Not yet 10:00 a.m., and already I have had my laugh of the day. From NJ.com:
While the governing board at Kean University has launched an investigation about false claims on his resume, university president Dawood Farahi has acknowledged for the first time that some mistakes were made.
In a recent interview, Farahi said even though there were some errors listed on past resumes, he was not responsible. Farahi said the inaccuracies, including claims that he had been acting academic dean at Avila College in Missouri and that he published “over 50 technical articles in major publications,” were made by staff members at Kean who helped prepare his resume for routine accreditation reviews at the university in 1994, 2001 and 2008.
Farahi said the claim about the 50 articles probably originated when a Kean employee condensed his resume and misinterpreted the list of titles, some of which were submitted but never published in academic journals. (NJ.com)
One thing I have learned as a lifelong member of the academy–you just can’t trust those pesky staff. They may come and go, turnover likely in the fourteen years or so since the first “inaccuracy” was added to President Farahi’s cv, but their propensity for messing with the boss’s resume just won’t go away.
Such malicious staff apparently even plagued President Farahi at his previous institution, according to the head of Kean’s faculty union, who points to “questionable claims in Farahi’s early resumes.” Far be it for me to side with a union shill, but in this case, I am more than willing to make an exception.
In the end, though, I suppose Farahi’s passing the buck is simply behavior presidential. Our commander-in-chief, after all, sees nothing wrong with heaping blame for the manifold disasters of his presidency on his predecessor. With that example of president leadership, what’s wrong with a university kingpin throwing a few staff to the wolves? It’s not as if they had tenure.
NOTE to readers: For more on doctored resumes in higher ed, see Alexander Kemos.
