Saturday, November 27, 2010

My article titled “Intellectual 419: Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo Compared” which compares and contrasts the tendency for Dr. Oyibo and Mr. Emeagwali to romanticize and hyperbolize their contributions to knowledge—to put it mildly—attracted quite a buzz on the Internet.  I have been told that the hate-filled, barely literate commenters that swarm Sahara Reporters like fetid maggots hurled vile and vicious personal insults at me for exposing the intellectual fraud of these swellheaded, egotistical imposters. 

I have stopped reading comments on my articles on such Nigerian Internet sites as Sahara Reporters and the Nigerian Village Square; they are too sadly familiar and too predictably malicious and ignorant to deserve being read by any serious person.  So I didn’t get to read the insults thrown at me. 

But two article-length responses were written to my write-up by two respected Nigerians.  The first was by Mr. Sonala Olumhense, the cerebral Guardian columnist whose exceedingly well-written essay I had the pleasure to read in my secondary school Practical English class several years ago. ( I had no idea that he was still alive until I rediscovered him in the Guardian in the 1990s).  That he wrote such a kind and flattering defense of me is at once humbling and inebriating. 

The second article-length response to my article was written by a certain Dr. Dare Afolabi, a mechanical engineer who teaches at the Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, which I thought was a fair and thoughtful, if misguided, rejoinder.  The substance of the rejoinder was that although Oyibo may be “crazy,” he did make substantial contributions to knowledge in his field, and that it is not impossible that the Guardian was right in speculating that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. 

He then brought the example of a certain Arthur Clarke whom the New York Times reported to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994. “ The whole world knew, in 1994, not fifty years later, the same way Arthur Clarke knew that he was a nominee for the Peace Prize in 1994: someone leaked it.  Leak?  In journalism?  How in the world is that possible?”  he wrote. 

Well, these are valid points.  Recall, though, that I admitted that Oyibo did, in fact, make original contributions to scholarship through his many peer-reviewed, scholarly publications.  Not being a scientist, I am, of course, in no position to sit in judgment over the quality of these contributions, but I am persuaded by the fact that he did lots of work that went through the crucible of peer review. 

My point—which Dr. Afolabi seemed to agree with when he said "More recently, however, I must confess that Gabriel has lost me when he started speculating on Atum, Atom, God, and so on”—is that Oyibo's GAGUT theory, which is at best an unpersuasive conflation of science and metaphysics, on which he stakes his claim to genius and Nobel Prize nomination, has never been peer-reviewed, hasn’t been published by an academic press, is pooh-poohed by his peers, and therefore can’t be anything but the vapors of a once brilliant but disturbed mind. 

So, that leaves us with the question: on the strength of what contribution to knowledge was Oyibo nominated for the Nobel Prize?  His routine academic articles as a university professor which, by the way, his colleagues didn't find worthy enough to grant him tenure at two separate U.S. universities?  If that were the case, every intellectually productive scholar should be a Nobel Prize nominee.  And as I said earlier, he couldn’t have been nominated on the strength of GAGUT when, in fact, the "theory" has never gone through the rigors of peer review, which is crucial for the circulation and acceptance of ideas in the scientific community. 

Afolabi’s point that Oyibo may indeed have been nominated for the Nobel is well taken.  But the fact is: thousands of people get recommended--or, if you like, nominated-- for Nobel Prizes by several different organizations and people, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.  Since I haven't read of any groundbreaking, earth-shattering work that Oyibo has done in his field to deserve a serious consideration for the Nobel, I am inclined to think that his nomination, if there ever was one, falls in the region of the ridiculous. 

But the impression often created when Oyibo’s putative Nobel Prize nomination is mentioned in the Nigerian press and in the black diaspora is that he was on the shortlist of people being seriously considered for the Prize, and not that he was merely recommended by some person or organization. 

For me, there is perhaps no greater proof that his nomination—again, if there ever was one—was of the flippant kind than the fact that Oyibo has been fired by the two low-end universities he worked for, is presently unemployed, and wrote a Wikipedia profile on himself that betrays flashes of incipient insanity—to put it nicely.  Anybody who can describe himself as “closer to GOD (intellectually and in other ways), than any other human being because of the GAGUT discovery,” “the Greatest Genius and the Most Intelligent Human Being ever created by GOD,” and “the Greatest Mathematical Genius of all time” can’t be anything but demented. 

