U. Wisconsin Prof ‘Cleared of Misrepresenting Her Ethnic Identity’
“Critics have denounced the university’s handling of the matter, arguing that it highlights how ill-equipped higher ed institutions are to address such complicated cases of identity.”
This has become a surprisingly common issue in higher education but it rarely ends in this way.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Professor Cleared of Misrepresenting Her Ethnic Identity
The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee has reversed course and cleared professor Margaret Noodin of misleading people about her ethnic identity, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The university initially concluded that Noodin’s inconsistent explanations of her supposed Indigenous ancestry violated the university’s code of conduct and lacked integrity. But when Noodin objected and requested a secondary “expert review,” the university obliged and eventually cleared her of any wrongdoing.
University provost Andrew Daire assigned professor Mark Freeland to conduct the second review. Freeland, who succeeded Noodin as director of the university’s center supporting Native students and research, has been one of her biggest defenders against the accusations, the Sentinel reported.
In the end, Daire accepted Freeland’s conclusion but urged Noodin “to consider how you represent yourself publicly.”
Critics have denounced the university’s handling of the matter, arguing that it highlights how ill-equipped higher ed institutions are to address such complicated cases of identity.
“All I can say is wow,” Sarah Gordon Altiman, a UWM graduate student who took several classes with Noodin, told the Sentinel. Altiman is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “It is interesting that the university had her hand-picked successor be the so-called expert on Indigenous identity. [Noodin and Freeland] are personal friends and knew each other prior to his hiring—talk about a conflict of interest.”
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This is no different than any other government entity investigating itself. They almost invariably find they did nothing wrong. And if the wrong-doing is so egregious that it can’t be overlooked, the solution is additional training or changes to the very policies that were ignored in the first place. No one is disciplined, demoted, fired or held accountable for any wrong-doing.
In this case, a personal friend of the pretendian, who had defended her against the allegations in the past, was selected to do an “independent review” and recommended ignoring evidence of wrong-doing and just giving her a good talking-to.
What a joke.
Just require everyone to provide our 23andme results.
Problem solved.
Next question, what percentage is considered a POC?
My 2% North African?
Harris’ 50% African/50% Asian?
People from Iraq are Asian not African.
A Hispanic that is 40% Spanish (European)
Wouldn’t it be “one drop”?
then we would all be minorities.
23 % Me isn’t really an indicator. Not all Native American tribes have been profiled to be identified in those tests, from what I understand. Besides, some people want to maintain their privacy – as in, my bloodline should not be relevant. Finally, don’t we have a few federal laws on the books saying it is illegal to require race and ethnicity information?
Don’t do that. 23andme along with all the others have a history of providing your DNA to law enforcement helping to build a national DNA database.
She is pretendian?
If you stop using identity as a proxy for goodness, this sort of thing stops.
As long as you let the identity cult within Progressivism have any air at all, bogus/questionable claims will continue to plague you. “I don’t care who your ancestors are. Here you’re just an American, like everyone else” is extremely powerful, and why it was MLK’s dream.
I agree with GWB. Your identity should have no effect on your employment. If I choose to represent myself as Native American, that’s nobody’s business but my own. Besides, it’s the truth because I was born in Florida, a part of America.
Another Lizzie Warren Pretendian.
The link led to the paywall so here is a good story on her https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2023/10/31/uw-milwaukee-professor-margaret-noodin-indigenous-or-pretender-native/70972938007/
“Despite admitting she does not have documentation of an Indigenous ancestor, she said she grew up believing she was Indigenous because of what her family told her.”
So, her family made up crap and she went around pretending to be part Indian. That’s not uncommon to have family tales. What isn’t common is to pull a Lizzie Warren and obtain a $167,000 year job at a University by it then when questioned by actual Indians immediately step down and leave the state.
The term “Native American” was invented by American Indian critical race theorists at Harvard, or so I was told by an American Indian academic who was there at the time.