Rensselaer’s Weasel
Merrill D. Whitburn
Exposé on Academic Corruption and Denial of Human Rights
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY and University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Compromised principles for personal gain and academic advantage without merit.
A cabal of Rensselaer LL&C/H&SS faculty members headed by Merrill D. Whitburn and C. Lee Odell controlled graduate students by criteria that guaranteed failure for those unwilling to accept a sycophantic cloning process. The policy insured very few new PhDs entered the job market to threaten insecure and incompetent faculty members. Cabal members coerced, cajoled, and harassed both students and junior professors until they either left the university or succumbed to unlawful practices.
Through willful blindness, university administrators cover up crimes by their subordinates to an extent where they commit criminal acts themselves or become accessories before or after the fact. Anyone who knows that a subordinate has committed or intends to commit an offense and remains silent to hinder or prevent prosecution or punishment ranks as an accessory before or after the fact under United States Code 18.
Successive deans, with full knowledge of multiple fraud in H&SS/LL&C, have done nothing to investigate or to provide due process to students subjected to breach of contract and abrogation of institutional, constitutional and human rights. They have not investigated outrageous and unlawful behavior by Merrill D. Whitburn and other faculty members which includes issuing fraudulent incomplete grades and transcript forgery before manipulating expulsion. They even choreographed a police arrest.
Whitburn libeled, slandered and blackballed several doctoral students to prevent career advancement and to deny equal employment opportunity. When this author traveled from Seattle to Troy to discuss the situation at scheduled appointment, LL&C trumped up charges to have him arrested. Campus police ambushed him in an administration building, arrested him without probable cause, then held him under campus arrest for four days. [Apologia]
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Shirley Ann Jackson, President and Whoever knows that a subordinate has committed an offense and remains silent to hinder or prevent prosecution or punishment becomes an accessory after the fact. |
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Like most universities, Rensselaer has a procedure for reporting complaints, discrimination, harassment, or retaliation which probably has no more value than the database on which it resides. Intended for use as a complaint procedure it provides for immediate, thorough, and objective investigation of all claims of discrimination or harassment.
The university claims that if discrimination or harassment has occurred it will take appropriate remedial action commensurate with the severity of the offense.
Rensselaer claims that it strictly prohibits retaliation against any person for using this reporting procedure, or for filing, testifying, assisting or participating in any manner in any investigation or proceeding involving allegations of discrimination or harassment. It claims that any person who violates that policy will become subject to discipline, up to, and including, termination.
Why have President Shirley Ann Jackson and Dean John P. Harrington not investigated multiple complaints against Carson, Halloran, Krull, Odell, and Whitburn under that policy?
Why does Whitburn still occupy a fraudulent named professorship with impunity?
A plethora of documentation validates claims of discrimination, harassment and fraudulent activity yet Jackson and Harrington continue to practice willful blindness.
Merrill D. Whitburn, forever endeared to graduate students as a sociopathic Weasel, devised a program that required four courses, each taught or controlled by corrupt cabal members (Carson, Halloran, Harrison, Krull, Odell, and Whitburn) under the auspices of two equally incompetent and corrupt deans, Phelan and Judd. Devoid of knowledge about technical and graphic communication, they presented totally unprepared orations to classes. The content had virtually no relevance to course descriptions. Some of them promote discussion on anything and everything to avoid preparation for class.
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Doctoral students had no choice of faculty advisor or dissertation topic - they all had to use
After thirty minutes, Odell waived him in and said that he could only spend a few minutes which he spent making humiliating comments such as “I am not interested in anything you do or say” and terminated the conversation. In three years, he never met with the author again and studiously avoided him in the public areas of the administration building. His behavior prevented several technical communication students from proceeding with their doctoral work and they left Rensselaer because of the abuse. Meanwhile, several rhetoric students received easy-rider treatment. [Easy Rider]
These examples describe only minor examples of humiliation meted to people who had signed contracts for an education. Several professors had fraudulent credentials and had no knowledge whatsoever to enable them to teach touted courses as will become apparent from this series of essays. Several of these individuals had never been anywhere or done anything related to technical and graphic communication and abused people who had both industry and academic experience far in excess of their own.
In particular, the cabal abused and swindled the author who founded the first (which became the largest) dedicated technical communication company in London circa 1957. He had thirty years commercial experience as a CEO and teaching experience at several prestigious universities before joining Rensselaer which qualified him to judge the aberrant behavior and fraudulent programs within H&SS and particularly LL&C.
