A historically black university whose president is under scrutiny for plagiarism allegations <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation">reported on</a> by The Daily Wire is a &#8220;criminal enterprise to divert federal and state funds,&#8221; according to a federal lawsuit filed by the school&#8217;s former Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
It is one of four similar lawsuits filed in the last few months against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, its president Heidi Anderson, its provost Rondall Allen, and its diversity, equity, and inclusion czar Jason Casares, that all follow a similar pattern: A faculty member allegedly discovers wrongdoing at the university, and then is retaliated against by the university&#8217;s DEI office.
Claims from the suits paint a picture of a university with almost no academic standards, that admits <a href="https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?163338-University-of-Maryland-Eastern-Shore" target="_blank" rel="noopener">90%</a> of applicants and looks the other way at cheating and truancy to avoid worsening its 17% on-time graduation rate and keep the federal student loan money flowing.
The<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> lawsuit filed July 28</a> by Sandeep Gopalan, a Rhodes scholar who until recently was the school&#8217;s vice president for research and vice provost for academic affairs, said that after he claims to have exposed a scheme by Anderson and other top administrators to steal thousands of iPads, the university axed Gopalan&#8217;s program and Ph.D. students in retaliation.
The students were funded by a $4.6 million grant from the federal Department of Education that Gopalan had secured and the university had no ability to terminate, but it dismissed the scholars anyway, falsely suggesting that the Trump administration had cut off funding to the historically black college, he said.
&#8220;As a result of this blatantly unlawful act, highly valuable research on cancer, environmental pollution, and AI, representing thousands of hours of research work by the Plaintiff, Ph.D. students and research staff has been stopped,&#8221; the suit said.
As part of his duties monitoring compliance for the university&#8217;s accreditor, &#8220;Gopalan learned that Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson were embezzling iPads intended for poor minorities and diverting those resources to their cronies. The thousands of iPads were purchased from a federal grant awarded by the US Department of Commerce,&#8221; the suit said.
&#8220;After being convinced that the scam was organized criminal activity based on direct observation of the devices’ stealthy storage, destruction of evidence, fraudulent documentation, attempts to trick the auditors, the apparent enablement of concealment by University System of Maryland apparatchiks, Dr. Gopalan sent whistleblower letters to federal agencies, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland in June 2024,&#8221; it said.
Soon after, Anderson began asking if the Ph.D. students in Gopalan&#8217;s Futures Institute program, the highest-performing students at the school, were black. &#8220;Gopalan explained that students were selected based on strict merit, but the projects had a focus on minority populations. Anderson expressed displeasure,&#8221; the suit said.
In December 2024, the lawsuit states he filed additional complaints &#8220;about Heidi Anderson and Rondall Allen’s embezzlement, diversion of federal funds, fraudulent reporting of student data to deceive the government, fraud in connection with physical plant and facilities,&#8221; including to Chancellor Jay Perman, who oversees all public universities in the state.
According to the complaint, &#8220;Anderson and Jason Casares began conspiring to steal Dr. Gopalan’s Futures Institute grant of $4.6 million,&#8221; and notified Ph.D. students that their scholarships were being revoked. The Department of Education had to step in, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.1.6.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a> that the grant had not been terminated and ordering Maryland to restore it.
The willingness to terminate the university&#8217;s brightest scholars was all the more remarkable because &#8220;UMES has some of the worst student outcomes in the United States under Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson. The 4-year graduation rate is 17% whereas the 6-year graduation rate is about 35% and graduates’ median incomes are on par with high school graduates. To Dr. Gopalan’s astonishment, Rondall Allen and Dr. Heidi Anderson were indifferent to these outcomes and appeared resentful whenever he mentioned the need to improve,&#8221; it added.
Anderson is a pharmacist, and Allen, another pharmacist, was appointed Provost in 2022. &#8220;Allen has no record of original intellectual publications and had copied and pasted Dr. Gopalan’s work to steal credit,&#8221; the suit said.
The suit asked the court to &#8220;direct the University System of Maryland Board of Regents and the Office of Attorney General to claw back Jay Perman’s $1.4 million salary, Heidi Anderson’s $450,000 salary, and Rondall Allen’s $300,000 salary and proportionate amounts from Casares.&#8221;
On Monday, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.15.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">response</a> in court. It noted that Gopalan was acting as his own lawyer, and sought to have the case dismissed based in part on legal technicalities, the claim that the public college and its officials had &#8220;sovereign immunity,” and that he did not provide enough detail showing he was a victim of intentional racial discrimination.
<h2>&#8216;Private looting opportunity&#8217;</h2>
A <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587750/gov.uscourts.mdd.587750.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">second lawsuit</a> was filed on August 1 under the pseudonym Jacob Doe, a faculty member who says he &#8220;directly observed the top administrators of the university engaging in criminal activities.&#8221;
When Anderson took over in 2018, UMES had an enrollment of 4,800; it is now only 3,000. The passing rate in Anderson&#8217;s own field of pharmacy fell from 95% to 57%. Allen became provost a few years later, despite a background in &#8220;discount pharmacies, and no record meriting a provost position,&#8221; it said.
&#8220;Plaintiff found one cause of the university’s terrible outcomes: rogue administrators led by the president Heidi Anderson and provost Rondall Allen turning the vast investments by the federal and state governments in the university into a private looting opportunity. Unlike other normal universities where administrators are appointed pursuant to merit, credentials, and experience, at UMES many were appointed based on a propensity for corruption and collusion in Anderson and Allen’s schemes,&#8221; the suit said.
&#8220;After directly witnessing and determining that there was organized criminal activity to siphon off federal and state funds led by Defendant 1 Heidi Anderson and Rondall Allen, in Summer and Fall 2024, Plaintiff filed reports with the USM Chancellor and Board, and state and federal officials. The USM initiated a cosmetic investigation – intended to save Anderson rather than determine the truth,&#8221; it said.
&#8220;Upon learning about the Plaintiff&#8217;s complaints, the Defendants took retaliatory actions under the guise of a fake complaint alleging in December 2024 that the Plaintiff had created a &#8216;hostile working environment&#8217; for one temporary worker whose contract was due to expire in two months&#8221; – an Iranian student who, the complaint claimed, was allowed to stay in the country as a reward for going along with the scheme.
Casares, the DEI director, accused Doe of sexually harassing the temp, even though no evidence was provided that the pair had ever been in a room alone together. Casares himself left his previous job after being <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/update-iu-administrator-casares-resigns-amid-sexual-assault-claim/531-610f5e2c-e658-4b3b-a008-e7d1df4b7e4c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> of sexual assault; the suit said &#8220;Casares is unemployable in US higher education and his grossly inflated salary and continued promotion by Anderson are bribes&#8221; for &#8220;intimidating faculty and staff who oppose illegal activities.&#8221;
The temp worker&#8217;s primary boss was a different professor, who witnessed every encounter between Doe and the temp, but Casares did not interview him, the suit said.
Casares was accused of telling the temp worker that “people say Turkish women are beautiful, but I prefer Persian women,&#8221; and &#8220;all work and no fun makes [her] a dull girl.&#8221; Doe said that these statements were fabricated, but that they would not meet the standard for sexual harassment even if they were true.
