Notes from Evil Bender

When I mocked Edward Bernard Glick for his substance-free anti-education screed, I had speculated that the “quote” he attributed to the unnamed head of the Duke psychology department might not in fact exist:

Please cite your source, Mr. Glick. A web search of the phrase returns only one result: your essay. As a responsible scholar, surely you know that quoting an unnamed professor on an unnamed “radio interview” is unacceptable.

It turns out I was right to be suspicious. You see, Glick had “quoted” from a supposed radio interview that never happened. He misremembered (to be charitable) a quote he had heard months earlier, misremembered where he heard the quote, and who said it. He literally got everything wrong, except to note that the quote (which was incorrect) had come from someone at Duke.

Confronted with this reality, Glick admitted to being completely wrong:

Inside Higher Ed located him to ask for the source of the quote and in an interview Wednesday, Glick confirmed that there is no such quote.

Glick said that he heard a quote on a radio show, while he was washing the dishes, “months and months ago,” before he ever thought about writing the column. When he was read the quote that College Freedom suspected he heard, Glick confirmed that that was the quote he had heard — not the one he wrote.

So why did Glick, who should be familiar with academic standards or at least basic honesty, put quotation marks around an attributed quote when he knew full well he was not actually quoting, but paraphrasing a quote he’s heard months before?

Asked if he knew of any department chair anywhere who had uttered the words he used, Glick said “No.” But he added that it was still correct. “Do I believe that is true? Yes,” he said, adding that he believes that regardless of what department chairs at top universities say or don’t say, those in many disciplines will not hire Republicans. “I am convinced that is the climate today.”

And that is why Glick’s take on Higher Education is completely irrelevant. He had exactly one piece of evidence to support his claim (outside of a brief quote by, ahem, Ann Coulter) and that quote was, at best, misremembered and attributed incorrectly as though it were a direct quote. Confronted with that, Glick’s defense is that he believes the quote to be accurate, even if no one actually said it.

Sadly, I must remind Mr. Glick that in the academic world, one’s opinion presented without any non-fabricated evidence is not persuasive. Claiming viewpoint descrimination while lying to make your case is a sure way to ensure you have absolutely no credibility.

Thank you, Mr. Glick, for demonstrating the academic bias against people who fabricate evidence and defame strangers.