… is the lying creative writing professors do about their academic and professional backgrounds.
An intrepid professor at Cal State Long Beach, Brian Lane, discovered scads of lies in the online biographies of two of his colleagues in the film and electronic arts department. They claimed screenwriting prizes they didn’t have. Advanced degrees they didn’t have. Professional memberships they didn’t have. One claimed to be a psychologist. Lots and lots of lies.
Brian wrote to UD this morning with an update: Both professors have been fired. A third professor, vociferous in defense of these two, has apparently also been fudging credentials.
Is there more of this sort of thing in writing than in other fields? How many James Freys sit on America’s writing faculties, lying on their bios and lying in their memoirs?
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:58AM
Am I missing something, UD? The article you link says that Brian Lane & his colleagues are in the FILM department, not Creative Writing.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:12AM
My mistake, Mark. Thanks for the correction. Note that most of the faculty in this department, as in creative writing, is made up of creative writers — people writing films rather than novels and poems. There are also historians of the cinema, technical people, etc., on the faculty, but it is mainly made up of writers.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:59AM
I recently quit a grad program in Communications because a lot of the recent hires (some of whom sat on a grade appeal committee) had spurious credentials.
Some of these people originally got hired to teach the production/professional courses, were liked by the standing faculty, and then got hired when a line opened up. Many of them have Master’s degrees in unrelated fields (e.g. MBA, Master’s of Liberal Arts, Management, etc.).
Their academic experience is often nil (before the adjunct gigs) and they tended toward the anti-intellectual. In their eyes (and one must presume the eyes of the Ph.D.-holders on the faculty), professional experience trumps academic excellence. I don’t understand why hires cant have both.
Silly me.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:46PM
It could be worse. Here in the ATL we had a dude pretending to be a doctor.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16427262/detail.html
"I was told [by Piedmont Hospital] at the time he was arrested, he and a nurse were taking a patient from the emergency room into intensive care," said Tammi Perteet.
Oh yeah, and the fake gynecologist from……Florida! Where else.
Police: Fake Doctor May Have Performed Gynecological Exams