Through Well, Abdur-Rahman
December 16, 2025
The two sides are both facing lawsuits, as the disgruntled professor claims she was forced to leave because of her whiteness.
An HBCU president is embroiled in a legal battle with a former professor over allegations of plagiarism over a decades-old dissertation.
University of Maryland Eastern Shore President Heidi Anderson has filed a defamation suit against Donna Satterlee, a former professor at UMES. Anderson claims her former employee, Satterlee, stifled career opportunities with her character attacks.
Anderson stated that Satterlee, who is white, claims she is a “con artist” who plagiarized parts of her 1986 dissertation, and these accusations lead to canceled speaking engagements and more. Now she is seeking $1 million in damages over the professor’s comments about her character The Grio.
The statements were made as Satterlee spoke out against alleged corruption at the HBCU. The disfavored professor left her position at UMES last Decemberdespite initially seeking a full-time professorship.
Instead, she faced calls for her resignation from administrators over claims that she violated the HBCU’s bullying policy. However, she has since filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. Satterlee herself claims she was forced to leave because of her race and retaliation for raising the school’s problems.
She is one of several former employees suing the university, while the other three also allege fraud and “criminal activity” by HBCU administrators. One of her problems has to do with Anderson, who she says is “not qualified to be president.”
However, Anderson plans to “take a stand” against the professor with her own lawsuit. Particularly regarding the plagiarism claims, Anderson defended her actions, stating that citation standards were different at the time.
“I stayed quiet as long as I could,” Anderson said. “There is no plagiarism here. It is an attack on me and my character and on all of us at the university. I had to take a stand.”
Although Satterlee Anderson never taught during her matriculation, she decided to check the president’s academic integrity herself in 2024.
Amid her growing grievances with UMES, which she said were blocking her appointment to a full-time position, she double-checked Anderson’s dissertation. The revelation of a 27% plagiarism check on the plagiarism checking website “Turnitin” led to a public doxxing of the HBCU president.
“I was angry about the way Anderson treated me and also about the way Anderson talked to students about plagiarism,” Satterlee said. The Washington Post. “Both contributed to my review of her dissertation.”
The two parties will appear in court in December.
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