Matthew C. Whitaker

Matthew C. Whitaker is an American historian. He was an associate professor of history and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University (ASU); in January 2016 ASU announced that he had resigned these positions.

Whitaker became the subject of public controversy in Arizona when he was demoted, but temporarily retained on the faculty of Arizona State University despite being found to have committed "significant" plagiarism. He was placed on administrative leave on September 17, 2015, while the university investigated allegations that "his behavior has fallen short of expectations as a faculty member and a scholar." On January 15, 2016, ASU released a statement that Whitaker would immediately step down from his center co-directorship and would resign his faculty position effective May 2017.

His work has focused on racial equality, civil rights, and African-American history. Whitaker's 2005 book, Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West, deals with the history of the civil rights movement in Phoenix, with a focus on the lives of Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale.

In 2014, Whitaker was cited in several publications in the wake of the Ferguson shooting speaking about the effect of social media on movements. The Washington Post quoted him in the context of actualization, and Nonprofit Quarterly used the same quote in a roundup article on the biggest nonprofit stories in relation to technology and millennials.

He was also an opponent of Arizona's religious freedom bill, having written an op-ed column for CNN in the wake of it having been passed by the Arizona legislature, where he called it a "right to discriminate" bill: "Under the guise of religious freedom, however, the bill would enable businesses potentially to discriminate against virtually anyone". The quote was then cited by a poll article on Cleveland.com showcasing both sides of the debate. The bill was later vetoed by Arizona governor Jan Brewer.

Whitaker is also owner of The Whitaker Group, a consulting firm that has provided cultural training to the Phoenix Police Department. In 2015, following a series of controversies over police treatment of black citizens both in Phoenix and nationally, the Phoenix police contracted with the Whitaker Group for "cultural consciousness" training. An ASU investigation, led by historian Jane Maienschein, into Whitaker's works found "occasional carelessness" but no "substantial or systematic plagiarism."

The committee stated that in the case of Race Works: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West, there were two passages that "seemed to follow (though not exactly copy)" passages from Bradford Luckingham's Minorities in Phoenix. The committee concluded that Whitaker credited the author of the book in his footnotes, acknowledged his "intellectual debt" to the author in his introduction to the book, and made it clear that he was "drawing from (and citing) Luckingham's work" and therefore, "a review of Race Works in its totality reveals that did acknowledge his sources".

The Arizona Republic asked Jonathan Bailey, a former journalist and consultant on copyright and plagiarism, to evaluate a major public speech given by Whitaker at a political rally in October 2010, called to protest Arizona SB 1070, a controversial Arizona immigration law. Bailey found that 30% of the speech was taken from published sources, including a 2006 Washington Post article, "U.S. Immigration Debate is a Road Well Traveled." Inside Higher Ed published examples of alleged plagiarism found by other historians. Ellison reported that not only did they find multiple "identical phrases" in Whitaker's book and his often unattributed source material, they found that some of the "main elements" covered in his book were "parallel" to those found in other sources.

Subsequent events

Doug MacEachern wrote an op-ed in Arizona Central criticizing those who he felt enabled Whitaker, particularly the Phoenix police department.

In an editorial published at the beginning of the fall semester, 2015, the ASU student newspaper, The State Press, published an editorial asserting that if Whitaker was a student, he would be expelled, and demanding that Whitaker be subject to the same standards that students are held to.

The investigation ultimately led to his being placed on administrative leave as of September 17, 2015. On January 15, 2016, ASU released to the media a statement that Whitaker had resigned from the ASU faculty effective May 2017, and was no longer co-director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

On July 14, 2015, Whitaker terminated his contract with the City of Phoenix.

In August 2015, DiCiccio requested that The Whitaker Group, a consulting company founded and owned by Whitaker to refund $21,800 paid to Whitaker for the creation of a slide set the Group created to train Phoenix police officers. DiCiccio stated in a report that through his own investigation, 52 of the 84 slides in the set the Whitaker Group claimed to have created for the Phoenix Police Dept. were "exact copies or slides with just minor changes," from Chicago police cultural training material, and that The Whitaker Group had marked the copied Chicago slides with a copyright symbol indicating that the Group had copyrighted the Chicago material. The Chicago Police Department stated that the training slides were not meant to be shared with a for-profit corporation, and that they were provided to ASU Police Chief Michael Thompson "by request" and for "internal use" only. On October 14, 2015, the City of Phoenix brought suit against The Whitaker Group, LLC, Whitaker, and his wife for $21,900. In April 2017, an arbitrator ruled in favor of Whitaker.

Diamond Strategies, LLC

Whitaker founded a new consulting firm, Diamond Strategies, LLC, described as "diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants," in 2016.