To add insult to injury, their victims had to pay full tuition, $35,000/year (current tuition rates give a logical comparison in real time) for a politically motivated program that provided no chance of academic success. The cabal employed a stable of work horses at minimal cost as teaching assistants and as unpaid consultants for lucrative contracts obtained by faculty members which they could not complete themselves through lack of knowledge and experience.
Whitburn apparently made a deal with Judd to sort out the mess that existed in LL&C when he became chair. That deal included obtainng for him the Louis Laflin Professor of English, an endowed chair, as a political perquisite. Then, for nineteen years he ran a corrupt administration with sociopathic ruthlessness, pathological lying and fake charisma. He destroyed anyone with whom he did not agree. Someone spun this totally untrue and unsigned oxymoron about him in Virtual Ratings on the web which to some degree demonstrates the extent of his scam:
What an awesome professor. First off, he actually cares about the students and his curriculum. He does all that he can to motivate the students, give them the tools they need, and to offer constructive help. He is understanding, compassionate, passionate, caring, strict, and funny. Everyone should try to squeeze in a class with this guy!!!
A fraud from the get go, Whitburn claims three teaching awards during thirty years that mean virtually nothing:
J. R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication, Society for Technical Communication, 1995, apparently obtained through political machination and sponsoring an Easy Rider. [Easy Rider]
Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching, Texas A&M University, 1978-79 which most departments give out with breakfast at their annual conference.
Best Article Award on Methods of Teaching Technical Writing among "First Annual NCTE Technical and Scientific Awards for Works in English Published between January 1, 1975 and December 31, 1980." Notice the qualifying term “among”.
The appended summation to a required doctoral course, taken from a recording by a student, exemplifies Whitburn’s inability to either research or teach. A former educator from Texas wrote: "I have a lot to say about this piece. First of all, the curriculum we devised in Texas taught everything anyone needed to know about English who did not intend to major in it at college. It was designed to have the student fully educated and prepared to enter a scientific university.
The literature source was exhaustive: Greek classic, Shakespeare, modern literature, American literature, British literature. Interspersed with the literature was a weekly concentration on grammar. Every unit had a written assignment as well as an oral presentation. Discussion employed techniques for cultural inter-communication. Every written and oral presentation was designed for a particular (varied) audience.
Technical writing was assigned in correlation with chemistry and vocational departments (they corrected for content and we corrected for writing). All of this [the Weasel’s summation] has been “done” on the secondary level. All they need to do is integrate [the] same into the university. They haven’t done a thing except talk about things. It’s quite disgusting when I consider their paycheck." [Weasel Summation]
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Whitburn’s claim to have participated in continuing education for Rensselaer's On-site Programs in Technical Communication at Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies) and IBM apparently related solely to administrative involvement as department chair. In fact, the author had to bail out the IBM program by taking over a graduate course after Krull (when he turned up for class) acted with complete incompetence to a point where IBM complained to RPI. That contract resulted in at least two IBM executives receiving unmeritorious doctorates under LL&C Easy Rider plan. [Easy Rider Plan]
Professors for required courses frequently do not show up for class at all. Grading exists as a frivolous, inconsistent, subjective, and malicious process. This academic circus completely negates the accumulation of knowledge ideal and precludes critical inquiry. It also promotes fraudulent research and publication of exaggerated findings. LL&C cabal does not educate; instead it operates a three-ring extravaganza that aggrandizes and enriches university officials and excludes almost everyone else. It follows a totalitarian ideology enforced by censorship and denial of constitutional rights.
Charactonyms complement wordplay by exploiting sound and meaning. For example, personally identifying Whitburn with a weasel characterizes his sneaky, treacherous, and cunning attributes. His rhetoric contains equivocating, prevaricating, ambiguous, and quibbling "weasel words" that deliberately mislead and take away the force and meaning from expression. He evades direct commitment and responsibility for what he says. His explicit contrast between He generates explicit contrast (positive or negative) between human actions or values and animal characteristics which results in an ironic situation. As a target for ridicule, Whitburn establishes his own counter or caricature. For the satirist, he provides a combination of humor, irony, parody, and dissonance that provide a playfulness before the satiric sting.
