And now it’s the president of Columbia who may be guilty of academic fraud
Here we go again.
I get a bit tired of starting posts by saying something like “It comes as no surprise … “. But indeed, it comes as no surprise that Columbia’s president Nemak “Minouche” Shafik, who recently testified in front of Congress and who has been AWOL in dealing with the vicious anti-Semitic “demonstrations” at the school, is now suspected of having taken false sole credit for a highly-cited academic paper:
Shafik got a B.A. in economics and politics from UMASS-Amherst, an M.S. in economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in economics from Oxford.
Nemat Shafik – @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994.
This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication.
This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism pic.twitter.com/ttqN3C7hFm— Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (@mushfiq_econ) April 26, 2024
This is not a close call. Table 1s are the same. Fig 1s are the same. Massive overlap in text.
She stole the junior author's intellectual property and simply removed his name from published version.
If he contributed enough to be an author in 1992, how can she delete him in 94? pic.twitter.com/eAnURB0qXK— Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (@mushfiq_econ) April 26, 2024
I'm an academic, and this is NOT okay to do. You cannot remove an author and claim intellectual property for yourself.
When a grad student tried this, we referred him to Dean for disciplinary hearings.
And this is worse because of power imbalance – she removed a *junior* person pic.twitter.com/E3RMDhbccY— Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (@mushfiq_econ) April 26, 2024
The stolen paper has been cited 2395 times.
Her next most cited paper: 115 cites – not very presidential.
This is the *only* publication of note in her portfolio.You'll find both the coauthored report and the OEP pub at this link – check for yourselfhttps://t.co/is5msh9yMe
— Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (@mushfiq_econ) April 26, 2024
In one of the comments at “X”:
Unbelievable. Has plagiarism now become a prerequisite for those applying for the position of President of elite US universities?
So far, the academics involved have also all been seeming DEI hires: women, and also some are minority women.
One of the commenters says this, however:
You might want to go slow here; in research jobs it is not uncommon to credit the research director despite what is often a very minor role in the product.
I assume we’ll hear more. She might get canned in the meantime for other reasons – and get replaced by another leftist apparatchik.
Jeez…Maybe it’s true about Life’s Pendulum, and it has started moving back down ‘n to the right.
Out on a limb… the more Didn’tEarnIt boxes someone ticks, the greater the likelihood of fraud to get there.
I don’t know the facts anymore than neo, but Tyler Cowen points out various reasons why any conclusions are premature.
From the comments at MR:
The acknowledgement section says: “Special thanks go to Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay for his outstanding research assistance.” Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay was the co-author on the previous paper. It is my understanding that different journals have different rules re who can be listed as a coauthor, and that the issue of whether to credit research assistants is, as they say, “contested.” See discussion here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1467
‘I get a bit tired of starting posts by saying something like “It comes as no surprise … “.’
You could always emulate Ace, and express how utterly and completely shocked you are at the latest not at all completely predictable (sarcasm) example of lefty corruption, or stupid idea failing in a completely predictable fashion.
?
And now it’s the president of Columbia who may be guilty of academic fraud
Get Out!!
Well we see her glide path up the academic and govt ladder as ive mentioned before
I wish neo would explain what, in the universe of possibilities not involving time travel, she wants President Shafik to do. Arrest the protesters? She already arrested and suspended 108 of them. Denounce the protesters? She has done that. Fire professors who express support for Hamas? She has no power to do that. Ban various public displays (banners, public demonstrations) in favor of Hamas? She has already done that. Ban outsiders from campus? She has done that, though no doubt a few might have snuck in. Change the hearts and minds of everyone on campus? Come on. Not admit students who sympathize with Hamas? Time travel is not allowed as part of your answer, and Minouche hasn’t been president very long anyway.
}}}Unbelievable. Has plagiarism now become a prerequisite for those applying for the position of President of elite US universities?
Nope. It’s just irrelevant — you know, kind of like Brandon’s child fondling and adult rape allegations — as long as you have an obvious association with the letter “D”.
OTOH, if you have an association with the letter “R”, then any accusation, no matter how irrelevant or preposterously unlikely, is Absolute Undisputable Truth, and you should be executed for it…
}}} You could always emulate Ace, and express how utterly and completely shocked you are at the latest not at all completely predictable (sarcasm) example of lefty corruption, or stupid idea failing in a completely predictable fashion.
