Talk:Matthew C. Whitaker

Balance needed

This WP:BLP article is mainly about controversies. There are six paltry sentences on Whitaker's entire career that don't involve a controversy, before diving into in depth discussion of controversies. Hardly balanced. I have no knowledge of Whitaker nor of the scandal, and no personal interest other than balance per WP:BLPSTYLE and WP:NPOV. Fight recentism and seek a more complete biography. Although controversy may be the current news item du jour, I implore editors to seek sources from prior to 2011, or sources with different content, to construct a fair, measured, and more appropriate article, else this be a coatrack or an article on a scandal masquerading as a biography. Surely there are non-scandal oriented book reviews. Surely there are more non-scandal biographical elements. Cheers, --Animalparty-- (talk) 01:54, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

There must be such sources. I hope that they will be added to the page, but recall this is an academic who had very little profile in the scholarly community before the plagiarism accusations. Perhaps searches on his political work will produce more material for a fuller profile.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:49, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

His main "accomplishments" are his controversies. The controversy seems the reason for his bio being sufficiently notable to be in Wikipedia. The ASU faculty page lists a number of accolades, but they are mainly from ASU and locals. His situation seems to be similar to the scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon, whose main accomplishment, aside from being a PhD in an esteemed institution, was to publish controversially. So it could be a mistake to dilute the controversy aspect for the sake of NPOV and anti-recentism, although the advice is timely. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I feel like merging a condensed account of this into List of Wikipedia controversies may be warranted. If he doesn't have enough sufficient academic stature for there to be sources other than those about this controversy, it falls under WP:ONEVENT. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 22:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

No. Indeed he has exceedingly little academic stature, but this was not merely a Wikipedia scandal. He was, in fact, a recidivist plagiarist, with major national and intense Arizona press coverage for 2 separate investigations of plagiarism of which there was extended coverage over the course of several years in major publications. Coverage that twas both extensive and intensive.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:42, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

• Removed tag, coverage is still coming out and, really, User:Smokefoot is correct that he hardly has a reputation at all - certainly not beyond Arizona - except for his repeat plagiarism.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:48, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

SPA/IP whitewashing page

An SPA, followed by an Arizona IP address now rewriting page as a promo for Whitaker. That editor and others should know that no one is objecting to properly sourced info about Whitaker's accomplishments being added to this page. But removing information about 2 - count them 2 plagiarism scandals that generated national press coverage cannot be simply wiped off the page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:28, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Prodded...

Editwarring aside, Whitaker does not meet WP:PROF and falls under WP:BLP1E. It is also my impression that this article was written to specifically publicize the plagiarism controversies. This is not the purpose of Wikipedia, so I think I'd be interested in the rationale for starting the article in the first place. MSJapan (talk) 22:44, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I dont feel super strongly. He's the founding director of a topical center at the largest university in the US and apparently a visible (based on pay scale) spokesperson on race. Yes, his loudest news catching achievement is repeated plagiarism (the only way I know about him), but one senses that before the latest incident, he would have been at least marginally notable. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:54, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I was actually much more interested to hear from the two authors editwarring on this article. One is simply repasting the subject's official bio, and the other only wants to talk about plagiarism. "Head of a center" is not a qualification under PROF, nor is the size of the university at which one works (and whether ASU is #1 or #9 depends on which WP size list you use, BTW). Salary does not equal visibility, and one CNN article does not confer notability. MSJapan (talk) 00:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

That "Head of a center", size of one's institution, and salary dont contribute or are irrelevant to notability is wrongheaded. While I empathize with your implied values, those factors are some of the trappings of notability. I might think that Donald Trump is an air-head, who has accomplished zilch, but ... --Smokefoot (talk) 00:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

