To Cheat, Or Not To Cheat: Does It Really Matter?

Ron Robin is a revisionist on the issue of academic dishonesty. David Callahan, on the other hand, is a hardliner on intellectual dishonesty. (Go to Callahan's Cheating Culture web site here.) If this is (fair & balanced) appraisal, so be it.

[x HNN]
The Myth of Academic Deviance
By Ron Robin

Do we live in particularly deviant times? A cursory glance at academic newspapers, internet bulletin boards and, of course, the recent spate of books, suggests that an epidemic of academic crimes and misdemeanors--ranging from plagiarism to the fabrication of data-- is sweeping through the groves of academe. The historical profession, according to David Callahan, is now a card carrying member of the "cheating culture" in which "survival of the slickest" appears to be the norm. Personally, I have my doubts.

While statistics are hard to come by, there is little to suggest that we are in the midst of an intellectual crime wave. I do not, of course, deny the transgressions of ethics and standards in academia. In a profession that boasts few visible saints, there has always been a constant stream of rule benders, and scoff-laws. The difference today lies neither in the quantity nor the quality of contemporary malfeasance in the ivory tower. Wrongdoing is simply more resonant than rampant.

Technology Takes Command

To begin with, I would argue that academic deviancy appears more common because it is easier to detect. Many of us have, at one time or another, stumbled across a student paper created by Internet cut-and-past. Such instances are usually presented as evidence of uncontrollable online fraud. The Internet may, indeed, facilitate deceitful practices. But this same form of technology has streamlined detection as well. Suspicious prose can be “googled” to detect its origins, while Amazon and other sites provide online searches of books on every conceivable subject. With a growing number of journals requiring the posting of data on their internet sites, the hordes of amateur sleuths who comb through such accessible material have become a fabricator’s nightmare.

In addition to their removal from secluded surroundings, deviancy debates are now amplified by news forms of dissemination. Such procedures now take place on cacophonous Internet forums, where professional gatekeepers appear helpless to manage procedures or control the attendant fallout of bickering academics. The Internet has also changed, if not revolutionized, the terms of deviancy procedures. Once upon a time, deviancy spectacles boasted a judicial aura; they were presided over by a judicial body, observed and monitored—if at all-- by a mostly passive audience, and usually confined to the discreet surroundings of a well-defined scholarly community.

For better or for worse contemporary cyber debates do not offer such restraining circumstances. Latter-day deliberations cascade out of academic precincts and scholarly journals. Cyberspace encourages instant and mass participation, while eroding the distinctions between a handful of participants relaying information to a mostly passive audience. The abundance of cyber platforms and contributors is inherently subversive and open-ended; cyber-debates disrupt conventional authority and challenge professional portals. The internet forum blurs distinctions between the public and professional arenas, the local and the global, while empowering in the process a broad range of participants, arbitrators, and rule makers. Anyone with even the slightest interest or even passing competence may weigh in and contribute to ongoing forums. Given the Internet's deep memory, latter-day scandals and deviancy debates are, as well, practically immortal. They never fade away, and they can be brought back to haunt the original protagonist at a stroke of a keyboard.

Deviancy debates mediated through cyberspace rivet our attention because of their shrill tenor. It is often impossible to avoid the wall-piercing volume, the gratuitous acrimony and irrelevant verbal abuse that dominate the typical cyber-discourse. Even in the best of times, academic exchanges are often an exercise in verbal intimidation and metaphorical bloodletting. Yet, when mediated on the internet, with its protocols of instant participation, active rejoinder, and a lack of restraint borne out of the medium's relative anonymity, such cyber exchanges are inflammatory and immoderate. Cyber debates thrive on volume and speed, rather than persuasion and deliberation. And while internet discourse has obvious benefits—it is immediate, democratic, and accessible—it is, as well, impulsive, lacking in contemplation, and often inflammatory. Technology offers no avenue of escape either; colleagues, acquaintances and perfect strangers appear to conspire in clogging our e-mail boxes with the latest provocative response to the scandal-de-jour.