I believe, in Political Chess, this is referred to as the “Casablanca Gambit”. 😛
Kenting them would be a good place to start…
Tip of the iceberg…
ey81:
Her testimony (which I discussed in a previous post) shows her lack of clarity and resolve on the issue. She has also not expelled students or professors guilty of egregious threats and vicious hatred of a type that she would never tolerate if aimed at any group other than Jews. Double standards are not okay. They have violated the supposed speech codes of the university.
She only called the police AFTER her Congressional hearing. Should have done it earlier.
Mealy-mouthed statements such as this:
Equating the two – on the one hand, on the other hand …
In particular, the fact that the student leader Khymani James is still enrolled there is disgusting. I plan to write a piece on that tomorrow.
Karmi (5:57 pm), what does “kenting them” mean? [Or is it an inadvertent typo?]
Here is Princeton’s policy on demonstrations.
https://twitter.com/sfmcguire79/status/1783167314487099447
The protesters at Columbia have shut down education on campus. After arrest, they should be barred from campus and expelled. The tent city should be removed. That’s what Shafik should do.
neo: the faculty will be voting no confidence in Minouche shortly. She is threading a difficult and tortuous path. I’m not aware that you have ever run anything but your mouth, but a leader has to take account of multiple constituencies and pursue the right without making things worse.
I thought I pointed out, but I’ll say it again, the university president has no power to fire professors, I know they sometimes try, but they usually lose in court, which only weakens them.
This is nice and all, and it is good to humiliate and try to remove these people. But it is not enough. We need to set up a more blanket and almost “automatic” process of this. We need volunteers going over this stuff line by line outside Academia, ready to blow the whistle earlier. That’s how we come closer to fixing this tumorous mess. Removing one person like Claudine Gay or this bitch is just cutting off some of the outgrowth, but we need to make it clear that this kind of nonsense can’t use this as a way to cheat and get unearned power.
Wow. This is easy. If it’s impossible for Shafik to do the right thing she should resign and clearly explain why she had to. That would be highly honorable.
”Karmi (5:57 pm), what does ‘kenting them’ mean? [Or is it an inadvertent typo?]”
Yeah, I’m kind of curious too. 😉
the ethical thing is not the professionally advantageous thing,
look at everywhere she has been,
I hope I’m wrong in thinking that Karmi may have been referring to the shooting of protesters at Kent State University in May, 1970.
The University of Florida has issued guidelines indicating that any student encampment or disruptions of normal university operations will be punished with expulsion for three years, and for staff, unemployment.
Hmm…I was kind of hoping it was more like defenestrating, but I think you might be right Kate. You’re always a step ahead of me.
On “kenting” —
Although I’ve never heard the expression before, in context I assume it’s a reference to the Kent State killings by the Guard. I don’t agree with the sentiment, by the way.
On Kent State [emphasis mine]:
Throwing rocks at people with weapons is never a great idea.
Maybe I’ll write a post about it.
Four students were killed; I’ve never heard any indication that any of them were the ones throwing the rocks.
Later:
By the way, if you were to do a quiz of a random selection of 100 Boomers who claim to remember the incident, I bet most of the don’t recall anything about rock-throwing.
Kenting came to mind on how the hate mobs at Colombia should be treated – figured it might be too harsh for DEMs & REPs, but created it anyway.
Look at how J6 has been treated for actions that seemed less violent & threatening than the hate mob at Colombia.
Coddling a hate mob leader like Khymani James is akin to coddling Hamas leaders, IMHO.
Sorry, but I don’t support any hate mobs, and believe they should be shut down by any and all means available.
I’ve been threatened by quite a few – or more mobs, and they are not fun.
“I’m not aware that you have ever run anything but your mouth, but a leader has to take account of multiple constituencies and pursue the right without making things worse.”
Really, ey81,? Gratuitous insults. Beyond that, I can assure you from 40+ years in academia, that higher education presidents are not leaders by any stretch. The main constituency they are concerned with is the Board. And many times they try to stack the Board with their own cronies.
Instead of “running your mouth” open your eyes to the serious rot of higher education that these protests have finally thrust into real public view.
Karmi:
There are plenty of ways to shut them down short of killing them. We’re not talking about mobs of a million people, like the ones that welcomed the Ayatollah.
If you paid attention to what happened at Kent State, by the way, it certainly didn’t make things better for the police, the Guard, or anyone else.
