Oh My: President of Prestigious Arts Society Says that False Claim of Having a Doctorate Was Due to a Rogue Low-Level Employee

Yahhh. Lot of that going around.

From the New York Times. I call this a Tuesday Tickle Your Funny Bone special.*

The claim occurred on grant proposals, seeking money from you, via the NEH. (Of course.) Her actual résumé, she says, does not contain the false claim.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the prestigious 233-year-old scholarly society in Cambridge, Mass., said on Tuesday that it is standing behind its president, Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, after accusations that she had falsely claimed on at least two grant proposals to have a doctorate.

...

But a spokesman for the academy, Ray Howell, said that Ms. Berlowitz had never claimed to have earned a doctorate, and blamed the mistakes on “an iteration of her résumé created at the staff level.”

...

In 2010, she became the academy’s president, previously an unpaid position held by a distinguished scholar.

Previously it had been an unpaid position.

How about after she assumed the position? Did that compensation package change?

Hells yeah it did.

Her total compensation for the fiscal year ending March 2012 was more than $598,000...

She did sign one of the grant applications. (The NEH gave her stupid club $300,000 for one of them. Yayyyy.)

The Boston Globe, which broke the story, says she's done more than the NYT is willing to tell you about. The NYT report stresses that the society is standing by her, and emphasizes her side of the tale (my résumé didn't contain this claim!), and withholds the following bits about her pre-prepared obituary.

In other words, the NYT is defending one of its own.

So let's see what they left out:

Obituary

Berlowitz also mentioned her non-existent doctorate in an obituary prepared by her staff in the event of her death. It also mentions a job title NYU said she never held.

Job posting

An employment ad for the academy repeatedly referred to Leslie Berlowitz as Dr., further conveying the impression that she earned a doctorate degree.

BTW, people call working under her a "nightmare." So if you're wondering why the Boston Globe would bother to FOIA a random grant application from the president of an Arts society, there you go: It's almost a guarantee that one of the workers she pissed on ratted her out.

I'm now prepared to render my own ruling on this matter.

* A commenter informs me it's... Wednesday.

Let me explain how this happened.

Actually I did think it was tuesday. But then, I also wrote this piece (most it) last night, which is why the Tuesday thing was in there.

I'm not sure why I continued to believe the *following* day was *also* Tuesday.

So actually I don't know how this happened.

Except... I guess it's one of those little mysteries I deliberately insert into this blog to keep you interested, and to keep you engaged. I try to keep the blog interactive, by keeping you "on your toes" at all times with a stream of false information, misspellings, and f'd up HTML.

posted by Ace at 01:30 PM

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