Dive Brief:
- Prof. Joseph Wilson, director of Brooklyn College's Graduate Center for Worker Education, is under fire from the City University of New York, which operates the college, for alleged financial misconduct.
- The accusations leveled against Wilson after an internal investigation include taking at least $200,000 in salary he wasn't entitled to, misappropriating grant money, secretly renting out the center during the day, and getting reimbursed for nonexistent travel expenses, purchases at his daughter's boarding school and a TV purchase.
- Wilson has been suspended and efforts are in motion to fire him, with the state attorney general's office also investigating him though it hasn't charged him with a crime. Wilson is fighting the charges from CUNY in an internal hearing, and so far, a few charges have been dropped.
Dive Insight:
One of the dropped charges includes allegedly creating a paralegal course without permission and profiting from it, though Wilson was able to produce emails showing that other officials were aware he had created it. Financial misconduct in institutions of higher education is nothing new and isn't likely to end, but if some of these claims are true, we wonder how nobody noticed sooner. Brooklyn College's president initially sent a letter to Wilson last year, accusing him of "unjustly enriching" himself, but Wilson and his lawyer are claiming that he is the target of a smear campaign by a political science department faction.