The open secret is one of the defining features of academic culture. In the radically de-centralized world of departmental self-governance, in which an institutionally-enabled lack of accountability goes hand in hand with the kind of intensely judgemental rumor-mongering common to small communities, everyone knows everything about everyone, and yet, quite often, no one is responsible for anything. I've known liars and plagiarists and harassers and incompetents; I've also known the administrators who look the other way rather than deal with the problems the lying, plagiarizing, harassing, and incompetence pose. The academic open secret is the by-product of a system where, very often, gossip is a more powerful regulatory force than the actual rules, and where the disciplinary power of rumor and innuendo frequently serves as a morally compromised substitute for a more straightforward and honest approach to institutional ethics.

The open secret system, in which illicit knowledge (or inaccurate rumor posing as knowledge) circulates in the absence of clear policy and responsible administrative action, gives rise to questions like the one posed to Ms. Mentor, CHE's resident advice columnist, by a befuddled and anonymous assistant professor:

My colleague "Phoebe" is a fraud, and the rest of us in the department have known it for years. Her dissertation, which she claimed was original work, is actually a translation of another scholar's dissertation in an obscure language, with a few extra pieces thrown in.

But no one confronts Phoebe, because she does what we don't want to -- she runs the language lab. She also does it superbly, serving as a mentor to countless students. Still, she doesn't have an honest Ph.D., and some new colleagues believe we ought to expose her to somebody -- her grad school, our department chair, our human resources staff, our dean, the local sensationalist paper....

We suspect that the dean and other administrators already know, but don't want to be bothered. She's now coming up for contract renewal -- but if we get rid of her, we may wind up with someone who won't run the language lab so conscientiously and cheerfully. Sometimes we think we should just continue our silence, since we don't have tenure, and the only reason to speak out is for Justice and Fairness, things that we've seen don't exist anyway.

Hat tip: Ralph Luker

What this shows is that one does not need a PhD. to run a language lab.

One needn't have a PhD to be an effective teacher, and a PhD doesn't guarantee effective teaching: that'd be a scary confession for institutions to make.

Sorry - too honest?

The kind of stuff that happens in rumor-mill departments is just stunning. I've had my own brush (it was a tarring brush) with the zero-accountability rumor-monger psychos. What really hit me was the utter lack of compunction about sending 'round utter nonsense because, well, that's what was done.

It's not as though open secrets in a similar vein don't exist outsie academia, but honestly--and no offense intended, of course--the more I read this blog, the more thankful I am that I work in the "real world" and not the ivory tower.

Part of the problem here is that the qualification which is said to be fraudulent..the PhD...seems irrelevant to actual job performance. I'd fire her anyhow, for obtaining her job dishonestly, but I'd feel bad about it in a way that I wouldn't if I were firing a structural engineer for faking his certification.

I get the feeling that the truth is Phoebe never claimed her dissertation was original. People probably hit the ceiling when they found out she was able to translate and comment on another work for her dissertation instead of writing an original. I saw the same reaction when I was getting my M.A. in History and told my classmates about a M.A. thesis at a neighboring university's library that was actually just a transcription of an 18th century vestry book from a county in Virginia. I agree it was bull s*** that the author got to do that for a thesis, but people literally went on about for days, shouting and getting red faced when the subject came up (ironically, it's one of the very few examples of a thesis that's usuable as a source for an academic work precisely because it's just a digitized version of 18th century source material).

Anyhow, back to the ethical issue, if Phoebe really did plagerize her dissertation, revoke the PhD and fire her. Period. Either that or repeal the honor code at both schools in question.

The problem from a student's perspective becomes that of respect - how can a student respect and therefore learn from a professor about whom there is such an "open secret"? As an undergrad, I had difficulty performing well for a professor I knew had tried to fail a student that refused to sleep with him, and one that was sleeping with and supplying cocaine for a housemate of mine, especially since the administration knew about both but didn't punish either (The end result being that I just didn't take those professors, which, at a small school, was a little difficult to justify). The same goes for academic credentials - perhaps even more so. It's not merely about the ethical issue, in my mind, but about efficacy. Perhaps I was overly sensitive and held my professors to a higher standard that was warranted, but I wasn't the only one.

