It was only a matter of time, really.
When you consider the massive pipeline from elite universities to the highest levels of government, it was never a question of IF a current senior government official would be exposed as a fraud and plagiarist, but WHEN.
Yesterday, Christopher Rufo -- who showed the world the fake academic achievements of former Harvard President Claudine Gay, among many other university administrators -- and Daily Wire journalist Luke Rosiak released a new report. This time, the DEI plagiarist was none other than Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
EXCLUSIVE: Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook is one of the most powerful economists in the world. But @LukeRosiak and I have discovered that her academic work appears to contain plagiarism, according to her former university’s policy.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
The plagiarism scandal hits the Fed. 🧵
Of course, Cook is a former Harvard and Michigan State University economics professor. Of course, she is.
Over a series of tweets, Rufo lays out Cook's highly questionable academic credentials, which include copying the work of other authors verbatim without attribution, and even plagiarizing her own copied work (that's a new one).
There have long been questions about Cook’s academic work. Her publication history is quite thin, contains serious methodological errors, and largely focuses on race activism rather than rigorous, quantitative econ. She had trouble getting approved by the Senate. pic.twitter.com/IvAQyijf43
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
Another race activist. What a shocker.
We have found that, in a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals, without proper attribution.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
In "The Antebellum Roots of Distinctively Black Names," Cook copied-and-pasted verbatim language from Calomiris and Pritchett, without using quotation marks when describing their findings, as required by her own university’s written policy. pic.twitter.com/1KwWCtTntU
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
In "Rural Segregation and Racial Violence," Cook appears as the lead author, with Logan and Parman as coauthors. But this paper simply duplicates much of Logan and Parman's prior work, which appears to be a violation of MSU's policy on "self plagiarism." pic.twitter.com/4O5uEQCm6b
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
Can we pause for a second to ask what 'The Antebellum Roots of Distinctively Black Names' or 'Rural Segregation and Racial Violence' have REMOTELY to do with 'economics'?
Cook's work is littered with these and other instances of plagiarism and self-plagiarism, according to MSU's policy. Some of the instances are minor, perhaps signifying sloppiness, but others are much more troubling, rising to apparent misconduct. pic.twitter.com/zoqwfVEX4Y
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 10, 2024
We weren't sure if Cook ever wrote (or copied) any academic papers that were on the subject she taught for years.
But in Rosiak's tweets and Daily Wire article (co-published by Rufo in The City Journal), they did find at least one.
Joe Biden appointed to a 15-year term on the fed an "economist" who had never published a peer-reviewed paper on economics. And the papers she did publish (on race), it turns out, at times plagiarized and often recycled language from co-authors' old work.https://t.co/fy40GaxMv8
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) April 10, 2024
Cook's most famous "economics" paper is about how the number of black inventors purportedly plummeted suddenly in 1900 due to racism. In reality, one of the largest data sets of inventions Cook was relying on simply ended in that year.
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) April 10, 2024
The article explains:
Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise.
So, if we're following this correctly, Cook not only plagiarized at Michigan State, but also published fraudulent statistics to justify her pre-conceived conclusion.
And they wonder why academic credentialism is dead.
Rufo and Rosiak further state in stark terms why this is a huge problem.
Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She ... served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.
Oh. Well, at least that's not an important job that impacts millions of Americans every day or anything.
Economist Chris Burnet chimed in on Cook, who he had written about a few years ago when her nomination to the Federal Reserve was under consideration by the Senate.
Most predictable scandal ever
— Chris Brunet (@realChrisBrunet) April 10, 2024
I wrote about Lisa Cook in my first ever article, in 2021: “The Federal Reserve Goes Woke”https://t.co/HvJIL1FMCF
“She is a fraud and an intellectual lightweight, yet no one is brave enough to point it out … I will end with pragmatic advice —… https://t.co/uwYkDFC1HV
The tweet continues:
She is a fraud and an intellectual lightweight, yet no one is brave enough to point it out … I will end with pragmatic advice — directed at US Senators rather than at degenerate gamblers: please do not elect Lisa Cook to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The future of civilization may depend on it. Should she be nominated and passed, the damage that she will do will last for decades; she will use her promotion to push for more change and a downgrading of standards, and she will do it with a smile on her face as she pats herself on the back. She has dangerously insane ideas (e.g. requiring racial quotas for boards of publicly traded companies) and fascistic sympathies — you can be sure that she will fight for expanded powers for the government to tell large corporations who to hire, who to fire, what to make, what to buy, what to invest, how much to charge. Just as most Berkeley PhDs do, she thinks she knows what is best for you, and she will do everything in her power to compel businesses’ political support.
Wow. Talk about 'YIKES.' Cook was confirmed in a 50-50 vote along party lines, with DEI Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote.
Rufo and Rosiak also expose how Cook is far more 'activist' than 'economist,' as she once tried to have University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig fired and canceled for the horrible crime of ... opposing the 'defund the police' movement (fortunately, she failed).
This saddens me. It literally hurts my heart to see what has happened to academia and who gets rewarded versus who gets dinged. https://t.co/hhdEDLJJzW
— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) April 10, 2024
Swain is one of the (many) professors Claudine Gay stole from, so she has a little more insight into this than most.
If I were a black scholar who had worked by butt off to be successful, I’d be PISSED that lazy DEI hire plagiarists like Lisa Cook are making me look bad. https://t.co/EZ7h4Mccgv
— Jackie Wright (@Joes1Neuron) April 10, 2024
True scholars of ANY race should be pissed.
They’re putting absolute morons in every single govt bureau and agency. https://t.co/PvCYu2SrEY
— Financial Guys Media Network (@finguys) April 11, 2024
It can no longer be called anything but deliberate.
Does anyone there not cheat to get into these positions of power? Ever? https://t.co/VtGgDKMDhh
— MayoMonkey 🐰 (@MayoMonkeyredux) April 10, 2024
Cook's predecessor at the Federal Reserve was current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin, so you can draw your own conclusions there.
A plagiarist, holding a key position as an economist in the Fed Reserve making decisions and policy for the entire country, does not inspire one bit of confidence. https://t.co/QPuhQ6tTKK
— 🌷Silvina🌷 (@SilvinaFlorida) April 10, 2024
What it inspires is abject dread.
may explain why the fed keeps creating helicopter money. https://t.co/W5F67i7Tci pic.twitter.com/7oAAFiCJSR
— Russ (@SoCalRuss1983) April 10, 2024
Another dishonest race-baiting DEI mediocrity. https://t.co/uVe3wNS5XI
— Mahound's Paradise (@MahoundParadise) April 10, 2024
It is becoming the rule rather than the exception.
Given that the whole logic of the progressive state -- Big Government, for short -- is that we'll live better if defer to very smart administrators, finding out that our money is controlled by a charlatanic half-wit kind of puts a spike in that conceit, doesn't it? https://t.co/AVWWcuGys4
— Patrick McIlheran (@PaddyMacMke) April 11, 2024
It's difficult to believe in 'Big Government' when Big Government is completely populated by charlatans.
This is probably a good time for a quick reminder that the current President was once laughed out of Presidential consideration when HE was found guilty of plagiarism.
What a difference a few decades make.
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