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ey81:
Juvenile middle-school-level insults aren’t going to enhance your arguments.
If your point is that university presidents are cowards and politicians these days (and it goes way back to the 1960s), that is also the point I’m making.
I’d say Columbia could use a John Silber type, but they’re few and far between. He somehow managed to run BU for a long time, despite ruffling many many feathers.
Neo:
Would probably have to have been in the boots of the Guard that day to understand what happened. I’ll not second guess the actions of those who are in such situations. Talk about the need for immunity – Trump isn’t the only one in need of it – in this country, IMHO.
Karmi:
I believe the Guard members who fired were probably genuinely afraid for their lives. The situation was volatile and some of the students were violent. But I recall reading that the Guard members hadn’t been properly trained for what to do in such a situation.
Facing mobs isn’t easy for even the well trained… 😉
Want to get an idea of what facing a mob is like? Go into any large black ghetto in America, and get a small sample of what a real mob is like…
She is basically a bureaucrat and an administrator, rather than a scholar or a researcher. According to Wikipedia, she does have other publications on her resume. Perhaps they aren’t considered scholarly or original contributions to her field.
I can’t help noticing the parallel that both Shafik and many of the students who are protesting or rioting are there because of Columbia’s desire to be a global institution. Standards might have been higher for a domestic hire.
because of Columbia’s desire to be a global institution. Standards might have been higher for a domestic hire.
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If we were sensible, visas for students, teachers, and their dependents would be distributed in tri-quarterly multiple-price auctions, with unused time tossed onto a secondary exchange once a student-teacher-dependent returns home. The number vended every four months would be a function of two variables: (a) the total number of temporary residents in the country less the total number of accredited employees of foreign governments and their dependents less the total number of asylees and their dependents and (b) the sum of time on the secondary exchange.
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If Columbia wanted to recruit foreign students and foreign teachers, they’d have to make bids on the auctions or on the secondary market. They’d also have to be debarred from charging a student’s patrons more than the domestic full freight in tuition, room and board, and fees and from offering a prospective teacher a compensation package less than the institutional mean.
the university president has no power to fire professors
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Tell that to the survivors of the late M.S. Adams. You might also drop a line to Amy Wax.
Karmi:
I’m the person who posted the quotes explaining the difficult situation the Guard faced. Nor do better-trained troops handle things perfectly, by any means. But it can help.
I followed that “Rockport Conservatives” link to the article on The Ghetto-ization of American Life. Interesting read.
I’d be pleased if state legislatures would set requirements for institutional presidents in the state education law.
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A. No one who has been a professor for more than x years or within the last y years.
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B. No one who has been a member of the bar for more than x years or within the last y years.
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C. No one who has been employed by said institution for more than x years or within the last y years.
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D. No one who has been an elected official or served on legislative staff for more than x years or within the last y years.
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In such a scheme, the highest position in the hierarchy to which a faculty member could aspire would be provost. You have one provost for the academic faculties and one for the occupational faculties. The position rotatates between those who have been instructional deans and is held for a three year term. The instructional deans’ positions rotate among those who have been department heads and are also held for three year terms. The department heads positions rotate among department members of a certain rank and are also held for three year terms.
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One other thing: leave faculty governance to hiring and evaluation of faculty, determining standards for the award of transfer credits, setting intradepartmental requirements to declare a major, evaluating proposed new courses, &c. Leave the faculty out of any other decision except when you have advisory committees composed of representatives of all sets of stakeholders (faculty, administration, staff, alumni, parents, trustees).
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Be agreeable if institutional boards were between 5 and 20 members and elected by a postal ballot of alumni registered to vote in the state in question. Unwieldy self-regenerating boards are commonly a scandal, as are boards composed of those who’ve contributed to the governor’s campaigns.
I wish neo would explain what, in the universe of possibilities not involving time travel, she wants President Shafik to do.
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She should actually do the things you claim she’s doing, rather than making feints at doing them. Their campus is bloody private property. Have the police round all of them up, press charges, and expel any who are enrolled. Hire a disposal firm to cart away their trash and put some Pinkertons on the quad until June.
