I remember how it was -- JR
Dishonesty expert accused of fraud sues Harvard and watchdog site for $275 million over their ‘appalling’ bias and ‘utter disregard for evidence’
Accusing a dishonesty expert of dishonesty would appear to be an intrinsically ambitious enerprise. And when all those who know her work support her,the enterprise becomes very ambitious indeed. I suspect that her investigations into dishonety have got under some people's skin and they hitting back at her
A star behavioral scientist accused of publishing fraudulent research has sued Harvard University and online academic watchdog site Data Colada for defamation and gender discrimination. Francesca Gino, a high-profile expert in dishonesty who has published two books and is a regular speaker at corporate events, on Wednesday sued her employer, Harvard, and Data Colada, after they had launched two separate investigations into her alleged fraud. Data Colada ultimately claimed it had found at least four academic papers in which Gino almost certainly forged data, while Harvard put Gino on leave in June without releasing the findings of its investigation.
Gino’s 255-page complaint, filed at the Massachusetts District Court, asserts that she never fabricated data and accuses Harvard and some of the professors who run Data Colada—Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joseph Simmons—of damaging her reputation and career through false allegations.
“Harvard’s complete and utter disregard for evidence, due process and confidentiality should frighten all academic researchers,” Andrew T. Miltenberg, Gino’s attorney, wrote in a statement. “The University’s lack of integrity in its review process stripped Prof. Gino of her rights, career and reputation – and failed miserably with respect to gender equity. The bias and uneven application of oversight in this case is appalling.”
Harvard declined Fortune's request for comment. Simonsohn, Nelson, and Simmons did not immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
The lawsuit accuses Srikant Datar, dean of Harvard Business School, of negotiating a backchannel agreement with Data Colada and investigating Gino more harshly than male colleagues. The negotiation resulted in Data Colada holding publication of its four-part exposé about Gino during Harvard’s internal investigation.
The complaint also said the forensics firm that Harvard hired to investigate Gino, Maidstone Consulting Group, produced faulty reports based off of data that was “not confirmed to be raw data,” and thus should not be used as evidence of fraud. The suit goes on to say that all six collaborators and two research assistants interviewed by Harvard’s investigation committee corroborated Gino’s account of their research and supported her innocence.
Gino is seeking damages of at least $25 million from the three professors behind Data Colada and Harvard.
“Prof. Gino’s career and life have been shattered without any proof she did anything wrong,” Frances Frei, a professor of technology and operations management at Harvard, wrote in a statement supporting Gino that was released simultaneously with the lawsuit. “I’m honestly shocked. As a fellow professor and researcher, it’s disturbing and frankly terrifying. And if this can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.”
Dishonesty expert accused of fraud sues Harvard and watchdog site for $275 million over their ‘appalling’ bias and ‘utter disregard for evidence’
https://fortune.com/2023/08/02/harvard-dishonesty-professor-lawsuit-fraud-defamation-bias/
**************************************************Parents Challenge LGBTQ Book Policy That Requires Teachers ‘To Shame Children’ for Religious Faith
Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Latter-day Saint, Protestant, Ethiopian Orthodox, atheist, and agnostic parents are taking a Maryland school board to court Wednesday, Aug. 9, for denying them the right to opt out of the school’s LGBTQ book curriculum.
“These books are in fact teaching explicit sexual orientation and gender identity issues as early as pre-k,” Will Haun, senior counsel at Becket Law, told The Daily Signal in a Thursday interview. The associated reading instructions “require teachers to make dismissive statements about a student’s religious beliefs, to shame children who disagree, and to teach as facts things that some would not agree are facts.”
“This is not a challenge to get the pride books out of the curriculum,” Haun, whose firm represents hundreds of families and the organization Kids First, clarified. “This is about restoring the right to opt out.”
In late March, the Montgomery County Board of Education told parents it was introducing LGBTQ-themed books into its pre-k through eighth-grade curriculum.
Parents did not object to this until the school board announced that it would deny parents the right to opt out, according to Becket.
Despite their various faith backgrounds, hundreds of parents formed a “united front on the fact that parents get to guide their children’s religious upbringing, that parents are the first teachers on a child’s own self-understanding,” Haun explained.
Consequently, on May 23, Muslim, Christian, and atheist parents sued the school board for denying them the right to opt out of reading books that directly contradict their religious beliefs.
For example, “Love, Violet,” one of the mandated “pride” books aimed at kindergarteners through fifth graders, gives romantic details about girls falling in love with other girls.
Denying parents the right to opt out of such instructional material goes directly against the school board’s policy, state law, and the Constitution, Haun argued.
“Montgomery County public schools allow for religious-based opt outs for everything under the sun, from Halloween parties to music class, to Valentine’s Day,” Haun said. “Maryland law requires opt outs and advance notice for all sexuality instruction.”
Not just the state law but also the “free exercise of religion, protected in the Constitution, requires, among other things, that policies be neutral and general toward religion,” Haun told The Daily Signal.
“All of this gives the court strong reason … to uphold the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing and also acknowledge that this policy is neither neutral nor general toward religion.”
The judge in the hearing Wednesday will consider a preliminary injunction, halting the district’s policy prohibiting the opt out until the court can resolve the lawsuit as a whole.
Haun told The Daily Signal that the plaintiffs hope to have “an early ruling to put the opt-out policy back into place” right before school starts on Aug. 28.
Before the hearing, the parents will hold a rally hosted by the organization Kids First, a group of parents and teachers who joined together to fight for the right to opt out in Montgomery County Public Schools.