Lastly, the Nobel Peace Prize, with which Afolabi contrasted the politics of Oyibo’s nomination, is intensely political, isn't anchored on knowledge production, and is therefore amenable to wild newspaper speculations.  The Physics Prize, on the other hand, isn't.  It's a specialist prize.  I don't recall reading newspaper speculations about Nobel prizes in physics, medicine, and economics before and after the prize winners are announced.  Only the Nobel Peace Prize is subject to newspaper speculations.  So the contrast is flawed. 

I call Oyibo a 419er because he owes his popularity to the falsehood he promoted in the Nigerian media that he was seriously considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics three or four times in a row supposedly on the basis of his farcically harebrained GAGUT. 

Well, if he had merely been popular as a result of these speculative indulgences and ridiculously wild exaggerations I wouldn't have had a problem with him.  But he was put on the national postage stamp, was celebrated by the Nigerian state, and gets invited to speak to different groups and organizations in gullible sections of the black diaspora on the strength of claims that are at best speculative and at worst intentionally fraudulent.  That puts him in the same intellectual 419 boat as Philip Emeagwali. 

Sunday, November 21, 2010

I have received torrents of emails from readers on the above subject.  I have reproduced only a representative sample below.  I will comment one more time on this topic next week and then move on.  Happy Sallah in arrears! 

My good friend Prof Wolf Lepenies—you can google him (we got our GCE together 50 years ago)—who has taught at Princeton University and other places, and who has founded the Berlin and Budapest scholarly fora, is also a member of the Swedish Academy, which mails those proposals, as he just informed me, after sending him your piece on intellectual 419-ers. 

"I now know what I have to do!"  he wrote to me textually.  But I DO think that giving Nobels to the two Os is 'too small': Nigeria should be ranked number OBE on the UN performance list, for not only performing marvelously well with her LOOOTOCRAZY but also by entertaining us with such clowns as the two Os.!!!  THANK you for informing me - and I keep laffin'

I just read your article about the intellectual fraud of Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo.  It is a good write up.  I happened to be one of the first people who brought the intellectual fraud of Dr. Oyibo to limelight when it was unpopular in Nigeria to do so.  I was asked to review his GAGUT documentary that I was invited to see at his producer's house in New York in 2005 for the Guardian newspaper. 

I wrote a review that was critical and they wanted to change it but I resisted it.  Nevertheless, I published the review in Nigeriaworld.com, and I passed it along to my friend Sowore who published it on Elendureports, and Nigeriavillagesquare as well.  Surprisingly, I suspect,Laolu Akande whom I have known for a long time asked Dr. Oyibo's documentary producer to write a rejoinder to criticize my review.  It was titled "Rebuttal to Ademola Bello's Critical Review of GAGUT's Documentary' by Clemson Brown.  It was published in Nigeriavillagesquare, Nigeriaworld, and Laolu Akande's website. 

Although, I was also threatened and also wanted to be bribed at the same time, to change the bad review and write a positive one but I refused to compromise.  The good news that came out of this silly thing is that Sowore and I were able to stop then President Obasanjo and Nigerian Senate from rewarding Dr. Gabriel Oyibo with undeserved $1million prize.  Can you imagine?  Nigerian Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Jibril Aminu and co that Federal government should create Africa's Nobel Prize valued at more than one million dollars and Dr. Oyibo should be the first recipient of the award for his GAGUT theorem?And his intention was to distribute copies of the review of GAGUT documentary that he thought was going to be positive to Nigerian Senators who will help make his case-but things didn't work out for him. 

I am indeed very happy for the good work done by Farooq especially the true statement of fact that Emeagwali has done more harm than good to the image of Nigeria.  I published a story sometime ago on Phillip Emeagwali in a page on our online magazine tagged "Nigerians In Diaspora" and the searchlight was beamed on Emeagwali. 