I do not, of course, imply that the current tidal wave of deviancy spectacles is solely the result of technology-run-wild. Nevertheless, in the case of deviancy spectacles mediated via the Internet, the medium is, indeed, the message. This does not mean that the text is unimportant, but rather that the use of a particular medium dictates the terms of debate, has a significant impact on the controversies’ life spans, their narrative structure, and their tone. Virtual communication is not only a technology for transmission and reception. Instant communication via the internet has encouraged the rise of a new pluralism, induced significant shifts in the geopolitics of academia, and has dislocated conventional nodes of knowledge and power. The dissemination of controversy via the internet breeds a culture of rancor that sometimes obscures structural objectives in the name of scoring points. In other words the mere use of a novel technology or mode of dissemination is, at times, of greater significance than the content of its messages.

Yet, lest I be accused of technological determinism, I should note that the applications of these technologies have achieved resonance because they are powered by prevailing, cultural, non technological forces-- in particular a widespread discontent with academic mandarins and the restrictions they have imposed on the production of knowledge, a growing fascination with the limitations of objectivity in scientific inquiry, and a powerful public yearning for moral transparency, intellectual integrity, and stable standards in unsettled times.

Trial-by-website is also the result of the demise of professional disciplinary mechanisms. Academic enclaves—from history to histology—possess, in theory, professional mechanism for maintaining disciplinary order. Such procedures are now functionally obsolete. Epistemological fragmentation, the sheer number of practicing academics, as well as the tangled growth of professional societies have eclipsed the monopoly of what used to be one coherent professional association capable of enforcing both mores and morals, formally and most often informally. An authoritative—and often discreet-- academic center has been overwhelmed by an ebbing, porous periphery, quite oblivious to the codes and cautious mannerisms of conventional governing boards. Technology merely provides the tool for the realization of a new pluralism that has been simmering under the surface for a long time.

The Selective Scandal

While the "outing" of deviant scholars is now a veritable cottage industry, not all of the accused find themselves trapped in the headlights of public interest. Is there a typical social profile of the scholar who merits a public tar-and-feathering? Jon Wiener has identified a direct link between the politics of the accused and their public lambasting. I would like to suggest some alternative explanations:

1. Media interest: One of the most fascinating aspects of latter-day scandals is the alacrity in which they find their way into the mainstream media. A scandal-hungry mass media is always fond of revealing the faults and foibles of the self-righteous. Surely, a lapsed academic is more titillating than familiar banker-gone-bad, or a crooked politician. However, not all wrongdoers are lambasted on the pages of the Boston Globe and other prominent broadsheets. This dubious privilege is reserved for the public figures among us, in particular those who have basked in the glow of the media prior to the eruption of scandal.

The incursion of a celebrity culture into academia has had many positive side-benefits for the media savvy historian. At the same time, celebrity historians pay a heavy price for their notoriety: they are entrapped in the Golden Cage of a celebrity culture. As "citizens in a republic of voyeurs" (Seyla Benhabib) we are fascinated with the spectacle of fallen Gods—be they rock-stars or those presidential historians with great hair who dominate the TV screen. The scandals exposed in the media usually involve celebrities, and often have a conspicuous melodramatic side. The scandal of a celebrity lend itself to a personalization of the act of wrongdoing: such as the morality tale of pride leading to a fall or other familiar mass-media images. The academic scandal of a star undergoes a transformation until, at times, they appear entirely unrecognizable. Their representations draw upon sensational language, personalized conflict, and familiar mass-media images that have little to do with the intellectual issue at hand.

2. Intellectual tenor of the debate: The well-publicized cases of malfeasance occur when deliberations tend to wander from a factual investigation of wrongdoing- to a more general critique of epistemological quandaries. A few well-known examples will suffice:

A. Plagiarism: During the debates concerning the transgressions of Stephen Ambrose, Stephen Oates and others—animosity appeared to stray from the original charge of plagiarism and focus, instead, on the perpetrators' hybridity—the fusion and confusion of an intellectual calling with a popular form of historical infotainment. Plagiarism debates tend to focus on the manner in which such hybrid scholars—who claim academic credentials, yet achieve their fame in the entertainment world—trivialize the craft of history writing by manufacturing a boilerplate form of history, replete with sentimental and derivative storytelling and a casual dismissal of disciplined remembering. Literary kleptomania does not appear to be the major issue at hand. Plagiarism is presented as an example of the type of transgression that occurs when scholars cross the divide separating intellectual reconstruction of the past from a pandering to nostalgic memory, when they churn out books at an industrial pace, thereby belittling and overshadowing the work of the "real" historical artifact: the product of a painstaking craft-like process, rather than assembly-line remembering.

