Campus hate crimes already have a pretty bad reputation as examples of bigotry — they’re frequently found to be the work of minority students who want to prove racism is still alive, and rarely are they substantiated as the actions of true-blue haters. Even conservatives students have gotten in on the action.
Now it comes out that a Columbia University professor who said she found a noose on her door last fall “plagiarized the work of another faculty member and two students” two dozen times, publishing it in academic journals.
Here’s her reaction:
[Madonna] Constantine said she was the victim of a racist conspiracy.
The school accused her of plagiarism because of the “structural racism that pervades this institution,” she charged. “As one of only two tenured black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”
Police haven’t come up with a suspect in the noose incident, and several professors, including Constantine, objected to putting video cameras in the hallway.