Via Ralph Luker comes a quite astonishing story from Margaret Soltan at University Diaries. (The link doesn’t seem to work: scroll to Wednesday June 23rd.) In March I wrote about Diploma Mills like Glenncullen University (a non-existent college in Dublin), which offer a range of degrees upon receipt of a fee, without all that tedious standing in line, taking exams, writing theses, and so on. Last month, an ongoing investigation headed by Senator Susan Collins called for a crackdown on such places.
Degrees from the Glenncullens of this world pad out the CVs of people from many walks of life. But University Diaries reports that the investigation has also found evidence of bogus credentials on the CVs of some … unexpected … people. People like Isaiah Berlin, for instance:
The committee’s zealous detective work has produced a list of contemporary and posthumous fake degree holders that is now making the rounds … Perhaps the most stunning revelation involves Sir Isaiah Berlin, an intellectual and moral icon whose death a few years ago prompted hundreds of tributes, festschrifts, conferences, and books. … How then can it be that Berlin graduated not from Corpus Christi Oxford, as his curriculum vitae claimed, but rather from the similar-sounding, and now defunct (by court order) diploma mill, the University of England at Oxford? And that his Ph.D. in philosophy was granted on the basis of a one-page essay he wrote describing his “life experience” as a “a real pluralist” who “likes everyone”? (Quotations are taken from UEO records confiscated by the Department of Commerce.) “It’s an intriguing story,” says Madelaine Jovovich, a member of Collins’s staff. “Berlin was born in Riga; his father was a timber merchant. His father was very unhappy that his son wanted to become an academic, because he wanted Berlin to go into the family lumber business… It turns out that this business was not just wood but wood products, including paper, and that Berlin’s father was, among other things, the proprietor of an early and very lucrative diploma mill, which his son did eventually agree to help run, so long as it could be kept quiet. The business was so successful that the Berlins opened a branch in Romania which continues to operate today.” … Given this new information, scholars are reviewing Berlin’s somewhat enigmatic life - in particular, his various overseas trips and contacts - with greater care.
So Berlin might not just have gotten his Ph.D from a diploma mill, he might have actually been in charge of one? That popping noise you hear is the sound of heads exploding at Oxford, and possibly also in various political theory seminars around the United States. University Diaries quotes (but doesn’t source) the likes of Ronald Dworkin, Tom Nagel and Michael Walzer expressing their astonishment and dismay at these revelations.
And if you are not disturbed that the Pope of Liberty might turn out to have feet of clay, then how does the actual Pope grab ya?
Academics are bracing for what Senator Collins promises are further, equally staggering, revelations. “I can’t be definitive just yet,” she said to a reporter yesterday, “but I can tell you that we are scrutinizing Albert Schweitzer’s activities in Africa very carefully. The committee is also looking into allegations that one ‘Karol Wojtyla’ graduated not from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, as his cv claims, but from the University of Jagellionia at Fort Lauderdale.”
Can all this be true? Am I just being wound up?1 If the Pope got his degree from Fort Lauderdale, then that means Ian Paisley (Ph.D Bob Jones University) is better qualified than him. I really, really need to read more detailed original reporting on this story, not just quotes at a few removes. Anyone got any news items to link to?
Update: Of course it’s a wind-up. It’s amazing what six hours of sleep will do for one’s clarity of mind. But I have to say the possibility of truthfully using the phrase “Crooked Timber Merchant” with reference to Berlin was just too tempting to pass up. If only she’d left out the bit about the Pope, I think I’d have swallowed it whole.
1 By the way, if some Oxbridge product leaves a comment to the effect that of course this has been common knowledge in the Senior Common Room for years, I’m going to be even more annoyed than I will be if it turns out to be a false report.
So the slogan “Paisley for Pope” has a sound basis.
As Prime Minister in exile of the Free Republic of Triest and Trst, Margrave of Moravia and Yoyvod of Voyvodina, I am outraged - outraged! - to hear of this outrage, and we shall certainly be posthumously stripping Mr Berlin of the many awards we awarded him.
My guess is that this is a hoax, and that like many other hoaxes related to Oxford University, it has fallen down on the letters PhD, a qualification which is not awarded by Oxford University.
And ‘Department of Commerce’? When the hell did the UK ever have one of those?
As the recipient of three — count ‘em, three — doctorates from the distinguished University of Stamford at Palo Alto, I am shocked and appalled at this sort of behavior.
um, where’s the sourcing for this?
