It’s rare that accusations of scholarly misconduct merit attention from New York City tabloids. But the case of Madonna G. Constantine, a Columbia University professor, is not your average plagiarism kerfuffle.

A law firm hired by Columbia found that Ms. Constantine had borrowed the work of two former students and a former colleague. The university asked her to resign (she declined) and then cut her salary. Ms. Constantine, who asserts there is a conspiracy against her, says that someone at Teachers College hung a noose outside her office door in October.

In an editorial with the headline “Contemptible Columbia,” the New York Post weighed in on the controversy:

By retaining Constantine as a tenured professor, and by keeping the alleged “sanctions” applied against her secret, Teachers has demonstrated that it cares as little about its reputation as Columbia cares about its own.

A columnist for Newsday doesn’t seem to buy Ms. Constantine’s claim that she’s a victim:

If Constantine is such a victim, how did she get to be a full professor, with tenure, the head of an annual conference, and the former chair of her department?

Read The Chronicle’s coverage of the case here and here. —Thomas Bartlett