He said the temp worker had falsified timesheets, leading him to admonish her, and the false claim was in retaliation. Nonetheless, Doe was suspended, banned from campus and his students were told that he was fired. He filed a complaint against Casares, which was ignored, he said.
<h2>A grades for illiterates</h2>
A similar <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit was filed on August 22</a> by Ciu Fang, an &#8220;award-winning computer science lecturer&#8221; who said she was retaliated against for raising concerns that University of Maryland Eastern Shore had almost no academic standards and condoned cheating in order to keep student tuition flowing.
With enrollment plummeting, the school seemingly began relying on foreign students from countries like Iran to fill slots. Although the HBCU was a low-performing institution that few Americans wanted to attend, foreigners who wanted to come to America could use it to gain a student visa.
Iranians began taking over the faculty as well, and Asad Azemi became chair of the computer science program. &#8220;Since his arrival, Azemi expressed a preference for hiring Iranians and manipulated hiring processes to create vacancies for his friends,&#8221; the suit said, citing one job search in which 80% of candidates were Iranian.
Azemi took all the course preparation that Fang had created and appropriated it for himself, while pushing her out of a teaching slot after she was unwilling to give students passing grades even if they skipped class and did not know the material, she said.
Fang said the college admitted students with low high school grades and SAT scores, and most proved unable to master the content in her advanced computer science class, with many not showing up to class at all. But when Azemi taught the course, the failure rate was 0%.
&#8220;Many students plagiarized code from the internet and were unable to answer basic syntax questions&#8230; Dr. Azemi awarded nearly all students a grade of B or higher,&#8221; Fang said. &#8220;Azemi encourages cheating and apparently fraudulent practices to maintain a false facade of enrollment to pad his salary and deceive the federal government,&#8221; she added, saying he pressured her to change students&#8217; grades.
On March 31, Fang emailed Chancellor Perman and &#8220;filed a complaint via the USM Fraud Hotline with information about enrollment, grading, and attendance fraud in specific courses,&#8221; but investigators never contacted Fang for more information, she said.
&#8220;Perman knew that he would be embarrassed if the fraud were to be publicly revealed because of scandals at other universities under his watch,&#8221; the suit said.
(The Daily Wire exposed the president of Maryland&#8217;s flagship campus at College Park as a plagiarist<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> more than a year ago</a>, but there have been no repercussions.)
Perman&#8217;s assistant merely referred her to Casares, who wrote a report taking Azemi&#8217;s side, without interviewing Fang&#8217;s witnesses, she said. Then Anderson personally <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.25_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emailed Fang to terminate her</a> without explanation. &#8220;The abrupt unlawful firing whilst the appeal process was ongoing is illegal retaliation,&#8221; Fang said.
Fang said Anderson developed personal animosity toward her years earlier. Fang had also worked as a personal trainer at the school&#8217;s gym, and &#8220;Heidi Anderson, who is obese,&#8221; asked a school coach to help her lose weight. The coach refused to continue helping Anderson due to her poor attitude, and delegated it to Fang. Anderson insisted on losing weight while refusing to do the necessary workouts, and became &#8220;resentful,&#8221; she said.
On October 31, Maryland filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.15.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reply</a> to the federal court that was similar to its motion in the first case, raising technical legal objections without denying specific allegations.
<h2>Director of Human Resources</h2>
The university&#8217;s former Director of Human Resources, Rosalie Hornbuckle, also filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.13.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">whistleblower complaint</a>, though not a lawsuit. Hornbuckle said she was terminated several months into her job after identifying &#8220;payment to individuals who were placed in fictitious jobs&#8221; and other misconduct.
The complaint alleged a large number of employees remained on paid leave for long periods after being accused of wrongdoing. She said in one case, Casares placed a staff member on paid leave after a complaint of discriminating against white students; six months later, Casares claimed that he had been investigating but had not taken any notes.
As another cited example, a finance employee arrested with a &#8220;large amount of marijuana packaged for sale&#8221; was provided severance instead of simply being terminated; Hornbuckle couldn&#8217;t understand why until learning that he was the nephew of the school&#8217;s budget director, she said.
The Daily Wire previously reported on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fourth lawsuit</a>, by former agriculture professor Donna Satterlee, who said that a Kenyan who was &#8220;incapable of writing in English at the level required of university professor&#8221; took over her department and made her do much of the work, while black faculty took credit and received much higher salaries.
After she called for a study that would publish salary information broken down by race, Casares&#8217;s DEI department accused her of bullying her boss, and she was placed on &#8220;transitional terminal leave.&#8221;
On October 31, Maryland’s attorney general filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969.21.1_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reply</a> in court saying that Satterlee signed papers agreeing not to sue the university in exchange for nine months of severance, and that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declined to pursue a complaint she filed with it.
<h2>Cyber Warrior Diversity Program</h2>
The Daily Wire separately obtained a contract signed in August 2019 by President Anderson with Lance Andre Lucas for a &#8220;Cyber Warrior Diversity Program.&#8221; The next year, Lucas<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/baltimore-businessman-lance-lucas-sentenced-18-months-federal-prison-honest-services-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> pleaded guilty</a> to bribing a state lawmaker $42,500 to create a state law pushing such a program, because he anticipated it would benefit his company.
“I’m from Baltimore for real, for real Baltimore … this is the least illegal thing that I’ve ever done,” he told Maryland Delegate Cheryl Glenn as he handed her cash in his Porsche.
The contract signed by Anderson said &#8220;the State of Maryland is paying a total of $10,000 dollars [sic] per student. The Cyber Warrior Diversity program direct cost [sic] are $7000 or 70%. University of Maryland Eastern Shore Cyber Warrior Diversity Program administrative cost [sic] are $3000 or 30%.&#8221;
&#8220;Once payment is made to University of Maryland Eastern Shore by the State of Maryland trough [sic] MHEC they [sic] have 30-90 days period of grace to pay Digit All City for program direct cost [sic] incurred,&#8221; it continued.
It said Lucas&#8217;s firm would run a computer science course, saying &#8220;The SWDP [sic] courses offer the hard and soft skills needed to work in this industry.&#8221; It is not clear why the school did not simply use its existing computer science program–taught by faculty like Fang–for that.
The<a href="https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2018RS/bills/sb/sb0615E.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> bill</a> creating the program allocated $2.5 million to black colleges to create programs &#8220;to train students in computer networking and cybersecurity,&#8221; and said &#8220;the governing entity at each institution is responsible for administering the program at that institution.&#8221;
Spokesmen for Anderson and Chancellor Perman both declined to comment on the lawsuits against the Eastern Shore college, citing policies on ongoing litigation.
Anderson hired a lawyer to threaten The Daily Wire with a lawsuit after it presented <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">side-by-side academic papers</a> showing thousands of words of her dissertation were identical to older papers by others. University spokesman Robert Vickers said the lawyer was hired by Anderson personally, not by the school.