B. Fabrication: Michael Bellesiles's alleged fabrications of evidence in support of a gunless America is a case in point. While ostensibly concerned with Bellesiles's imaginary statistical evidence, the scandal provided a conduit for a much broader debate on the pitfalls of the "usable past" paradigm and the follies of "presentism"—the casual, if not manipulative construction of the past as an explanatory device for contemporary reality. Instead of conducting an historical investigation anchored in verifiable documents, Bellesiles's original sin was his fabrication of data to reflect present-day concerns. Bellesiles chose what others have called the "noble lie." He allegedly manufactured an attractive, yet illusory version of the past to support the important existential cause of gun control. According to Ira Gruber, Bellesiles was "enamored by the idea of using the past to reform the present.” The great divide separating the lives of long-dead ancestors from the dilemmas of the present was conspicuously deleted from his work. Thus, a critical Jackson Lears observed (before he was aware of the charges of fabrication), Bellesiles offered the “anti-historical” but attractive premise that the past was first and foremost a “compendium of useful lessons” for contemporary dilemmas.

In tailoring the notion of a usable past to popular demand, Bellesiles found no redeeming quality in “recognizing “the finality of the past.” He was, then, no different from the army of mythographers he had set out to challenge. In his quest for a usable past he had enshrined a narrative no less mythical and unmoored than the version he had set out to debunk. “ America’s gun culture,” an emphatic Bellesiles claimed, “is an invented tradition.” Yet, in his zeal to undermine the power and resonance of this “invented tradition,” Bellesiles had willfully employed exaggeration, selective quotations, and distortion of quantitative evidence. His noble lies undermined the very position he had sought to bolster.

C.Embellishment in the classroom: The debate concerning Joseph Ellis's transformation into the Forrest Gump of our profession began as a straight-forward dispute on lying in classroom. Having deliberately mixed truth and invention before a captive audience, scholars wondered whether his research should be taken on faith, and to what degree did his embellishments tarnished his office as keeper of the past. Ellis's friends and colleagues pleaded poetic license, arguing that there "there is an element of great teaching that's theater," which legitimizes the creation of a classroom persona...that's really not quite you." (Donal O'Shea).

Predictably, the debate offered a commentary on the politics of academia as well. As far as the University of Maine’s Howard Segal was concerned, the Ellis affair was a prime example of the profession’s obsession with irrelevant misdeeds and its pervasive unwillingness to clarify the historian’s obligations to teach a biased-free understanding of the past. Segal complained that the same system that had rushed to judgment in this mostly minor case of intellectual misdemeanor appeared paralyzed by major offenses, such as the publication of ideological diatribes masquerading as history. Segal mentioned, in particular, the tomes of Wellesley's Tony Martin” who taught and published anti-Semitic “nonsense” with impunity.

Other commentators noted that Joseph Ellis was responding to a public demand for a particular pernicious form of remembering—the fatal attraction to the "experiential" form of remembering by means of a theme park, pseudo-real film footage, and, of course, the now-typical encounter with a pseudo-protagonist. In an age jaded by virtual reality, our student-consumers of historical accounts, crave the "real thing" an eye witness to "reality," even if the eyewitness report is invented. We are attracted to the glittering fake version, media sociologist Sherry Turkle reminds us, because the fake is more exciting and compelling than the real. "What would we rather see?" Turkle muses. "A Disney crocodile robot or a real crocodile? The Disney version rolls its eyes, moves from side to side, and disappears beneath the surface and rises again. It is designed to command our attention at all times. None of these qualities is necessarily visible at the zoo where the real crocodiles seemed to spend most of their time sleeping. And you may have neither the means nor the inclination to observe a real crocodile in the Nile or the River Gambia."

