The University of Pennsylvania placed the vice dean of its Graduate School of Education on administrative leave late Wednesday after The Inquirer began asking questions about his false claim to have a doctoral degree.
But the guy is involved with all of the Right sorts of things, so no harm no foul.
Since joining Penn, Lynch has become a lightning rod for controversy. He has pushed entrepreneurial methods and supported programs such as Teach for America, which puts bright college graduates who lack education degrees in some of the nation's toughest public schools for a two-year commitment.
A February 2011 feature on him in Penn's alumni magazine said: "What happens when you unleash an entrepreneurship evangelist on an education school? Meet Doug Lynch, the vice dean bent on making Penn GSE a hub for social entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and next-generation educational reform."
Penn professor John Puckett said Lynch had unfairly been targeted because he is trying to shake up the graduate school and make it better. He said Lynch had made an "honest mistake."
Lynch, he said, told him that the chair of the dissertation committee at Columbia had assured him not to worry about the changes he was being asked to make.
"Doug's a little sloppy. He moves from one project to another in a great hurry," Puckett said.
All I know is what I've read in this article, but my spidey sense tells me there's something deeply corrupt going on here.