Heidi Anderson / University of Maryland Eastern Shore

This Black College Is A ‘Criminal Enterprise,’ Ex-Top Official Says In Lawsuit

Education

Maryland

University of Maryland

A college president and former chair of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities plagiarized extensively in her doctoral dissertation, a Daily Wire review found.
Heidi M. Anderson is president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. For nearly four decades, she has climbed the academic ladder while producing an unremarkable amount of low-quality research.
Now, a lawsuit from a former Eastern Shore professor threatens to cast Anderson&#8217;s career in a startling new light. Donna Satterlee alleges that, under Anderson, low-skilled black faculty were hired based on their race and paid more than white faculty. The suit said whites were forced to do the work that black officials took credit for.
A Daily Wire review suggested that it could be a pattern that began with her 1986 doctoral dissertation for Purdue University, which kicked off her academic career.
Portions of the dissertation, which deal with the use of computers in pharmaceutical education, appear to be a repurposed and uncredited copy of a 1984 paper by Donna E. Larson, a professor of nursing, about the use of computers in nursing education, with simply the name of the field changed. The photos below show just the beginning of a lengthy section where Anderson appears to crib Larson&#8217;s eight points.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-980103 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages.jpg" alt="" width="1812" height="1410" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages.jpg 1812w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-740x576.jpg 740w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-768x598.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-1536x1195.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1812px) 100vw, 1812px" /></div>
Note at the bottom that Larson cited a number of papers, including her own prior work. Anderson appeared to lift those citations, in order, but remove Larson&#8217;s citation to herself–perhaps to avoid leaving a clue that could unravel an academic crime. Larson&#8217;s name is not mentioned anywhere in Anderson&#8217;s dissertation.
Larson&#8217;s list had eight items on it, but Anderson had 12. The 10th item on the list also copied someone else&#8217;s words verbatim and without quotation marks to make a simple point.
When Anderson summarizes a book by Christopher Evans, she is actually copying someone else&#8217;s summary of Evans&#8217;s work, even though there is no parenthetical attribution in that section of the text indicating it. The summary on the right, by Richard E. Pogue, was from the introduction to the same journal issue where Larson&#8217;s paper appeared.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-980105" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans.jpg" alt="" width="1812" height="1510" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans.jpg 1812w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-300x250.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-691x576.jpg 691w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-768x640.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-1536x1280.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1812px) 100vw, 1812px" /></div>
Likewise, Anderson appears to have simply taken the language of University of Texas medical professor Robert M. Caldwell, writing about computers in medical schools, and changed the name of the field. Caldwell does not appear in the references section of that chapter.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="542" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-300x133.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-1024x456.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-768x342.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
A significant stretch of Anderson&#8217;s paper is identical to<a href="https://ia601401.us.archive.org/18/items/lb-1043-j-6601978/LB1043J6601978.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> &#8220;Introduction to Instructional Media&#8221;</a> (1978) by David H. Jonassen, even though Jonassen&#8217;s name never appears in her paper. That includes mirroring Jonassen&#8217;s language that something was &#8220;recent&#8221; in the world of computers, without the reader knowing that it was actually new almost a decade prior.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980109" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="1130" height="2560" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-scaled.jpg 1130w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-132x300.jpg 132w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-254x576.jpg 254w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-768x1740.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-678x1536.jpg 678w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-904x2048.jpg 904w" sizes=" (max-width: 1130px) 100vw, 1130px" /></div>
Anderson&#8217;s personal touches consisted of adding woke language and grammatical errors. For example, a 1,000-word stretch appears copied directly from a paper by Robert M. Caldwell (1984) and an introduction to another paper by Christopher R. Brigham and Martin Kamp in 1973. The primary difference is that Anderson changed &#8220;his&#8221; to &#8220;his/her,&#8221; and the correctly-spelled &#8220;judgment&#8221; to the incorrect &#8220;judgement.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980111" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="638" height="2560" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-scaled.jpg 638w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-75x300.jpg 75w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-768x3083.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-383x1536.jpg 383w" sizes=" (max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px" /></div>
Anderson&#8217;s paper proposed using computers to administer quizzes to pharmacy students, but she cribbed information about computers from papers that were woefully out of date even in 1986. One sentence said &#8220;Review of the literature demonstrates that there are relatively few methodologically sound evaluations of the effectiveness of computer assisted instruction (Atkinson, 1968).&#8221;
By the time of her writing, Apple II computers were widely available, and the sort of interactive tests her paper focused on were technically trivial. Yet with her experience with computers seemingly consisting only of reading old papers about them, her paper went on at length about topics like the comparative advantages of mainframes versus terminals. She copied older scholars&#8217; exact language even when explaining such obvious concepts as why it&#8217;s better for a computer to be small than big (&#8220;microcomputer units may be transported into the environment of the subject&#8221;).
The portion of Anderson&#8217;s dissertation designed to drive the field forward consisted of showing a computer program to students and then asking them questions about their opinions about computers. But the interactive activity was programmed by someone else, and the questions were also written by another researcher.
Startlingly, the conclusion of her original research also appeared to be copied from someone else. &#8220;These findings suggest that CAI can be as effective and efficient as a more traditional instructional modality in teaching both factual content and application of learned material when both methods use the same instructional content,&#8221; she wrote. That was virtually identical to a sentence that Elaine G. Boettcher wrote five years prior.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980113" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings.jpg" alt="" width="1096" height="298" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings.jpg 1096w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-300x82.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-1024x278.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-768x209.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1096px) 100vw, 1096px" /></div>
Anderson&#8217;s dissertation says that &#8220;financial assistance was provided to the author by the Purdue University Black Doctoral Fellowship.&#8221;
<h4>&#8216;Posture towards non-Black faculty and staff was barely concealed hostility.&#8217;</h4>
In July, Satterlee sued the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Anderson, saying, &#8220;Black faculty and administrators are paid vastly higher than others of similar or better qualifications. Heidi Anderson has instituted a two-tier system of racial preferences discriminating against White and Asian faculty who are given more and less-desirable work but significantly lower pay.&#8221;
&#8220;The Heidi Anderson Administration’s posture towards non-Black faculty and staff was barely concealed hostility. It was an established practice to pay non-Blacks less than Blacks, not include them in valuable opportunities, and only exploit their work for personal gain of the select few who were close to the university administration,&#8221;<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> the federal lawsuit said</a>.