The understanding of the past through fictionalized presentations, observed Yale's Jim Sleeper, was Ellis's cardinal sin. Professors, he argued, had a sacred obligation to resist a culture of facsimiles and provide students with the necessary intellectual tools to sift between the real and virtual. History had been infected by what Joyce Appleby described as a pervasive "cultural milieu….imbued with factoids, infomercials and" fatally realistic reproductions. It is precisely under such circumstances that the historian has an obligation to at least seek authenticity rather than cede authority to credible verisimilitudes. Ellis, according to his critics, had failed this crucial cultural litmus test.

The Necessary Scandal

In concluding, I would like to survey, ever-so briefly two common interpretations of the significance of contemporary scandal debates and then offer my own take on the issue.

A.The postmodern view: Under the ironic gaze of the postmodernist, history is a malleable enterprise, where the borders separating the domains of fact and fiction, public domain and intellectual property are fuzzy, arbitrary, and political. Beneath the official record lie other, different versions of the past that are revealed only by acts of intellectual subversion. The past is not an entity unto itself; it exists as a reflection and refraction of the present. Therefore offering imaginative or even imaginary versions of the past is salutary because it erodes epistemological regimentation, encourages the disassembling of obsolete paradigms, and promotes the construction of a critical and constructive present. The postmodernist argues that academic malfeasance is a mutable, ideologically saturated affair. Even in the case of plagiarism, the postmodernist argues that such rigid definitions of intellectual property, are a political device for obstructing other cultural traditions in a multicultural America. Originality—the essence of scholarship—should not be measured by an obsessive counting of words and a compulsive search for original ownership of an ephemeral commodity such as text. Originality lies in the manner in which an argument is presented.

B.The traditionalist view : Many of our colleagues approach latter-day scandals as a symptom of a disease- ridden academic polity, a veritable “university in ruins.” Such pessimistic viewpoints are, at times, tempered by distinctions between the scandal as an illness—a passing malaise affecting one particular individual—and the scandal as pandemic— a rampant disease that has taken control of, and debilitates an entire community. All too often, (and based on circumstantial evidence), singular acts of wrongdoing appear as symptomatic of a larger cause. Scandals are posited as the result a virus, passing from one infected individual to another; they demonstrate the pathological symptoms of a disease-infected academic polity. The wave of contemporary scandals, is what Oscar Handlin described in another context as inundation of the modern university by “plagiarists, loafers, incompetents, drunkards, lunatics (mild)” and the most insidious enemy of all: the glib intellectual trend-surfer.

C.The Necessary Scandal: While there is, of course, much merit in the preceding interpretations, I would argue that the very existence of wrongdoing serves an important normative function. The sociologist Kai Erikson once observed that the detection of deviancy—academic or otherwise—is not necessarily a sign of a society in crisis. Aberrance, “is not a property inherent in any particular type of behavior; it is a property conferred upon that behavior” for the functional purpose of inscribing or revising rules and regulations. In other words, delinquency debates, such as the present wave of academic storms-in-a teacup, are part of a necessary process of reflection rather than a symptom of declension. I understand the most conspicuous accusations of academic miscreancy in recent years as somewhat more complex than simple instances of wrongdoing, and/or a symptom of the unraveling of grand narratives and paradigmatic conventions—whether salutary or cataclysmic. Deviant behavior may sometimes be, in the lingo of postmodernists, an issue of positionality, or in simpler terms, in the eyes of the beholder; in other instances, there is little ambiguity about the deviant act. But above all, scandals are in my view an indispensable device for intellectual border control. The “discovery” of deviance is first and foremost a didactic protocol for informing and conceptualizing intellectual boundaries; it is an essential instrument for preserving social structures and controlling ambiguity, and not a distress signal. Scandals today are more visible due to changes in scholarly communication and community arrangements rather than the spread of a deviance culture. But in the final analysis, scandals are necessary, observes historian J.C. Davis, “because it is only through deviance that we understand normality.” If this is indeed the case, the proliferation of disaster warnings, on the one hand, and gleeful funerals, on the other, may be somewhat premature. The present bout of scandals may very well reflect vibrancy rather than demise.