To my utter dismay, a woman purported by Phillip Emeagwali to be his wife, which in fact I got the picture from Emeagwali`s website, wrote to me through my mail (publisher@onlinenigeriannews.com) and told me point blank that I should remove her picture from the magazine website and that she was never a wife of Phillip Emeagwali.  I had a series of correspondence with the woman who indeed is a Professor of African Studies at Connecticut State University in America.  Her name is Prof. Mrs Gloria Emeagwali.  I have all the facts with me and am willing to give it out to any reasonable Nigerian who cares about the truth.  When I contacted Seye Kehinde (City People Magazine Publisher) and he was not keen on the story, I took the story to Sun Newspapers office around Mile 2 area of Lagos State and I met with one of the editors for onward publication. 

Further contacts were made with Phillip Emeagwali in USA and he could not refute the woman`s assertion.  Till now, Sun Newspaper has not published the story.  It all happened about a year ago and the Prof Mrs Gloria Emeagwali was really interested in having me publish the story in a Nigeria national paper.  I published it in our online magazine then and the woman was very appreciative.  She said Phillip Emeagwali has been a mischievous human being and that his misdemeanor is not known by many. 

Thanks, Farooq, for the article.  I don’t know you and I do not know if you are ethnically biased but I think your piece is the truth.  We must not shy away from it notwithstanding whose ox is gored.  I think it might also help to write about honest Nigerians who are really doing great work out there in the diaspora and celebrate them.  When I was working on a project thesis, I came across these Nigerians and the link to the Howard University sites where the work is http://cancer.howard.edu/research/faculty.htm

Farooq, good work, nice column.  I believe with people like you doing good job such as this one, the likes of Emeagwali will be exposed to the world.  After doing some internet research about him, I found out that the man has penetrated almost everywhere with his intellectual fraud.  If you have time, please checkout YouTube and you will come across quite a number of videos of him giving speeches and lectures at different locations globally. 

I also read that he was once described by former President Bill Clinton as one of the great minds of the information age.  One question which I still can’t find an answer to is, why did it take so long for this guy to be exposed?  The guy is not preaching about his claims of being "father of the internet,” professor of bla bla etc only in Nigeria/Africa where I believe the majority of the people don't care, but he is doing that almost everywhere in the world.  How come he was never reported by either the IEEE or the ACM that his claims were wrong? 

Nigerian-based websites have become a nuisance where only hate and casting aspersions on a particular section of the country is now the norm.  It is annoying that those people spreading hate against others are not morally better than them. 

Please permit me to use Pidgin English on your page: THE THING TIRE ME NO BE SMALL!  It's sad how low we've descended.  Just about every discussion on Nigerian-based sites degenerates into an ethnic and/or religious battle, even if the subject is on how Mr A or Mrs B made a bold decision to start jogging every morning to stay fit.  It's such a BIG SHAME.  The biggest beneficiaries of this madness as always are the 'prominent stakeholders', 'chieftains' and the rest of them. 

Surely, a psychologist will appreciate this dramatic insight into the psyche of Nigerians.  Distrust, cynicism, suspicion, stereotyping... the list goes on.  I am a student of Psychology and I believe that someone can do a Ph.D. thesis that will provoke global interest on this apparent peculiarity that most of us never really observed. 

The reality in Nigeria is that public discussion, whether in the virtual or print media, has become that of hate and mutual suspicion and distrust and is now degenerating into vulgar and uncultured abuse.  It is now taking a higher level when elders, statesmen, seasoned journalists engage in it.  Just read any newspaper in Nigeria and you will have a full dose of it.  But I have a strong belief that Nigeria will survive it, not because of patriotism but because those milking the cow will not let it die.  Rather, they will find a way to settle at the expense of the blinded masses that follow them in the fight and get bloodied.  Don't ever trust them.  All they are doing, like my late friend said, is playing with "Ashana" matches. 

You are my reason for reading Weekly Trust.  Nice one there.  I also read your article on the MENDacious president and about him having incompetent hands.  His S.A. on media doesn’t even come out to talk like Remi Oyo and Segun Adeniyi.  The newscasters are the ones reading his messages. 

