Professor Who Made Noose Claim Suspended

Teachers College at Columbia University is suspending indefinitely Madonna Constantine, a professor who claimed she was the victim of a hate crime after an investigation began into allegations that she committed plagiarism.In a letter sent out yesterday to Teachers College faculty, the college president, Susan Fuhrman, and dean, Thomas James, said the faculty advisory committee had rejected Ms. Constantine’s appeal of the plagiarism charges. They said Ms. Constantine was suspended as of yesterday but that she is entitled to appeal the decision or request a hearing before the faculty executive committee.RELATED: The Letter to Faculty (pdf).The letter, obtained by The New York Sun from a source at Teachers College, said the faculty advisory committee upheld an 18-month investigation by a Manhattan law firm, Hughes Hubbard & Reed, which found that Ms. Constantine had plagiarized two dozen times works of two former doctoral students and a former colleague.“During the months since the College levied sanctions against her,” the letter said, “Professor Constantine continued to make accusations of plagiarism, including in at least one instance to the press, against those whose works she had plagiarized.”When news of the plagiarism investigation became known in February, Ms. Constantine strenuously denied the charges. In addition to saying it was she who was the victim of plagiarism, the professor said the school targeted her because of the “structural racism that pervades this institution.”At the time, Teachers College said she had been sanctioned but declined to give any information about the sanctions.Ms. Constantine’s lawyer, Paul Giacomo Jr., said his client is considering taking legal action against Teachers College and that she has until July 15 to request a hearing before a college committee.The faculty advisory committee, he said, approved Ms. Constantine’s original sanction. “The new sanction of termination is something that’s completely retaliatory,” he said. “It tries to punish our client for taking her appeal.”A professor at Teachers College who as chairman of its clinical and counseling department took the complaints against Ms. Constantine to the college authorities, Suniya Luthar, applauded the college’s decision. “I am enormously relieved for the students and young faculty who have suffered terribly, and for such a long time,” she said.“Finally, justice has been served,” one of two former students of Ms. Constantine involved in the case, Karen Cort, said.In March, the New York Post disclosed that a grand jury had subpoenaed Ms. Constantine’s university records as part of its investigation into the alleged hate crime last October, when Ms. Constantine reported to police that a noose had been hung on her office door. The records included Ms. Constantine’s financial contracts with the college and the details of the plagiarism investigation, an apparent widening of the probe to determine if someone close to Ms. Constantine may have put the noose on her door in an attempt to create sympathy for her, and to deflect attention from the plagiarism investigation.The police department declined to comment on when the results of the grand jury investigation would be made known.Mr. Giacomo wrote in a recent e-mail message to the Sun: “Our evidence shows that those who have accused our client can be shown to be lying, in that their explanation of events can be demonstrated to be false not merely because our client says it is false, but because the documentation we have presented proves it is false.”As part of the documentary evidence that Mr. Giacomo said exonerates his client, he e-mailed the Sun a spreadsheet of various passages that compare extracts of a dissertation of a second former student of Ms. Constantine’s, Tracy Juliao, who said Ms. Constantine had plagiarized from her, with passages of what he said is Ms. Constantine’s work.Ms. Juliao’s dissertation was submitted in 2005. The passages from Ms. Constantine in the spreadsheet date from 1997, when she was at Temple University; in 2002, when she submitted a paper to the Journal of Black Studies; and again in July 2003, when she, along with co-author Rhonda Bryant, submitted another paper to Professional School Counseling.When presented with the spreadsheet and asked for her response, Ms. Juliao said: “An independent law firm and a faculty committee at Teachers College both found Constantine guilty of plagiarism based upon documentation provided by myself (and others), as well as by Constantine. As a faculty member in the department where drafts of my work were filed, she had access to my work long before it was published.”

Professor Who Made Noose Claim Suspended

Professor Who Made Noose Claim Suspended

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