OK, so you have a fake Ph.D. Here's $475,000, now go away.

Chronicle of Higher Education, today:
Head of American Academy of Arts and Sciences Quits After Résumé Controversy

"Leslie Cohen Berlowitz has agreed to resign as president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on July 31, after she was accused of embellishing her résumé with a spurious doctoral degree, The Boston Globe reported....
[more details]
Ms. Berlowitz will receive a one-time payment of $475,000 for retirement and other benefits, according to an academy statement cited by the newspaper, but she will not receive a severance payment."

 

From Boston.com (The Boston Globe):

Berlowitz also came under fire for regularly berating staffers, micromanaging the academy’s affairs, barring scholars from viewing the academy’s historic archives, and receiving an outsized pay package -- more than $598,000 in fiscal year 2012 alone for an organization with only a few dozen staffers, several times what her peers were paid. Investigators were also examining whether the academy fully reported all her executive perks on its tax returns, such as catered meals, first-class travel, and chauffeured transit to her home.

Normally, we're outraged to see organizations stand by people they want who've claimed fake degrees. They didn't want her, apparently (after initially defending her).

 

Why was she under fire for receiving a ridiculously large salary? What about the dummies who grossly overpaid her in the first place? Shouldn't they be gone, too? :sad:

Johann

 

No, because they have to remain to make the next hiring mistake.

 

How is a one-time payment of 1/2M not a severance package?

 

It could be money owed to her. Retirement payments, bonuses, deferred compensation, vacation accrued, time left on her contract, whatever. Rather than fighting to dismiss her "with cause" and withhold that money, it might be easier just to pay it and send her on her way.

What often happens in these things is either (a) she would have nothing happen to her. Just carry on. Or (b) she'd keep working but her employer would have her no longer claim the degree. But those couldn't happen here, so they had to fire her. But letting her go and kicking her out are two very different things. "Take your money and leave" is a lot easier to pull off than "Leave your money and go."

Johann is right: the mistake wasn't in the firing. It was in the hiring. And those people got to keep their jobs, which is sad.