Michigan State University Dean Accused of Plagiarism

Jerlando F. L. Jackson, the Dean of Michigan State University’s (MSU) College of Education, is facing multiple allegations of plagiarism.

The allegations were first reported in the Washington Free Beacon last month. However, despite a formal complaint being filed, neither Jackson nor MSU have addressed the allegations since then.

The formal complaint alleges 27 instances of newly discovered plagiarism in Jackson’s work. However, the allegation is unique because, in addition to the new allegations, it also highlights 32 previously reported ones.

Long-time readers of this site may remember Jackson’s name from February. Then, Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, was facing her own plagiarism allegations.

One of the allegations against Charleston was that a paper she co-authored with her husband was a duplicative publication of one of her husband’s previous works. Jackson is the third co-author of that controversial paper, which is where the 32 previously reported allegations come from.

So, how serious are the allegations against Jackson? The answer is complicated.

Examining the New Allegations

Right off the bat, this complaint is clunkier and more difficult to follow than most of the earlier ones.

First, the filer does not clearly state whether Jackson cited the works (just not quoted). Second, much of the yellow highlighting represents paraphrased or rewritten material, not verbatim copying.

Those issues make it challenging to perform a thorough analysis based on the complaint alone. However, I was able to obtain at least some of the papers involved, though not all of them.

Twelve of the allegations against Jackson deal with his 2000 dissertation. They accuse Jackson of copying a 1968 paper by Henry Mintzberg.

At first blush, these are also the clearest and most egregious allegations. However, upon closer examination, two problems arise. First, as noted above, much of the highlighted text is rewritten, not verbatim.

While you can undoubtedly plagiarize with rewritten text, that’s only if the source isn’t cited. However, if you look at the actual dissertation, Mintzberg is mentioned over 90 times, and this paper is cited in the footnotes.

While some of the text is still too close to the source for my liking, we are now revisiting poor paraphrasing, a common theme among these allegations.

However, the first three allegations carry the most weight. They concern a 2003 paper that he published in the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals Journal. They accuse Jackson of plagiarizing from a 1990 paper by Gary Orfield in the American Journal of Education.

Once again, the yellow text indicates both verbatim and non-verbatim similarities, but Jackson’s paper does not cite the source. So, even if this represents adequate paraphrasing, there’s still an issue with the information. In fact, the section in question has no citation at all.

This is especially interesting as Jackson served as guest editor for that issue.

Finally, the remaining allegations deal with a 2002 paper Jackson published A
Long Way to Go: Conversations about Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students. The allegations here are similar to those in the 2003 paper, focusing on rewritten but closed text.

However, the paper does not include the source in its citations.

The Previously Published Allegations

The previously published allegations focus on a 2014 article Jackson, along with Sherri and Larvar Charleston, published in the Journal of Negro Education. According to the claims, the article is significantly similar to a 2012 article published by Lavar Charleston without coauthors.

We already examined this set of allegations in February. There, it was clear that this paper could represent an instance of duplicative publication with potential ghost/guest/gift authorship issues. Given that it was Sherri Charleston’s only academic publication, this was a potentially serious issue for her.

It’s a different story with Jackson. According to Google Scholar, he has nearly 100 publications dating back to 1998. While this doesn’t make him immune to authorship issues, it means that a single retraction isn’t likely to damage his body of work too much.

That said, between the two new publications the complaint highlighted and the unanswered questions over this article, there’s cause for a thorough investigation.

The journals involved need to examine these articles and decide what, if any, corrective action is required. This could include a correction or a retraction if deemed necessary.

As for MSU, they need to examine his body of work. While these could be isolated incidents, there could also be a pattern. Without an examination, we have no way to know.

So, while these allegations aren’t as serious as they seemed at first blush, they do point to enough of an issue that they can not be easily ignored.

Bottom Line

I know some people will ask why I’m covering this now when the allegations were first made in early October. The answer is simple: I didn’t see it.

Ever since the Claudine Gay scandal in December 2023, these allegations have been getting less and less media attention. No reporter called me with this story, and it didn’t appear in my news feeds. The same hasn’t been true for stories before and after this one.

The news media seems to be growing weary of these politically motivated plagiarism allegations. Interest in these stories has waned considerably outside of extremely conservative publications.

However, just because an accusation is made in bad faith or for political reasons doesn’t mean that it doesn’t highlight real issues. In this case, it appears to be true.

That said, how damaging those allegations will be to Jackson remains to be seen. Right now, we’re looking at just 3 percent of his publications. A few retractions or corrections probably won’t unseat him, especially if they are decades old and may have other mitigating issues.

On the other hand, if this pattern has existed throughout his career, then there is a serious issue that requires a strong response. However, we’ll only know that with a thorough, neutral investigation.

Header Image: Branislav Ondrasik, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons