DEI Official At UCLA School of Medicine Massively Plagiarized Her Dissertation On DEI

Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on “Indigenous womxn” and “two-spirits.” Future doctors had to take a class on “structural racism” and were led in a “Free Palestine” chant by a Hamas-praising guest speaker. The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology, and two of its psychiatry residents championed “revolutionary suicide.”

Why has the school charted this course? One reason is its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology. UCLA has a DEI program called “Cultural North Star,” and at the medical school, it is led by Natalie J. Perry. Her official biography says her job is to “embed our aspirational Cultural North Stars [sic] value [sic] in our organizational DNA.” UCLA honored Perry last month for teaching students to “do what’s right,” saying her “empathy and radical listening” are to thank for her “success as an educator and a leader.”

According to a Daily Wire and City Journal investigation, however, Perry’s academic career is based on fraud. Perry has published a single paper, a 2014 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Virginia about how colleges should create larger DEI programs. An analysis of the paper found it ridden with the worst sort of plagiarism, reproducing large swaths of text directly from several other authors, without citations. The scale of the plagiarism suggests that Perry lacks both ethics and competence and raises questions about academic programs that push DEI.

Perry’s dissertation lifted passages from ten other papers. In key portions of her text, she copied almost every paragraph from other sources without attribution. She fails even to mention at least four of the ten plagiarized papers anywhere in her dissertation.

The first three pages of Perry’s paper, “Faculty Perceptions of Diversity at a Highly Selective Research-Intensive University,” suggest that she did not even bother to read beyond the first page of papers from which she stole. Her dissertation’s second sentence reproduces verbatim part of a sentence on the first page of a paper by Adrianna Kezar, Peter Eckel, Melissa Contreras-McGavin, and Stephen John Quaye. Her third paragraph, without citation, lifts more than 100 words from the first page of a paper by Angela Locks, Sylvia Hurtado, Nicholas Bowman, and Leticia Oseguera.

In some cases when Perry did include parenthetical citations, she wasn’t citing the papers whose text she had lifted. Instead, she simply reproduced the citations included in those stolen excerpts.

Take the above paragraph, which ends with “(Bernard, 2005; Bollag, 2005; Munoz, Jasis, Young, and McLaren, 2004; Williams, Nakashima, Kich, and Reginald, 1996).” Perry was not synthesizing those authors. Instead, the citation was part of Adalberto Aguirre and Ruben Martinez’s paper, which she copied without attribution.

A core part of Perry’s dissertation involved summarizing work done by professors Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh. Instead of citing them directly, however, Perry cribbed summaries from other academics. Perry copied and pasted almost all of a nearly thousand-word passage from a paper by Chad Hartnell, Amy Yi Ou, and Angelo Kinicki, without quoting or crediting the authors.

The rest of Perry’s analysis of Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s work is largely copied, unquoted and unattributed, from a 2003 paper by John Smart. Below are pages 13 and 14 of Perry’s paper, outlining its “Theoretical Framework,” with the italicized text coming directly from Smart:

In a section titled “Positioning Diversity Leadership in Higher Education,” Perry copies almost every sentence from one of several other papers. In no case does she credit the actual source:

Finally, in a section on organizational culture, Perry duplicates language from a variety of other authors:

Perry presented her paper as “qualitative” research because she chatted with what appear to be ten of her colleagues at the University of Virginia who sat on the faculty-retention taskforce and counted their musing as “data.” But when the paper gets to this section, where plagiarism wasn’t possible, Perry includes the following jumbled passage that includes a glaring spelling error:

The positionality of the participants informed the perspective on the origins of the commission. /in response to the needs of the varios [sic] stakeholders within the university, the commission addressed issues of diversity on the faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and university level.

The section of original text suggests that her plagiarism could be used to mask glaring academic deficiencies. Moreover, Perry in her references section fails to list some of the papers that she cites parenthetically in the body of the dissertation—a telltale sign that she had simply copied those citations from somewhere else. A legitimate academic field never would have found this dissertation plausible.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently argued that DEI policies don’t necessarily lower an organization’s expectations. But for Harvard, UVA, and UCLA Medical School—where Perry earned her master’s, Ph.D., and DEI position, respectively—this is evidently not the case. These institutions have dramatically lowered expectations for favored groups and pushed a cohort of “scholars” through the system without enforcing basic standards of academic integrity.