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Weasels suck the contents from eggs without breaking the shells. Similarly, Whitburn “weasels” meaning from preceding words and, consequently, fails to support a conclusion. He lays rhetorical eggs, then like a weasel he sucks the content from them to leave meaningless shells.
Narcissistically, he destroys anything that he does not understand or cannot compare with his own (extremely limited) knowledge base. When he makes irrational statements he uses his authoritative position to imply that his utterances comprise an absolute truth. Subsequently, he defies validated contradiction and denies legitimate discourse. Euphemistically, his weasel words cover up pathological lying and academic fraud.
Whitburn claims prominence as a professor of rhetoric; however, his bombast prompts one to dub him a rhetorical professor. He has an extremely narcissistic and hypocritical disposition. His record shows more than three decades of political machination and academic fraud. He claims expertise in several disciplines, particularly technical and graphic communication, yet he has published no research in either field. In fact, he has published virtually nothing for almost three decades (except the summation to his course that Contra Cabal published for him). [Weasel Summation]
During 1987, Whitburn informed his doctoral students of the imminent publication of his new book on Isocrates. During 1988, he published an announcement of another new book Innovation in Industries and Universities: the Rise of a New Community in America. A recent search of Books in Print, International Books in Print and the citation indexes revealed no reference to either title.
The author asked Whitburn directly to support his claims; however, he has provided neither evidence to support the empirical research that he claims nor references for these books. Subsequently, Rensselaer officials failed to investigate complaints about his academic fraud. Instead, the former Dean of the Faculty, Gary Judd, changed the name and criteria for an existing prestigious chair to match Whitburn’s fraudulent credentials.
This politically motivated maneuver allowed the appointment of Whitburn as Louis Laflin Professor of English, a named chair. Subsequently, Judd censored library information about the award and Barbara Lockett, formerly Rensselaer’s library director, refused to reveal this previously unclassified information after conferring with Judd. Lockett’s disclosure of a patron’s name and her subsequent censorship, breached a trust by any interpretation of American Library Association standards. It also showed the extent to which Rensselaer officials will go to cover up academic fraud by faculty members.
A graduate student listened to sixteen weeks of inane Whitburn gobbledygook. Previously, he had studied some law then registered in Rensselaer’s business administration program. Exasperated by paying tuition at current rates of $4,363.00 for this three-credit required course, he tape-recorded the summation which Whitburn read from yellowed notes. He thought that he might have a potential course of legal action and made the recording as evidence. He considered the course description fraudulent and characterized Whitburn as incompetent.
Whitburn changed grade records and transcripts retroactively. He coerces students by using a “comply or flunk out” ploy that causes most of them to remain silent or withdraw their challenges to his behavior and competence. Required courses gave him, as both department chair and professor of record for a required course, absolute control over the future aspirations of all H&SS/LL&C graduate students. By using subjective and politically motivated grading procedures he denies students due process. The combined conflict of interest and arbitrary misuse of power allows him to control their destiny absolutely.
The author listened to the twelve sessions (one cannot describe them as lectures) given by Whitburn and witnessed the recording of the summation. Later, he obtained a copy of the tape and transcribed it verbatim. Readers may purchase a copy of this tape for their satirical delight or intellectual disgust according to their political inclination. The transcript contains inane rambling that continues for about an hour.
The summation, intended as a serious review of eleven sessions, probably surpassed in irony anything that Jonathan Swift could have written. The Weasel’s rhetorical theory course followed a script in which Oscar Wilde would have taken pride. Lauded by students, it hilariously satirized the art of rhetoric to a point bordering upon insanity. Afterwards, several students seriously questioned Whitburn’s sanity because of his convoluted discourse and egocentric presentation. Unwittingly, Whitburn developed a new genre: self-referential satire.
People unwilling to compromise principles have historically become pariahs in H&SS/LL&C. Students and faculty members who maintain academic standards and principles find themselves with enemies on all sides. They incur the enmity of colleagues only interested in retaining and advancing their own careers.
Whitburn treats his intellectual adversaries as intellektbestie, or educated beasts. Meritless Nazis, unable to refute arguments that irritated or baffled them, used this term. Hitler used it at the slightest hint that someone would contradict him. Like Hitler, the Weasel never joins in open debate with an adversary. Like Hitler, he has his adversaries “arrested and academically annihilated to avoid discussing genuine issues. He blackballs and stonewalls them into extinction.
