Controversies from Cook’s past in academia resurface as she battles President Trump to keep her job
As Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook does battle against President Donald Trump to keep her job, controversial experiences from her time as a professor have resurfaced, such as plagiarism claims and her involvement in a high-profile cancel culture incident.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Cook — who was fired by Trump in August over allegations of mortgage fraud — can keep her job as her lawsuit challenging the president’s authority winds its way through the courts.
But allegations of mortgage fraud, which she denies, are not the only questionable charges that have been levied against Cook, appointed to the board in 2022 by then-President Joe Biden.
In her lawsuit, Cook argues Trump’s removal is illegal and that she is entitled to keep her job unless removed “for cause.” The complaint describes Cook as a “distinguished economist with a background in academia.”
Prior to her appointment to the Board, Cook was a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, a member of the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a National Fellow at Stanford University, among other positions.
An investigation published in April 2024 by City Journal and The Daily Wire alleged: “In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University’s own written academic standards.”
One of her most cited papers, which claims racism oppressed black inventors until after World War II, was accused of using a flawed methodology and relying on unverifiable sources by the investigators.
City Journal found the study had been used to promote diversity initiatives in academia and finance despite Cook using a database which stopped collecting data in the year 1900. Cook, however, concluded “that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination.”
Cook did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment. She has previously stated she stands behind her academic record.
Cook has also leveled some serious accusations against one of her peers.
In 2020, Cook joined the high-profile campaign to cancel University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig after he compared Defund the Police advocates like Black Lives Matter to flat-earthers.
“Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g. police reform proposals by @TheDemocrats and national healing. We need more police. We need to pay them more. We need to train them better,” he wrote on X at the time.
The cancel campaign, which included a condemnation from former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, led to his suspension as editor of the Journal of Political Economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago cut ties with him, and he was investigated by his university.
In her posts, Cook said Uhlig was guilty of “the kind of racial harassment my mother faced 50 years ago when integrating the faculty of a college in the Jim Crow South in the 1970’s.”
“I agree with Angela Merkel and @FrankSchlibach that free speech has its limits. It should not be used to spread hatred and violate the dignity of other people. This is how you, Dr. Uhlig, used your words and your power – to spread hate,” Cook wrote in an X thread in June 2020, at the height of the national angst over the death of George Floyd.
She finished by calling for Uhlig’s “removal” as the editor of the Journal for Political Economy and for the University of Chicago to remove his access to students, writing “Racial harassment should be treated like sexual harassment, another means of impeding the free flow of ideas in the economics profession.”
In an interview with The College Fix in September, Uhlig said the attacks “led to repercussions that are still felt.”
“I personally think, it was all convenient ‘virtue signaling’ at the time,” Uhlig told The Fix. “[It] was ridiculous and, in retrospect, highly embarrassing for everyone participating in it . . . it was more consequential than it should have been, though that it is not her fault or the fault of the other ‘activists,’ but the fault of weak decision makers elsewhere.”
As to Cook, he said “I maintain that she does not have the qualifications for being a Fed governor, other than having a PhD in economics on a topic completely unrelated to monetary policy. I maintain that Fed governors should know a thing or two about money, monetary policy or banking, and I do not think she does.”
Her former employers, Harvard and Michigan State University, did not respond to requests for comment.
Part of Cook’s record was recently rehashed in a Reason piece by journalist Robby Soave headlined “Fed Governor Lisa Cook’s Record Is a Reminder of the Social Justice Insanity of 2020.”
Soave told The College Fix that Cook’s history aligns with “peak wokeness and peak cancel culture.” He said he believes this may damage her public credibility during the court case.
“This is someone who led an internet witchhunt on someone else for saying an unfashionable but completely inoffensive thing on Twitter, who got some pretty fundamental data wrong in her signature piece of academic research, and who has been now accused of mortgage-related fraud,” Soave said via email. “Taken together, that does not seem like someone who fits in this role.”
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