Brick by Brick

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The last post in this blog was about Timothy J. Feeney’s insistence on referring to himself as Timothy J. Feeney PhD or Dr. Timothy J. Feeney when he is neither, at least not in the United States.

As I stated earlier, both his masters and doctorate degrees were issued by a diploma mill called Greenwich University, a non-accredited college that floated back and forth from California and Hawaii in the 1990s before going to Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia in 1998. It closed in 2003.

In truth, Mr. Feeney has a good working knowledge of people with brain injury and, were he able to step up to the plate and shed the guise and present himself as he is, he could be a formidable and helpful presence in the world of community-based brain injury rehabilitation.

In his February 8 e-mail Mr. Feeney asserts that members of the New York State Department of Health have known all along that his degrees were issued by a diploma mill and were satisfied with this.

If Mr. Feeney’s assertion is true, it is deeply troubling and it is all a symptom of our culture’s addiction to dishonesty and penchant for greed.

Did members of the New York State Department of Health know Mr. Feeney’s degrees were, in short, bogus? Did the DOH know this and still sign Mr. Feeney and his company, School and Community Support Services of Latham, New York, to contracts for nearly 15 years?

What group of dysfunctional minds felt morally comfortable and at peace with the notion of giving so much influence to someone who has no doubt impacted the lives of hundreds of brain injury survivors, their families and community-based healthcare providers in New York State?

Mr. Feeney’s insistence on misrepresenting himself is, sadly, not unique. The tragedy for Mr. Feeney is that choosing to do so undermines the very real qualities and knowledge that he brings to the table because it destroys trust, and once trust goes out the window, one’s ability to be effective in their therapeutic endeavors goes out the window with it.

Here is a critical point to all of this, because it points to a larger picture. This writer and any reader of this essay would be flat out wrong to villainize Mr. Feeney or those DOH officials who, according to Mr. Feeney, knew full well the reality of his degrees. While Mr. Feeney et al are certainly responsible for their choices, we have all in one way or another contributed to the creation of a culture that promotes this kind of mindset, and thus we are all responsible for dissembling it, brick by brick, if you will.

We can and must hold people accountable, but we must do so without hatred, without cruelty. We must allow people to step up to the plate, apologize, make amends. We can dislike the choices, even hate them at time, but we are stepping into emotional quicksand if we allow ourselves to hate our brothers and sisters.

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BRAIN INJURY AND THE SHADOW OF FRAUD

Like any field, the field of brain injury has a wide range of participants. There are those who put their hearts and souls into making sure those of us who live with brain injuries are treated as equals, because we are. Then there are those too who see us as a way of making money and or a way of making a name for themselves.

In the next few weeks I will likely be writing a story about an individual who for more than a decade has claimed to have college degrees that don't exist, unless of course you want to include college degrees issued by a non-accredited college, a diploma mill.

This individual - a contract employee with a state government - has impacted the lives of many brain injury survivors and their families as well as the lives of many health care providers who offer services to survivors, all the while having degrees that are not recognized as valid anywhere in the United States and this writer has been unable thus far to find any place in the world where these degrees are considered valid other than the non-accredited school that issued them.

Diploma mills as they are called are sadly plentiful.

Greenwich University is a case in point. A non-accredited school that was located in Hawaii and California in the 1990s, it moved to Norfolk Island off the Coast of Australia. The Australian Government later issued an alert in the Internet making it clear that Greenwich (not to be confused with the prestigious University of Greenwich in London, England) did not live up to its educational standards.

Greenwich closed its doors in 2003 and, it seems, reopened in Hawaii as Akamai University, also a diploma mill.

Both Greenwich and Akamai are on numerous diploma mill lists.
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