Florida State University made news recently after one of its high-profile professors was dumped for fabricating research about systemic racism within police departments.
The Federalist on Thursday highlighted a recent report by the New York Post detailing that FSU criminology professor Eric Stewart, who is black, was fired for “extreme negligence” in his work, as well as “incompetence” and producing “false results.”
As the Post reported, “To date, six of Stewart’s articles published in major academic journals like Criminology and Law and Society Review between 2003 and 2019 have been fully retracted after allegations the professor’s data was fake or so badly flawed it should not have been published.”
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Stewart had been away from his job since March. The Post cited a July 13 letter from FSU Provost James Clark to Stewart officially notifying him that he was terminated from his $190,000 a year job.
“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” Clark wrote.
As The Federalist reported, Stewart published a study in 2019 that asserted the historical legacy of lynchings “made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives.” “This effect,” Stewart noted, “will be greater among whites… where socioeconomic disadvantage and political conservatism are greater.”
Another report he issued in 2015 claimed that Americans supported tougher criminal sentences for Hispanic defendants because they feared an increase in the Hispanic population and Latinos’ potential economic success.
In a 2018 study, Stewart argued that “white Americans view black and Latino people as ‘criminal threats,’ and suggested that perceived threat could lead to ‘state-sponsored social control.’”
FSU has retracted all of the above so far for Stewart’s shoddy work.
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The Federalist noted that Stewart’s discredited research has been cited more than 8,500 times in other academic papers. The website cited Kentucky State University professor Wilfred Reilly, who said Stewart “[p]robably THE academic [figure] responsible” for spreading the left-wing narrative that police departments throughout the country are rife with “systemic racism.”
It’s quite a fall for Stewart. In 2017, FSU sang his praises after he picked a prestigious academic honor.
In a press release, the university noted that Stewart had been named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology, which “recognizes scholars who have made significant contributions to the discipline, contributed to career development of other criminologists or participated in organizational activities within the society.” Stewart himself called the organization “the premier flagship professional organization for criminologists.”
In a statement at the time, Dean Thomas Blomberg said, “We are so very fortunate to have Dr. Stewart among our faculty. He is a gifted and productive scholar, and he continues to demonstrate his commitment to the future of the field through leadership and service in the ASC and through his amazing mentorship of so many of our students.”
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