No, it isn't "wrongheaded"; the issue is that you're being subjective, just as you are with Donald Trump. Politics aside, Trump would be notable for business or television reasons even if he wasn't running for President. So because you don't think Trump is notable (despite objective evidence), he's not, and (despite a lack of objective evidence) you think Whitaker is, so he is? The whole point of guidelines is to prevent exactly that sort of subjective judgment. You're using words like "apparently", "some of the trappings of", etc. None of those phrases is "is notable because" The guidelines I cited define "is notable because"; that is why they are there. Those guidelines make no distinction based on any of the criteria you have mentioned, and therefore, you cannot base notability on your own criteria. MSJapan (talk) 01:12, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Matthew C. Whitaker misunderstands WP:GNG, to wit, if a subject passes WP:GNG it does not have to be pass the subset of guidelines such as WP:PROFESSOR, or WP:AUTHOR. It is not uncommon for a professor to become notable for some activity outside his regular job. Whitaker passes GNG because of the major media publishing details of the case.E.M.Gregory (talk) 03:07, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

E.M.Gregory: I have undone your change to MSJapan's signature. Don't do that. And your implied accusation that MSJapan is a sockpuppet is laughable when one looks at the contribution history, not to mention a blatant violation of WP:AGF. As for notability criteria: I would think WP:PERP would be the most relevant one for this case. He's a plagiarist, according to the sources, but that's not something that's automatically notable. Does he have long-term notability as a plagiarist? Do we have "sustained coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources which persists beyond contemporaneous news coverage"? The fact that almost all the sources are from a two-month period (May-Jul 2015) leaves me unconvinced. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:30, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I logged on last night very late, just to see whether the SPA was continuing to revert the article, and was shocked to see that it had been prodded. I ought not to have edited when I was that far past exhausted, bu t I did, and somehow managed to switch a name. I am very sorry, It was a stupid error to make.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

• Back to the page itself, looking at this morning's news, I suspect that the reason an SPA and, someone with an Arizona IP, were repeatedly blanking the page to replace it with a glowing bio is that Whitaker was back in the news, yesterday. See here: [1], here: [2], and here: [3]. He has been in the news for plagiarism since 2012, here:[4].E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, not buying your editing claim. You didn't "switch a name", you changed a signature tag and then referred to me as the article subject on a totally different line. That's not "exhaustion", that was done on purpose, because you're trying to OWN the article. The "glowing bio" by the way, is Whitaker's official bio from CRSD that you apparently didn't bother to Google and apparently don't think is legitimate enough to incorporate at all into the article. If this is a bio article, there needs to be biography in it. Also, try WP:NOTNEWS; three local stories about the same event is still local coverage about one event. There is no wider coverage of this whatsoever. MSJapan (talk) 16:20, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

• It was an error and I have apologized. What possible motive could I have had? - beyond bad judgement in attempting to edit after a late night out.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:38, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

• Uninvolved editor here - I believe we need to assume good faith. There is no motivation for EMG to mess with your signature and also call you by the name of the article subject. As I stated in the ANI complaint, a recent problem with my CTRL key led me to made me commit a lot of copy/paste errors (CTRL-C would sometimes not work, but if CTRL-V did, I would end up pasting what was already on my clipboard. Most of the time I noticed, but not always). Anyway there is no conceivable reason for E.M.Gregory to do this on purpose, so it would be good if you dropped this accusation and accept the apology given. —Мандичка^YO 😜 08:43, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

• In creating the article, I included his job titles, faculty rank a list of published books, and information about Whitaker's op-eds and talking head appearances, since they seemed to demonstrate that he is something of a spokesman on racism. You removed it. I concede that he doesn't have much beyond the series of plagiarism events - although do note that his 2005 book Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West' got full reviews in a more than respectable number of academic journals. That book alone carries him past WP:AUTHOR. Also, this is not "one event" As of the new plagiarism charges in this week's news, it is a series of three events, and not only can we not dismiss The Arizona Republic as "local coverage", and the Tucson papers covered it too. repeated and intensive statewide coverage would be accurate. We aalso need to take into account coverage in the national publications Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. I think some more general circulation media outside Arizona picked the story up, too. (Checked. Here, for exampe: [5]) I have no objection to someone putting time into expanding and sourcing the article, there must be some local media coverage of his contracts as a consultant to the police department. Unfortunately, ethnic papers, including black papers, are under-resourced and don't show up well on searches. Back when I wrote the story, it was hard to find coverage of his unrelated to the plagiarism. And I don't source to faculty bios, beyond using them for job titles. Even with listed prizes, If I find awards on a faculty bio, I look for a secondary source and if I don't find one, I figure the prize is too minor to include. As for deleting this with a prod, between the multiple book reviews and the recurring national news coverage, I think you need to take it to AFD.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:38, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The issue here is one of a fundamental misunderstanding of policy.

