The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is a historically black college (HBCU) that was founded in 1886. It's part of the University of Maryland system and is classified among "Research Colleges and Universities."
It's also described as a "criminal enterprise" by an ex-top official who was fired for blowing the whistle on shady dealings by the school's president, Heidi Anderson, its provost, Rondall Allen, and its diversity, equity, and inclusion czar, Jason Casar.
The lawsuit was filed on July 28 by Sandeep Gopalan, until recently, the school’s vice president for research and vice provost for academic affairs. The former Rhodes Scholar said in the suit that after exposing wrongdoing by the trio, Anderson cut the scholarships of the students who were participating in the PhD program he was running, even though the federal grant that funded the program did not give her the authority.
“As a result of this blatantly unlawful act, highly valuable research on cancer, environmental pollution, and AI, representing thousands of hours of research work by the Plaintiff, Ph.D. students and research staff has been stopped,” the suit said.
Gopalan, whose job was to monitor compliance to maintain the school's accreditation, "learned that Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson were embezzling iPads intended for poor minorities and diverting those resources to their cronies. The thousands of iPads were purchased from a federal grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce,” the suit said.
Pretty nifty grifting, wouldn't you say?
“After being convinced that the scam was organized criminal activity based on direct observation of the devices’ stealthy storage, destruction of evidence, fraudulent documentation, attempts to trick the auditors, the apparent enablement of concealment by University System of Maryland apparatchiks, Dr. Gopalan sent whistleblower letters to federal agencies, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland in June 2024,” it said.
The University of Maryland system wanted nothing to do with this dynamite, and Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown sent a letter to Gopalan noting that "Gopalan was acting as his own lawyer, and sought to have the case dismissed based in part on legal technicalities." The AG also claimed "that the public college and its officials had 'sovereign immunity,' and that he did not provide enough detail showing he was a victim of intentional racial discrimination."
According to the complaint, “Anderson and Jason Casares began conspiring to steal Dr. Gopalan’s Futures Institute grant of $4.6 million,” and notified Ph.D. students that their scholarships were being revoked. The Department of Education had to step in, writing that the grant had not been terminated and ordering Maryland to restore it.
The willingness to terminate the university’s brightest scholars was all the more remarkable because “UMES has some of the worst student outcomes in the United States under Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson. The 4-year graduation rate is 17% whereas the 6-year graduation rate is about 35% and graduates’ median incomes are on par with high school graduates. To Dr. Gopalan’s astonishment, Rondall Allen and Dr. Heidi Anderson were indifferent to these outcomes and appeared resentful whenever he mentioned the need to improve,” it added.
A second lawsuit was filed on August 1 by a faculty member who says he “directly observed the top administrators of the university engaging in criminal activities.”
“Plaintiff found one cause of the university’s terrible outcomes: rogue administrators led by the president Heidi Anderson and provost Rondall Allen turning the vast investments by the federal and state governments in the university into a private looting opportunity."
It's actually worse. "Unlike other normal universities where administrators are appointed pursuant to merit, credentials, and experience, at UMES many were appointed based on a propensity for corruption and collusion in Anderson and Allen’s schemes,” the suit said.
Using the school's accreditation and reputation to recruit fellow corrupt administrators is a new one on me. It's certainly unique in the annals of higher education corruption.
An "investigation" was undertaken by the school whose sole purpose, the suit alleges, was to save Anderson's job. “Upon learning about the Plaintiff’s complaints, the Defendants took retaliatory actions under the guise of a fake complaint alleging in December 2024 that the Plaintiff had created a ‘hostile working environment’ for one temporary worker whose contract was due to expire in two months."
As a reward for taking part in the academic sham, the student, an Iranian, was allowed "to stay in the country as a reward for going along with the scheme," according to the Daily Wire.
President Anderson was accused of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation in 1986. She has shown racial preferences in hiring and firing and has used DEI to retaliate against her detractors and those who filed suit against her.
But the University system and the state of Maryland are standing behind her. Meanwhile, UMES has gone down the tubes with enrollment falling from 4,800 when Anderson took over as president to just 3,000 now. The grifters and thieves who are running this university are firmly in charge, with no sign they will be pushed out anytime soon.
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