Speakers back Chapel Hill-Carrboro superintendent after report on plagiarism concerns
Over 100 people attended the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board meeting Thursday night, many wearing purple, to support Superintendent Nyah Hamlett and to reject recent plagiarism concerns.
It was the first meeting since The News & Observer published a report about the superintendent’s 2019 doctoral dissertation at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
“The board knows Dr. Hamlett to be an effective, authentic leader, and as we look at continued attacks on public education, we are so grateful for her leadership as she continues to focus us all on improving student outcomes for the district,” school board Chairwoman Rani Dasi said to the crowd’s extended standing ovation.
The N&O, after receiving a tip about the dissertation late last year, found 35 examples of sentences and paragraphs that were taken almost verbatim from sources that in some cases were misidentified or not identified at all.
While a Surgeon General’s report provided the most extensive examples, The N&O’s analysis noted at least 25 other passages that were duplicated from reports and online sources, or that substituted a different word or phrase but were largely similar.
Instead of focusing on Hamlett’s dissertation, board member Deon Temne said, the community should be supporting the district’s work on critical issues of equity, education and funding.
It is “unfortunate that one anonymous tip has the ability to undermine and undo goodwill of an incredibly strong leader like Dr. Hamlett,” Temne said.
“Yet, with one questionable accusation, I’ve seen the same community members questioning her authenticity and credibility,” he said. “It is further disheartening to see other community members, who may not be actively participating in these discriminatory actions but still choose to remain passive and allow these actions to (stand).”
Hamlett’s leadership, response
Speakers who addressed the board Thursday also praised Hamlett, who started her job in late 2020 at the height of the pandemic, as students, teachers and parents were still dealing with the emotional and social strain of attending online and then hybrid classes.
They cited Hamlett’s efforts to shepherd the district through the pandemic, advance its equity goals, maintain open communication, and be actively involved in individual schools and the community. In particular, they noted her handling of a 2021 investigation into claims that two East Chapel Hill High School teacher’s assistants were reassigned for being Black.
“People need to get with the program and realize we are trying to move in a positive manner,” said Vickie Feaster-Fornville, a parent and Chapel Hill-Carrboro alumna.
“What I know is this superintendent, this Black woman that some people are uncomfortable with, because she has power to lead this district … they are upset that she can do it, so they are trying to move our attention,” she said.
Other speakers echoed her comments, including Chapel Hill native Danita Mason-Hogans, who reflected on the district’s first Black superintendent, Naomi Geraldine House, who served from 1985 to 1992.
House also was “called names, ridiculed and had to put up with unspeakable … indignities,” Mason-Hogans said, while acknowledging that “plagiarism is serious.”
“It’s important that a dissertation receive academic scrutiny, which is what happened at William & Mary and for Dr. Hamlett, and she was found not to be in violation by her institution, which is sufficient for me,” Mason-Hogans said. “What is not sufficient is that she has to endure an unequal process of inquiry and was set up for humiliation, I believe because of her advocacy for equity.”
Hamlett listened quietly before thanking the crowd for “the kind words, encouraging messages, prayers and expressions of support.”
“My commitment to our students, to our school district, and community educators and leaders is to partner with you, to support you and to block for you. Through our collective efficacy — another one of our core values — we must be doing something right on behalf of our students, and it’s clearly time to turn our social justice action up a few notches.”
Public letter of support
Hamlett has wide public support, said a group of residents who took turns Thursday reading an “Open Letter to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Community.” The letter, written by a multiracial group of elected and community leaders, has over 700 signatures, they said.
The allegation against Hamlett is “an all-too-familiar pattern,” the letter’s authors said, noting a similar concern about plagiarism that was raised in 2013, when a former Chapel Hill High School principal, who was Black, was accused of plagiarizing her own “welcome to school” message and other internal letters to staff.
“Black educators in our town report exaggerated levels of scrutiny and suspicion regarding their academic backgrounds and their work,” the letter said.
“It is not uncommon for principals to get calls from white parents inquiring about the credentials of Black teachers. Research by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that Black workers are perceived as less skilled, subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny, and more likely to be disciplined or fired than white workers for the same errors and infractions,” it said.
Hamlett issues statements
Hamlett has declined to be interviewed by The N&O, but she responded to the allegations in a Dec. 2 email and also issued a public statement about the issue on Jan. 6.
In the Dec. 2 email, Hamlett told The N&O that she wrongly attributed passages from a surgeon general’s report, but did not say why the duplicated material was not in quotes. The 164-page dissertation was written while Hamlett was also assistant superintendent for the Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia.
“In reviewing my 2018 dissertation, the sourcing and citations accurately reflect and provide credit to the scholarly research that contributed to my final product, but I now see instances where certain citations should be placed elsewhere in the work,” Hamlett wrote.
In her Jan. 6 post on the district’s website, Hamlett again defended her work, saying the dissertation includes credit where it was due and accurately reflected her research.
She also criticized The N&O’s questions, saying it is a reminder that “being in public leadership requires perfection (and undue scrutiny and judgment), sometimes at the expense of the progress and grace that I often encourage our community to extend to self and others.”
The dissertation, which focused on teacher readiness to respond to student mental health needs, will be reviewed, Hamlett told The N&O. On Thursday, Hamlett declined to say who is conducting the review, because “that is something I’m doing for my own personal (reasons), and it’s not related to my work for the district.”
Once she gets feedback from the reviewer, Hamlett said she could make revisions through the ProQuest research database. The online platform “has a third-party software that checks for errors and plagiarism,” she said.
“It’s all been painful, but it is what it is,” Hamlett told The N&O.
The district’s code of character considers plagiarism a “behavior violation” that can result in students who are caught receiving “no credit, partial credit, or alternative assignment.”
Plagiarism experts weigh in
Two experts contacted by The N&O said the examples of duplicate wording and incorrect citations suggest intentional plagiarism. A third said it looked more like a case of sloppy work.
Harold “Skip” Garner, a biomedicine professor behind a website focused on plagiarism in scientific research articles, said William & Mary officials should take another look at Hamlett’s dissertation.
“My review confirms that there were many significant areas in the dissertation that would be considered unethical and inappropriate, a violation of publication integrity standards, especially for an academic work,” said Garner, a professor at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Va.
Nancy Chesheir, a UNC-Chapel Hill medical school professor and past editor of the Obstetrics and Gynecology journal, had a different view.
The incorrectly cited sources “need to be corrected if possible if it’s in the published literature, but they are not a reason to believe that this person’s trying to somehow cheat the system,” said Chescheir, who is also vice chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, an international group based in England.
William & Mary officials cited student privacy standards in declining The N&O’s interview requests.
In an email to The N&O, Margaret Constantino, director of the college’s executive education doctoral programs and leader of the three-person committee that reviewed Hamlett’s dissertation, noted the dissertation review process is “very intense and complex.”
It involves “multiple full-time faculty” who work with the student and review the work, a public defense by the student of their dissertation, and an external editor’s review, Constantino told The N&O.
Text comparison
This section of Nyah Hamlett's dissertation cites multiple sources for information that is largely word-for-word from only one source: a U.S. Surgeon General's report.
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Speakers back Chapel Hill-Carrboro superintendent after report on plagiarism concerns."