&#8220;Moses Kairo, a former Kenyan national, became the dean of the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences at UMES in 2012. He exhibited a distinct preference for African nationals in hiring for positions within the school,&#8221; the lawsuit said. Another Kenyan and apparent former schoolmate of Kairo&#8217;s, Grace Namwamba, was hired as department chair and Satterlee&#8217;s boss, even though &#8220;Namwamba had extremely poor work competencies and skills and appeared incapable of writing in English at the level required of a university professor,&#8221; it said.
Satterlee, the lowest-paid faculty member in her department, &#8220;was assigned double the work of African or African-American faculty. In one instance, Dr. Satterlee was instructed by Dr. Namwamba to create a master’s degree program in two days&#8230; after Dr. Satterlee worked without rest to complete the assignment, Dr. Namwamba took her work product and stole the credit,&#8221; the suit said.
Satterlee said she earned the ire of Anderson and Namwamba after she called for a salary study that would publish faculty pay broken down by race, and by correcting sloppy work by Namwamba in an attempt to save the department from embarrassment. She was the only faculty member to be denied a request for a promotion that year, she said — with the denial letter misspelling her name as &#8220;Dr. Scatterlee.&#8221;
She said she was disciplined by the school&#8217;s DEI office, called the Office of Institutional Equity. The office is led by Jason Casares, who was hired after resigning from his job at a different university amid allegations that he <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/update-iu-administrator-casares-resigns-amid-sexual-assault-claim/531-610f5e2c-e658-4b3b-a008-e7d1df4b7e4c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sexually assaulted a college administrator</a>. Casares&#8217; claim was that Satterlee had &#8220;bullied&#8221; her boss.
He also accused her of insubordination, to which Satterlee replied: “If a written communication from a department chair is &#8216;riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings&#8217;, I have an obligation to call that to her attention and may do so without fear of reprisal, because, ultimately, we seek to teach students how to communicate.&#8221;
She was placed on &#8220;Transitional Terminal Leave.&#8221; The lawsuit said the Office of Institutional Equity has no authority to terminate the employment of a tenured professor, and that &#8220;insubordination&#8221; is not grounds for any university office to terminate a tenured professor.
The lawsuit also said that the University of Maryland Eastern Shore has declined sharply under Anderson&#8217;s leadership,<a href="https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/institution/university-of-maryland-eastern-shore/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> losing the prized R2 research designation</a>.
The university is required to submit a response to the lawsuit by October 10.
Anderson declined to comment for this story. After publication, she put out a public statement saying “Recent allegations of plagiarism have been raised regarding my 1986 doctoral dissertation. Integrity, accountability, and trust are the foundations of my leadership and I take these concerns with the utmost seriousness. Consistent with University System of Maryland policy, there will be an assessment of these allegations… I am deeply grateful for the support of the UMES family during this period.”
Anderson&#8217;s published research in the decades since defending her dissertation has been short and of low quality, often published in obscure journals. For one paper, she had students ask 89 people who was their &#8220;primary source of prescription medicine information.&#8221; Most said their doctors, so she concluded that &#8220;pharmacists should consider providing more information.&#8221;
In another, she claimed that an unnamed minority faculty member had students repeatedly subject her to racial slurs in class and over the phone, and that this research discovered that colleges should create a &#8220;grievance process&#8221; for &#8220;student-faculty conflicts.&#8221;
Anderson repeatedly attained high academic positions. &#8220;I was the first African American to serve as President  [of] the Accreditation Council on Pharmaceutical Education, the national accrediting body,&#8221; she<a href="https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/anderson_testimony_package.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> testified to Congress</a> in 2021, and &#8220;The Chronicle of Higher Education also recognized UMES as having the second most diverse faculty.&#8221;
&#8220;Allow me to say, that because we launched this program during the COVID pandemic, our efforts were not as robust or as smooth as it [sic] otherwise might have been,&#8221; she acknowledged to lawmakers in written remarks about her school&#8217;s use of federal funds. &#8220;One of the important issues we face as a nation and world are [sic] the challenges brought about by climate change.&#8221;
She told Congress that the university, which is both a historically black college and an agricultural college, would focus on &#8220;creating safe spaces where farmers can meet monthly.&#8221;
In 2023, Anderson served as president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, making her the face of public universities.
Satterlee, the professor who was forced out, said that Anderson&#8217;s alleged pattern of forcing white professors to do the work, while black faculty take credit, mirrors the apparent deception that began her academic career.
&#8220;Heidi&#8217;s PhD has been obtained by fraud and by her passing off the work of other scholars as her own work. How can a university tell its students to be honest if its president is herself dishonest?&#8221; she told The Daily Wire. She called on Jay Perman, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, to fire Anderson.
Michael Sandler, a spokesman for the University System of Maryland, told The Daily Wire: &#8220;We are aware of the allegations raised against President Anderson and are reviewing them with our policies. We will determine the next steps once that process is complete.&#8221;
In September 2024, The Daily Wire revealed that a 5,000-word paper on rocket science by Darryll Pines, the president of the Maryland&#8217;s flagship campus at College Park,<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> copied a 1,500 word stretch from a tutorial website</a> by an Australian student. The paper, by Pines and a co-author, did not mention or cite the student anywhere, and attempted to change his British spellings to American ones–potentially a telltale sign that Pines knew he had not written the material, and was attempting to deceive readers.
In response, Pines wrote that &#8220;I<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-acknowledges-recurrent-language-submits-to-plagiarism-review" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> acknowledge recurrent language</a>,&#8221; and said an investigation would begin. Perman&#8217;s office said the review would be conducted jointly by the College Park campus and the statewide system, and &#8220;the two parties will use an expert consultant at an external law firm to lead the review&#8230; the consultant will determine who will serve on the review panel.&#8221;
A month later, the Australian student, who said it was &#8220;clearly plagiarism&#8230;not worthy of an academic,&#8221; said the panel<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/10/24/author-argues-maryland-president-clearly" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> hadn&#8217;t contacted him</a>. More than a year later, that panel has said nothing publicly, and Perman&#8217;s office has declined to share updates.
&#8220;It just feels like something weird is going on,&#8221; Professor Nick Seybert told the<a href="https://www.thebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-pines-plagiarism-AHZESFHKN5HA5DLTEF32CER46E/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Baltimore Banner</a> in July. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t feel like they&#8217;re taking it very seriously.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980185" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="720" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-300x177.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-974x576.jpg 974w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-768x454.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980187" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="1402" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-261x300.jpg 261w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-500x576.jpg 500w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-768x884.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
This story has been updated with a statement from Anderson.

