Nearly six months after Dr. Gregory J. Vincent stepped down as president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the legal and diversity scholar has continued to champion education causes through his new role as CEO and chairman of Sigma Pi Phi — also known as the Boulé.
Vincent’s unanimous election to lead the international Fraternity that once counted Drs. W.E.B Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr., as members, came two months after an anonymous email was sent alleging that he plagiarized parts of his dissertation. Vincent vehemently denied the allegation but acknowledged that there were some citation problems, which officials at the University of Pennsylvania has since allowed him to correct. According to sources at the Ivy League school, those corrections have been made and Vincent’s doctoral degree stands.
“The dissertation did make an original contribution,” Vincent said in a recent interview with Diverse. “It wasn’t that I was rewriting my findings; there were just some technical issues that needed to be addressed.”
In April, Vincent resigned as president of his alma mater “to avoid any further stress to the campus community,” and has since turned his attention to advancing educational opportunities for African-Americans through his work with the 5,000-member Boulé.
“We’ve always been about promoting educational excellence,” said Vincent about the Fraternity that was founded in Philadelphia in 1904 by a small group of physicians and medical professionals committed to promoting a classic liberal arts education.
Now, with Vincent at the helm, the Boulé — which has operated as a discreet organization — has stepped up its efforts to support historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), provide scholarships to students and encourage civic engagement.
The organization, which boasts a $21 million endowment through its Foundation, has also taken public positions on a wide-range of issues, including encouraging political participation in the upcoming elections.
