I'm not a huge fan of academia, as it currently stands. It's not about the search for truth or teaching young adults how to think or even seek gainful employment. It's about political indoctrination.
It's a kind of academic fraud, but one university professor demonstrates it's far from the only kind.
See, while it's possible to blatantly misrepresent history, literature, science, and any other subject in such a way that you can convince hungry young minds that what they're really seeing is the result of racism, sexism, or some other form of alleged bigotry, there's also just straight-out fraud going on as well.
At least at one university, according to a report at the Daily Wire.
A historically black university whose president is under scrutiny for plagiarism allegations reported on by The Daily Wire is a “criminal enterprise to divert federal and state funds,” according to a federal lawsuit filed by the school’s former Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
It is one of four similar lawsuits filed in the last few months against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, its president Heidi Anderson, its provost Rondall Allen, and its diversity, equity, and inclusion czar Jason Casares, that all follow a similar pattern: A faculty member allegedly discovers wrongdoing at the university, and then is retaliated against by the university’s DEI office.
Claims from the suits paint a picture of a university with almost no academic standards, that admits 90% of applicants and looks the other way at cheating and truancy to avoid worsening its 17% on-time graduation rate and keep the federal student loan money flowing.
That last paragraph tells you all you need to know about the university, such as it is. It's one thing from a community college that's designed to be open academically to pretty much anyone. It's another when it's a supposed university.
But the former vice provost isn't actually lashing out over that. Apparently, that's just how the university does business and no one is that upset over it. In fairness, that's hardly the worst thing in the world.
Oh no, it gets so much worse.
The lawsuit filed July 28 by Sandeep Gopalan, a Rhodes scholar who until recently was the school’s vice president for research and vice provost for academic affairs, said that after he claims to have exposed a scheme by Anderson and other top administrators to steal thousands of iPads, the university axed Gopalan’s program and Ph.D. students in retaliation.
The students were funded by a $4.6 million grant from the federal Department of Education that Gopalan had secured and the university had no ability to terminate, but it dismissed the scholars anyway, falsely suggesting that the Trump administration had cut off funding to the historically black college, he said.
Interesting, no?
One could argue that this was a politically-motivated move designed to gin up outrage toward President Trump, and it would be easy to accept that. Sure, that might have played something of a factor, but Gopalan alleges far worse goings on at the school.
“As a result of this blatantly unlawful act, highly valuable research on cancer, environmental pollution, and AI, representing thousands of hours of research work by the Plaintiff, Ph.D. students and research staff has been stopped,” the suit said.
As part of his duties monitoring compliance for the university’s accreditor, “Gopalan learned that Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson were embezzling iPads intended for poor minorities and diverting those resources to their cronies. The thousands of iPads were purchased from a federal grant awarded by the US Department of Commerce,” the suit said.
“After being convinced that the scam was organized criminal activity based on direct observation of the devices’ stealthy storage, destruction of evidence, fraudulent documentation, attempts to trick the auditors, the apparent enablement of concealment by University System of Maryland apparatchiks, Dr. Gopalan sent whistleblower letters to federal agencies, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland in June 2024,” it said.
Honestly, there's a ton there, and none of it really looks great for the school or its beleaguered president, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg here.
But lest you believe that this school also didn't have more than its fair share of woke going on, it had that kind of fraud happening as well.
Soon after, Anderson began asking if the Ph.D. students in Gopalan’s Futures Institute program, the highest-performing students at the school, were black. “Gopalan explained that students were selected based on strict merit, but the projects had a focus on minority populations. Anderson expressed displeasure,” the suit said.
In December 2024, the lawsuit states he filed additional complaints “about Heidi Anderson and Rondall Allen’s embezzlement, diversion of federal funds, fraudulent reporting of student data to deceive the government, fraud in connection with physical plant and facilities,” including to Chancellor Jay Perman, who oversees all public universities in the state.
According to the complaint, “Anderson and Jason Casares began conspiring to steal Dr. Gopalan’s Futures Institute grant of $4.6 million,” and notified Ph.D. students that their scholarships were being revoked. The Department of Education had to step in, writing that the grant had not been terminated and ordering Maryland to restore it.
In other words, Anderson got angry because there were non-black students in the school's highest-performing program, then they tried to "steal" the grant money that came from the Department of Education that funded the program in question.
Then again, let's not forget that merit-based standards are inherently racist, because how dare anyone believe that non-white students are just as capable as white students? Anderson and those like her prefer you to believe that black students aren't as capable and need to be included just for their own self-esteem, and if you don't include them because of that, you're a terrible person.
I swear, these people are sickening.
And, if the allegations are true, criminal.
It makes me wonder if this really will turn out to be an isolated incident or if there are a lot more examples like this that we simply don't know about because no one is willing to blow the whistle on it.
I'd love to say that it's unlikely, but considering the crap coming out of academia over the last decade or so, it's impossible for me to just assume there are too many principled people there for this to be common. I mean, if they're that big into things like wealth redistribution, what's to say they won't take part in redistributing some of that wealth to themselves?
Theft is theft, regardless of what you do with the money, so it's not hard to believe people who advocate for theft for the benefit of some won't think they should benefit, too.
Of course, as it stands, these are simply allegations of wrongdoing.
It's just that nothing about this is as shocking as it should be.