AUTHOR

WP:AUTHOR does not apply to academics. Per its page AUTHOR applies to: "authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, and other creative professionals", not academics. The criteria of AUTHOR are:

1. The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors. - we've established he has no research vita, which is indicated in several articles. That's why there's no coverage; it's not "ethnic under-representation" - the sources state clearly he did nothing professionally required of him for the promotion or tenure he received.

2. The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory, or technique. - also no. One needs research to do that.

3. The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. - it's not a well-known work, and this does not apply to scholarly reviews; it's talking about NYT, Kirkus, etc. Scholarly works are almost always reviewed in peer journals, which is why this criterion doesn't apply to academics.

4. The person's work (or works) either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums. - also no; it's not his work that has gotten the attention, it's the plagiarism in it.

That's why AUTHOR doesn't tend to apply to academics, and why academics have separate criteria not included nor referenced here.

PROF

As for the academic criteria:

1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. - no, the opposite has been established, actually.

2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level. - no.

3. The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE). - no.

4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions. - no.

5. The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon). - no, he didn't have a named chair appointment. There are many Foundation Professors at ASU, and it's not an award [6].

6. The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society. - not highest-level, no.

7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity. - no, the controversy is entirely within academia. The outside issues with the PD are his outside business and have been disavoed by the University.

8. The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area. - no.

9. The person is in a field of literature (e.g., writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g., musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC. - no.

Sourcing

To address sourcing:

1. I removed the op-eds because you cited one op-ed written on CNN and one written in a local paper in the span of several years as evidence of being "something of a spokesman for race." That's OR, as well as misleading puffery in the extreme. For him to be a recognized spokesman, someone else would have to recognize him, and nobody does. Therefore, you cannot say that he is and point ot that as notability.

1. There is no national news coverage of this whatsoever. Coverage in academia or Arizona news outlets is not "national." Even if there was, bear WP:NOTNEWS in mind.

Other items

You have made the comment several times that "he doesn't have much beyond the plagiarism." This has been pointed out by others. If he is in fact notable for only one thing, that becomes an issue of WP:BLP1E.

GNG requires substantial coverage. The only substantial coverage is of Whitaker's plagiarism, it's local, and it's pretty much going to go away in a week or so apart from what goes on on the campus itself. There are no wider ramifications. If there were, they'd have happened in 2011, and we wouldn't be creating an article now.

You're mixing and matching policies to try to establish notability. That's a problem, and having to stretch like that is usually indicative of having a topic which does not meet guidelines.

A bunch of newspaper coverage in a short time is not automatic GNG, especially when several outlets are reporting essentially the same story. You can cite sources all day, but it comes down to this: "plagiarized several times, got demoted, lost contract."

I fail to see any reason why this article exists except for you (and I mean "you" as the article creator and main contributor) to write about this person's plagiarism. That is clearly your focus, and all the other claims about "race spokesman" etc., are being used as foils to allow you to do that. That constitutes an attack page, and we don't permit those, either. It's even more so the case because you are reverting edits by an alleged SPA whom you claim is skewing the article. However, your article is skewed just as much one way as you claim the SPA edits were making it go the other. In the interest of NPOV, both sides need to be shown, but the problem is, there's no other side to show, because the only thing Whitaker is notable for is plagiarism. He has no published research that isn't suspect, his Center has done nothing of note, he isn't an expert on anything, and he's not a prestigious academic otherwise. As a biography, he's got nothing. MSJapan (talk) 19:29, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

