February 28th, 2024
Homage to UD’s colleague, Daniel DeWispelare, who died last month, age 41.

From a grateful GWU student.

I still remember how he proposed and facilitated my first event as a Resident Advisor: a trip to the Library of Congress, where he gave a personal tour of the institution’s collections and architecture (and pointed out the best study spots within the facility). He was also just as detailed in planning for the after-tour meal, finding the group, with a day’s notice, a Capitol Hill establishment that met all of our attendees’ numerous dietary and allergen needs.

Daniel was also instrumental in facilitating my final event as a Resident Advisor: a Friday night baseball game at Nationals Park. It was no secret that I was a huge fan of baseball, and accordingly, I deliberately selected a baseball game with a rather nice giveaway (bobbleheads). The proposed budget for the game exceeded my allotted funds, but Daniel, without hesitation, sponsored the event, even calling the box office personally to select our seats. When I arrived at his office to pitch the event, he handed me an envelope with the tickets and explained, with a mischevous smirk, that he was happy to fund a game against his hometown Colorado Rockies (along with any other activity I proposed). For the remainder of the hour, we instead discussed my studies, with Daniel probing about domestic elections theory, how the Senate works, and a wide range of other topics.

I share these two memories because to me, they epitomize Daniel at his best. He was always a scholar, passionate about sharing his experiences and studies with the world. But he was also a kind soul: he always placed others first, he did his best to make academia seem less intimidating, he always thought about the finer points and worked tirelessly to alleviate any issues, and he had a genuine sense of wit and generosity …

February 18th, 2024
Lovely pic of UD’s colleague…

Daniel DeWispelare, whose untimely death has been a terrible shock to the department. I knew him only a little bit, but was always struck by his sweetness. He was apparently a spectacular teacher and scholar.

January 26th, 2024
No-Professor Zone

On [South Korea’s] Jeju [Island], it’s not unusual to see signs at camping grounds or guest houses stipulating both lower and upper age limits for would-be guests. There are “no-teenager zones” and “no-senior zones”, for example, and even plenty of zones targeting those somewhere in between.

So numerous have the “no-middle-aged zones” become that they have collectively been dubbed “no-ajae zones,” in reference to a slang term for “uncle.”

One restaurant in Seoul rose to notoriety after “politely declining” people over 49 (on the basis men of that age might harass female staff), while in 2021, a camping ground in Jeju sparked heated debate with a notice saying it did not accept reservations from people aged 40 or above. Citing a desire to keep noise and alcohol use to a minimum, it stated a preference for women in their 20s and 30s.

Other zones are even more niche.

Among those to have caused a stir on social media are a cafe in Seoul that in 2018 declared itself a “no-rapper zone,” a “no-YouTuber zone” and even a “no-professor zone”.

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I assume that last one is because professors order one tea and then sit at a table all day, reading a book.

April 5th, 2023
‘So far this year, Luque has published 58 studies at a rate of one every 37 hours.’

Professor Rafael Luque: A model for us all.

February 1st, 2023
Cornell, Duke, UCLA: Each one of these schools maintained a dangerous madman on their faculty and/or in their student body. The students in his classes tried complaining and were ignored. His dissertation committee praised him and passed him along. How did this happen?

It took a judge ruling Matthew Harris too insane to go on trial to stop the upward trajectory of this man’s academic career.

 A trail of red flags about his behavior toward women followed him throughout his academic journey to UCLA. In online class reviews, interviews and emails obtained last year by The Associated Press, current and former students at all three universities alleged negligence by the schools for letting Harris slide, despite his concerning conduct.

Here are my posts about him. An extremely obvious crazy person, sending out vile threats to female students, leaps from one great academic job to another. How ’bout that. UD thinks a class action suit might help all of these schools focus productively on their negligence; she also thinks the enthusiastic dissertation chair in the case should be handed a punitive year away without pay, during which he must take a basic criminology/psychology course in the characteristics of psychopathology. The bit where the model student/psychopath whips out his gun and blows away all the women in his class didn’t have a chance to happen in this case, but there may well be other dangerous madmen, and the dissertation chair needs help before getting enthusiastic and passing those along too.

