Hughes Hubbard Investigated Alleged Prof Plagiarism
Hughes Hubbard & Reed was hired in 2006 to investigate allegations that a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College used the work of a former colleague and students without attribution.
The college said yesterday (statement posted by the Columbia Spectator) that Madonna Constantine, who was recently in the news after a noose was found on her office door, had in “numerous instances … used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years,” the New York Times reports.
Constantine said in a statement (posted by the Columbia Spectator) that the evidence points to a “conspiracy and witch hunt.” Her lawyer, Paul Giacomo Jr., told the Times the noose may have been “an additional way of intimidating my client.” He said the law firm had found 36 passages that were similar to the work of others, but he was able to show they were original to Constantine.
The college said that Hughes Hubbard, a firm with a substantial practice representing universities, had determined that Constantine’s explanation for the “strikingly similar language” was not credible.
