NDTV’s Nidhi Razdan claimed she was ‘teaching at Harvard’ without an interview, and these are the journalists we rely upon
On June 13, former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan announced that she would be quitting NDTV after 21 years to take up a teaching role at Harvard University, US.
Yesterday at 4 in the afternoon, Nidhi tweeted that she had been the target of a “very serious phishing attack”. The ex-NDTV journalist realised that she had been targeted after she reached out to Harvard University after several delays and “administrative anomalies” in the process and had learnt that what she believed was an offer to teach at Harvard University was fake.
Surprisingly, a few months after announcing her “success” earlier, not only did she unethically proclaim herself to be an Assistant Professor at Harvard University on her Twitter handle, but she had also conducted many sessions, classes and interviews such as at Ashoka University, KSPP, iDreamCareer etc, under her new designation.Several social media users raised questions on the credibility of Razdan’s ‘phishing’ claims and some shocking revelations were made, such as:
~ As Razdan’s old tweets were dug out, one of them showed her saying, ”I am teaching at Harvard”. However, in her current statement, she revealed that she was told to wait until January 2021 before she could start her stint at the University so does it mean she lied that she was teaching at Harvard when her job was not confirmed? Or was she teaching in some fake university in USA?
~ Assuming that she had already moved to USA to join her ‘new job’, various questions of her visa also arises:
1. If she obtained work visa on fraudulent Document she has to face legal action.
2. If went on Visitor Visa, but her purpose was for her “job”, she can be banned entering into states next time.
Joshua Benton, the founder of Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, retweeted Razdan’s tweet and said that the varsity has “no school of journalism, no department of journalism and no professors of journalism” which doesn’t coincide with what Nidhi had tweeted.
Nidhi Razdan said that she has informed the authorities at Harvard University of the matter and also stated that she had filed a complaint with the concerned authorities.
Many more questions about her qualifications, her travel details, the scam etc were raised too, but such intimate details will only be available when we hear from Nidhi next.
~ Many others raised questions on why Razdan didn’t see red flags when the University did not contact her for an interview. Assuming that physical interview was not done due to Coronavirus pandemic, it must have been replaced with video interview. Had she studied the recruitment process, she should have felt something was not right when it was not done at all. If it happened, who took it? Did someone impersonate some senior official at Harvard and Nidhi Razdan didn’t recognise that? Can an experienced journalist be fooled to this extent?
But one thing is for sure, there is more to this story than meets the eye.
