And given the lack of any information about what actually happened in that celebrated case, I can't help but wonder if these two incidents are related.

A Columbia University professor who was the apparent target of a hate crime last October, when a noose was left on her office door, has been sanctioned for plagiarism, university officials confirmed today. The plagiarism investigation of the professor, Madonna G. Constantine of Teachers College, was reported today by The Columbia Spectator. This afternoon, she called the investigation “biased and flawed” and accused the university of a “witch hunt.”

The university would not specify how Professor Constantine, a psychologist, is being punished.

So she is clearly dishonest here -- and her statement plays upon the noose incident to cast herself as a victim.

In a statement sent by email this afternoon to Teachers College students and faculty members, Dr. Constantine called the investigation “biased and flawed,” saying that it, coupled with “other incidents that have happened to me at Teachers College in recent months, point to a conspiracy and witch-hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community.”

“I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote. “As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”

Interesting, isn't it, that she became the target of such a convenient incident right in the middle of an investigation that was going bad for her? Interesting, isn't it, that it allows her to turn a simple investigation of academic dishonesty into a racial cause celebre? It is enough to make me ask if she hung the noose herself -- after all, there have been a number of high profile noose incidents where the "victim" is the perp trying to distract from something else.

H/T Malkin