Philip Rubens filed two versions of a recommendation with Whitburn (04 Jan 88) so that the author could complete his PhD. He then became his doctoral advisor. Rubens agreed that the author could complete his dissertation and defend it before the deadline for graduation (00 May 93). [Kafkaesque Scenario] [Rubens]
However, it became abundantly clear that Whitburn neither intended to conciliate nor to allow completion of the PhD and choreographed another expulsion. Roland W. Schmidt, President, Gary Judd, Dean of the Graduate School, and Thomas Phelan, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences acquiesced to Whitburn’s pathological lying and refused to respond to requests for interviews or to grant due process under university regulations.
The author visited Troy (13 Jan 93) by appointment to make arrangements for degree completion and immediately became subject to RPI Department of Public Safety (DPS) surveillance and arrest with movements on campus restricted to DPS office. This DPS action resulted from reports filed by Whitburn and Judd that contained false statements that he had a history of violence and therefore threatened the safety of faculty members and administrators.
The author filed complaints while under DPS restraint and asked the Captain of Detectives for a full investigation of the malicious behavior of Judd, Phelan, and Whitburn including filing of capricious and false reports which unnecessarily occupied the DPS for four days. The police could find no history of violence.
Sharon Kunkel, Registrar, informed the author, in front of DPS investigators while still under restraint that, expulsion predicated upon a letter purportedly written and signed by Philip Rubens entirely inconsistent with two recommendations that he wrote (04 Jan 88). She claimed that Rubens made categoric statements that the author had not made satisfactory progress toward his degree. She also advised him that the actions and letters of the Graduate Committee, LL&C and the Graduate School predicate upon the letter which she refused to produce on grounds that it constituted an “official internal document”.
It seems totally inconsistent that Rubens would write two salutary letters then completely reverse himself without coercion or without providing a copy of the document as required by university regulations. Complaints against Kunkel for fraudulently altering transcripts and conspiring with others to blackball both academically and professionally became part of the investigation.
Miriam M. Netter, RPI Attorney accompanied by James D. Meindl, Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost, to a meeting at the DPS office. She behaved outrageously and claimed that after receiving a copy of a letter from Kunkel she telephoned Rubens. She said that Rubens denied having any part in writing the signed and dated recommendations. She, therefore, advised Meindl to disregard them as forgeries and a falsification of Ruben’s position regarding academic progress. [Rubens]
After travelling from the West Coast in an effort to resolve matters, the DPS personnel comprised the only people on campus that treated the author with any respect. They asked him to divulge any knowledge of criminal activity within LL&C and, accordingly, the author reported those matters of which he had direct knowledge and also divulged information about LL&C given to him by others that related to attempted suicide and murder, drug abuse, alcoholism, and other activities that could construe as criminal. It appears that police took no action to investigate any further.
Whitburn behaved immorally and unethically. The principles that he espouses embody tactics that he uses to dispose of adversaries who try to tie him to his statements. Like Hitler, the Weasel looks upon all those who profess ethical academic tenets as his enemies. Like Hitler, he tries to destroy them so that he may maintain and increase his power.
However, those who have invested time, money, strength, and enthusiasm will never give way to his ideologies or allow him to dispose of them brusquely. The author has written extensively about this cheap cheat and others have now begun to show an interest in removing him. Ironically and obscenely, his removal will probably result in the university increasing his salary as happened with his conspirator, an antisemitic Semite and former dean of the faculty, Gary Judd.
What has caused Rensselaer officials to endorse the appointment of Whitburn as a department chair and grant him a named professorship?
What has prompted successive presidents to continue to support this academic fraud?
Why have they not investigated his fraudulent claims to scholarship?
Faye Duchin, former H&SS dean, boosted Whitburn with full knowledge of his academic fraud committed during more than nineteen years as chair. She knew about his racketeering yet covered up his aberrant and illicit behavior. By her propagandizing, the Weasel’s paperback curriculum now has a red-leather cover emblazoned with Rensselaer’s coat of arms.
From all this, a reasonable person must doubt her much vaunted ethics. She willingly inherited Judd’s protégée; however, her policies did not change anything. She continued fraudulent H&SS business as usual. Her successor, John P. Harrington has a similar modus operandi and issued a series of misleading statements after Thomas Phelan’s death, probably to try to bury his corruption with him. [What Goes Around . . .]
Nmesis.
See Portable Document File (PDF) for citations.
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© Copyright 1998 by Paul Trummel |
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