Prof Jo Phoenix, 59, saw her name dragged through the mud at the Open University once her views on the importance of biological sex became known.

Despite assuring colleagues she was not transphobic, a small group of trans activist lecturers refused to set aside their personal politics to allow freedom of opinion.

Instead, ringleader Dr Leigh Downes, a female who identifies as non-binary, led a campaign against Prof Phoenix – publishing an open letter ‘in order to create a pile-on’, which amassed 368 staff signatures

Last week, in an extraordinary judgment, the participants were criticised for their vindictive motives; as well as their evidence, which a judge described as ‘evasive’ and ‘not credible’.

Employment Judge Jennifer Young said: ‘On multiple occasions, whenever gender critical views were expressed at the Open University, Dr Downes complained or tried to get the view suppressed. 

‘The claimant’s gender critical beliefs made Dr Downes feel palpably uncomfortable.’

The judge went on: ‘The purpose of signing the open letter was to create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for Prof Phoenix. 

‘We conclude that having 368 of your colleagues sign a public letter saying that you are part of a group that is fundamentally transphobic, is stigmatising and damaging.’

Besides Dr Downes, other signatories in the open letter – Dr Helen Bowes-Catton, Dr Nicola Snarey, Prof Peter Keogh, Natalie Starkey and Dr Chris Williams – were found to have contributed to the hostility, despite their claims that they were expressing academic freedom.

The judge dismissed this reasoning and wrote: ‘[It] was not an exercise in academic freedom. There is nothing scholastic about the open letter, it stigmatised the claimant and damaged her reputation.’

Rather than stamp out the febrile atmosphere on campus, departmental leaders at the university left Prof Phoenix to face the onslaught alone and even blamed her for having spoken out in the first place.

Prof Louise Westmarland, a former friend who had unsuccessfully competed for the same job, likened the under-fire professor to ‘a racist uncle at a dinner party’.

The head of the department, Dr Deborah Drake, caused huge distress by comparing Prof Phoenix to controversial US political scientist Charles Murray, whose views have been likened to a racist.  

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Oregon University Will No Longer Give ‘D-‘ Or ‘F’ Grades

Citing a wrongheaded “GPA fixation,” Western Oregon University leaders have announced plans to abolish D- and F grades for students…

They will replace them with “no credit” in an effort to support student success and encourage struggling undergrads to continue their education despite obstacles, they said.

The public university announced in a news release this month the changes would start in the fall.

“Students not earning a passing grade will be required to repeat the course and demonstrate proficiency. Our goal is to ensure that students who have met the core competencies and learning objectives graduate and provide every student an opportunity to be successful at Western Oregon University,” Vice President of Academic Affairs Jose Coll said in an email to The College Fix.

Coll, who took the job as provost in June 2023, said in the news release that “GPAs will now be a true reflection of student success and course mastery; failures will no longer mask the demonstrated abilities of our students when they pass courses.”

The news release stated that “the institutional academic grading regulation will reflect a grade range of A through D; the letter grades of D- and F will be replaced with No Credit (NC) for undergraduate students.”

“The difference is that the grade of NC will not negatively impact student GPAs.”

The move comes as data from the school shows that 65 percent of freshmen who drop out of WOU have earned at least one “F,” Inside Higher Ed reported.

Western Oregon University acknowledged students receiving “no credit” are significantly more likely to continue with their education than those who fail classes, leading some to accuse the school of allowing “grade inflation” to occur, according to Inside Higher Ed.

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College Vaccine Mandates: Here to Stay?

It is January 2024, and Covid vaccine mandates persist at 70 of the top 800 colleges in the US, and who knows if they will ever let them go. If you are a healthcare major, nearly every clinical partner site still mandates that healthcare students take the most updated Covid vaccine (often no exemptions accepted) even if those sites are affiliated with colleges and universities that do not currently mandate Covid vaccines.

It is truly remarkable with all that we have learned about these novel medical treatments that colleges can still coerce students into taking them. In fact, it is truly remarkable that any college ever announced Covid vaccine mandates in the spring of 2021 given that by this time the CDC (upon which the colleges dutifully and explicitly relied) knew they were ineffective at preventing infection and transmission. So, while we have all come to understand that mandating students to take Covid vaccines does very little if anything to protect the vulnerable members of the community, this remains the single biggest reason colleges put forth to explain why they mandate(d) them.

When colleges began preparing to return to in-person learning in the Fall of 2021, they built Covid dashboards to keep track of infection rates on campus. At that time, there were both large college systems and small colleges that never mandated Covid vaccines and that fared better week-to-week with Covid infection rates than other large and small colleges that mandated Covid vaccines.

I analyzed colleges in New Hampshire over several months only to find that the University of New Hampshire, which never mandated Covid vaccines and has triple the undergraduate enrollment of Dartmouth College, consistently had less Covid infections on their dashboard than Dartmouth, which announced a Covid vaccine mandate in April of 2021. I wrote to Dartmouth administrators countless times to point this out, but I either got no reply or no acknowledgement of my observations. Dartmouth ended their Covid vaccine mandate on April 11, 2023, two years after they implemented it, and after over 98% of their campus community had taken the initial series and at least one booster.

Prior to fall 2021, to help ensure a high uptake of Covid vaccines, Jerome Adams, the Surgeon General at the time, wrote an “Open Letter to Leaders in Higher Education” urging them to mandate Covid vaccines on college campuses. If colleges choose not to mandate Covid vaccines “we are asking leaders to take strong steps to get as close as possible to 100 percent of their students, faculty and staff vaccinated early in the academic year.” 

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