Ultimately, Natalie Perry is to blame for her misconduct. But these institutions of higher learning share some fault for permitting such shoddiness to stand unchallenged.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution. Luke Rosiak is an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire and author of Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education.

DEI Run Amok: meet the most corrupt cop in the US
<><>Wild ‘slush fund’ spending of Philly cop
<><>posted glowing fake news stories written by ChatGPT on her own website
<><>’lost’ 76 department guns
<><>Deputy Bilal of Philadelphia is facing public backlash for suspicious activity
<><>Her team admitted they fabricated 30 news stories for her site using ChatGPT
<><>Nearly 200 guns have been ‘lost’ under her supervision, which she denies
<><>Despite claiming she couldn’t provide supplies to her deputies, she spent nearly $9,000 on a professional costume for the department’s new mascot

By ALEXA CIMINO FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 22 April 2024

You’ve met America’s ‘worst mayor’ Tiffany Henyard, and now meet the woman who may be the country’s worst sheriff.

Rochelle Bilal is currently the deputy sheriff for the City and County of Philadelphia, and has been for the last four years - but she has recently been embroiled in scandal, including frivolous spending, maintaining a secret ‘slush fund,’ and allegedly losing 76 guns from her department.

Bilal’s campaign team also came forward and acknowledged that 30 fake positive ‘news’ stories posted to their site were generated by ChatGPT after the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that outlets could not find the stories in their archives.

The stories were written by a consultant using the AI chatbot in hopes of overshadowing the existing bad press - which is just one of the many scandals reported by the Inquirer about Bilal in recent months.

Rochelle Bilal (pictured) is currently the deputy sheriff for the City and County of Philadelphia, and has been for the last four years

Bilal said her office is severely underfunded to the point that she is unable to provide supplies to her deputies, but spared no expense for her office’s new mascot, Deputy Sheriff Mascot (pictured right, next to the sheriff herself)

WGN.COM INVESTIGATES
by: Ben Bradley, Andrew Schroedter,
Apr 21, 2024

Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s admin spent $100K on travel to Las Vegas

DOLTON, lll. — What happened in Vegas isn’t staying in Vegas… and it’s leading to new questions about a south suburban politician’s penchant for first-class travel and allegations she retaliated against two subordinates who reported a possible sexual assault by a Dolton trustee on the trip.

Tiffany Henyard is not only the mayor of Dolton, she’s also the supervisor of Thornton Township. FBI agents served subpoenas at village hall Friday for employment and disciplinary records for more than a dozen employees; and Henyard’s top aide was indicted for bankruptcy fraud earlier in the week.

She has a taste for travel and taxpayers are picking up the bill. A WGN Investigates analysis of government credit card records shows charges totaling $102,987 in the past year for trips Henyard was on.

She and twelve other village and township officials traveled to Las Vegas last May ostensibly to attend an economic development conference, according to a new lawsuit. It says Henyard’s Las Vegas entourage included two of her administrative assistants, two Dolton police officers who acted as her security detail, a photographer, two township trustees as well as a Dolton trustee.

WGN Investigates reviewed credit card records which show the entire trip cost taxpayers at least $26,099. The vast majority of the money – $24,300 – was paid for by residents of the 17 south suburbs that comprise Thornton Township.

“It’s not paid by them.” That was Tiffany Henyard’s answer to questions last fall about the Vegas trip. She was likely referring to Dolton residents since the question was asked at a Dolton village board meeting. Henyard and her team have ignored multiple follow-up questions in recent months asking for evidence of how that trip – or any of her travel – has benefited village or township taxpayers.

The group was in Las Vegas during the International Council of Shopping Centers conference, which connects retailers with communities for potential projects.

Several suburban mayors contacted by WGN Investigates scoffed at the notion the township plays any role in economic development or that Henyard and her team lured businesses to their communities by attending the Las Vegas conference.

“There certainly has been no discussion, or any evidence, past or present, of any direct benefit from this trip or any other trip to the taxpayers of South Holland,” said village mayor.

SEX ASSAULT REPORTED ON TRIP
The Las Vegas trip’s cost to taxpayers might climb significantly after one of Henyard’s aides filed a civil lawsuit claiming she was the victim of a sexual assault by a Dolton trustee on their final night in Sin City. The lawsuit accuses trustee Andrew Holmes of smoking cannabis and drinking with Henyard’s aide until the early hours of the morning. She said she became light-headed and disoriented before blacking out. A Dolton police officer who was on the trip said Holmes called – and then Facetimed him – revealing the woman was partially naked on a hotel room bed. Henyard’s aide told South Holland police the Dolton officer said he could see via Facetime that Holmes was “not wearing a shirt” and that he “walked over to where she was sleeping and pulled her clothing back, exposing her [private parts].”