Ron Robin teaches at the University of Haifa. His latest book is Scandals & Scoundrels.

Copyright © 2005 History News Network

Another Dr. Laura

Academic dishonesty is rife. The plagiarists (Stephen Ambrose and Doris K. Goodwin) and liars (Michael Bellesiles and Joseph Ellis) have joined Clio's Hall of Shame. They have taken their place beside Stephen Oates and Odie Faulk (and countless others). They all must move over for Laura L. Callahan, Ph.D. Dr. Callahan "earned" her degree at Hamilton University in Evanston, WY. See the Hamilton University web site here. See a former Motel 6 recycled as a university campus. Of course, the two of the last three presidents of the Collegium Excellens (where I toiled for 32 years) "earned" their doctorates at Bossa Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. If this is (fair & balanced) deception, so be it.

[x Reason]
Cut-Rate Diplomas
How doubts about the government’s own “Dr. Laura” exposed a résumé fraud scandal
by Paul Sperry

Laura L. Callahan was very proud of her Ph.D. When she received it a few years ago, she promptly rewrote her official biography to highlight the academic accomplishment, referring to it not once or twice but nine times in a single-page summary of her career. And she never let her employees at the Labor Department, where she served as deputy chief information officer, forget it, even demanding that they call her “Doctor.”

Callahan’s management style had always been heavy-handed. Once, while working in a previous supervisory role at the Clinton White House, she reportedly warned computer workers to keep quiet about an embarrassing server glitch that led to the loss of thousands of archived e-mails covered by federal subpoena. But with her newly minted Ph.D., Callahan became intolerable, several employees say, belittling and even firing subordinates who did not understand the technical jargon she apparently picked up while studying for her doctorate in computer information systems.

One employee was skeptical of Callahan’s qualifications, however, and began quietly asking questions. The answers worried him, especially after Callahan was hired in 2003 as the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy chief information officer. His concerns and the resulting investigation ultimately revealed a troubling pattern of résumé fraud at federal agencies, including several charged with protecting Americans from terrorism. The scandal raises serious doubts about the government’s ability to vet the qualifications of public employees on whom the nation’s security depends.

“When she was running around telling people to call her ‘Dr. Callahan,’ I asked where she got her degree,” says Richard Wainwright, a computer specialist who worked for Callahan at Labor for two years. “When I found out, I laughed.”

It turns out Callahan got her precious sheepskin from Hamilton University. Not Hamilton College, the highly competitive school in Clinton, New York, but Hamilton University, the unaccredited fee-for-degree “distance learning” center in Evanston, Wyoming, right on the Utah border. Such diploma mills frequently use names similar to those of accredited schools.

Unbeknown to Callahan, Wainwright had once lived near the small town of Evanston (population: 10,903) and knew it well. As a student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he received his bachelor’s degree years ago, he had made beer runs to Evanston, less than 60 miles away. He knew there were no universities there, or at least none worth attending. “Evanston doesn’t have much but a few motels and liquor stores,” he tells me. “I looked up Hamilton University on the Web and saw it was an old Motel 6, and I knew it was bogus.”

Indeed, the old motel lobby is clearly visible in a photo of the main entrance to Hamilton posted on the home page of the school’s Web site at hamilton-university.edu. Click on “Campus,” and you’ll find more photos of the converted motel, as well as another small building on the campus, shot from a sharp angle to make it appear large and august.

If the other building looks like a church, that’s no illusion. It is a church—sort of. Callahan’s alma mater is run by the Faith in the Order of Nature (FION) Fellowship Church, also in Evanston. In fact, the church is headquartered at the same address as Hamilton, which was organized as a “nonprofit theocentric institution of higher learning” in 1976 and claims a religious tax exemption.

Student of Nature

Here’s where it really gets weird. FION believes all life forms, including bugs and trees, are created equal and should be treated with equal respect. It feels the same way about education.