Another College President Plagiarized Her Dissertation. That’s Just The Tip Of The Iceberg.

Civil Rights

College

Plagiarism

The University of Maryland has agreed to pay Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) $100,000 after the university first defended, but then briefly tried to reschedule, a rally on the anniversary of Hamas&#8217;s October 7, 2023 attacks by a campus group that advocates &#8220;the right of Palestinians to carry out armed struggle.&#8221;
The public university&#8217;s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter “will spend every dollar we receive from the $100,000 penalty for banning our vigil on organizing and supporting the movement for a free Palestine,” group member Daniela Colombi said in a <a href="https://www.cair.com/press_releases/palestine-legal-cair-announce-historic-100k-settlement-from-u-of-maryland-for-unlawfully-suppressing-pro-palestinian-student-speech/">statement</a>.
&#8220;Capitulating to bad faith, anti-Palestinian pressure will cost you,&#8221; Ahmad Kaki, a CAIR attorney, added, calling it a &#8220;transparent censorship attempt&#8221;—although even as CAIR fought for the right of students to demonstrate on October 7 on free speech grounds, it tried to force the university&#8217;s medical school to <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2025/01/umd-medical-school-stands-by-israeli-surgeon-after-cair-played-role-canceling-his-talk/">cancel</a> a lecture by an Israeli surgeon.
CAIR noted that the Maryland public institution agreed to pay the anti-Israel group even as the Trump administration has extracted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/columbia-university-retreats-as-trump-scores-historic-220m-settlement">massive</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ucla-will-pay-6-million-to-settle-antisemitic-discrimination-complaints">payments</a> from other universities for failing to protect Jews from antisemitism on campus. 
 University president Darryll Pines had in fact gone to great lengths to allow Students for Justice in Palestine to rally on the anniversary of the terror attack — an event advertised as &#8220;honor[ing] the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-will-let-anti-israel-group-hold-oct-7-rally">150,000+ martyrs</a> who have lost their lives within the past year&#8221; — including his personally echoing the false claim that Israel had killed 150,000 people, which not even Hamas contended.
But that freedom appeared to extend only to certain groups. In an email obtained by the Daily Wire, Pines threatened to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining">call the police on a Jewish woman</a> if she did not stop emailing faculty and staff with complaints about antisemitism.
When Jewish critics raised that double standard by wondering how Pines, who is black, would respond if it were a KKK rally instead of an anti-Israel rally, or confederate flags instead of Palestinian ones on the campus&#8217;s central quad, the rhetorical device seemed to go over Pines&#8217; head: he took it as a literal assertion that there was actually a KKK rally planned for October 7, and suddenly his prior First Amendment concerns no longer seemed to apply. 
Patricia Perillo, the University of Maryland’s Vice President of Student Affairs, later said in an affidavit that “on August 26, 2024, an individual emailed University President Darryll J. Pines, who is Black, advising that if the University was going to permit SJP’s event to go forward, ‘then my Klan Rally with sheets and a noose are also approved.’”
Pines cancelled all events on October 7, not because of his aversion to the anti-Israel event, but because of what he suggested was anti-black racism and threats by Jewish people, requiring the cancellation of events to protect the safety of the Palestine activists, according to prior Daily Wire reporting and CAIR&#8217;s summary of the lawsuit.
&#8220;The University <a href="https://palestinelegal.org/s/Defendants-Opposition-to-Plaintiffs-Motion-for-TRO-and-PI.pdf">responded to CAIR and Palestine Legal’s lawsuit</a> by claiming that it was forced to cancel all events due to racist threats from pro-Israel individuals, who had threatened to organize a KKK rally and come to campus armed if SJP’s vigil was allowed to proceed. At the hearing, University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell testified that pro-Israel individuals even threatened UMD President Darryl Pines’ family and used the N-word,&#8221; CAIR said in its statement heralding the settlement.
But the postponement of all October 7 gatherings on campus was short-lived. Despite Pines&#8217; general sympathy to the group, SJP sued his university in federal court, backed by lawyers from CAIR. On October 2, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte wrote that the Palestinian group would suffer &#8220;irreparable harm&#8221; if it could not congregate on that date to mark &#8220;what it calls Israel&#8217;s most recent &#8216;genocidal campaign,'&#8221; and ordered the event <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-says-university-must-let-anti-israel-group-hold-oct-7-event">reinstated</a>.
In its statement on the settlement, CAIR cast the planned event as a &#8220;vigil&#8221; somberly mourning the deaths of people in the Israel-Hamas war, but that is not what contemporaneous documents indicate. SJP&#8217;s national headquarters had called for a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-student-group-is-calling-for-a-week-of-rage-beginning-october-7">&#8220;Week of Rage&#8221;</a> coinciding with the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group&#8217;s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. 
An application for reserving campus space, filed August 1, contained only a nine-word description of the event (&#8220;One year since the genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza&#8221;), according to documents obtained under public records laws, and Jewish critics have raised questions about whether the group failed to properly comply with the university&#8217;s rules for getting events approved, which would have given Pines a mechanism for blocking the event. 
Pines dismissed complaints from Jews by claiming that the group had &#8220;condemned the horrific attack by Hamas,&#8221; but a Daily Wire review of SJP&#8217;s social media showed no such sentiment. SJP instead said on Instagram that it supports the “<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WntvnPe2D/?img_index=5">right of Palestinians to carry out armed struggle,</a>” and “unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C9yDEB3PJv6/?img_index=5">no right to exist</a>.” 
Pines was so invested in defending the anti-Israel group that he resorted to academic misconduct, sending a Jewish critic what he said was original &#8220;faculty research&#8221; from Middle East scholars on campus that proved that the Palestinian flag was not objectionable. The Daily Wire found that what he called the &#8220;consensus opinion from these faculty scholars,&#8221; whom he claimed he personally consulted with, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally">actually came from ChatGPT</a>.
That misrepresentation spurred The Daily Wire to check Pines&#8217; past academic work for plagiarism, and it found that nearly one-third of a 5,000-word paper was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student">copied and pasted from an Australian student</a>, who was never referenced anywhere in the paper. There was evidence that Pines (or his co-author) had not accidentally mixed up someone else&#8217;s work with their own, because the British spellings in the Australian version had — with one exception that was missed — been changed to the American versions.
Pines acknowledged &#8220;recurrent language&#8221; but denied misconduct, and the state&#8217;s university system opened a review into his academic integrity. Ten months later, the review panel has <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;rct=j&amp;opi=89978449&amp;url=https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-pines-plagiarism-AHZESFHKN5HA5DLTEF32CER46E/">issued no findings</a>.
The University of Maryland did not answer The Daily Wire&#8217;s questions, but said in a statement that &#8220;the litigation in federal court has been mutually resolved through a settlement agreement with no admission of liability by the University.&#8221;
&#8220;UMD SJP is a registered University student organization in good standing which has had more than 100 events on campus since October 7, 2023, for which it consistently followed the University’s policies and procedures governing such events,&#8221; it added. &#8220;The University reiterates its support for the First Amendment and particularly making campus space available for individuals and groups of all viewpoints to share their opinions pursuant to its Guidelines for Expressive Activities and the First Amendment. The University takes very seriously its responsibilities for the safety and security of all University students and other members of its community.&#8221;
A top senator this week <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-to-long-investigate-cair-for-ties-to-terrorists">called</a> for CAIR&#8217;s tax-exempt status to be examined due to its &#8220;ties to terrorists.&#8221;

UMD Students for Justice in Palestine / Instagram

University of Maryland Will Pay Anti-Israel Group That Planned Campus Rally On October 7

Anti-Semitism

Free Speech

Israel

Universities

The president of the University of Maryland will face an internal probe after The Daily Wire exposed extensive plagiarism in his published writing.
On Wednesday evening, Darryll Pines sent an email to all university faculty under the subject “A forthcoming impartial review.”
&#8220;Just yesterday, a blogger contended that I co-authored papers in 2002 and 2006 on the topic of structural health monitoring that used language from an online tutorial without citation,&#8221; Pines wrote. &#8220;While I am steadfast that our results, data and findings are sound, I acknowledge recurrent language in the introductory sections.”
“While I do not believe there is merit to these claims, an impartial review is in the best interest of the university. Consistent with existing policies related to research conduct, I have asked the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to begin an independent review. The findings of the ORI review will be shared with the University System of Maryland Chancellor Jay Perman through our Office of Faculty Affairs in the Provost’s Office,” the email continued.
The email is somewhat contradictory, as Pines acknowledges “recurrent language,&#8221; but denies that he plagiarized outright.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-799291" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review.png" alt="" width="1322" height="1642" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review.png 1322w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-242x300.png 242w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-464x576.png 464w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-768x954.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-1237x1536.png 1237w" sizes=" (max-width: 1322px) 100vw, 1322px" /></div>
On Tuesday, The Daily Wire identified <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a 1,500-word section of a 5,000-word paper</a> published in 2002 which Pines had lifted from a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970216154235/http://www.monash.edu.au/cmcm/wavelet/whistory.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tutorial website created by an Australian student in 1996.</a> Pines only changed the British-style spellings.
Pines and his co-author published another paper using the exact same stolen language in a 2006 paper.
Prior to the publication of The Daily Wire’s story, a spokeswoman for Pines seemed to defend the duplicated text, also calling it “recurrent language” and saying “the use of customary or common language in introductory material does not speak to the integrity of the data or the veracity of the findings.”
That drew shock and outrage from several academics, who said that no academic would consider 1,500 straight words pasted from an un-cited, little-unknown author to be “customary or common language,” or acceptable to use in a paper.
Online, some students speculated that if Pines was not punished, students punished for academic dishonesty would have grounds to contest their punishments.
Reporting on the fallout, The <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-j-pines-ZUVIHYS4Z5EFJIY7BUSVFGY6XA/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Baltimore Banner</a> quoted SPIE, an engineering society that published the 2002 paper, saying it “considers plagiarism by authors and contributors in any form, to any degree, to be unethical, unacceptable, and a serious breach of professional conduct.”
It also quoted Jonathan Bailey, a “plagiarism expert,” who seemed to both acknowledge that the plagiarism was real and major, but dismiss it because the media outlet flagging it was not liberal. 
The evidence against Pines “appears to be one of the stronger” cases, he said, saying “we have whole sections of a paper that are near verbatim or verbatim.”
Yet “the uptick in plagiarism accusations over the last year has targeted people of color, in particular,” the Banner claimed, paraphrasing Bailey.
(The Daily Wire did not look into Pines because he is black, but because of an incident this month in which he falsely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed off ChatGPT output</a> as original Maryland &#8220;faculty scholarship.&#8221;)
“Bailey said as someone who ‘cares deeply about plagiarism,’ he finds the accusations frustrating for both himself and universities that have to investigate serious allegations even when they come from, as Bailey views it, a place of bad faith,” the Banner continued.
The paper did not say why reporting on academic misconduct was “bad faith,” except that “The Daily Wire is a conservative publication who often rail against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” seemingly suggesting that standards should not apply to scholars like Pines, a rocket scientist who this year co-authored  papers titled &#8220;Stereotypes and implicit biases in engineering: Will students need to &#8216;Whistle Vivaldi&#8217;?&#8221; and &#8220;Understanding the ‘Us All’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers.&#8221;
A side-by-side of the student&#8217;s 1996 website and Pines&#8217; paper is below. The Daily Wire&#8217;s original story is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student">here</a>.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-797593" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png" alt="" width="1799" height="10212" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png 1799w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-53x300.png 53w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-768x4360.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-361x2048.png 361w" sizes=" (max-width: 1799px) 100vw, 1799px" /></div>

