US Academy President Caught Embellishing Resume, Will Resign 124
An anonymous reader writes "The 233-year old American Academy of Arts and Sciences has announced that its longtime President and Chief Executive, Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, has agreed to resign effective at the end of this month following an investigation of charges of resume embellishment and other misconduct. Berlowitz falsely claimed to have received a doctorate from New York University, and has also been criticized for her behavior towards scholars and subordinates, and for her compensation package ($598,000 for 2012) relative to the size of the non-profit organization she led. The Academy, based in Cambridge MA, was founded during the American Revolutionary War and is one of the most prestigious honorary societies for the American intellectual elite, extending across math and science, arts and letters, business, law and public affairs. The active membership rolls contain people you've heard of; the incoming class list provides a more manageable glimpse of the society's breadth."
Patriarchy (Score:5, Funny)
She is clearly a victim of the patriarchy's obsession with facts and evidence.
She FEELS she deserves the post.. so therefore she does.
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Well she fooled the intellectual elite for 17 years. Chances are that doctorate was just ornamentation anyway.
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Chances are that doctorate was just ornamentation anyway.
Most of what people look for in life nowadays is just ornamentation. And a significant element of that ornamentation's value is the price you are supposed to have paid for it.
Shortcuts threaten the fabric of society.
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>>> Well she fooled the intellectual elite for 17 years.
All the more reason to stop shaking in the boots and question the general intelligence of its members when you hear silly things such as:
"The nnn-year old ...", "one of the most prestigious honorary societies for the ... intellectual elite" etc.
When I apply for a lowly programming job the effing HR goes all the way to my Elementary school to verify the records and since it was long closed I have to "explain" but a claim of PhD from NYU for a
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MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:1)
This had nothing to do with patriarchy or feminism. This has to do with the amoral standards of "elites" and other ascendancies in western society. Cynical fraud has become an accepted standard across our institutions, public and private.
Dear God (Score:5, Interesting)
She is so fucked. It doesn't matter so much that she lied for the Academy. But she lied on grant proposals. This could lead to a MASSIVE criminal penalty.
Ref:
18 USC Section 1001
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 [cornell.edu]
18 USC Section 1031
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1031 [cornell.edu]
She is so fucked it isn't even funny. She might want to head to Russia and ask for asylum.
Re:Dear God (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't you read the summary? Her salary was $598,000 last year. Nobody with a salary that large gets any criminal penalty. (Actually, Jeffrey Skilling is a counterexample, but there are very few others.)
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Black people in the US can never transcend abuse, due to what Paul Mooney termed "the nigger wake up call," which is the observation that no matter what an African American achieves in America, they can still be treated "like a nigger," if the system wants to do so.
Martha Stewart was convicted of bullshit charges and Bernie Madoff only got busted because he ripped off people richer than him.
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(Actually, Jeffrey Skilling is a counterexample)
Skilling was a fool. Against his lawyer's advice, he went in front of a congressional panel, the representatives of the people, and answered their questions in plain English. He paid a heavy price for that, which will serve as a valuable lesson for anyone else that thinks that honesty is rewarded in our society.
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Skilling's Enron sentence was cut from 23 to 14 years recently. It'll probably be reduced further before he serves his remaing 8 years. I estimate he'll be out on parole in 10 years.
When you think of the sheer amounts of money he could have been skimming off during Enron's "golden years", I'd consider 10 years a pretty good deal.
Re: Dear God (Score:1)
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That's not so bad. Lie on a home loan or a credit application and you can get 30 years [cornell.edu] (which I'm betting that she probably also did if she was willing to lie on grants). This is the charge that federal prosecutors go after if they can, since the 30 year penalty ensures a plea agreement (this was famously used to oust Baltimore police chief Ed Norris [davidsimon.com] when he took a loan from his father and listed that money as an asset for a home loan). And since Carmen Ortiz will be in charge of this case, you can almost g
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No one is going to press charges on a female for lying on a grant proposal.
She'll leave, that will end it.