Haun told The Daily Signal that Becket is representing hundreds of parents through Kids First. He expects a large turnout at the rally, since thousands came to a rally in June to protest at a school board meeting.
Despite parents of multiple faith backgrounds coming together to fight for their constitutional right to opt out, MCPS still refuses to respect these parents’ religious beliefs.
“Those on the school board have a completely uniform view,” Haun explained. “It raises a question of who’s really respecting the diversity of Montgomery County.”
These parents remain undaunted because they understand that the material being taught to their children “goes to the core of not only the child’s religious foundation but to the child’s self-understanding,” the lawyer added.
“One thing that has so moved me as a husband and a father myself is that these parents, they don’t have any agenda besides sticking up for their kids,” Haun told The Daily Signal. “These are their children. They get one shot to raise them well, and they want to hand down their faith to their kids.”
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Australia's woke-ready students: Affirmative action dressed up as higher education reform
Education Minister Jason Clare began well earlier this year when he made it compulsory for universities when training teachers to teach reading, writing and mathematics using evidence-based practices.
However, his foray into the teaching wars has, unsurprisingly, culminated in a series of policies focused on improving equity while seriously compromising academic standards. Worse still, the federal government has turned its back on racial equality by implementing recommendations designed to usher in a new age of identity politics at our universities.
As part of the higher education shake-up, all academically qualified indigenous students will be guaranteed a Commonwealth-funded place at university and the 50 per cent pass rule for students to continue to receive funding will be abolished.
The Minister for Education claims this is ‘not about lowering standards’. However, continuing to fund students who fail more than half their courses will, by definition, do exactly that. Needless to say, the Minister provided no evidence to back up his statement. While nine Australian universities are among the top 100 globally, the Productivity Commission’s five-year inquiry found highly variable and poor-quality teaching was failing students who entered the workplace unequipped to meet real world demands.
Academic standards in Australian universities are already in crisis. Students finish their degrees woke-ready rather than work-ready. Yet the federal government’s response to the interim review into higher education does nothing to arrest this decline. In fact, the removal of the 50 per cent pass rule will further exacerbate falling standards by transferring responsibility for student performance from the student to the university.
The Minister for Education stated, ‘Instead of forcing them to quit, we should be helping them to pass,’ adding that universities will be required ‘to improve support to students who need it and to report on the outcomes for the student following that intervention’. This effectively relieves the student of any obligation to take personal responsibility for their performance.
Under the guise of helping disadvantaged students, the government is now throwing money at universities. While such largesse may benefit minority groups, it ultimately betrays the interests of hardworking Australians who must fund the exercise but derive no benefit from it.
The core purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and to hone the mind through the development, consideration and the contest of ideas. A tertiary education means nothing if universities discourage debate and intellectual challenge. And suppressing freedom of thought has a knock-on effect; the contest of ideas is not only the essence of university life, but the essence of a flourishing liberal democracy.
Instead of pursuing academic excellence and free speech, the federal government seems committed to making our universities a further arm of Australia’s already extensive social welfare program.
While there is merit in implementing policies to help disadvantaged groups and reduce poverty, this should not be done at the expense of tertiary education standards. Perhaps there are far greater returns for governments to be found in funding programs that encourage school attendance rather than boosting university enrolments. Without a secondary education, disadvantaged students will never attain a university qualification.
Embracing affirmative action in university admissions undermines the principle of equality of opportunity. This was the finding of the US Supreme Court which declared in June that race-based preferencing in admissions violated the constitution. US Chief Justice John Roberts said universities had ‘concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.’
Australia is running in the opposite direction, moving to permanently embed identity politics in our university admissions processes.
There is already a widespread and growing tendency for Australian universities to adopt formal ideological positions, contributing to a culture of censorship on campus. Every Australian university has signed up to one or more policies or strategic commitments which pledge their institution to woke ideologies. These generally fall into three categories: indigenous issues, gender inequality, and sustainability. The rise of the ‘social justice university’ signals a new focus on activism over education.
The University Accord reforms as they stand will entrench these woke priorities while exacerbating the fundamental failure of our academic institutions to be places of open learning and intellectual freedom.
Worryingly, the interim review will do nothing to address the erosion of free speech on campus. Forthcoming IPA research shows 90 per cent of Australian universities have policies that are hostile to free speech. The total hostility score across all institutions, as measured by the number and severity of university policies which are hostile to free speech, increased by 117 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
Previous IPA research has shown that the culture of censorship on campus has already been advanced by university policies that purport to protect free speech on campus. In 2020, the federal government introduced a new requirement forcing universities to develop free speech policies based on the French Model Code – a template written by former Australian chief justice Robert French. However, analysis shows only a third adopted the six essential pro-free speech criteria.
A case in point is Newcastle University’s Code for the Protection of Freedom and Academic Freedom, which states, ‘The principles outlined in this Code do not have overriding legal status nor overriding status to the University’s institutional values or strategic commitments.’ Newcastle University’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025 outlines ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’ as key values, meaning the university could arguably prohibit speech in opposition to the proposed Voice to parliament or views not aligned with the zeitgeist on climate change.
According to Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University, a social justice institution cannot also protect free speech. By promoting one side of an issue, universities attach a value judgment to it and suggest it is the superior position to hold. This closes debate and crushes viewpoint diversity.
Affirmative action is antithetical to the principles of individual liberty, equal opportunity and the pursuit of academic excellence – all cornerstones of strong democracies. Excellence in education and equity-based policies are mutually exclusive goals. Pursuing one will always come at the expense of the other.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/clares-woke-ready-students/ ?
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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