• This is not a case of WP:BLP1E because it is not "one event", it is now 3 events. Whitaker is not a "low- profile individual"; he leads an academic center, appears on national television as an expert on racism, and has had well-publicized contracts to train the police department of a major city in culturally sensitive, non-racist, best practice policing. Moreover his role in a pair of plagiarism incidents that garnered national coverage was "significant" - he was the plagiarist. And consider taking this to AFD where we can both stand aside and let other editors weigh in.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

• MSJapan, Be careful about that faculty page, it needs updating. Referring ot it as you suggested, I added the fact that he is Foundation Professor of History, which would have made him notable under WP:PROFESSOR # 5. However, that title was stripped form him. Added news story form national publication about his loss of that title. Whitaker has, by the way, admitted ot the plagiarism.[7]. It was/is a major story. WP:NOTCENSORED. E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I already addressed the fact the Foundation Professorships are not named chairs, as there's at least one in every department. I have already addressed the fact of there being no basis to call him an expert except by your own reasoning. You are simply not listening to what you are being told, because three separate editors have said there are issues with this article. You are the only one maintaining there is not. MSJapan (talk) 21:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I disagree that Whitaker doesn't meet WP:PROF. MSJapan, I think you're too focused on what you take to be EMGregory's motivations. Motivations are irrelevant to a view on notability. I don't think there's a problem here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 10:33, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Saving sources

This may be useful, but one source does not go so far as to allow for the lede to "credit" Whitaker "for a renewed focus on plagiarism"; especially it's a puffed-up lift from the source's headline. Since it has no other utility in the article at present, it's here for future use.

We also don't need three citations for the same single-sentence fact, so the two that aren't already in the article are here:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by MSJapan (talk • contribs) 00:05, 22 August 2015‎ (UTC)

References

Just noticed something....

The entire "2011 controversy" section ends up by saying that no serious issues were found because of the nature of the work, so is it not UNDUE WEIGHT to give it its own section? By stating that the professor was known for plagiarism, aren't we implying something in 2011 that was not the case, or are we trying to draw the reader to the conclusion that ASU covered that up, too? MSJapan (talk) 02:23, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Following up on my own comment, User:Scholarsbio seems to have gone through the sources, and his edits seem to indicate that where the article creator claimed the entirety of the work, the scope was much, much smaller in those cases ("several entries" or "several essays", not the entire corpus). MSJapan (talk) 23:55, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The book in question is an encyclopedia with multiple authors. Whitaker was the editor. See http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2015/07/10/edu-popular-asu-professor-matthew-whitaker-demoted-plagiarism-incident/30000997/ Scholarsbio (talk) 05:19, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Additional Commentary

There was an outburst of additional commentary on Whitaker, coming in the form of two commentaries in the Arizona Republic http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2015/08/25/phoenix-demands-refund-plagiarizing-prof-public-should-demand-answers-city/32359525/ and http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/dougmaceachern/2015/08/25/whitaker-race-asu-plagiarism/32355769/ followed by a piece in the ASU student newspaper http://www.statepress.com/article/2015/08/matthew-whitaker-asu-plagiarism. The question is whether this is more of the same or whether it increases the magnitude of the event. Note that Whitaker apparently did not merit an entry prior to this event.

Note also that IHE article makes mention of poor professional behavior by other ASU historians (the anonymous blog comes in for special attention): see https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/13/arizona-state-demotes-history-professor-after-investigation-his-book. Scholarsbio (talk) 05:18, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

There are also some strength of words issues, so I would suggest that the article wording be scrutinized with respect to usage. E>M>Gregory wrote that Prof. Ellison requested a formal ASU investigation. She did not. The source indicates that she suggested it. There is a tremendous difference between "requesting" and "suggesting." I'd also note Whitaker's apology letter was included in the same source, and was not cited in the article, despite the article creator having apparently looked at the source. If Whitaker is to have an article, we cannot simply present one side of the argument. Funnily enough, with the other side of things put in, it's not seeming as serious as originally claimed. MSJapan (talk) 16:19, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Bias issues addressed

In addition to the above issues with how Ellison stated her position and when, I'm starting a section to address other issues of bias. The article creator cherry-picked material out of sources to only support his position, and has thereby distorted the facts.