Irony: (Score:5, Funny)
One of her publications is titled: Restoring Trust in American Business
We're not off to a good start on that.
What's the hubbub? (Score:3)
As long as companies lie in the job description and promises of packages and benefits, I'll lie in my CV and my skills.
Turnabout is only fair!
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As long as companies lie in the job description and promises of packages and benefits, I'll lie in my CV and my skills.
Turnabout is only fair!
The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
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The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
Uhm, you can "fire" them any day you decide to do so.
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The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
Uhm, you can "fire" them any day you decide to do so.
I assume you mean quit instead of fire. They are not the same. Quit means you left voluntarily. It may not be wise to quit, but usually somebody else will pick you up. OTOH, if you are fired, your future prospects in your field diminish dramatically.
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Quitting is 'firing your boss'. Duh.
The reputation hit isn't so bad for employers. Nobody looks up people who quit, but still; there are employers that I would recommend a friend flee from.
Employers do take a hit. Turnover is a popular metric when evaluating a business. Which says nothing of the knowledge that walks out and what that costs.
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Damn, you are a doormat. Jump up and down until your balls drop.
Your employer is not a surrogate parent, much as they would like to act like they are. People like you are part of the problem. If you act like an infant you will be treated like one.
If the employer didn't find value in having you there they would have fired you. Quitting does hurt them, often more then it hurts you. If often gets you a big fat raise. Devil is in the details. I didn't say: 'fire your boss and worry about finding work later
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Depends on why you get "fired". Actually, I was once fired for a reason that actually improved my chances with my next employer. Basically I was fired for daring to tell my boss that his idea is maybe not the smartest one possible, something that my next employer was actually looking for (in his words, he had enough yes-men and didn't want to suffer from having one in security).
But I admit, such occasions are rare.
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You've brought back memories. I was once selected for cutbacks for what I thought were very good reasons. I was already quite senior and had trained the junior members, and had documented my work, and family medical issues had cut my oncall availability. This was back when telephone modems were how you telecommuted, which were not as effective as modern roving laptops.
2 months later, i found out why I was _really_ let go just then. Another employee and I were closing in on the inventory of unused hardware t
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I'm a little unclear on why you were really let go. There seems to be a chunk of your story missing. By inference, it sounds like you were let go because a dishonest VP was selling unused hardware off the back of the loading dock and you were close to discovering him. Is that the case?
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I was also unclear at the time. The nominal reason was cutbacks: the private talks with my superiors helped expose the "cover" reasons that I mentioned. The real reason was the pressure from the embezzling VP trying to cover their criminal trail. The new manager tried their best to clean up the situation and make it up to people who'd been hurt in that process, and i bear the rest of the company or their newer ill-will.
But it's an excellent example of how the reason you are "fired" or asked to resign may n
Internal politicing (Score:5, Interesting)
This random system then prevents people from spending all their time scheming to set up the ideal circumstances where all the other candidates have been pushed under a bus. Also then they don't owe any favors for their job.
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This random system then prevents people from spending all their time scheming to set up the ideal circumstances where all the other candidates have been pushed under a bus. Also then they don't owe any favors for their job.
Even with that method....you would have the same problem. This is because of how a "qualified" candidate will most likely be defined. The "qualified" candidates will be the ones that are the most adept at politicking (i.e. backstabbing) and marketing (i.e. look at all the amazing things I do for company Z) themselves.
So you'd have a random pool of people who were all scheming and calculating there way to the top.
Re:Internal politicing (Score:4, Insightful)
I very much doubt that there was only one qualified candidate for her job. Obviously the system they used picked one of the worst.
I don't know about that... her position was "President of the US Academy." A presidential position in a large nonprofit is all about image, motivation and being able to bring in the money. My guess is that mo matter what her academic credentials were, she wouldn't have been able to keep that position for 17 years without excelling at the mentioned criteria. Most eggheads in any specialty who were really interested in the pursuit of knowledge would be dismal failures as presidents of such an organization. They require someone who inspires confidence (who we usually call a con artist).
