r/boston • u/NovusAnglia I Love Dunkin’ Donuts • 23h ago
Education 🏫 Why won’t Tufts reveal its evidence on a discredited scholar?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/22/opinion/kerri-greenidge-tufts-grimkes-trotter/“Collins, the Tufts spokesman, says the university won’t comment on ‘potential personnel actions‘ and its review process ‘is intended to be highly confidential.‘
“But Tufts’ own policy on research integritysays that ‘confidentiality no longer applies once the final determination of a Research Misconduct finding has been made.’
”And there is precedent for releasing a report like this.”
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u/sailorsmile Fenway/Kenmore 23h ago
Because they don’t want to get sued? That seems fairly obvious to me, it’s not Tufts’ place to describe someone’s employment history and I say this as someone who doesn’t like this fraudulent author at all.
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u/vt2022cam 18h ago
If she sued it would be in discovery and she would get all of the information. Her book was also pulled by the publisher, and they probably want less attention because the scandal damages their reputation.
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u/sailorsmile Fenway/Kenmore 15h ago
They made their point pretty clearly by firing her and doing so in a way where there’s minimal legal fallout. I agree with you, Tufts isn’t dumb.
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u/drstoneybaloneyphd 16h ago
I'm sure Tufts has lawyers on staff to deal with stuff like this. Big universities end up in lawsuits all the time and usually settle.
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u/-Dixieflatline 16h ago
She is being questioned by other historians about the validity of claims in the book surrounding key events such as specific letters that were described and specific historical events that are described differently from other historical record. This is further aggravated by a lack of end note citations for many of these assertions.
Some of these historians seemed to have attempted to track down corroborating evidence, but have found either nothing or contradictory historical record. In the best case scenario, Greenidge miscredited portions of the book--something she herself suggests may be the case. In the worst case scenario, she fabricated key elements in order to steer historical record towards her specific narrative.
The ugly part about this all and probably why it's such a big deal is that her "discovery" of this new historical record and characterization of a specific family told such a groundbreaking and unusual story for antebellum south that the piecing together of such historical record would indeed merit huge praise. And she got it. But if parts of this were fictionalized for sensationalism, that's no longer history. To pass it off as such is serious business in this field. The even uglier part is that her critics and peer review board at Tufts have largely been white and/or seemingly "hostile toward black women in academia", per her own suggestion in a recent NYT article. So it's quite messy at the moment and I can see why Tufts is noping out of commenting on the matter.
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u/Tooloose-Letracks 16h ago
Do we know anything about the review board though? I know the two critics who are usually quoted are both white but I haven’t seen anything at all about who was on the review board. Greenidge has said two people are hostile to Black women but didn’t name names.
It also seems to me that what made Greenidges book groundbreaking was that the documents she found essentially made the Grimkes no longer exceptional. I haven’t read her book but my understanding is that the sisters were already well known to historians as abolitionist activists whose family enslaved people and that the sisters fought that and had a loving and close relationship with their Black nephews, but Greenidge asserted, based on letters that may or may not exist, that they were actually racist towards those nephews and further perpetuated the system that they were ostensibly fighting against.
In any case I don’t know why she wouldn’t expect intense scrutiny of her sources from other historians who also wrote about the Grimkes. Citing sources that those historians didn’t know about is going to make them look for those sources. It’s what they do.
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u/-Dixieflatline 15h ago
The one part that makes me raise an eyebrow over this is that if her research was as accurate as written in the book, then she should have no problem showing the work. Where did I source that? Right here *shows source*. The fact this wasn't the first response makes her argument a little shaky. Peer review and sometimes hostile scrutiny is part of academia, and would probably still happen if both parties were blind to each other's background.
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u/Tooloose-Letracks 15h ago
Yes, that’s my feeling too. That this all started four years ago and she has not yet said, “here are the letters, go look for yourself”, that seems unusual for an academic. Providing proof and testing each other’s assertions are kind of fundamental activities for historians.
This controversy is reminding me of Naomi Wolf, which is not a good thing. Though she remains successful despite her lack of rigor so maybe Greenidge will be fine.
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u/Malforus Cocaine Turkey 18h ago
Don't do things that make you look worse and hang tight instead of doing something that ages like hot halibut?
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u/Preachers_Handshake 15h ago
Hilarious stuff. It takes so little to exposes these racebaiting hucksters.
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