• There is no denying that "requesting an investigation" and "suggesting an investigation" are two very different degrees.

• The article made it appear that Councilman DiCiccio was after Whitaker for misleading the city. He was not; he was after the Council and the police for pushing for the contract in spite of the disciplinary proceedings against Whitaker, which were already known to the Council, apparently (given the specific mention of timing). Whitaker was a secondary matter to DiCiccio - the councilman was taking issue with the behavior of more parties than just Whitaker.

• Article claimed the materials Whitaker Group plagiarized were not meant to be given to for-profit companies, thus implying that Whitaker had somehow gotten ahold of them by his own agency. The source, however, clearly stated that the materials had been requested by and provided to the ASU Police for internal use.

• In the 2011 case, two sources were cited claiming that "10 faculty members asserted" Whitaker plagiarized. Neither source makes that claim, and both refer to allegations. I therefore expanded the section with the actual findings of the committee as reported by the Basu source.

I will expand this as I go. MSJapan (talk) 16:33, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

BLP or event?

I just removed a batch of material detailiing Chicago PD's statements regarding the contract materials situation, because a) it was an expanded detail of what was stated earlier in the section already, and b) Chicago PD being willing (in theory) to give ASU PD training and materials for short money is not pertinent to Whitaker. One group making a comment after the fact to another group is a comment on the incident, and should not be construed as commentary on the person. I bring this up because if this is a BLP about Whitaker, comments about the incident that are not directly tied to him are not relevant to the article, which is about a person. If, however, this is to be a full-blown article about the plagiarism incidents, it needs to be retitled as something other than a BLP. MSJapan (talk) 16:50, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

MSJapan's removal of word to change meaning of a direct quote

When a reputable newspaper like the Arizona Republic prints a quotation from a letter, we can trust them to get the quote right. I have made the section conform to the source, and moved it to a better place within the section.E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:57, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Considering the issue was not with the quote but with "Green, who was also Black", which was unequivocally the writer's statement (and which you did not attribute to the writer), I don't particularly want to hear your quibbling. Your work is absolutely atrocious, and has been noted such by other editors both here and in the ANI you have thus far refused to respond to. You're not scoring any points by your actions, other than to show that you lack the ability to use and attribute sources properly, or edit neutrally. This article is now so far from the version you tried to "protect" that it's not even funny. Nitpicking (and incorrectly, too!) isn't going to gain you any credibility whatsoever in the face of that. MSJapan (talk) 16:21, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

(fearing that editors coming new to this debate may misunderstand, I want to point out that this was a dispute within an academic department. The point being made by my sourced addition is that both Green and Whitaker are black Americans, and, therefore, allegations of racism being flung at Green were odd.E.M.Gregory (talk) 09:45, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Digital Journal: Really?

Took a look at the Digital Journal entry. I'm not sure why including what seems to be a rather skimpy website with a rather poorly-composed article that repeats what is by now common-sense knowledge adds to this entry. As it is, the paragraph in which that appears is weak, as the other sentence is a simple report of the ASU investigation, which we already know about. Meanwhile, the article misses substantial conversation about these allegations in History News Network and Andrew Gelman's blog. Scholarsbio (talk) 20:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

That oddity would be because it started out as a general statement in the lede, stating that Whitaker brought "widespread attention" to plagiarism via technology. I felt that there was no support for that kind of statement based on one source, so it was toned-down to be more accurate to the source and moved. However, I imagine the article was written contemporaneously, and thus did not address all the potential information. I've got no objection to ditching it entirely if all it is doing is summation; I'm still fairly certain that there's a lot of coatracking in the article, and that needs to be addressed. Moreover, I don't buy the "widespread" aspect anyway; Phoenix is one city, and Arizona is one state. The GNews hits just aren't showing that. MSJapan (talk) 22:13, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Revisiting the entire entry