This story doesn’t sound true.
dsquared -
holders of DPhils are used to the rest of the world describing them as PhDs.
Of course, we have all known this for years… old Isiah was very open about it. (I don’t get what the hoax is based on. Is it meant to be satirising something? It doesn’t seem particularly playful or funny imho)
dsquared -
holders of DPhils are used to the rest of the world describing them as PhDs.
Of course, we have all known this for years… old Isiah was very open about it. (Of course it’s a bloody hoax. But, I don’t get what the hoax is based on. Is it meant to be satirising something? It doesn’t seem particularly playful or funny imho)
UD’s post is very very thin:
http://margaretsoltan.phenominet.com/archives/2004_06_01_archive.html#108800392641516571
I nominate this for “blog entry title of the month” winner.
Crooked timber merchant—brilliant.
The stuff about Karol Wojtyla is ridiculous.
You can read his http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=faith+according+to+st.+john+of+the+cross&Search_Code=TALL&PID=16091&SEQ=20040701103353&CNT=25&HIST=1doctoral dissertation in theology (Pontifical Univ of St Thomas Aquinas Rome).
There is no University of Jagellionia at Fort Lauderdale.
Sorry about that second reference. Here’s that dissertation link.
Nuts. Not. My. Day.
This is the dissertation’s title:
Faith According to St. John of the Cross by Karol Wojtyla
Translated by Jordan Aumann, O.P.
Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1981
This has to be bollocks.
Did Berlin even (claim to) have a PhD or or D.Phil? He certainly had no need of one in order to get his university lectureship or his Fellowship of All Souls in the 1930s.
And a little googling reveals some info on the trial of “the founders” of the University of England at Oxford. Very unlikely that they “founded” it as early as 1931 (the year of Berlin’s first degree).
Looks like a hoax to me, but what isn’t a hoax is a lot of government employees getting high-ranking jobs without any sort of checks on whether they are making stuff up.
I am an attorney sitting for the bar exam in a second state this month, and I have already spent over $200 just on confirming stuff like the fact that I actually graduated from an accredited Law School and that I’m a lawyer in good standing in the state in which I primarily practice, and that I don’t have a criminal record anywyere, and that I haven’t gotten any moving violation in any state in which I have ever had a driver’s licence . . . and this is just to be able to defend employers in cases involving New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.
You might think that the screening process to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense would be a little stricter.
If the pope doesn’t have a college degree, would that make him into an antipope? I’ve always wanted to swear allegiance to an antipope, but thought I’d be thwarted by history.
Also, would this fulfill any end-times prophecies?
jdw,
there are several current antipopes to choose from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope_Gregory_XVII
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope_Pius_XIII
This is a nice experiment. How can so many people miss obvious irony?
Especially the part about a Pole getting his PhD in Florida during the Cold War…
Is there some really subtle and entertaining joke that I’m missing here? The Soltan post seems to me like an obvious and not very entertaining joke, a setup for the “crooked timber” pun and not much else. What I can’t get is whether Kieran actually believed this, as his footnote seemed to suggest.
Interestingly/scarily a Google for the “University of England at Oxford” reveals at least one HE institution (a real one, I think: the Art Institution of Fort Lauderdale) with a list of faculty including someone claiming an MA from that “University” and also a PhD from “Metropolitan Collegiate of London, GB”, which doesn’t even sound real.
‘Tis a joke. Really.
That is hilarious. I disagree with the damp blankets who say Soltan’s post isn’t funny. It is so too. So is Kieran’s. I’m mopping my streaming eyes even now.
david—
I had no idea; I’m too lazy and underinformed to be much of a heretic, I guess. Though Pius XIII seems too small-potatoes to really qualify, by my book.
Berlin wrote a book called
The Crooked Timber of Humanity:
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/6265.html
Berlin wrote a book called
The Crooked Timber of Humanity:
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/6265.html
No no, Timber wrote a book called The Crooked Humanity of Berlin. It’s a shocking account of decadence, corruption, and littering in the Weimar era.
No no, Timber wrote a book called The Crooked Humanity of Berlin. It’s a shocking account of decadence, corruption, and littering in the Weimar era.
People! Of course it’s a joke.
“…a one-page essay he wrote describing his “life experience” as a “a real pluralist” who “likes everyone”?
Really, now! Does it have to appear in the Onion first?