“We accept all education as equal in Nature,” according to the church’s stated doctrine. “We offer recognition and special designations to those who have achieved higher levels of understanding regardless if obtained naturally or formally.” Apparently that’s how it got into the diploma business. FION’s Web site describes Hamilton University as “a Nature-based institution of higher learning, which grants university level degrees that are based in whole or in part of [sic] education obtained through Nature.” Since there’s little, if any, coursework required, call it education by osmosis.

But this Nature isn’t free. Tax-exempt Hamilton, with a staff of three, charges a flat fee of $3,600 for nature lovers in need of a Ph.D., while certifying that all its degrees are accredited “based on the rigid accrediting standards of the American Council of Private Colleges and Universities.” And not to worry, Hamilton’s Web site assures future graduates: “All transcripts carry the ACPCU seal.”

What it doesn’t mention is that ACPCU is a fake accrediting agency that the FION church set up to accredit Hamilton. The U.S. Department of Education does not recognize ACPCU as a legitimate accrediting body. (Hamilton officials did not respond to requests for comment. Calls go to a voicemail system.)

To get her Ph.D., Callahan merely had to thumb through a workbook and take an open-book exam. The whole correspondence course—which includes instruction on business ethics—takes about five hours to complete. A 2,000-word paper (shorter than this article) counts as a dissertation.

In short, Callahan’s diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Though there is that nice leather-bound holder.

It gets worse. Callahan owes her entire academic pedigree to Ham U. The bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science she lists on her résumé were also bought at the diploma mill.

The high-paid senior official was plainly pulling a major scam. And Wainwright was on to her. “I had finally caught Callahan in one of her lies that she would not be able to get out of,” he says of his unpopular boss.

Paid Vacation

At the time, Callahan had applied for an important high-level position at the Department of Homeland Security. The job was deputy chief information officer, similar to the post she held at the Labor Department. But this new job required integrating and managing some of the nation’s most sensitive databases in a time of war. Callahan clearly wasn’t qualified, no matter what her résumé said. Wainwright wondered if she could even be trusted with a top-secret security clearance.

After Callahan landed the post in April 2003, Wainwright anonymously tipped off a Beltway trade journal about her phony degrees and fraudulent résumé. Government Computer News broke the story about Callahan, triggering an 11-month congressional investigation that culminated in government-wide reforms meant to curb the use of diploma mills by federal employees, whose tuition is often financed by taxpayers.

“She was in a position where she could cause…damage to the United States,” Wainwright says, speaking publicly for the first time about the case. “And that’s why I did what I did.”

Callahan’s fraud was exposed in May 2003. Curiously, she wasn’t forced to resign until March 26, 2004, after being placed on administrative leave—with pay—the previous June. That means she continued to draw her Department of Homeland Security salary of between $128,000 and $175,000 for nearly 10 months while under a serious ethical cloud. Misrepresenting qualifications on a résumé, an official bio, or an application—including submitting false academic credentials—is grounds for immediate dismissal, according to federal rules written by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Homeland Security officials maintained they were awaiting the results of an internal investigation, which, oddly, was led at one point by the Secret Service, which does not usually investigate such matters. (Callahan is married to a Secret Service agent, but there is no evidence to suggest he took part in the probe.) “We have no reason at this time not to believe Laura Callahan’s credentials,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich told Government Computer News on May 30, 2003, months after the scandal broke.

Wainwright, who was interviewed by OPM investigators who knew her degrees were phony, wonders why it took Homeland Security 10 months to confirm what OPM already knew—what he found out in a few minutes of online research. Meanwhile, congressional investigators found that red flags about Callahan’s academic credentials had already been raised in her personnel file at the Labor Department, according to House Government Reform Committee spokesman Dave Marin. Yet no action was taken there.

In fact, Callahan was twice promoted by the department, even as complaints about her promoting unqualified cronies and rewarding them with big bonuses piled up against her at the office of Labor’s inspector general. A confidential 2001 report issued by Assistant Inspector General John J. Getek cited “allegations of waste, mismanagement, fraud and abuse” against Callahan’s office. Another Callahan employee—one of the complainants, who claims she retaliated against him in evaluations and raises—gave me a copy of the report, which concluded that Callahan’s management practices had led to “low morale” among her 60 federal employees and 65 contractors. Callahan and her lawyer declined repeated requests for comment.

