Not the time for wit. No need for interpretation. The facts:
Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker has parlayed his standing as ASU Foundation Professor of History into a $268,800 no-bid contract -- with the possibility for a $96,000 extension -- with the City of Phoenix.
Professor Whitaker will provide 448 hours of training in procedural justice, police legitimacy, and cultural competency, and an additional 448 hours of evaluation in those matters, to Phoenix' 2900 police officers. He will do this between July of 2015 and April of 2016, through his consulting firm, while he continues to collect his salary as a full-time professor of history at Arizona State University (whose rules state that employees may do no more than 384 hours per year of outside work).
Professor Whitaker will "plan and execute" this training despite the fact that he does not even pretend to do research into procedural justice or police legitimacy training. He will do this despite the fact that he does pretend to do research into African-American history, a pretense that has been repeatedly pulled aside: even his reluctant university deems his work to fall "below the standard of the profession," Dr. Whitaker himself admits that the books he has published with ABC-CLIO contain extensive plagiarism, and the publisher of his most recent volume has issued a statement that the book would not be sold in its current form because of errors of attribution. The Press, it added, "maintains no inventory." But there is more.