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Th
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Many of the people who rise to the tops of large organizations are backstabbing, loudmouthed, blowhards.
FWIW several studies have shown that it's exactly the opposite, people rise to the top then become backstabbing, loudmouthed blowhards. People who start out that way don't rise too much because no one likes them.
But power corrupts.
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Interesting idea, but it sounds a lot like affirmative action, with the same problems.
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There a number of politicians have been given the shaft because their Phds were based on theses that were mostly copy&paste from unattributed sources.
Of course, not having received a doctorate in the first place (rather than based on insufficiently independent work) is a bit more audacious.
Doesn't anybody check that? And in this kind of position?
In most areas of life, if you talk the talk and deliver on promises, nobody checks to see if you walked the walk, other than in a most superficial manner.
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We regularly try to locate Ph.D.s from customers to get an idea about their expertise. So far, zero (!) luck in about 5 cases. For all of these we did not even find a single published paper or a single mentioning of their Ph.D. in any academic content. I am beginning to think that there are many people with fake or really, really bad Ph.D.s out there. As a counterexample, my own Ph.D. thesis, the one of my boss and one of a fiend are easy to find.
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As a counterexample, my own Ph.D. thesis, the one of my boss and one of a fiend are easy to find.
You search for demonic doctorates? I have enough trouble finding the research I need for my job. Are you using Google Scholar?
$475k for application fraud? (Score:2)
She should forfeit her compensation package as a consequence of her falsifying her application.
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I should probably put in a footnote: Elitist colleges like this don't like having the truth rubbed in their faces. That's why she's getting dismissed -- she just proved their demands of needing a college degree are hollow and stupid. It's an embarassment of epic proportions. Not that I should have to say this if you can read between the lines, but increasingly, I have my doubts about the average slashdotter's ability to even read the lines, let alone between them... hence this post.
Re:In crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
I don’t get your rant on student loans. She lied about having a doctoral degree. No one should be doing a doctoral degree on a student loan. Bachelors and Masters – sure. But, not for a doctoral degree. Not having money is not a reason for not having a doctorate.
> as HR passes over you repeatedly
This has nothing to do with glass ceiling at HR. In fact, HR does not handle doctorates well. They don't understand them for most part. They almost seem to count it as a liability. The only people who respect it are other people with doctorates since they know what it takes to get one and about how to put such candidates to use. This lady was NOT going through a HR filter. Few who make close to $600K do. She did not betray a faceless HR. She betrayed people who would most likely know her by name, for grants that cost millions of tax payer dollars.
Most of these studies in humanities don't get verifications. You trust the people who have done them because they have been trained for a decade in a culture of academic honesty. Now, all the studies she would have done in the past would need to be called into question since she might have faked data. Your defense of her is quite bizarre. This isn't a put-food-on-table, livelihood position.
> The conservatives have hated public education since it was first introduced
How did you manage to turn this into a partisan issue?
> she just proved their demands of needing a college degree are hollow and stupid.
She has college degrees alright, from good institutions too - a bachelors from NYU and a masters from Columbia. She did not have a doctoral degree from NYU that she claimed she had.
You clearly have not been in academia and you have no idea what you are talking about. Forgetting to cite things in a paper can get you into a world of trouble. Faking a doctorate, in grant applications no less, is pretty much an academic death sentence - in any country, at any level - not just US elite institutions.
> I have my doubts about the average slashdotter's ability to even read the lines, let alone between them... hence this post.
You clearly consider yourself far above this average that you seem to have computed. Why hang around here if we are not your intellectual equals? For the benefit of gracing us with your insights from above, oh elite mind?
The average slashdotter is fine. It is you who is seeing imaginary lines and projecting.
college education need change in IT as well (Score:2)
First off CS Is not IT
There is to much theory and skill gaps in college education for tech / IT
The college system is some what stuck in the past as well.
also have the AA vs AS / BA vs BS (Score:2)
Where you may have to say you have an AS / BS when you have an AA / BA to get past HR or just drop the Arts or Science part.