Of course netiquette should prevail on our fora.  When elephant egos collide—or rather when two elephants fight— it’s said that it’s the grass that suffers. 

You have a point there about baseless hatred (Sinat Chinam) which is a very potent and destructive force.  It should not be encouraged – and the recent news about arms shipments to Nigeria does not bode well for peace and harmony and the ideal of a United Nigeria which the enemies of Nigeria and the enemies of the nation state would like to split into many pieces…

You have summed it up nicely.  Wow!  I couldn't have expressed it any better!!!  It is a sad state of affairs.  Thanks for giving voice and clarity to the opinion and observation some of us hold, about the chaotic state of Nigerian Internet Etiquette and Conduct.  Nice one. 

Your piece gave me academic delight and a professional satisfaction.  It is a lucid piece and timely.  It is more timely for me because I am currently writing a thesis on the rise of citizen journalism in Nigeria taking a look at Sahara reporters, NVS and others and investigating to what extent they have enhanced the deliberative process of democracy. 

As a professional journalist with 20-something years of experience, I share some of the concerns you raised.  Can we entrust news reporting and opinion writing and the gate-keeping role of editors to ordinary citizens who are often unable to remain objective?  How can we create a regime of vetting and editing content and comments in a world where everyone is suddenly a journalist?  Your piece is most inspiring. 

I am currently a research fellow at Oxford University in the UK.  I will draw insights from your piece, but more importantly, I was wondering if I could send you a few questions, some kind of interview to get your direct comments about other aspects of this subject matter.  Sahara Reporters is my case study.  I am interested in finding out to what extent Sahara reporters in particular and others like it have succeeded in stimulating political participation and deliberative democracy.  How has SR impacted the system in specific situations of forcing the hand of change?  How many Nigerians in the Diaspora get their news first from SR and why?  This and many more. 

Let me stop here and wait for your reply.  I contribute opinion pieces from time to time to Sahara reporters.  My name is Sunday Dare.  And like you, when I write, I no longer read the comments about my piece. 

Thursday, November 18, 2010

In times past, when the world hadn’t
become as intricately integrated as it has now become thanks to the inexorable
march of globalization, it was easy to understand what the other person meant
when they communicated in the lingo of the academia, especially if you shared
the same English dialect with them.  No longer.  American and British English
have become so meshed over the years that terms whose significations we had
taken for granted have now been suffused with different meanings and usage
conventions. 

For instance, when someone addresses
herself as a “professor of geography” at a university, what should we
understand her as saying?  Should we understand her as saying that she has
reached the highest possible point attainable in the hierarchy of university
teaching and research?  Or is she an entry-level assistant professor,
“lecturer,” or even a graduate teaching assistant who just wants to say that
she teaches geography at a university? 

The first sense is chiefly British
while the second is decidedly American.  But, increasingly, the American usage
is being adopted in British universities.  In what follows, I have identified
the vernaculars of the academe in the two dominant dialects of the English
language while laying bare the ways in which these vernaculars sometimes
interweave in fascinating ways.  I use the term vernacular NOT in the way it’s
generally understood in Nigeria, that is, native Nigerian languages in contradistinction to
the English language; I use it to mean the everyday speech codes of particular groups of
people. 

Terms
for university teaching ranks

In American English, “professor” is
a generic term for anybody who teaches in a university (Brits prefer the
preposition “at” in reference to universities and other kinds of schools).  That
is why the term “professoriate” refers to the university teaching profession
collectively.  In British English, however, “professor” is a title used
exclusively for people who have reached the pinnacle of university teaching and
research, what Americans call “full professor.” 

But the American usage of
“professor” is more faithful to the Latin etymology of the term which,
according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, literally means a
“person who professes to be an expert in some art or science….”  In the Romance
languages ( that is, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, etc.), 
which are the surviving linguistic children of Latin, professor is used to
denote teacher at any level of education. 

While the generic term for a
university teacher in the British system is “lecturer,” in the American system
lecturer means something slightly different.  There are two dominant senses of
the term in America.  The first is a public speaker at certain universities.  The
second sense is an inferior-rank university teacher who either does not possess
a Ph.D. or who has a Ph.D. but doesn’t have a tenure-track job. ( I will explain
what “tenure-track” means shortly). 