It has been several months since Whitaker has been placed on academic leave and has been sued by the City of Phoenix. In that time there have been several efforts to replace the text with a laudatory essay that pays little attention to the recent scandal (or a track record of them). Nevertheless, some of that information could be incorporated in a more robust and one might even suggests more balanced entry that is not primarily devoted to the scandals, although the recent efforts to "redress" the balance have erred far too much in the opposite direction. Thoughts? Scholarsbio (talk) 06:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hard to reply to such a general post. Any specific proposals? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The issue is fundamental - Whitaker is not notable for his research, because we attempted to go that route and found nothing substantial. This article was created as a pseudo-BLP precisely to talk about the scandals (which created the initial problem), and he's just not cited otherwise elsewhere for his corpus of work. The "laudatory" material referred to is material lifted from Whitaker's own university bio, and therefore we need to be careful of puffery therein. As it stands, per WP guidelines, Whitaker is either going to be notable for the scandals, or, without that, he's not notable at all. So we have a subject problem right there - notability stems from negative events only.

I would be more inclined to rename this as an event article (Whitaker plagiarism scandal or something), and avoid the BLP aspect, because it's really not relevant. OTOH, all that we know about Whitaker is the scandal coverage, so there may be no way to unbias the article in that direction. I know what I did was to fact-check every source and change what was claimed here but not supported (and I missed a few that others caught). So the article should be a) factual, and b) in line with what was reported by third-party sources. Certainly, the claims of "character assassination", etc., are unfounded, because we've made sure that what we are saying reflects what others have said, and we've used a lot of quotes (as opposed to paraphrase) as a result.

I personally don't even think this is any more than local news. Yes, it was reported in multiple Arizona news outlets, but a lot of it is thanks to the Internet-based 24-hour news cycle. Academic news sites are still academic news sites, not mainstream media, despite being on the Internet. The situation hasn't affected any other university, either inside or outside of Arizona, in any fashion. ASU doesn't even appear to have changed any policies as a result. What it looks like is a questionable appointment that was eventually brought to light, and it simply got a lot of coverage. In short, I don't know what else could be done with it, or even if, in hindsight, it really does meet guidelines now that the initial flurry of coverage is over. MSJapan (talk) 23:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I would endorse the "event" entry approach, because it would focus on what was of interest. As a biographical entry it falls somewhat short, because of the imbalance of space given to what has made him notable to a broader audience. One could add biographical information: it appears he was a somewhat notable (and promising) figure in Arizona before the revelations began to appear, and there seems to be a level of bitterness about some of this that suggests that there's more to it, although precisely what is difficult to determine. He does not appear to have been a terribly important figure on the national level as a scholar of history: rather, he falls into the scholar-as-activist category who has been big in the community but not elsewhere. Also, in perspective, some of the details about the scandal (recall my comments about Digital Journal) might no longer seem essential to the account of the event (which is why I would support that approach to a revised entry). Scholarsbio (talk) 05:48, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

This BLP has already been through an AfD and the result was "keep". Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:30, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't matter in the least, actually. There have been several occasions of BLPs being rewritten as event articles because there wasn't really a need for the biographical information. As a matter of fact, I bet we could remove everything biographical about Whitaker not pertaining directly to the case, and essentially have the same article we have now. Where he was born, etc., wasn't covered by the media outlets and has no relevance to the fact that he wrote several works that were plagiarized and was subsequently disciplined for them, does it? It doesn't...unless you want to pretend that you're writing a BLP that's really a BLP1E, and that anything outside of the "1E" really matters, when in fact the entire motivation is "this guy behaved badly, I found out about it on "teh Interwebz" cuz I read Inside Higher Ed and as a former academician, it offended my sensibilities and thus I felt it necessary to excoriate the fellow for his conduct", which, by the way, is exactly what I think was the impetus behind this article.