Separation of Degrees

It turns out that Callahan’s phony diplomas from Hamilton were backdated. Hamilton boasts on its Web site that it can “custom tailor” degree programs “to meet the needs” of busy professionals. Callahan’s advanced degrees were required for her Labor promotions as well as her Homeland Security transfer. Her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees officially were conferred in 1993, 1995, and 2000, respectively.

Yet in March 2000, Callahan made no mention of the 1993 and 1995 diplomas while describing her educational background under oath in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee. They are also missing from her sworn prepared statement submitted to the panel.

Callahan was called to the Hill then to answer charges by four White House computer specialists who swore she threatened them with jail if they talked, even to their spouses, about a computer coding error that conveniently kept hundreds of thousands of e-mails covered by subpoenas from being turned over to federal investigators of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. (Callahan denied under oath making such threats.) At the time of the so-called Project X e-mail scandal, Callahan was a supervisor in the White House’s computer branch.

“I’m a graduate of Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, New Jersey,” Callahan said in her opening statement. “And I have numerous certificates and a series of awards and recognitions that I’ve basically been able to achieve over my almost 16 years of federal service.” Callahan then began to tick off all her work-related awards, closing the chapter on her education.

“I do have available for you, if you like, a list of those accomplishments, because I think it helps you understand who I am, because those accomplishments number over 40, and they include recognition from not only [military] commands and agencies for which I worked for, but they also include recognition from outside entities,” she continued in a soft, demure voice. “What I mean by that, to give you an idea of who I am, the outside awards include the 1995 Supervisor of the Year award—”

“Excuse me, Ms. Callahan,” committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) mercifully interrupted. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but your entire record of accomplishments is not necessary at this time. We really want to get on with the questions pertinent to the hearing.”

At no time in the long hearing did Callahan bring up the Hamilton degrees—just a two-year associate’s degree in liberal arts from Thomas Edison State that she got in 1992. That degree is no longer on her bio sheet, replaced by the three Hamilton diplomas. It’s not clear whether the OPM or Homeland Security ever tried to obtain the canceled checks Callahan wrote to Hamilton for the degrees to see if the dates on the checks correspond with the dates on the diplomas.

But investigators with the General Accounting Office (GAO) were able to solve the mystery after several lawmakers asked the watchdog agency to probe Callahan and other diploma mill graduates employed by the federal government. In a May 11 report, the GAO said Callahan received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in rapid succession between March 2000 and June 2000. Since her Ph.D. arrived in March 2001, that means she got all three degrees within a year.

What the report doesn’t say is that Callahan went shopping for her phony bachelor’s and master’s degrees right after her embarrassing House testimony in March 2000 and as she was bucking for another Labor Department promotion that required such degrees. The degrees were backdated to make it appear as if she got them in 1993 and 1995, which would look more plausible on her résumé. The Ph.D.—also backdated, to 2000—closed out the academic package: a three-for-one deal at Diplomas ‘R’ Us.

Faithful Correspondent

But at least give Callahan credit for getting her associate’s degree; she did some legitimate schooling after high school, right? Actually, even that is debatable. Much like Hamilton, Thomas Edison administers an external degree program for older students that gives course credits for life and work experience, with no required attendance. It has no resident faculty, no classrooms or library. The SAT is not required, and all applicants are accepted. It’s a noncompetitive correspondence school.

Which raises the question: Was Callahan even qualified for her White House job, which she got in 1996—just before the problems with the computer system for archiving and retrieving e-mails sent to key Clinton appointees? (To this day, none of the “lost” e-mails relevant to the investigations have been recovered, despite a federal court order demanding them.) Amazingly, Callahan, with just an associate’s degree and a few years of computer experience, had direct oversight of the network infrastructure and desktop computing environment used to support the offices of the president and vice president.