Lecturers are despised and
looked down upon with contempt in the American academe.  They are overworked and
underpaid, only teach undergraduates, are not expected to be researchers, and
are often abandoned to vegetate on the fringes of academic departments in
American universities. 

In the American system, fresh Ph.D.’s
start their careers as Assistant Professors.  These positions may be
tenure-track or non-tenure-track.  A tenure-track appointment is basically an
appointment that promises life-employment to an aspiring academic, usually
within six to seven years from the start of employment.  In research-intensive
schools, the conditions for tenure is at least a peer-reviewed book published
by a reputable academic publishing house, a couple of referred academic journal
articles in reputable journals, some evidence of teaching excellence, and
service to the university and the community. 

In teaching-heavy schools where the
focus is on undergraduate education, to earn tenure you have to show evidence
of teaching excellence, have a couple of peer-reviewed journal articles, some
academic conference presentations, and service to the university.  When an
assistant professor meets the requirements for tenure, she will be promoted to
the rank of “associate professor,” and then finally to “full professor.” 

Academic positions in the less
prestigious non-tenure-track option are “lecturer,” “visiting professor,” and
“adjunct professor.”  An adjunct professor is a type of university teacher we
would call a “part-time lecturer” in the British system.  Some people are
“adjuncts” by choice, perhaps because they have full-time jobs elsewhere and
can’t take a full-time employment in the university; many, however, take the
position because they can’t find tenure-track jobs. 

Lecturers, on the other hand, are employed usually on a two-year contract
that is subject to periodic review and renewal.  The condition for the renewal
of the contract is evidence of teaching effectiveness.  There is no expectation
of research productivity.  The highest rank you can attain in the lecturer track
is "senior lecturer," which is completely different from the British
understanding of the term, as I will show shortly.  In other words, lecturers
never get to be "full professors." 

In the American system, lecturers
are paid less, teach more courses, and have far less privileges and benefits
than tenure-track or tenured professors.  They have no guarantee of life-time
employment; they can be fired from their jobs at any time for any reason.  In
most departments, they are excluded from departmental meetings.  They are similar
in some respects to “visiting” professors (i.e., visiting assistant professor,
visiting associate professor and visiting professor), except that a visiting
professorship is usually a terminal, non-renewable appointment that lasts no
longer than two years. 

Lecturers, adjuncts, and
visiting professors are the intellectual slave laborers of the American
academe.  Don’t call an American academic a “lecturer” if you’re not sure that’s
really their designation.  Use the more generic “professor” if unsure. 

Comparing
academic titles in the British and American systems

Now, it’s really difficult to match
the academic titles across the American and British systems.  But it is
customary to state that “senior lecturer” in the British system is equivalent
to “assistant professor” in the American system, “reader” (which is rarely used
these days) in the British system is the equivalent of the American “associate
professor,” and “professor” in the British system is the equivalent of “full
professor” in the American system. 

In reality, however, this is a false
equivalence, as I will soon show.  But it’s interesting that most people who
attain the rank of “reader” in the British system prefer to be addressed as
“associate professor”; however, “senior lecturers” in the British system don’t
call themselves “assistant professors.”  My sense is that the term “associate
professor” is popular in non-American contexts because it indicates that the
person associated with the title is only a step away from being a professor in
the British sense of the term, while the term “assistant professor” may give
the impression that the bearer of the title is merely an assistant to a
professor, which he is not. 

In the British system, fresh Ph.D.’s
with no publication (especially in the humanities and in the social sciences)
begin their careers as Lecturer II, move up to Lecturer I, to Senior Lecturer,
Reader, and finally to Professor. ( People with a master’s degree start their
university teaching careers as “assistant lecturers” and those with a
bachelor’s degree start as “graduate assistants.”) 

