Monday, June 25, 2012

University of Texas Whitewash of Elizabeth Warren Scientific Misconduct Charge Entangles UVA, UC Presidents

When Elizabeth Warren, Teresa A. Sullivan, and Jay Westbrook, co-authors of the 1989 book As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America, were charged by Rutgers Law School Professor Philip Shuchman with scientific misconduct in 1990, they quickly asked for an investigation to clear their names. Sullivan, who resigned earlier this month as President of the University of Virginia, “immediately asked [her] employer, The University of Texas, to investigate the charge,” as she told me in a letter I received by email from her on June 5, 2012.



By 1990, all three co-authors--Sullivan, Warren, and Westbrook--were well established fixtures in University of Texas academic and social circles. Sullivan was the Chairman of the Sociology Department at the University of Texas, and would soon become the Dean of Graduate Studies. Westbrook was a long-tenured member of the faculty at the University of Texas Law School. Warren, who taught at the University of Texas Law School from 1981 to 1987, had by this time moved on to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a top ten school with great prestige.



Warren’s former colleagues at the University of Texas took pride in her emergence as a rising legal star of the left, a reputation she carefully cultivated. According to some who have followed her career, she was considered a master practitioner of hard-nosed academic political tactics, and her critics in the genteel world of higher education were increasingly wary of her.



It was in that environment that current President of the University of California system Mark Yudof (then Dean of the University of Texas Law School) and current University of Texas Dean of Graduate Studies, ad interim Judith Langlois, wrote the April 1991 report for the investigation that Sullivan requested. It was titled University of Texas Preliminary Inquiry Report: Scientific Misconduct Against Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren, and Jay Westbrook.


You can read the rest of the story here at Breitbart.com.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Did Breitbart Investigation Play Any Role in Sudden Resignation of UVA President?


Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Sometimes it's more than that.

Based on all available current evidence, it appears that Teresa A. Sullivan's sudden resignation as President of the University of Virginia this past Sunday was most likely unrelated to an ongoing Breitbart News investigation into twenty-two-year-old allegations of scientific misconduct. However, since none of the key players in this drama--neither the sixteen members of the Board of Visitors who asked for her resignation, nor President Sullivan--have been willing to offer much in the way of explanation, rumors and speculation as to the true reasons for her sudden dismissal have been rampant.

Here's a chronology that documents the curious coincidence of timing:

You can read the rest of this story here at Breitbart.com





Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The Academic Scandal Elizabeth Warren and Harvard Don't Want You to Know About


Here's the first article in my four part series running now at Breitbart News on 1990 allegations of "scientific misconduct" against Elizabeth Warren.

In 1990, Rutgers Professor Philip Shuchman charged Elizabeth Warren, along with Teresa A. Sullivan (above), the President of University of Virginia who resigned unexpectedly yesterday, and Jay Westbrook,  her two co-authors of the 1989 book, As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America, with “scientific misconduct.” Within a few months, Warren’s friends and former colleagues at the University of Texas quickly completed an error-filled investigation.

This secret report was accepted by University of Texas President William Cunningham. For two decades, Warren and her co-authors have claimed in academic circles that this report--never before made public--exonerated them.

You can read the rest of the article here at Breitbart.com .