One of the regularly accepted acts in the process of publishing academic papers is this: one teacher coaches several students during “office hours”. Student writes paper and teacher is listed as first author/researcher–just because she tutored this kid during regular school hours. That is to say, if I come and take a class from Dr. Missy Migraine and I go into her office after class to ask a question about the subject taught in class and then I publish a paper with several other students, Dr. Missy Migraine’s name will appear first in the list of authors. You can see when a teacher has done this just by looking at the teacher’s resume she will have hundreds of papers listed as items she credits herself with being the dominant author. If you ever interview a college professor with pages of “publications” you can be sure those are publications done by the students with her oversight while performing the duties of her job description–not because she was the actual author. Academia is totally corrupt. Shall I tell you what happened to my DH ? Don’t forget the university presidents that will come to a faculty member and tell him to “write me up something for a speech I am making next month–make me look good!”
Yes, Neo, you’ve been mostly fair & balanced on this subject. 🙂
American Society needs a new Law: getting in One’s Face should be a Capital Crime. You wanna “protest?” Do it in front of your mirror…
Recall the Guard at Kent State were Infantry. In the Infantry, you protect yourself by killing the other guy. And are equipped for that role. They had no protection against various thrown items including tiles which are hard to see coming at you, edge-on.
Proper equipment would have included riot shields which would provide protection without having to shoot somebody. Poor choice of forces, although perhaps no others were available.
Anne,
What you describe does happen, but I think you overstate the situation. At the university level, the faculty will be supervising several grad students at any time. Those students research will be published and the faculty will be listed as coauthor. The less scrupulous faculty will insist to be lead. Grad students soon learn who those are the one to avoid.
For myself at an undergrad school, my student’s research was published and I made them write the papers which is quite a learning experience for an undergrad. I was always listed last and the students who wrote the paper listed as primary.
@Anne:That is to say, if I come and take a class from Dr. Missy Migraine and I go into her office after class to ask a question about the subject taught in class and then I publish a paper with several other students, Dr. Missy Migraine’s name will appear first in the list of authors
Sounds like Anne has heard vague rumors of how publishing works but never published anything herself.
Students who are just taking classes from a professor almost never are publishing papers at all, and there’s nothing that happens in office hours after class that could possibly give rise to a published paper. There’s virtually no undergraduate coursework that could give rise to a published paper, since publications are supposed to be original research and not things you find covered in a textbook, though sometimes an honors class will result in a student doing original and publishable work which goes above and beyond coursework.
The students who publish with a professor are working on a research project with that professor. If they are STEM graduate students they are almost certainly getting paid from that professor’s grants in addition to getting credit on the paper.
I don’t know how it works everywhere but in my academic career the professor leading the team typically got credit as the LAST author, unless they had actually done the lion’s share of the work. Writing up the paper was not considered “the lion’s share of the work”, share of the actual scientific work being written about was the determining factor.
Kenting: Thanks, all, for the definition and subsequent discussion.
M J R
Niketas Choniates; physicsguy:
I know someone quite well who as a grad student spoke with his advisor about an original research idea he wanted to pursue for his doctoral thesis. The advisor heard him out and discouraged him from pursuing that particular avenue for some reason or other; convinced him it was not a good avenue for research and probably wouldn’t be approved. This was in economics and required no special equipment or human subjects, just various databases that the grad student (and of course the professor) had access to. So the grad student did his doctorate on something else – and the professor pursued the research and published it, completely unattributed to the student, of course. The econ professor was quite well known.
No surprise, they plagiarize into their positions, their work would be the same.
Neo, that stuff happens outside of academia as well.
We had a department meeting to discuss a particularly thorny design issue, one that no one had any ideas how to handle.
There was a lot of discussion the first hour, or so, getting nowhere, then Stan said something that triggered a thought of mine, and for the next two hours, it was essentially the two of us working it out. We left meeting and I drew up the schematic of the circuit solution and thought nothing of it, until two years later,, at the Patent award dinner, when I find out that our supervisor, who contributed nothing past the first hours chatter, had submitted a patent application on the circuit, which had been awarded. His was the only name on the patent.
Taking credit for your underlings work seems to be common.
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“…prerequisite…”
Together with lying blatantly ALL THE TIME, wishing (with fearful intensity) to destroy the country, your political opponents, the family, the legal system, the economy, the military, the health system…and any concept of meritocracy truth, dignity and justice.
Those are pretty stiff requirements…but the Democrats seem to have untold scads of uber-competent applicants…
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Barry
And scads of half-wits who righteously approve of every incremental move without a thought for the result.
Copy that, captain. Buahaha.