University of Maryland President Darryll Pines (Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

University of Maryland President Acknowledges ‘Recurrent Language,’ Submits To Plagiarism Review

University of Maryland President Darryll Pines appears to have committed significant plagiarism, lifting large portions of two academic journal articles from a tutorial website made years prior by an Australian student, a Daily Wire investigation found.
A 1,500-word stretch of a 5,000-word paper by Pines and a co-author published in 2002 — accounting for nearly a third of the paper — is virtually identical to a <a href="https://www.dmsa.unipd.it/andreap/wavelet/wavelet.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tutorial website</a> called “Surfing the Wavelets” published in 1996 by Joshua Altmann, who at the time of publishing was a university student in Australia.
Pines does not cite or mention Altmann or the website, which says it was last updated in October 1996. Pines and his co-author, Liming Salvino, then recycled much of that paper, including almost all the uncredited Altmann language, for another peer-reviewed paper in 2006.
Pines, a rocket scientist and diversity activist, does not appear to have made any changes to Altmann’s work except removing some sentences and Americanizing the Australian’s British spelling (turning “analyse&#8221; to &#8220;analyze,&#8221; e.g.) — but Pines missed two such words, “endeavour” and “modelling,” which remain in his work with the spelling commonly used abroad.
Pines&#8217;s systematic editing of British words suggests he did copy the language, but deliberately manipulated Altmann’s text to look like his own. The finding of significant past plagiarism comes after Pines this month presented what he said was “faculty research” defending a pro-Palestine rally planned for October 7, but which actually came from ChatGPT.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726665846407000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0AO_BnWzjBHW-hvzLTw1hC">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
When Altmann published the tutorial in 1996, he had recently been working in a restaurant and was a student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. At the time, Pines had a doctorate from MIT and was leading a University of Maryland program “to increase the number of underrepresented minority PhDs in four departments within the College of Engineering.&#8221;
Another scientist cited Altmann’s online tutorial in his Ph.D. dissertation in <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Acoustic_noise_removal_by_combining_wiener_and_wavelet_filtering_techniques_%28IA_acousticnoiserem00forn%29.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1998</a>.
The duplicated language is highlighted here:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-797593" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png" alt="" width="1799" height="10212" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png 1799w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-53x300.png 53w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-768x4360.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-361x2048.png 361w" sizes=" (max-width: 1799px) 100vw, 1799px" /></div>
Pines’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252446892_Health_monitoring_of_one_dimensional_structures_using_empirical_mode_decomposition_and_the_Hilbert-Huang_Transform" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2002 paper</a>, “Health monitoring of one dimensional structures using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert-Huang Transform,” was published in the journal Smart Structures and Materials, part of the SPIE engineering association.
In 2006, Pines and Salvino reused a large portion of that paper — including nearly the entire uncredited Altmann section — for a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223597065_Structural_health_monitoring_using_empirical_mode_decomposition_and_the_Hilbert_phase" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paper</a> published in the Journal of Sound and Vibration, “Structural health monitoring using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert phase.” The above chart looks almost the same whether comparing Altmann to Pines’s 2002 or 2006 papers.
Where Altmann writes the word “endeavor,” Pines’s 2002 article says “endevour,” as if someone tried to Americanize the Australian’s British-style language but removed the wrong letter. The 2006 article also mirrors Altmann’s language in using the British “modelling,” though the 2002 article does not, perhaps because an editor at that journal changed it to the American “modeling.”
Pines&#8217; papers do not contain any footnotes to Altmann. Instead, his footnotes are the same as Altmann&#8217;s, down to the page numbers.
In virtually the only instance where Pines tried to paraphrase, he managed to add multiple errors. Altmann writes, “Several techniques can be used to enhance the characteristics that are otherwise not readily observable.” Pines’s 2002 paper says “This led to the emergence of several techniques that could be used to enhance the characteristics that would otherwise not readily observable.” That passage in his 2006 paper has an additional inserted typo (one apparently again caught by the more vigilant 2002 editor), saying “This lead to the emergence.”
Katie Lawson, a spokeswoman for the University of Maryland, did not deny that the language was copied, but suggested there would be no repercussions for the president.
“It is not uncommon for historical and technical reviews to use recurrent language to provide a framework for past work. Establishing this shared understanding in the scientific community is what allows for applications of new technology, which is what Dr. Pines and Dr. Salvino explored in testing a new application of the Hilbert phase. The use of customary or common language in introductory material does not speak to the integrity of the data or the veracity of the findings,” she said in an email.
Lawson declined to respond to questions about whether University of Maryland students and faculty are required to cite their sources when using extensive verbatim work of others, and what would happen if they did not.
IEEE, a professional engineering society, says “Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, (a) uncredited copying of someone else’s work, (b) using someone else’s material without clear delineation or citation, and (c) uncited reuse of an author’s previously published work that also involves other authors.” It said it “is a type of copyright infringement, and as such may also subject the author(s) to legal liability.&#8221;
<a href="https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/PSPB/opsmanual.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IEEE’s policies</a> say that it considers “uncredited verbatim copying of a large portion (greater than 20% and up to 50%) within an article” as its second-most serious offense. It said the actions that “shall” be taken in such a case include the publication of a “Notice for Publishing Misconduct,” rejection of all articles currently being reviewed by the author, and possible prohibition of future publishing.
The society recommends that the offender be required to submit an apology to the victim and the journal editor, with more severe punishment if he refuses.
The Daily Wire reported this month that Pines <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plagiarized from ChatGPT</a> and passed the writing off as original research he had gathered from faculty experts. “I have consulted with Middle East Scholars and Historians on our campus regarding the origin and history of the Palestinian Flag. The general consensus opinion from these faculty scholars is as follows,” he wrote, followed by output that in reality came from ChatGPT.
He used the veneer of &#8220;expert scholarship&#8221; to end a debate with a Jewish critic who objected to his decision to allow a pro-Palestinian group that advocates for “armed struggle” to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hold an event on October 7</a>, the anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. When The Daily Wire asked him about the false attribution, he ignored the inquiry.
Pines is credited with many journal articles and academic accomplishments, but his scientific achievements often come with him as just one member of a larger group. In the plagiarized articles, he is the lead author.
His journal articles co-authored this year include “Stereotypes and Implicit Biases in Engineering: Will Students Need to ‘Whistle Vivaldi’?” and “Understanding the ‘Us All’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers.”
Pines’s story is similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned following the exposure of her own plagiarism. Both Pines and Gay came under fire for their handling of anti-Semitism on campus, and were uncovered as plagiarists in the ensuing scrutiny.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U of Maryland Prez Said Anti-Israel Protesters Could Rally On 10/7—Then Threatened To Call Police On Jew For Complaining</a>

