By Jessica Remo, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
UNION — The drama over whose consultant should review allegations of discriminatory employment practices at Kean University may have come to an end Friday, as the school’s president issued a statement agreeing to hire former state Supreme Court Justice John Wallace.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney had previously suggested Wallace be the one to conduct an external investigation, but Kean officials argued that they had already hired another consultant and were performing the investigation internally, sparking a battle between the parties.
That feud came to a head after a recent report by the Record found that the consultant Kean hired, Rev. Michael B. Blackwell, 59, served jail time in June after a domestic violence incident where he allegedly punched a woman in the eye and threw a rock at her. The paper also found that Blackwell was indicted on a bank robbery charge in 1993 and served five years in federal prison. It also says Blackwell has a 2009 felony conviction for passing a bad check in Bergen County and that he claims he graduated from Temple University, but the school only shows that he had attended but did not graduate. Another degree listed on his resume was from a non-accredited, now-defunct online college, Almeda University.
Today, Kean President Dawood Farahi said the school will do what Sweeney has asked.
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