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An academic matter

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The Michael LaCour affair reminds me that I know of several flat-out crazy and/or evil people who have managed to make it big in the academic world. Or maybe this is just an observation about the world in general. In any case academia seems to have its own peculiarities, some of which are illustrated by the following story.

Nancy Leong and Mary Anne Franks are both on the market for an entry-level academic position. For various intellectual, sociological, and psychological reasons they are to a significant extent rivals for the same tenure-track slots, which are very scarce and extremely competitive.

Leong and Franks both get initial interviews at Georgetown’s law school.   Franks gets a second interview at Georgetown; Leong does not.   Leong then tries to destroy Franks’s chances of getting a job at Georgetown, by engaging in an astonishingly malicious fraud, which among other things involves inventing supposed harsh criticisms of Frank’s work, and attributing these imaginary criticisms to members of the faculty at Georgetown.

Franks doesn’t get the job at Georgetown. It turns out that, for reasons not relevant here, Franks not getting the job wasn’t actually caused by Leong’s fraudulent scheme. Still, under slightly different circumstances the scheme could have had its intended effect. (The analogy with the LaCour matter would be if the paper had been rejected by Science, and then the fraud had been discovered before it was submitted elsewhere).

By the end of the hiring season, Franks has gotten a tenure-track job at another school, while Leong has gotten a position at William and Mary. At this point Franks knows about Leong’s fraudulent scheme, but doesn’t know Leong’s identity. Just after Franks and Leong start their new jobs, Franks finds out that Leong sent her the fraudulent malicious email.

Franks consults with various academic mentors. This process leads to these events coming to the attention of Brian Leiter, who on his law blog threatens to out Leong if Leong does not acknowledge Leong’s guilt to Franks, and to Leong’s new employer, William and Mary.  Leong then confesses to Franks and to William and Mary.

Leong and William and Mary then enter into an agreement.  Leong agrees to leave Willam and Mary, and William and Mary agrees not to disclose what Leong has revealed to it about Leong’s fraudulent scheme to destroy Frank’s job prospects at Georgetown. (William and Mary also agrees not to reveal the existence of any agreement between itself and Leong).

By the end of the academic year, Leong has secured a new job at the University of Denver. Leong gets this job with the help of glowing recommendations from various people at Willam and Mary, who know why Leong is leaving. At this point nobody at Denver knows anything about the true circumstances of Leong’s departure.

Four years later, Leong is a Rising Young Star, and is up for early tenure. Leong has now gotten into a bizarre fight with another member of Denver’s faculty, which results in Leong filing a frivolous complaint with a government agency against this faculty member. This faculty member has many friends throughout academia, at least one of whom knows the story of Leong and Franks. The friend provides a detailed account of the incident to Denver’s dean.

The dean calls the dean at William and Mary, to try to confirm the story. The dean at William and Mary refuses to discuss the matter (or the existence of any such matter etc. etc.). Denver’s dean then decides that he can’t pursue the matter further, because all he has to go on is a second-hand story from somebody at another institution who won’t go on the record about any of this. (Denver’s dean actually knows Franks personally, but does not contact Franks). Leong then receives tenure at Denver.

There are several other baroque or perhaps gothic twists to this little tale. Here are just a couple:

At the same time Leong is going through the tenure process, Leiter decides to use Leong – who he doesn’t actually know — to attack Dybbuk, an anonymous internet critic of both Leiter and Leong.  Leiter accuses Dybbuk of engaging in behavior similar to that which Leong engaged in toward Franks, although Dybbuk’’s behavior is “similar” only in the same sense that taking a questionable tax deduction is similar to robbing someone at gunpoint.

Leiter has discovered Dybbuk’s identity, and decides to disclose it to Leong, even though back when Leiter was threatening to expose Leong’s fraudulent scheme, he speculated both about Leong’s mental health, and about what effect exposing Leong would have on Leong’s apparently fragile mental state.  In any case, Leiter praises Leong in a public and fulsome way for pursuing administrative sanctions against Dybbuk. (When praising Leong Leiter does not, needless to say, reveal that he knows Leong has engaged in vastly worse behavior than anything Dybbuk has done).

While pursuing this administrative action against Dybbuk — which, like Leong’s complaint against Leong’s colleague at Denver, ends up going nowhere — Leong publishes a number of polemics upbraiding Dybbuk and others for engaging in the same general type of malfeasance that Leong had committed against Franks, although again, Leong’s behavior was exponentially worse. (Recall that Leong is doing all this at the very same time she is going through the tenure process).

I’ve confirmed the details of the story with three different people who had first-hand knowledge of the events. I also spoke to Denver’s dean, and asked him what he planned to do if he learned Leong was under consideration for a job at another school. He told me he would have to think long and hard about that.

On one level, I can’t really blame him that much for his ambivalence. After all, there are dozens of people – certainly most everyone at William and Mary and Denver, and of course Franks herself – who know much if not all of this story, and yet it remains off the official record. Why? For one thing, Leong is an obsessively ambitious person, of apparently questionable mental stability, and who wants to get tangled up with somebody like that, especially once the person has tenure and is close to unfireable?

For another, rationalizations in these situations are always at hand: while it’s true Leong’s behavior, had it been known at the time, would have absolutely barred Leong from ever getting a tenure-track job, maybe it was an otherwise inexplicable one-time act, brought on by exogenous factors which have since been dealt with, cured, or what have you. (This seems to me about as likely as Michael LaCour having been a scrupulously honest fellow until he suddenly had some sort of breakdown, but whatever).

For what it’s worth, in my view the single biggest villain in all this – that is if we assume on principles of interpretive charity that Leong and Leiter are more crazy than evil — is William and Mary, and especially its dean, who agreed to offload Leong onto Denver by covering up an incident which should have permanently precluded Leong from getting hired for any academic job. But there’s more than enough blame to go around.

Finally, this matter, like the LaCour affair, raises questions about how common these sorts of breakdowns in systems designed to protect academic integrity are. As in the case of LaCour, this story illustrates that institutions like academic tenure must function to a significant extent on the basis of an assumption that those participating in the process are doing so in good faith, even when doing so is inconvenient or costly to them.

It was obviously convenient for William and Mary to lie to Denver about Leong, and it would have been costly, in various at least short-term senses, for Denver to deny Leong tenure after they discovered what William and Mary had hidden from them. And so here they, and we, are.

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