That’s a far longer route than
the American system.  But, then, the American system is way more rigorous than
the British system.  The American system is structured in such a way that many
Ph.D. candidates leave their programs with substantial conference paper and
publication record--often enough to earn the position of "Senior
Lecturer" in the British system.  Plus, the publish-or-perish (some say
it’s actually publish-and-perish) environment of the American academia makes
American academics way more productive than their counterparts in the British
system. 

There also exists an interesting
terminological difference in the way university workers are collectively
addressed.  In the British system, university teachers are collectively called
“academic staff.”  That is why the name of the trade union for Nigerian
university teachers is Academic Staff Union of Universities. 

But in American English the
collective term for university teachers is “faculty,” which in British English
means a division of a university that houses cognate subject areas, such as
“Faculty of Arts,” “Faculty of Science,” etc. “ Professors” and “faculty” are
interchangeable terms in American English.  That’s why the American equivalent
of the Nigerian Academic Staff Union of Universities is called the Association
of American University Professors, which is open to all people who teach in the
university—be they lecturers, adjuncts, visiting professors, tenure-track or tenured
professors. 

In the American system, the term
“staff” is used only for people who don’t teach or research in the university,
what we call “non-academic staff” in the British system.  So where the British
would say “academic and non-academic staff” Americans would say “faculty and
staff.” 

Lastly, the American academe has
some professional titles that, to my knowledge, are absent in the British
system.  For instance, there is in the American system what is called “professor
of the practice,” or “clinical professor,” which refers to people who are
awarded a professorial title because of their extensive immersion in and
knowledge of a field, although they may not have more than a bachelor’s degree. 
The practice is intended to draw people with extensive industry experience to
the academe and to bridge the gap between the "town" and the “gown.” 
This is especially common in such vocational and skill-based courses as
journalism, engineering, business, etc. 

This is unnecessary in the (old)
British system because people can attain the highest rank in their academic
careers with just a bachelor's degree.  Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, JP Clark,
etc.  became professors (or, if you will, "full professors") without
having Ph.D.’s.  The National Universities Commission has, however, now made it
impossible for anybody without a Ph.D. to proceed beyond the rank of
"Senior Lecturer." 

Americans also have what they call
“research professors” who are hired only to conduct research; they don’t teach
any courses. 

Comparing
everyday university terms

Then there is a whole world of
difference in the vocabulary for everyday university activities.  For instance,
what we call “question papers” in British English are better known as “tests”
in American English.  When I first came here, I had occasion to instruct my students
to not write on their "question papers" because I wanted to use the
same papers for another class.  The students all looked blankly at me. 

I initially thought they had
problems with my Nigerian accent.  So I not only enunciated it clearly and
slowly, I also wrote it on the board.  But they still said, “What’s that?”  And
when I pointed to their “question papers,” they exclaimed, “Oh, you mean we
should not write on the test?”  Write on the test?  Test is an abstract noun.  How
the hell do you literally write on an idea?  Anyway, I have since stopped
calling question papers by their name; they are “tests.” 

Again, American professors don’t
“mark scripts”; they “grade papers.”  And they don’t award or reduce students’
“marks”; they give or “take off” students’ “grades” or “points.”  And there is
this whole concept of “curve” or “curving” in the American academe that I don’t
think has an equivalent in the Nigerian British-derived system. 

Sometime in the early part of my
stay here, about half of my students got really low scores in my first test.  On
the day I handed out their test grades, one female student stood up and asked
if I would give her a “curve.” 

I wondered silently what in Heaven’s
name she meant by a “curve.”  But I knew that the girl knew enough to know that
only God could bring curves to her skinny, almost masculine, physique at that
stage of her life.  So she couldn’t possibly mean that she wanted me to do
something about her lack of bodily endowments.  Besides, there were also men in
the class who should have no business with "curves" but who wanted a
“curve” from me.  So I asked, “What curve”? 

Seeing my confusion—and its obvious
implication, because I must have been unconsciously examining the lady’s body
to observe the absence of curves on her!—somebody volunteered to change the
structure of the sentence to, “Will you curve the grades?”  It was then I got a
hint that they were probably asking if I would add extra “points” across the
board to move the class average up. 