Howard “Chip” Sparks, a career White House employee who worked with Callahan (who at the time went by the name Laura Crabtree) did not think she was qualified at all. Sparks, a networking specialist, questioned a technical decision she made in 1997 and practically pulled back a bloody stump. Callahan later warned him in a memo not to question her qualifications again. “Please be advised I will not tolerate any further derogatory comments from you about my knowledge, qualifications and/or professional competence,” she snapped in the March 3, 1997, memo.

At Labor, Callahan eventually got more power (despite being pushed out of the Clinton White House over the negative Project X publicity) and became less tolerant of those who didn’t agree with her. “She had a style where she was right and you were wrong,” Wainwright says, “and if you ever questioned her knowledge, if you were a contractor, you were fired, and if you were a fed [employee], you were banished.”

Then she got the Ph.D. and threw it in all their faces, Wainwright and others say. “She insisted we call her Dr. Callahan,” he says. “And she would belittle people with her technospeak to make them look stupid. In fact, she said most people [at Labor] were basically stupid.” They got the last laugh.

Mill Work Ain’t Hard

After Callahan’s phony degrees were exposed, Congress asked its investigative arm, the GAO (recently renamed the Government Accountability Office), to audit other federal agencies to find out how widespread the problem of bogus academic credentials is inside the government. Congress also wanted to get a sense of how much, if any, federal money pays for tuitions at diploma mills.

Looking at the personnel of eight federal agencies chosen at random, the GAO found that 463 employees showed up on the enrollment records of just three unaccredited schools. (It actually looked at four colleges, but only three responded to its request for information and only two fully cooperated.) This was merely a sampling of the dozens of mills operating nationwide, not an exhaustive audit; given the limited nature of the GAO’s investigation, the true number of federal employees who are academically unqualified to fill the positions they hold could be in the thousands.

Agencies tasked with defending America from terrorism were among the top employers of workers with phony diplomas identified by the GAO. The Department of Defense employs 257 of them. Transportation has 17. Justice has 13; Homeland Security, 12; Treasury, eight.

The GAO also found that two diploma mills alone have received a total of nearly $170,000 in payments from a dozen federal agencies for tuition for 64 employees. Hamilton University refused to cooperate with the GAO in its audit of federal payments for student fees, so it remains unclear whether Callahan’s tuition was subsidized.

But as a serial fake-diploma shopper, Callahan is one of the worst offenders among the senior officials identified from the eight federal agencies the GAO surveyed. At least 28 senior-level employees had degrees from diploma mills, the GAO found, while cautioning that “this number is believed to be an understatement.” Among them: Daniel P. Matthews, chief information officer for the Department of Transportation (which oversees the Transportation Security Administration), who got his $3,500 bachelor of science degree within eight months from diploma mill Kent College in Mandeville, Louisiana, and three unnamed managers with super-secret Q-level security clearance at the National Nuclear Security Administration—including an Air Force lieutenant colonel who attended no classes and took no tests to get a promotion-enabling master’s degree from LaSalle University, a diploma mill affiliated with Kent College and also based in Mandeville. No word yet if they, too, will be forced to resign, or if it will again take the news media to drum them out of office.

The GAO report has prompted the OPM, which conducts background checks on new federal hires, to crack down on the résumé cheats, who short-cut their way to the top and undermine those employees who work long and hard for legitimate degrees and who might get passed over for a raise or promotion. The agency is revising its hiring and background investigation forms to emphasize that degrees must be from accredited schools. It also has authorized more money for background checks so job applicants’ academic credentials can be more thoroughly investigated. Down the road, U.S. senators are considering legislation to ban agencies from paying for courses from unaccredited schools. (Congress is not immune to the scam. In fact, an aide to the Senate committee that investigated the Callahan scandal had enrolled in an unaccredited school.)

It remains to be seen whether those reforms will help restore confidence in the federal work force. The American people need to know that the best-qualified workers are running the war on terrorism, not a bunch of hacks and cheats.

Paul Sperry is WorldNetDaily’s Washington bureau chief. Formerly of Investor’s Business Daily, he is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism (Thomas Nelson Publishers).

Copyright © 2005 Reason