By Patricia Alex and Abbott Koloff, Staff Writers, The Record.
The consultant hired to ensure that Kean University is not racially biased has a criminal history that includes convictions for domestic violence and writing a bad check, a résumé that lists a degree from a university that has no record of it and a track record of defaulting on debts.
Michael Barry Blackwell, a former Westwood pastor retained in January to review hiring and enrollment at the public university, served jail time on a simple assault charge in Newark as recently as last June. He has had legal troubles dating back more than two decades, according to a review by The Record of court records and other documents.
His online résumé boasts a degree from Temple University — but the Philadelphia school said it has no record of him receiving one. He lists another degree from an online school that was widely disparaged as a diploma mill and gained notoriety after it bestowed an associate’s degree on a dog.
He was in federal custody in the late 1990s, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons, but details about the charges against him were not available from the courts. A 1993 newspaper article in the Nashville Tennessean said a Michael Barry Blackwell was indicted on a federal bank robbery charge in Tennessee but it appears he was later acquitted in state court.
Blackwell, 59, acknowledged in an interview that he’s had a few “bumps in the road,” but said he did not remember being in federal custody and denied being involved in a bank robbery in Tennessee.
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