I couldn’t relate to it because it
was a strange concept for me.  In Nigeria, my teachers never gave me grades that
I didn’t work for.  Second, I just couldn’t associate the word “curve” with the
arbitrary increase in the grades of students to raise the class average—perhaps
because of my weak quantitative reasoning abilities.  I don’t draw graphs; I
only draw word pictures.  A recent
article I read from a retired, frustrated British academic called
this “scaling.”  So the Brits now have the American equivalent of
"curving."  I am not sure this practice-- and the corresponding
terminology-- has percolated to Nigeria yet. 

Again, "certificate" is
not a generic word for paper qualifications, as it is in British English; when
the word is used in an educational context in America, it usually implies a
document certifying the completion of a short, crash course. “ Diploma” is the
generic word for all manner of certificates—secondary school certificate, bachelor’s,
master’s, and doctoral degrees, etc.;  it does not mean a sub-degree
qualification, as it does in British English.  And “college” is the generic word
for university, although it technically means an institution that only awards
four-year bachelor’s degrees.  When somebody is described as “college-educated,”
it often means he or she has at least a bachelor’s degree. “ College professor”
is also the generic term for what in British English we would call “university
lecturer.”  In British English, college can mean high school. 

And then you have this fascinating
semantic and lexical inversion of the names for the lengthy research papers
students write at the end of their degree programs.  In British English, people
write “dissertations” at the end of their bachelor’s and master’s degree
programs and “thesis” at the end of their Ph.D. study.  In America, people write
“honor’s thesis” at the end of their bachelor’s degree programs, a “thesis” at
the end of their master’s programs, and a “dissertation” at the end of their
Ph.D. programs. 

Another expression in the American
academic community that intrigues me greatly is “commencement exercise.”  When I
was first invited to a “commencement” at the end of my first semester at an
American university I wondered what the hell anybody would be commencing at the
end of a semester.  I thought “commencement” was the American equivalent of the
British “matriculation,” and couldn’t understand why students would be
matriculating at the end of a semester. 

I later learned that “commencement”
is actually the American equivalent of the British “convocation” while
“orientation” is the American equivalent of the British “matriculation.”  My
friends told me that the logic behind the word commencement is that it is when
people graduate that they really "commence" the journey to the
"real world."  I later found out, though, that some American
universities use “convocation” in the same way that it is used in British
English. 

Finally, Americans reserve the term “thesis”
only for the final research projects that bachelor's and master's students
write and use "dissertation" for the treatise that Ph.D. students
write.  In British English, on the other hand, “dissertation” is used only for the
final research projects that undergraduates write (which Americans call “honors
thesis” or “senior thesis”) and “thesis” for the capstone research by master’s
and Ph.D. students

Whatever the case, the vernaculars of the academe in the
British and American systems present fascinating examples of the vitality and
diversity of the English language. 

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

My peer-reviewed, scholarly article titled, "Cooperation with the Corporation?  CNN and the Hegemonic Cooptation of Citizen Journalism through iReport.com" has just been published in the prestigious New Media & Society journal.  Here is the link to the abstract.  Of course, I am excited about this! 

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Ask an average Nigerian to name the country’s most famous scientists.  In all likelihood, they would mention “Dr.” (or “Professor”) Philip Emeagwali and Dr. Gabriel Oyibo.  This, in a way, is excusable ignorance. 

After all, the great President Bill Clinton has been scammed into undeservedly calling Emeagwali “one of the great minds of the information age” and the “Bill Gates of Africa.”  And such prestigious Western news organizations as TIME, CNN and BBC fell for Emeagwali’s smartly orchestrated intellectual fraud. 

Philip Emeagwali

As for Dr. Gabriel Oyibo, he was for many years touted in the Nigerian media as the great successor to Albert Einstein, as a four-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Physics, and as the inventor of the "almighty" GAGUT (God Almighty Grand Unified Theorem), which he farcically calls “the theory of everything.”  On the basis of his comically delusional intellectual fraud, Oyibo has been celebrated in Nigeria as one of the greatest scientists that ever lived. 

