Victim of hate incident fired from Columbia University

A Columbia University professor at the center of a campus noose incident last year has been fired from her job.

After several months of investigation and deliberation on a charge of plagiarism against Professor Madonna Constantine, she was terminated by the school on Monday, according to a letter sent to the faculty from the President and Provost of the New York-based college.

In a message to her students, Constantine suggested that she was being targeted for termination because of her race.

"I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner," she wrote. "As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted."

Constantine was the victim of a hate incident late last year when a noose was found on her door one morning. The noose incident is still under investigation.

"The decision [to terminate Constantine] will take effect following a hearing before a faculty committee, and Constantine has been suspended, effective immediately, until that hearing is completed," said the letter from the school administrators.

The faculty advisory committee of the Teacher's College of Columbia University made the decision, which the president and provost announced on Monday.

According to campus sources, Constantine's lawyer Paul Giacomo revealed that the sanctions against his client included suspension without pay and firing pending an appeal. Giacomo believes the actions against his client are "retaliatory and hostile."

The investigation of charges against Constantine has been going on for the last 18 months. The administration confirmed that the investigation "was prompted by complaints from students and one former faculty member who said language from materials they wrote was included without attribution in the articles."

Constantine denied the charges and accused her students of having plagiarizing her work, which is said to have very strong similarities with the work of her former students and of another professor. Investigators insist that Constantine's explanations for the similarities are "not credible."

Giacomo said the findings against Constantine were "fatally flawed," according to the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper. The faculty advisory committee did not evaluate the "plethora of documentary evidence," and the committee never interviewed key witnesses, showing that the information the investigation relied on was "demonstrably false," Giacomo said.