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people in the job market today face some unpalatable options: You can either forego the degree and slam into the glass ceiling in a mid-level position as HR passes over you repeatedly, or get it and wind up a bit farther ahead in your career but be financially worse off than your subordinates who aren't paying back hundreds to thousands of dollars a month to some corporation who will just keep jacking the rates up year after year so you're paying off mostly just the interest and doing very little to hit the
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Let's be honest... if you've been doing the job for many years, it's clear a college education isn't necessary to keep doing your job.
If we're going to be "honest", then I need to point out that she was fired because she lied about something material to her employment at AAAS.
This is the reality of the wealth inequity in America. The conservatives have hated public education since it was first introduced in the 1800s... and they've finally managed to find a way to destroy the American dream: Without higher education, there's no upward mobility. Without that, there's no middle class. It's game over.
So conservatives are responsible for federal subsidized student loans - which are the driver for higher education inflation in the US of the past few decades? Do tell.
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I wonder... (Score:2)
The active membership rolls contain people you've heard of; the incoming class list provides a more manageable glimpse of the society's breadth."
I wonder how many of them have embellished their accomplishments, too? Seems pretty common in academia these days.
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I wonder how many of them have embellished their accomplishments, too? Seems pretty common in academia these days.
Citation needed...
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I wonder how many of them have embellished their accomplishments, too? Seems pretty common in academia these days.
It's actually exceptionally rare. Anil Potti, the Duke cancer researcher who falsely claimed to have been a Rhodes scholar, was an unusually notorious case simply because it was so unusual. (Also because he may have been committing outright fraud in his research.) It's very rare to come across someone in the academic community falsely claiming a degree, simply because it's such a stupid idea:
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Even in college, calling my Professors "Dr. Whatever" was exceptionally rare and I went to an Ivy League school where you'd think they'd insist on their proper titles.
Weird, I always used their titles in class, also at an Ivy, and it wasn't that long ago (less than 15 years). Of course once I started doing research, I figured out after a couple of days that it was okay for a lowly undergrad to address the professor as "Mark". Since I work with mostly PhDs, usually the only time we're addressed as "Dr. So-
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You might need to be more specific, because if you went to Brown, that doesn't count. Pass/fail classes are for middle schools and community colleges; they have no place in the real Ivy League.
</haterade>
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> It's actually exceptionally rare.
Not in my experience. A bit of digging into the background of some computer science and engineering colleagues I've met, applying for work, or reviewing their resumes as port of planning for a shared project, shows a strong degree of fraud.
Some punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
"She will receive a one-time payment of $475,000 for retirement and other benefits, according to an academy statement, but no severance payment"
*That* should teach her a lesson and send a strong signal.
Re:Some punishment (Score:4, Insightful)
It's important that important people be shielded from consequences. Without exception, the Important People, and their talking heads, that I see on TV assure me that this is so.
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It goes a bit downhill too ... I read recently about a local cop who, when accused of theft of evidence (proceeds of burglary not yet returned to victim) he was offered to be allowed to retire with pension rather than face a departmental hearing and embarrass the PD. Turns out that's business as usual in my state.
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It's important that important people be shielded from consequences. Without exception, the Important People, and their talking heads, that I see on TV assure me that this is so.
The concept of this is well-intentioned. Golden parachutes are supposed to encourage risk-taking and pursuing new products or strategies which may or may not pay off. The idea is that managers won't be so worried about keeping their job (salary) that they just clam up and don't do anything which might rock the boat. Management paralysis is not a good thing.
The good intentions of the golden parachute are counteracted and overpowered by massive bonuses creating very short term incentives, stock options w
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*That* should teach her a lesson and send a strong signal.
It's still not as bad as Carly Fiorina driving HP's stock price down 50% and firing 7000 people, and getting let go with a $20M severance package, and still being considered a serious candidate for California senator. That's the biggest difference between the rest of us and the 0.01%: when we fuck up, we get fired with cause and are economic roadkill, and seriously risk being impoverished. When they fuck up, they lose access to the corporate jet an
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I honestly wouldn't have any problem with income inequality if we could occasionally see failed CEOs like Dick Fuld reduced to standing in line at soup kitchens like all of the other "takers".
