‘DEI’ BIG NEEDED A LIFT?

Columbia plagiarism claim

A new Diversity and Equity leader at Columbia University is the latest academic being accused of plagiarism — for allegedly lifting material from more than 30 authors, as well as Wikipedia, for his doctoral dissertation, according to a bombshell report.

Alade McKen (inset), Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s chief DEI officer, allegedly plagiarized about a fifth of his 163-page thesis, the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing an anonymous complaint filed with the Ivy League school.

The complaint lists dozens of examples of alleged plagiarism in his 2021 dissertation at Iowa State University’s School of Education titled, “‘UBUNTU’ I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization.”

More than two pages in the thesis “are a near-verbatim facsimile of Wikipedia’s entry of ‘Afrocentric education,’ which McKen never cites,” Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium wrote on X.

“Other pages lift paragraphs from well-known African scholars, including the University of Rwanda’s Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, while making small tweaks to their prose, such as reordering certain clauses or changing a ‘were’ to a ‘was,’ ” Sibarium wrote.

“Some of the scholars McKen allegedly plagiarized appear in the dissertation’s bibliography but not in in-text citations. Others, like Ezeanya-Esiobu, an expert on ‘indigenous knowledge’ who has worked with numerous international agencies, aren’t cited at all,” he continued.

McKen allegedly lifted material from Ezeanya-Esiobu’s “A Faulty Foundation: Historical Origins of Formal Education Curriculum in Africa,” published in the Frontiers in African Business Research book series, according to the report.

Alternate bibliography

One example cited from the complaint involves a passage the DEI official allegedly lifted from LaGarrett King, a scholar at the University of Buffalo, who wrote “Black History is Not American History: Toward a Framework of Black Historical Consciousness.”

Another example cited involves the near-verbatim lifting of paragraphs from Kwayera Archer-Cunningham’s 2007 article “Cultural Arts Education as Community Development: An Innovative Model of Healing and Transformation” in New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education.

McKen could not immediately be reached.