Lawsuit Against Northwestern Discrimination in Hiring Law Faculty Alleges Widespread Plagiarism

Three months ago, I highlighted a lawsuit that charges that Northwestern University’s law school has long unlawfully used race and sex preferences in hiring faculty. Jonathan Mitchell, counsel for the plaintiff organization Faculty, Alumni, & Students Opposed to Racial Preferences, has now filed an amended complaint that alleges that Northwestern’s most recent “affirmative-action hire,” Myriam Gilles, has repeatedly committed plagiarism.

Over a span of 14 pages (pp. 18-32), the amended complaint presents fourteen authors whose work it alleges that Gilles has plagiarized, along with side-by-side comparisons of the authors’ original passages and Gilles’s passages. It provocatively alleges that Northwestern “does not and will not care that Gilles has plagiarized to this extent”:

The university will not take any corrective or disciplinary action against Gilles for any of these transgressions—even though the university would suspend or expel a Northwestern student who engaged in this type of behavior. And the university won’t revoke the tenured offer that it made to Gilles earlier this year on account of her academic dishonesty. What matters to Northwestern is that their professors check the proper diversity boxes. Whether their professors observe the requirements of academic integrity is secondary concern. A white or Asian professor who plagiarized to this extent would never be hired by Northwestern University. But black professors who plagiarize not only get away with it but are awarded lateral appointments over non-black faculty candidates with better credentials, better publication records, and higher standards of integrity.

The amended complaint also alleges that an article by Fordham law professor Norrinda Brown that Northwestern University Law Review published in its black-women-authors-only issue “contains numerous instances of plagiarism,” which it similarly presents in side-by-side comparisons (pp. 37-42).

The discovery phase of this litigation should be quite interesting.