Wed 11 Nov 2009
Fire Professor Bernard Moore Now
Posted by David under Bernard Moore, Bill Wagner at 7:51 pm
Williams should fire Professor Bernard Moore immediately: stop his paycheck, cancel his health insurance, kick him out of College housing, empty his office, ban him from campus.
First, by most accounts we have seen, he is a horrible professor, giving everyone is his class As, while not reading their work nor providing feedback. Second, he has produced no meaningful academic research of any sort. (No one will be surprised if we discover that his Ph.D. was plagiarized.) Third, and most importantly, he has pled guilty to fraud, including acts committed during his time at Williams. He is not fit to enter a Williams classroom.
Fortunately, the College has uncontested grounds on which to proceed. Moore claimed to Williams that he had a B.A. (1978) from the University of California, Los Angeles. (See page 349 of the course catalog: pdf). In his proffer to the court, Moore admits that he “has never received any undergraduate degree.” There are few worse sins in an academic community than lying about your educational credentials. Such a lie is cause for immediate dismal. There is no need for further investigation, for weighing the good that Moore has done in arranging campus events with the poor instruction that he has inflicted on his students. Every day that Moore stays on the College payroll, enjoys the use of a campus office and benefits from the resources of the Sawyer library — every day of delay sends a signal to the Williams community that academic honesty is optional.
This is the biggest test that Bill Wagner will face during his presidency. How will he do?
UDPATE: See the faculty handbook for details on the dismissal procedure. Depending on how intransigent Moore wants to make things, this could take a while. And, given that he is still being paid, why wouldn’t he drag it out?
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13 Responses to “Fire Professor Bernard Moore Now”
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frank uible says:
Let’s keep him around for a while – I haven’t had so much fun since the hogs ate my brother.
hwc says:
It’s also a test of Greg Avis and the Board of Trustees. There needs to be a serious examination of how this happened, who hired this guy, and what kind of dynamics led to the hiring of a comprehensively unqualified professor.
Dick Swart says:
@hwc:
hwc, David. Re: investigation and immediate dismissal – Hear, Hear!
As you know, I am not much for topics in which alums jump into the lives of those on campus and carry on longish threads about the competence of the administration.
This instance needs investigation as to due diligence. If the grant is to bring an interesting person to campus to share life lessons of value to undergrads, that is one thing. But if there is some assumption in addition of academic and teaching competence, that is quite something else.
Frank,
Sorry to hear about your brother. I knew things got rough at the Deke House!
Invisible Mom says:
David is right! Moore should be fired now.
When an employee pleads guilty in court to fraud (credit cards, student loans, stealing identities,using aliases,social security fraud,…), and is being sentenced in a couple of months, why would you want to keep him on the Williams’ payroll – and on the Williams’ campus? As an example of who you do not want students to become? To bring in more speakers from Washington?
He has lied about his undergrad degree to Williams and to Howard, where he was awarded his phd (it’s listed in their commencement program). As David says, “There are few worse sins in an academic community than lying about your educational credentials.”
These are more than enough valid, legal reasons to fire Moore immediately.
kthomas says:
Respectfully: is there something about a suspension pending a full and complete investigation, confirmation, and due process, which is inadequate? Is there something lost by circumspection?
rory says:
blood, ken, blood is lost.
hwc says:
I did not see the phrase “suspended without pay” in Wagner’s statement.
JG says:
Wagner’s statement very carefully walked the line of saying what it needed to say right now (suspending him only hours after this all came to light) and pending the double-checking of the contract and what must be done for a 100% clean firing.
I’m sure he’ll be gone very quickly, but they just have to be sure their i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. Obviously, in any sane world this is grounds for firing but there may be process requirements currently underway. There may be a requirement of giving him some kind of minimal process to defend himself. I don’t know this to be true obviously as I don’t have his hiring contract, but immediate suspension seems light-years faster than anything else ever happens at Williams, so my guess is they’re proceeding as quickly as they can. This is hugely embarrassing for the school and nobody has any reason not to take care of this as quickly as possible.
Andy says:
JG: Very true. Yes, all signs point to his guilt — and yes, when he is shown to be 100% guilty, he should be booted the hell out (and maybe Williams should demand some money back for misrepresenting his credentials). However, no need to jump the gun. I’m sure there are proper procedures for these things, and I’m also sure that they’re working as quickly as they can. It’s not as if they need to send security to tar and feather him the day after the story breaks.
Ronit says:
@Andy:
He pleaded guilty. Not sure you can get more 100% guilty than that.
That being said, I have no problem with Williams following duly established procedures when firing him (maybe, next time, they’ll do the same when hiring a new prof).
Andy says:
@Ronit: Heh. Absolutely. I wish they’d demonstrated as much caution in hiring this “professor” as they did in firing him. How is it that they didn’t check that where (and if!) he got his undergraduate degree? Even though he had a graduate degree from Howard, it seems like basic caution on Williams’ part.
I’m reminded for some reason of the Madoff scandal. The reason that prominent individuals didn’t check on Madoff’s credentials and background was that other prominent individuals invested in his fund — so, they thought, it must be legit, even though it was apparently later that the first batch of prominent individuals didn’t do their research. In the same way, Williams didn’t check on Moore’s undergrad degree because Howard didn’t, and Howard didn’t because CGU didn’t…and so on.
hwc says:
Wagner could have prevented some raised eyebrows if had specified whether or not the College is continuing to pay “Mr. Moore”.
I’m not quite sure Wagner appreciates what the reaction of the alumni community is likely to be.
Chillin says:
Wouldn’t the fact that he has no BA be a poor reflection on Claremont and Howard…not on our (in)ability to check effectively into his background. Those schools should have made sure that he truly had an undergraduate degree before giving him a graduate one!!! If one has a MA and a Ph.D the assumption is that they have a BA because you cant them without it (or so we thought).