God damn it!
I got an error message when I hit post - so I did NOT hit post again, I went to the front page and from there back to this page where my post was NOT and only THEN reposted it - and look what I get.
Well I’m sorry. But the stupid thing seems to have decided to trick us into posting twice.
““…a one-page essay he wrote describing his “life experience” as a “a real pluralist” who “likes everyone”?”
Yeah, that’s my favorite part. Made me fall about.
What’s the proper punishment for foisting a hoax upon us?
Translating the collected works of Isaiah Berlin into Swahili?
Karl Popper too — Oxford by way of fucking New Zealand and Austria, or whatever. Yeah, sure.
Wittgenstein should have thumped him good. None of those centrist sumbitches are any damn good at all.
You guys think you were a bit confused by this? I read the title as Irving Berlin and went quite deep into it before some of the most massive cognitive dissonance I’ve ever experienced set in.
(Wanders off whistling show tunes…)
Hey, the Vatican had the backbone to say that Catholics could vote for pro-choice candidates.
Folks at Bob Jones do not have that kind of spine.
Scorpio
Eccentricity
OK, let me get this straight.
Kieran falls for this obvious hoax (unless of course his falling for it is all part of some bigger online perfromance art hoax)
And the day before Ted M posts that he ‘s leaning toward the idea that “the Administration veto(ed) plans to attack the terrorist Zarqawi, or his base in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, prior to the beginning of Gulf War II, because the presence of a genuine terrorist in Iraq was too useful for their case to give up.”
And Henry accuses Glenn Reynolds of promoting conspiracy theories.
Really, who’s lapping up all the dubiously source rumours now???
What can I say other than hmmm….
I think some of us are all too ready to believe dirt about Isaiah Berlin, myself included.
Kieran falls for this obvious hoax
Hey, give me a break. Maybe I was willing to believe it, but the last paragraph of my post isn’t exactly awash in credulity:
Can all this be true? Am I just being wound up? … I really, really need to read more detailed original reporting on this story, not just quotes at a few removes. Anyone got any news items to link to?
Well I thought you were flat-out joking throughout, so that just goes to show.
“Crooked Timber Merchant” Ivory - starring Emma Thompson as Isaiah and Simon Callow as the Pope.
Good story, I almost wish it was true! Some of the smartest and most powerful people I have met were very crooked. Maybe we need to maintain the illusion of purity in order to inspire the children - for the sake of society and harmony.
Of particular interest to me is how many academics in “reputable” institutions will award degrees and PHDs to sub-standard students, simply because the academic sub-environment itself is sub-standard.
Let’s take Oxford University as an example: how many people awarded qualifications by Oxford University do not “deserve” those qualifications? I am sure that someone at Oxford would be able to think of areas where assessment might be weaker than others.
How many institutions will simply make awards effectively/merely for turning up … if you have a poor student, do you fail him, or simply award him the bottom pass-rate?
If you have a poor student, do you ever add a point because you like him? Could you honestly answer that question in a public forum, or would honesty be impossible as it might lead to unpleasant consequences?
Somehow, much as I like both Emma Thompson and Isaiah Berlin, I can’t see the former doing a very credible impersonation of the latter … but perhaps I’m underestimating her thesping skills.
I didn’t find the hoax terribly funny, myself, but I did find the fact that some people weren’t sure if it was true or not hilarious. (I, by the way, have a bridge in Brooklyn that’s for sale, if any of you is interested).
(In the real world, by the way, Berlin didn’t like everybody, as his recently published letters from the 1930s show, and didn’t start groping towards value pluralism until later [though he did advance something resembling pluralism, under the influence of Aristotle, in 1931).
“Somehow, much as I like both Emma Thompson and Isaiah Berlin, I can’t see the former doing a very credible impersonation of the latter.”
Oh. Huh. Darn - I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. Probably the wrong kind of accent, for instance. Shucks. I should have realized. Thanks for the help!
Comment on this seems superfluous:
“A BRITISH university is under police investigation in Israel over a multimillion-pound scam in which fake degrees were awarded to thousands of government employees. Teachers, police, army officers and senior civil servants were among 5,500 people who paid for fictitious qualifications from the University of Humberside.
“Four managers of the university’s operation in Israel have been arrested and the country’s fraud squad officers said yesterday that at least one member of staff in Britain was involved in the fraud. . . ” - from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3561-973012,00.html
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