A friend of mine was fired from a position as VP of a bank because when he applied for the job he claimed a BA when he did not have a degree. He was one of the best employees they had and yet because of his dishonesty he was fired. The same should go in this case because if you do not have your integrity, then what do you have. Letting someone slide by with this kind of claim is tantamount to saying that there is not integrity involved in academia at that institution. Fire the b**ch.

The framework suggested by Ms Mentor for analyzing this situation seems to me to be very shallow and not very responsible:

"Ms. Mentor...sees two competing ethical systems...One is the role of rules in academe, the abstract absolutes that are supposed to govern our lives. The other is the ethic of care for others, the responsibility to students....If Phoebe is fired, the rule-mongers will be satisfied -- but students will lose."

This completely ignores the impact on students who might learn that it is OK to misrepresent one's qualifications and to appropriate the work of others as one's own...and the impact on still other people whose lives those students will later influence.

Academics talk a lot about abstractions, but it seems to me that many of them are pretty bad at actually doing abstract thinking, in the sense of going beyond the concretes of a specific situation.

And the references to Carol Gilligan and to Portia imply that this kind of mindless thinking is general among women, which I don't buy.

The government especially values paper qualifications; I wonder how many government employees claim degrees without actually having them?

Diversity goals are most easily acheived through fraud. This leads to the gradual devaluation of successively higher credentials. High School diplomas are already worthless, and four year degrees are becoming so.

John Doe: Lots of 'em have fake degrees, and lots of people in the real world get fired after years and years of otherwise excellent service.

And, like other folks have said, pettiness and rumor-mongering and psychos who are all yet to get you are hardly unique to academia.

So, Dave J, it ain't that bad.

"...students who might learn that it is OK to misrepresent one's qualifications and to appropriate the work of others as one's own..."

This wouldn't happen if people didn't gossip so much. The students have no reason to know anything about it. And I wouldn't accept the argument that they deserve to know if she has an authentic Ph.D. If not writing her own dissertation had made Phoebe unable to run the language lab, that would have been obvious before now. It's not like she's practicing medicine.

I wonder if anybody ever confronted Phoebe about all this? Maybe it's all moonshine and she could set the record straight if anybody ever asked.

What I think is really nasty is that they're only hesitating about turning her in because they don't want to get stuck with the language lab - otherwise she would be thrown to the wolves. Yuck. I wouldn't want to work with people like that.

to Laura. You would not want to work with people like this but you see nothing wrong with working with people who misrepresent their qualifications. If not having a PhD was no problem with running the language lab, then why would she think it important to say that she had one.

My problem with Phoebe is that she is willing to misrepresent herself to get hired. This says something about her credibility and her honesty and therefore brings into question the rest of her actions. That is why I would fire her. If she is willing to lie about her qualifications, then what is she not willing to lie about and how would one ever know?

I thought that honesty and honor were supposed requirements in academia. I know they are supposed to be in science and industry. If we who work in the "real" world are dishonest, we are fired in a heartbeat. The same should be true of those who train people to work in the "real" world and who inculcate standards in those who work in the "real" world.

"My problem with Phoebe is that she is willing to misrepresent herself to get hired."

That's actually not been established. It's what everybody "knows" but by the letter writer's own admission Phoebe's never been confronted so she's never had the opportunity to clear her name. It's so much fun to back-stab that new hires and students know all the unsubstantiated rumors, but nobody has the guts to ask Phoebe about it to her face. They might find out that they were totally wrong about her; or they might have to run the dreaded language lab. So they just keep on gossiping. I think it's disgusting.

There is another miconception at fault here, not only does the employee misrepresent their credentials, the school misrepresents the job requirements and its service to the students.

Obviously, the language lab position does not require a PhD to run it successfully, because the school is willing to accept a fraud to run it.

The discussion has been about the employees honesty and ethics, but what about the school presenting language lab staffed by a PhD?

It seems to me that Phoebe has a PhD but one which doesn't meet the more exacting standards the asst professor believes are mandated by that degree. How is this fraudulent?

Phoebe's a minor case - I know of Deans at major Universities who got their PhDs by mail-ordering them from a diploma mill. The thing about academics is they are terribly susceptible to the "big lie"- it you are bold enough to bluff for your whole career, there are few in academia bold enough to call you on it.