Darryll J. Pines, PhD is appointed the 34th President of University of Maryland at College Park on February, 14, 2020. (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

University of Maryland President Copied Rocket Science Paper From Aussie Student

Hecklers disrupted a prominent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/house-democrats" target="_blank" rel="noopener">House Democrat</a>&#8216;s university lecture on democracy last week, after which the president of the school ended the event due to what he called a show of &#8220;free speech.&#8221;
Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/jamie-raskin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jamie Raskin</a> (D-MD), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, spoke at the University of Maryland (UMD) on Thursday until a commotion about the Israel-Hamas war led him to get sidetracked and open the room to questions.
Although UMD President Darryll Pines reportedly cut short the lecture and wished the disruptors had been more civil, he <a href="https://www.marylandmatters.org/2024/03/29/raskin-speech-at-umd-disrupted-by-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Capitol News Service</a> that the result was a positive one.
&#8220;[Raskin] came here to speak about where our democracy is going in our country,” Pines reportedly said. “What you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom.&#8221;
He added, &#8220;From our perspective as a university, there are the difficult conversations that we should be having.&#8221;
Raskin told the news outlet the &#8220;sentiments&#8221; of the protesters were &#8220;perfectly consistent&#8221; with his planned lecture, which was titled &#8220;Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.&#8221;
The congressman said he is &#8220;not really opposed to heckling&#8221; but noted that &#8220;it seems like heckling today is all about drowning out the speaker, and that’s totally antithetical to the spirit of free expression.&#8221;
As word of what transpired at the event and what Pines had to say about it spread on social media, people chimed in about their views on protesters effectively shutting down speakers.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Congressman Jamie Raskin tried to give a speech at <a href="https://twitter.com/UofMaryland?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UofMaryland</a> on democracy and &quot;the threat to reason in the 21st Century.” 
It was relentlessly heckled and drowned out by people protesting Israel&#39;s invasion of Gaza. 
The speech was ultimately shut down by the university… <a href="https://t.co/DQVH2dkXoI">pic.twitter.com/DQVH2dkXoI</a>
&mdash; Nico Perrino (@NicoPerrino) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoPerrino/status/1774482820678693194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;President Pines is wrong,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoPerrino/status/1774482820678693194" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
&#8220;What you saw play out was mob censorship,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;It was a bastardization of free speech and the antithesis of democracy. These shout-downs happen far too often on college campuses — and with the approval of college administrators.&#8221;
NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen, a UMD alumnus, suggested that Pines&#8217; comments should be called the &#8220;loudest-voice doctrine,&#8221; according to a <a href="https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1774788172091642176">post</a> on X.
&#8220;It’s debatable the degree to which federally funded schools have a duty to ensure free speech,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1774817009168978403" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a>. &#8220;What’s not debatable is that the [First Amendment] also protects the right of assembly — to allow political discourse. Nor is it debatable that intimidation can fall outside protected speech.&#8221;
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
UMD professor Howard Milchberg, who <a href="https://umdphysics.umd.edu/about-us/news/department-news/1934-milchberg-lect-24.html#:~:text=University%20of%20Maryland%20Professor%20of,parents%2C%20Renee%20and%20Irving%20Milchberg." target="_blank" rel="noopener">started the lecture</a> with his family in recognition of his late parents who survived the Holocaust, posited that the disruption of Raskin&#8217;s remarks was a good thing.
&#8220;It didn’t go as planned, but it maybe turned out better than normal,&#8221; Milchberg <a href="https://www.marylandmatters.org/2024/03/29/raskin-speech-at-umd-disrupted-by-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Capitol News Service</a>. &#8220;It was an actual exercise of democracy rather than a story about democracy.&#8221;

Rep. Jamie Raskin

House Dem’s Lecture Derailed By Hecklers; University President Claims ‘Free Speech’ Prevailed

House Dem's Lecture Derailed By Hecklers; University President Claims 'Free Speech' Prevailed