However, since I can't prove that unequivocally, the fallback is that articles need to be about their topics, and the topic is not Matthew C. Whitaker, if only for the reason that we don't have enough on him as a person to be able to do that. The topic is Matthew C. Whitaker's plagiarism, because that is easily 98% of the article besides Whitaker's name. If this is a BLP, why do we have no idea where he even got his earlier degrees, or what his thesis was about, or where he went to elementary school, or his first job? Those are BLP details. As we haven't got them, and giving a quick perusal of the article, what I do see that we know is what he plagiarized and from where, who investigated him, and what the conclusions were. Sounds like he's notable for what he did, not who he is. MSJapan (talk) 07:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• I'll weigh in since I started the article. I did so on a day last summer when I happened to read an article about Whitaker's plagiarism. It got under my skin. I am hardly alone when I say that plagiarism gets under my skin. Among scholarly crimes, it's right up there with dying the fur of laboratory mice and making up stats. Like Scholarsbio, as the coverage continued, I began to understand Whitaker's career. There certainly appear to have been undercurrents of powerful resentment within the department and faculty. I have no inside knowledge as to what that was all about. But even from the other side of the continent I can see that he was a scholarly lightweight who was locally notable not only as a popular professor and a useful public face for Arizona State, but as something of a scholar-activist on the local political scene, and a scholar-entrepreneur who was able to earn a tidy amount providing consulting services to government agency. That sort of thing does cause faculty resentment. Especially when someone who colleagues view as a lightweight gets a university professorship and outsize salary. (It is even possible that he was given that holy grail of faculty perks: a reserved parking spot.) It then turned out that some of the expertise he was peddling to public agencies was also plagiarized. The plagiarism, both the plagiarized training material his company peddled to Arizona police, and the plagiarized popular and semi-scholarly books that supported his career both as a university professor and as a scholar-activist and as a political commentator, are part of what makes his plagiarism intelligible. Leave this biographical material out, and we leave out useful, publicly available information on a public figure. Hew was certainly a publicity seeking, wanna-be player on both the political and consulting scenes. Not a WP:BLP1E. Not a cloistered scholar or private figure who falls under WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE proteciton. He was certainly at least locally notable separate from the plagiarism. Local is, of course, a relative term; Phoenix is a major city and Arizona is a big state. Certailny there are undercurrents of right-wing resentment in the plagiarism accusations re his public consulting contracts. But he gave some pretty aggressive speeches at political events and can hardly cry foul when political opponents also want to play hardball. Whitaker's activity as political activist, consultant, commentator, and author of books addressed ot non-scholarly audiences makes it seem inappropriate to move this bio to an article solely on the plagiarism. E.M.Gregory (talk) 22:00, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I'd like this made clear, so I'm going to rephrase your statement: you wrote an article on a subject because you were angry at how the subject acted, based apparently on the fact that you took professional affront to his activities? Do you see why that's a conflict of interest and a non-neutral point of view issue? Also, do you understand that you have in effect validated every argument made *against* your creation and editing of this article? MSJapan (talk) 00:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Nonsense. My creation of an article after reading a news article about a plagiarist is no more a WP:COI than it was for me to create 2016 Philadelphia police officer shooting because I was outraged by the attempted murder of a Philadelphia police officer, Daveed Diggs after I saw him give a fabulous performance, Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement and Kalo Shops because I share the museum's donor's passion for the Arts and Crafts movement/style, or Darmstadt American rock-throwing incident after some idiot delinquent threw a rock through my windshield. Having an interest in or even a passion for an actor, art form, idea, subject, writer, artist or topic is not the same as having a COI.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:22, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

The material I added concerning the reporting of the Arizona Republic on January 15, 2016, concerning the resolution of this dispute (and Whitaker's resignation) moves the story forward. Details of the settlement can be found by pursuing a link in the article.Scholarsbio (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2016 (UTC)