With all due respect to Mr Dos Equis, Gilbert NMO Morris might be the most interesting man in the world. And you need only browse his social media pages to see why.
He not only teases his friends and followers with hints of a jet-set life, but also comments on topics so varied he makes Renaissance men look like Neanderthals.
But perhaps his most distinctive meme is the extent to which he goes to advertise his academic achievements. You might think of it as showing off his brains the way the Kardashians show off their butts.
For example, the Intro on his Facebook page reads like the CV of a man who knows as much about ten academic disciplines as most graduate students know about one. As if to preempt any question, he actually introduces himself as “Professor, Financial Centre Expert, Economist, Diplomat, Writer”.
Surely that is impressive enough. But he then informs the world that he has “studied” the History of Medicine, International Trade Relations, Philosophy, Logic and the Scientific Method, Political Science, Law, Linguistics, Mathematics, and Theology.
What does it say about Morris, a man in his mid-50s, that he highlights his Facebook page with subjects he studied in school over a quarter century ago? And what are we to make of the care he takes to share that he studied them at some of the most prestigious schools in America and England, including Harvard and Oxford, respectively?
But those academic highlights are modest compared with entries in professional profiles he shares elsewhere (e.g., on Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Bloomberg). They include his professional bona fides as a lawyer, economist, and publisher; citations for his masters and doctorate degrees; the claim that “Dr Morris taught history, law, philosophy, economics and finance at a variety of American and English universities”; and intriguing claims about being a diplomat, luxury property designer, Taoist, and Rastafarian.
Lest he gives the impression that he lives a purely intellectual and ascetic lifestyle, Morris disabuses his friends and followers of that with this pithy insight: “Life must be as cool as juice & gin; as serious as an executioner and as simple as butterflies. I am.” Of course, it is debatable whether his predilection for “liking” flattery-seeking women on Facebook, indiscriminately, is either cool or serious.
Still, all of the above presumably explains why the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunications Organizations (CANTO) thought Morris would be a terrific draw for its 33rd Annual Conference in the Dominican Republic last week. They invited him to lecture on “The Estonian Model: Disruptive Technology, Prosperity and the Possibilities of ‘Digital Democracy.’” This, interestingly enough, had him sharing the wonders of artificial intelligence.
Morris made a viral show of this invitation. This included publishing a customized poster on his social media pages highlighting the fact that Caribbean heads of state, government ministers, CEOs, and other distinguished guests would be attending to hang on his every word. But, perhaps to put most of them in their place, his poster boasted, “Already, Professor Morris’ lecture is slated as one of the main highlights of the Conference.”
Given that we felt obliged to run a feature hailing him as easily the most buzzed about speaker at this year’s conference. But, shockingly, it did not take more than a few keyboard strokes for our researcher to encounter glaring red flags.
This is where Morris became a far more interesting man than we could have imagined. It compelled us to reconsider that feature.
• Morris holds himself out as a professor. He claims to have taught a variety of subjects at a variety of American and English universities. But we could find no record of Morris ever attaining a professorship.
(George Mason University in Virginia confirmed a stint as an adjunct professor in its African American Studies department over 20 years ago. But Morris claiming to be a professor based on that is like someone claiming to be a doctor based on a medical internship, with no further training or accreditation.)
• Morris holds himself out as a doctor. He appears regularly on a talk show in The Bahamas where the host not only introduces him as Dr Gilbert Morris, but hails him as the Dr Kissinger of The Bahamas. But we could find no record of Morris ever attaining a Ph.D.
• Morris holds himself out as a lawyer. He even claims to have taught law. But we could find no record of Morris ever attaining a law degree.
• Morris holds himself out as an economist. CANTO billed him as such. Be we could find no record of Morris ever attaining an economics degree.
On and on it went, with institution after institution reporting either to have had no association with him or that he is grossly misrepresenting his association. We never bothered to research the aristocratic pretenses behind identifying himself on Twitter as “@MorrisMedici” and naming his nominal book publishing company “Choses de Myrtle”.
But our research indicates that Morris is so cavalier with these misrepresentations that, if you have merely exchanged pleasantries with him, you are probably familiar with one or two of them.
In any event, we soon arrived at the point where it became imperative to ask Morris for clarification on some of the more glaring ones. To this end we sent him the following questions:
1. Where and when did you get your doctorate degree(s) and your degree in economics?
2. Where did you acquire your professorship?
3. Where are you teaching today, and are you tenured?
4. Besides teaching at George Mason University, when and at which universities in America and England did you teach law and finance?
5. When and in what subject did you lecture at Georgetown University?
6. When and for whom did you clerk at the US Court of Appeals?
7. When were you called to the Bar of England and Wales, and when did you become a member of Grays Inns of Court?
8. When did you serve as a scholar at Mansfield College, Oxford?
9. Can you provide some basic details on Grupo No. 9 re type of work, clients, your personnel, other board members, and office address and phone contact?
10. How long have you lived in Curitiba, Brazil?
11. When and where did you live as a Carmelite mon
We gave him ample time to reply. We advised, however, that we would take his failure to answer them as an indication that he declined to comment. He never replied.
Meanwhile, we informed CANTO about our findings well in advance of the date set for Morris to deliver his lecture, asking for comment. The general secretary responded almost immediately, expressing surprise and promising to get back to us. She never replied.
What does it say about CANTO’s regard for its fiduciary duty that it would subject Caribbean heads of state, government ministers, CEOs, and other distinguished guests to a man lecturing them under patently false pretenses?
There was considerable debate among our editorial staff about why Morris would perpetrate such brazen academic and professional misrepresentations. Some made immediate comparisons with Donald J. Trump. They speculated that, just as Trump clearly believed he could lie and bluff his way to the White House, Morris clearly believed he could lie and bluff his way to this CANTO conference. Their sense is that both men seem wedded to the maxim that the bigger the lie and the more you tell it, the more likely people are to believe it.
But this observation by a reliable source probably sums up best what our findings say about Morris:
“Gilbert makes a good impression. Everyone from government ministers in the Turks and Caicos Islands to his friends on Facebook will tell you that. But Bernie Madoff made a good impression too. Everyone from bankers on Wall Street to his friends in the Jewish community will tell you that. Come to think of it, Gilbert might just be to intellectual fraud what Madoff was to financial fraud.”
Ultimately, though, Morris’s march to CANTO says almost as much about his hosts as it does about him. Therefore, in addition to questioning him about his misrepresentations, we feel obliged to question those who have bought them over the years hook, line, and sinker.
But here is a test, which this self-professed professor might appreciate:
Morris claims to be a linguist who speaks Latin and conversational Spanish. If you speak either of them, seize any opportunity to converse with him and see how he fares. We suspect you will get an immediate lesson in the spectre of artificial intelligence. Of course, anyone can ask him any of our 11 questions and get some of the same; provided you press him beyond initial glib responses.
His friends and followers on social media seem either too servile or too stupid to tell this emperor he wears no clothes. But we have a journalistic duty to call him out in the public interest.
Related Posts
Nothing found.