Congress

House Democrats

Jamie Raskin

Politics

Protesters

U.S. House of Representatives

In a blatant example of a school failing to protect a male student from false accusations of sexual assault, the University of Maryland-College Park (UMD) allowed an accuser and a powerful campus group to brand him a rapist even after the school determined he was not responsible, according to a lawsuit.
The male student, referred to in <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.510573/gov.uscourts.mdd.510573.1.0.pdf">court documents</a> as &#8216;John Doe,&#8217; was a junior at UMD when he was accused of sexual assault by a female student, referred to only as &#8216;Jane Roe.&#8217; Jane claimed in a formal complaint filed with the university on October 27, 2020, that she was sexually assaulted by John Doe and another student, referred to as &#8216;Jacob Poe.&#8217;
John contended that his sexual encounter with Jane was consensual, and her contemporaneous text messages supported that contention. Shortly after performing oral sex on John, Jane texted a friend to say what she had just done and added, “I have this thing where I like to make guys feel good.” 
After her encounter with John, she became interested in Jacob, according to John’s subsequent lawsuit. Her text messages regarding her feelings for Jacob were also positive, telling that same friend, “As soon as I walked in, I was like ‘oh shit,’” and “I feel like we… Vibed.” Jane engaged in sexual activity with Jacob, after which she fell asleep with him on the couch in John’s apartment, “hugging [him] like a koala,” one witness later testified. The next day, she stayed at the apartment, conversing with John and watching football before going home later that afternoon.
But sometime later, Jane started calling both encounters sexual assault.
Even during the investigation, the university ignored student complaints of harassment and intimidation. Jane’s mother, according to John’s lawsuit, harassed at least two witnesses, threatening one’s family in an effort to prevent him from testifying and saying that if he did testify, “he would have a problem next.” The university “took no meaningful steps to remedy the harassment or witness tampering,” John’s lawsuit says. 
Jane’s mother also personally threatened John and Jacob with physical violence on her social media account, according to court documents.
During the investigation process, Jane repeatedly changed her story about what happened with John and Jacob, the lawsuit says. At one point she said John used force, yet another time she said he didn’t use force. She claimed to be drunk and later claimed she was sober. She once said she had said no “eight to ten times” but later said she didn’t say no. 
She also at one point said John “forcibly removed her clothing” but subsequently said she removed her own clothing.
Jane also claimed that she didn’t leave after allegedly being sexually assaulted by two different men because she didn’t know how to exit the apartment building. Multiple witnesses at the hearing, however, insisted they offered to walk Jane home but that she declined. And far from being distressed, the witnesses testified that Jane “seemed like she was enjoying every moment,” that she danced, joked, and stayed up with everyone until five or six o’clock in the morning.
Jane had also told a UMD police officer that she “had a consensual sexual encounter” with John, but the school never sought these statements on its own as part of the investigation. They were only included after John obtained them through a Public Information Act request.
Even though the school had a mountain of evidence that Jane’s allegations were false, it went through with its process under Title IX, costing John more than $100,000 in legal fees, court documents say.
Prior to the hearing, Jane submitted photographs of clothes she claimed to have worn the night of the alleged sexual assaults, saying it was stained with semen. The hearing officer – in a rare move not usually seen during campus hearings – had the clothing sent to a DNA lab, which ultimately found no semen on the clothes.
On September 1, 2021, the Title IX hearing officer found John and Jacob not responsible for sexual assault. Jane did not appeal the determination, even though accusers are able to under campus Title IX policies.
This should have ended John’s ordeal, but as he alleges in his lawsuit, after he was thoroughly exonerated in an atmosphere typically hostile toward the accused, Jane and a campus organization allegedly spread the claim on campus that he was a rapist, going so far as to contact campus organizations to get John removed from them.
Jane went to UMD’s officially recognized student organization, Preventing Sexual Assault (PSA), and claimed to be a victim of sexual assault. As John noted in his lawsuit, PSA co-presidents Rachel Salem and Hailey Chaikin stated in a public forum that PSA had a special influence over UMD’s Office for Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct (OCRSM), which helps coordinate the school’s Title IX policies. Salem and Chaikin, according to the lawsuit, also stated that it was “their job” to inform students of “who the predators are on campus.” As part of this self-described “job,” Salem and Chaikin told student organizations at UMD that John was a “rapist” and “under investigation” for sexual misconduct. These claims occurred after the Title IX proceedings had concluded, which Chaikin and Salem would likely have known. 
The two women allegedly continued to make these claims for months to students and student organizations, resulting in John being ousted from those groups and continually branded a rapist despite all evidence to the contrary.
Neither Chaikin nor Salem responded to repeated requests for comment from The Daily Wire. After questioning the given deadline, a UMD spokeswoman stopped responding and didn’t provide a comment for this story.
John says in his lawsuit that he repeatedly made OCRSM aware of what Jane, Chaikin, and Salem were doing, even filing formal complaints against them and alleging retaliation and harassment. OCRSM, according to John, ignored or dismissed his complaints without investigating any of them. The closest John said he came to a resolution was when his Title IX advisor spoke on the phone with UMD’s Title IX Coordinator, who said she would tell PSA to stop harassing John, but later said she would not do so unless she could use John’s full real name, something John didn’t want. He insisted in his lawsuit that his name wasn’t needed because a general statement to PSA was all that was needed. He also alleged that using his name would only increase the harassment against him.
John responded the only way he could: With a lawsuit.
&#8220;John Doe&#8217;s complaint against the University of Maryland, in which he extensively details the harassment and discrimination he suffered as well as the complete lack of credibility by the complainant, speaks for itself,” John’s attorney, Lindsay McKasson, told The Daily Wire in an email. 
“He was fully exonerated by the University of horrendous and malicious false allegations. Nevertheless, the University repeatedly refused to protect John Doe’s rights as a student, including failing to protect him from the retaliation and harassment levied against him. The University&#8217;s egregious conduct must be rectified so this does not happen to any other students. We look forward to protecting John Doe&#8217;s rights in court.&#8221;
While the lawsuit didn’t get much attention when it was filed in April, a curious thing has happened in a more recent filing. Typically, plaintiffs are able to use pseudonyms to protect their identity, but defendants aren’t usually granted the same anonymity. But in this case, Chaikin and Salem filed motions to continue the lawsuit under pseudonyms, and a judge granted their request.
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who specializes in the First Amendment, <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/16/pseudonymity-for-libel-defendants-former-co-presidents-of-campus-activist-group-in-theylied-claim/?comments=true#comments">noted</a> that the judge seemed to accept a “promising young man/woman” exception to allow Chaikin and Salem to proceed under pseudonyms, after they argued the lawsuit could hamper their ability to find jobs and start their careers. Volokh suggested the judge’s decision in this case may be a compromise, as earlier filings still contain Chaikin and Salem’s full names.
Defense attorney Scott Greenfield <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2022/09/17/do-defamers-deserve-pseudonymity/">questioned</a> whether the women deserved the pseudonymity, asking “Is there any reason they shouldn’t suffer what they tried to do, and did, to John Doe by ruining his life? Is there any reason why, going forward, people should not know that if they hire, associate or engage with these two women, they should expect the worst of them?”
John’s case is still pending.

McKeldin Library and fountain, University of Maryland

She Accused Him Of Sexual Assault. Lawsuit Shows Her Allegations Were False, Yet She Continues To Defame Him On Campus

Lawsuit

Readers Pass

Sexual Assault

Researchers working on an experiment with carbon atoms found evidence that could suggest an alternate reality actually exists.
Victor Galitski and Alireza Parhizkar at the University of Maryland prompted speculation when they stacked two graphene layers together.
“They realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying phenomenon might generalize to other areas of physics,” a <a href="https://jqi.umd.edu/news/bilayer-graphene-inspires-two-universe-cosmological-model">press release</a> from the university stated.
“The scientists think that because the electrons can interact between two graphene layers, each just an atom-thick, they could exhibit other interactions from across space time,” <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/18600665/suspicious-clue-that-alternate-reality-exists/">The Sun</a> reported.
“Stacked graphene’s exceptional electrical properties and possible connection to our reality having a twin comes from the special physics produced by patterns called moiré patterns,” the press release explained. “Moiré patterns form when two repeating patterns—anything from the hexagons of atoms in graphene sheets to the grids of window screens—overlap and one of the layers is twisted, offset, or stretched.”
The two scientists “realized that the physics in two sheets of graphene could be reinterpreted as the physics of two two-dimensional universes where electrons occasionally hop between universes,” the press release stated.
The scientists then extrapolated from the math involved in the experiment and used that math to apply to universes such as ours.
“We don&#8217;t claim—ever—that this solves cosmological constant problem,” Parhizkar cautioned. “That&#8217;s a very arrogant claim, to be honest. This is just a nice insight that if you have two universes with huge cosmological constants—like 120 orders of magnitude larger than what we observe—and if you combine them, there is still a chance that you can get a very small effective cosmological constant out of them.”
“We haven&#8217;t explored all the effects—that&#8217;s a hard thing to do, but the theory is falsifiable experimentally, which is a good thing,” Parhizkar added. “If it&#8217;s not falsified, then it&#8217;s very interesting because it solves the cosmological constant problem while describing many other important parts of physics. I personally don&#8217;t have my hopes up for that— I think it is actually too big to be true.”
Films featuring alternate realities have become popular in recent years; some of those films include “Inception,” “The Matrix,” and “Parallel,” but an alternate timeline has been featured as far back as the classic 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
&nbsp;

HereÕs a variation on creating a time-sequence composite of the August 21

Alternate Universe Might Be Real After All, Scientists Speculate After Experiment

alternate reality

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