The woman and Dolton police officer say they reported the alleged misconduct to Henyard the day after they returned from the trip. They recounted Henyard saying she would be “ruined” if the incident became public and vowed to take care of it, according to the lawsuit. Instead, the woman said she was put on unpaid leave and eventually terminated while the officer said he was demoted off Henyard’s security detail.

A South Holland police report filed ten months later quoted the alleged victim as saying she saved a shirt that contained “bodily fluids” as potential evidence. It’s unknown if the clothing has been turned over to police or tested.

South Holland police have said they are working with their counterparts in Las Vegas to investigate. Holmes has denied wrongdoing and has not been criminally charged. Henyard, the Village of Dolton and Thornton Township are all named as defendants in the civil lawsuit.

FIRST CLASS TRAVEL
Credit card records reveal Tiffany Henyard and her top aide in both Dolton and the township, Keith Freeman, flew first class on United Airlines at a cost of $3,741 per person. Freeman has since been indicted on bankruptcy fraud charges. He’s accused of lying about – and attempting to hide – his employment by Dolton from his creditors, despite the fact he sits right next to Henyard at Dolton’s public meetings which are easily viewable on YouTube.

Henyard and her allies have a fondness for first-class travel and accommodation. They’ve taken trips to Austin, Portland, New York City, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. in the past year. Henyard and her team stayed at the Four Seasons hotel in Atlanta, billing taxpayers nearly $9,000. Township taxpayers footed the bill for five first-class flights to New York and charged $13,037 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square. Henyard and a different group of officials racked up a $10,831 bill for a stay at the Fairmont Hotel in Austin, according to credit card records.

In Las Vegas, Henyard and her entourage stayed at Planet Hollywood at a cost to taxpayers of $8,457. They charged a total of $587 for meals at Ruth’s Chris Steak House to their government credit card.

OPPONENTS BATTLE BACK
Henyard gets little scrutiny of her spending and a rubber stamp on bills in Thornton Township where only one trustee opposes her. Township Trustee Chris Gonzalez said he has pushed for explanations of the trips – and how they benefit residents – but is routinely ignored by Henyard and her allies who control the township board. “I get no answers,” Gonazlez told WGN Investigates in January.

Fire temporarily shuts down popular drive-in restaurant in Grayslake
It’s a different story in Dolton where some of Henyard’s former running mates have now turned on her. They’ve formed an opposition block that has refused to pay village bills unless and until Henyard provides more transparency. They’ve even gone so far as to hire former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, who used to be a federal prosecutor, to investigate both the alleged sexual assault in Las Vegas as well as Henyard’s spending.

There are also growing signs that residents are taking notice of the questionable conduct in Henyard’s administrations. “We are fed up,” South Holland resident Curtis Watts said at a recent township meeting.

HENYARD CLAIMS TO BE THE VICTIM
Tiffany Henyard frequently reminds people that she is the first black, female mayor of Dolton and the first black supervisor of Thornton Township. She has argued that racism plays a role in the scrutiny she receives. “You all forget: I’m the leader,” she shouted at her opponents during a Dolton village board meeting in February. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are Black. You all are Black! And you all sitting up here beating and attacking a Black woman that’s in power,” she said. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

SPENDING SPREE CONTINUES?
Henyard and Freeman both flew first class to Washington, D.C. in January to attend a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It included a visit to the White House where Henyard was front-and-center for a speech by President Joe Biden. Township taxpayers were billed $1,436 for the airfare. There were two charges to the township credit card from the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January totaling $5,000.

Also in January – the same week Freeman filed for bankruptcy protection – township credit card records show he and Henyard flew to Atlanta for an undisclosed reason and stayed at the Loews Hotel for three nights. The airfare and hotel cost taxpayers $4,449.

It’s unclear what Dolton residents are spending to finance Henyard’s taste for travel because her administration has ignored open records requests in violation of an order from the Illinois Attorney General.

WATCH: THE MAYOR, MISTRUST AND MONEY: A RECAP OF WGN INVESTIGATES” REPORTING ON TIFFANY HENYARD

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