Well, those people get their huge payments because of their large responsibility. When they screw up, they impoverish thousands of people. So it's important to ensure that they are not impoverished along with them. Otherwise they might worry and get headaches.
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That'll be a benefit built up over the course of the employment, something that was always owed, just not yet due. They would not have any right to not pay it, it would be similar to saying they had decided to reduce the basic salary for the duration of the employment, and asking for a cheque.
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Many jobs include forfeiting benefits, even pension, if terminated for certain causes. Lying about qualifications for employment seems like it would be near the top of the list. It's true that we don't know the details of her employment contract - but hat they convinced her to resign and that the article includes a quote from the chairman indicating that the deal "is in the Academy's best interest" suggests to me that they pursued the legal path of least resistance rather than fought to keep more from he
AAAS not AAAS (Score:4, Informative)
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It's easy to get these guys, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, mixed up with with these guys, The American Association for the Advancement of Science. They're not the same. The latter are the ones that publish Science, the prestigious scientific journal. The former, I'm not sure who those guys are.
Aren't they the people who award the Oscars or something...?
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Also not the same as the prestigious and perhaps more familiar National Academies [nas.edu], which consists of The National Academy of Science, The National Academy of Engineering, The Institute of Medicine, and The National Research Council.
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Wow -- good call. That might also be why the complaint in the article "She was not allowing staff to examine historical documents" is due to the whole organisation being a massive lie or con job from the beginning.
Just on the applications? (Score:2)
Berlowitz falsely claimed to have received a doctorate from New York University
I'm assuming she only lied on the grant applications since she was also the Vice President for Institutional Advancement [nyu.edu] at New York University. Presumably they would have noticed if she falsely claimed to have a doctorate from them.
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Having been a grad student is not the same as being a Ph.D and yes, there is a big difference.
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Having been a grad student is not the same as being a Ph.D and yes, there is a big difference.
No doubt. I'm just trying to figure out the scope of her lying. She had a high profile academic career so her credentials should have been quite widely known. Lying on the grant application is still illegal, but I don't think it would have been feasible for her to claim a PhD on a regular basis.
Why the fuck do people even try? (Score:2)
Back when 'verification' might have required pulling out your good quill and sealing wax, I can see how pulling a blatant con of this flavor might have made some sense, however unethical it is. Now, though, when it is trivial for just about anybody, never mind the people considering you for the job, to take a look at your CV and start asking annoying questions like "How did you get a degree in XYZ in 1994 at a university that didn't offer that degree until 2001?" and "Why does the registrar at Foo Universit
Time and money (Score:3)
People get away with this because verification of all these facts costs time and money. Even companies that are actually hired to do background checks are often slacking and don't actually verify the copies of diplomas you send them.
Also, universities and such have a good reason to not make an API for 3rd parties to query their databases. First, they'd have to settle on an API with all educational facilities, at least nationwide, probably even globally. Second of all, they can charge for a nice sum of money
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It's really the 'trivial honesty check' bit that surprises me. I have no reason to expect that they'd care much, at least a few years out, about the details of her alleged PhD process; but I would have expected exploitation of a nearly automatic honesty test. Even if they are otherwise competent (if anything, especially if they are otherwise competent, since they'll probably be better liars), liars are a rather dangerous breed. I would have (naively) assumed that trivial fact checking, even of facts that ar
233 Year Old (Score:2)
Asked to resign???? (Score:2)
WTF is with that? If you lie on your resume, you are terminated immediately and walked out the door. What a bunch of two faced hypocrites. When's the last time that any of you were asked to resign because you screwed up? There are rules for the 99% and then the 1% get politely wrist slapped - don't do that again and here's your pension package. This is what's wrong with business today. The top 1% can do anything they want without repercussions while the 99% pay.
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probably embellishing for decades (Score:2)
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