OyiboandEmeagwali are certainly different in many respects.  But they are also similar in more ways than one.  First, Oyibo started out as a productive scholar who actually published a number of peer-reviewed, scientific articles before he degenerated into his current patently psychoneurotic state (I will give evidence for my conclusion shortly); Emeagwali, on the other hand, never had a Ph.D., is/was never a professor by any understanding of the term, has never published in any peer-reviewed journal, nor owned any patent—all contrary to his claims.  However, Emeagwali did win an actual award—the Gordon Bell Prize— whose significance he has exaggerated beyond the bounds of reason and decency. 

Note, though, that Oyibo also claims to be a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Physics.  This is pretty much like Emeagwali's fraudulent claims to being "a" or "the" father of the Internet.  The Guardian's U.S. correspondent, a certain Laolu Akande, is the biggest accomplice in Oyibo's fraud.  Until the last few years, the Guardian often reported that Oyibo was among the top three candidates being considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics.  This intentionally deceitful newspaper speculation was/is the basis for his unearned popularity in Nigerian elite circles.  I don't know if this has changed, but when I was in Nigeria it was customary to identify Oyibo in Nigerian newspaper narratives as a "three-time Nobel Prize nominee in Physics."  In the Afro-romantic digital black diaspora, in fact, it is usual to identify him as a four-time Nobel Prize nominee! 

He sent emails to the Nobel Committee asking to know if Oyibo had ever been a nominee for their Physics Prize.  Of course, they flatly disclaimed it.  They said it was impossible for anybody to know if he was a nominee for any Prize until several decades after the fact. 

So, in more ways than one, Oyibo is guilty of the same intentionally fraudulent self-promotion that Emeagwali has a dubious honor for.  Like Emeagwali, he currently feeds on this fraud since he, like Emeagwali, is effectively jobless now.  Plus, Oyibo stakes his claims to unparalleled scientific genius on the basis of his ludicrously incoherent and insane GAGUT theory, which hasn't been published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal or book, although he has a vanity, self-published book that he flaunts every time—much like Emeagwali's claims to having 41 patents, which have turned out to be patents in sophisticated, intricately multi-layered intellectual frauds. 

But anyone who has followed Oyibo's life closely will agree that the man needs help—seriously.  The brother has lost it.  He has no job as I write now.  He left the university system as an untenured associate professor years ago. ( Hmm.... Can you imagine a four-time Nobel Prize nominee in Physics who no U.S. university or research institution wants to touch with a barge pole?)  If you need evidence of Oyibo’s undisguised psychic imbalance,read his deleted profile on Wikipedia, which he wrote of himself. 

Here is a sample from the profile for your amusement: “Honors and Awards: Professor G. Oyibo has been recognized as being closer to GOD (intellectually and in other ways), than any other human being because of the GAGUT discovery.  He has also been recognized by the Nigerian Federal Government as Mathematical Genius which was inscribed on a Nigerian Postage Stamp that was issued in 2005.  Professor G. Oyibo has also been recognized as the Greatest Genius and the Most Intelligent Human Being ever created by GOD.  He has also been recognized as the Greatest Mathematical Genius of all time.  Professor G. Oyibo has been recognized by the Nigerian Senate, representing the entire population of Nigeria of over 200 million people, through a Senate Motion No.  151 page 320 presented in the Federal Republic of Nigeria Order Paper on Tuesday, 15th March, 2005." 

If the above is not proof of a man who is truly in need of psychiatric help, I don't know what is. 

Emeagwali and Oyibo honored on Nigerian postage stamps by the Nigerian government in 2005

But the greater concern for me, however, is that our hunger for heroes has predisposed us to be easily susceptible to all kinds of cheap intellectual frauds.  By officially celebrating Emeagwali and Oyibo, the Nigerian state has inadvertently become an accomplice in intellectual 419.  And by engraving their images on our postage stamps, the Nigerian state has unwittingly and permanently stamped deceit and false pretenses (otherwise known as 419) on our national consciousness—and on our international image.  That’s a shame. 

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA.  He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award."  He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award. 

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student. 

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States. 

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal.  He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME). 

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. ( Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta).  For more than 13 years, he wrote two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).  From November 2018, his political commentaries appear on the back page of the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday. In April 2014, Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication.  His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.