Western academia is a viper’s den of humbug and hypocrisy. Let us call it out to its face.
We all know about Caesar’s humbug about Caesar’s wife needs to be above suspicion, but what we have is any Black scholar ‘must be above suspicion’ even if his ‘white ‘ colleagues are convicted of guilt but have no or minor sentences.
We need to set the grid lines before we begin to discuss Arday’s case. We cannot have an implied set of holy standards that must be applied to Arday but to no one else.
Here is a short list compiled at short notice by Professor Stacey Patton:
‘Doris Kearns Goodwin — Plagiarism/improper attribution. Career survived. Still a celebrated bestselling historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual.
Edmund Morris — Inserted fictional characters and invented scenes into his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan. Controversy notwithstanding, continued publishing and remained a prominent biographer until his death in 2019.
Joseph Ellis — Lied about serving in Vietnam. Suspended for a year, returned to teaching, continued publishing bestselling history.
Laurence Tribe — Acknowledged improper attribution in a book. Career survived; Harvard’s Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus. (Harvard Law School)
Stephen Ambrose — Plagiarism/improper attribution across multiple books; later evidence challenged claims about Eisenhower interviews. Continued writing and remained a bestselling historian until his death in 2002.
Mike Barnicle — Resigned from the Boston Globe amid fabrication/plagiarism controversies. Rebuilt his career. Longtime television commentator and MSNBC contributor.
Mitch Albom — Published a column falsely describing athletes attending an event they didn’t attend. Suspended briefly; remains a bestselling author, columnist and radio host.
Jonah Lehrer — Plagiarism/self-plagiarism and fabricated quotations. Lost major jobs and had books recalled, but returned to publishing books.
Stephen Glass — Fabricated sources, quotations, people and entire stories. Journalism career ended; later earned a law degree and built a career as a paralegal.
Michael Bellesiles — Serious research-integrity problems in Arming America. Lost the Bancroft Prize and resigned from Emory. Later returned to teaching and publishing.
Marc Hauser — Found responsible for multiple counts of scientific misconduct at Harvard. Left Harvard but subsequently wrote books and pursued work outside traditional academia.
Brian Wansink — Cornell found academic misconduct involving data, statistical methods and authorship. Resigned from Cornell; continued professional work outside his former academic position.
Brian Williams — Falsely embellished accounts of his reporting experiences, including the Iraq helicopter story. Lost the NBC anchor chair but returned to national television at MSNBC.
Ruth Shalit Barrett — Plagiarism and accuracy controversies during her journalism career. Continued writing after the original scandal, though later faced another major journalism controversy.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne — Stanford president whose laboratory papers contained serious errors and whose handling of corrections was criticized. Resigned the presidency but remains a Stanford professor and laboratory head.
White academics and journalists do face consequences for lying, plagiarism, fabrication, or misconduct. But that disgrace does not become a death sentence for their careers or their humanity. Many have been allowed to apologize, regroup, keep working, publish again, rebuild their reputations, and have second acts.”
Lets recap: if you are a white scholar you can engage in theft, illegal access to another scholar’s work, publish the results as your own and collect a Nobel Prize (Double Helix) ,Yet if you are white you get to keep your job and the Nobel Prize!