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The lad was found with ammunition, but

[Harris] attempted to buy a “bodyguard revolver” at the Silver Bullet Shooting Range in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

The purchase was denied.

So the gun was still a work in progress. But you and I know that, if the law hadn’t come sniffing around, he would have gotten one somehow.

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As for the larger academic village that made the world safe for this madman… oy. UD is currently tossing her hands up in the air. A whole lot needs to change for professors and administrators to acquire the balls to identify and dismiss politically trendy psychopaths.

January 20th, 2023
I AM OZYMANDIAS KING OF KINGS!

Enter, peons, and creatively write! First, though, sign this contract acknowledging my Singular Creative Writing Greatness and your willingness to flunk my course if you deviate AT ALL from my commandments, to which you sign your name! I and I alone will tell you how to creatively write, for there is only one way, and that is the way of The Great And Powerful Salesses!

October 10th, 2022
One of Paul Fussell’s X’s Just Won the Nobel in Economics.

If you’re having trouble grasping Fussell on the phenomenon of X’s, consider Philip Dybvig.

[I play] instruments such as the erhu and the hulusi. I also enjoy weightlifting, Taiji, Qigong, Tui Shou (push hands), and walking…

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Professor Dybvig’s leisure time is spent playing and composing music, cooking, playing taijiquan, and lifting weights.

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A study in contrasts.

September 9th, 2022
Oh for GAWD sake FINE ALRIGHT I mean GEEZ everyone cheats on these things and if it weren’t for that asshole math professor and by the way who hired that dude…

Manifold are the ways universities fuck with statistics so they can get higher US News rankings, and it’s just Columbia’s bad luck that it hired its own petard… I mean, someone at the school actually hired the math prof who figured out Columbia had to be cheating AND PUBLICIZED THE FACT ON HIS FACULTY WEBSITE. Now, months later, the school admits yeah we did that thing and we promise to stop.

August 25th, 2022
S.H. – International Man of Mystery

UD‘s heart skips a beat when she realizes that this hugely intriguing figure was for years just across campus from her GWU office! A bona fide lecturer/researcher in the university’s medical school despite allegedly having lied about a number of his degrees, this man held on to his GW position while telling his boss Trump – or those close to him – that Fauci had to be fired, and that hydroxychloroquine was the solution to coronavirus. (Also involved in Trump administration hydroxychloroquine pushing: The Pride of New Jersey, Mehmet Oz.) He seems at the moment rather close to being in contempt of Congress, though I’m trying to update this information. He appears to be a “big lie” co-conspirator. He also seems to have used his personal GW email account for official WH communications.

Dr. Hatfill exchanged more than 1,000 messages using his George Washington University email account with senior officials in the Trump White House, federal agencies, private companies related to procurement and supply chain issues, and others about the federal government’s pandemic response.  In one email to an unidentified White House employee, Dr. Hatfill misleadingly stated:  “States favorable to Trump have a lower COVID Case Fatality Rate than the Fucktard states that do not.” 

SH doesn’t seem to be at GW anymore; but the question I’ve got is why such a person was ever there in the first place. Surely GW is as we speak asking itself that question.

August 2nd, 2022
Nerd Humor

And then there was [Colin Blakemore’s] rapier-sharp wit. We recall when a visiting professor, one of the many world-class neuroscientists to visit his laboratory, was having a birthday. At the time, one project in Colin’s laboratory involved studying how a subpopulation of callosal projecting layer 5 neocortical pyramidal neurons retract their dendritic tufts that reached to the pial surface during the first week of postnatal development in the mouse. Colin’s memorable message on the birthday card was “May your tuft never retract”!

July 30th, 2022
It took eight years for us to finally get a mug shot of Charlie Adelson…

and now, only a few months later, we get a guilty verdict and a life sentence for his girlfriend, who Adelson apparently paid to put together the conspiracy to murder Florida State University law professor Dan Markel.

Markel had to die because he sought shared custody of his children by Adelson’s sister, and this annoyed Adelson. He allegedly had two thug friends of his girlfriend blast his head off.

Ja, ja, wheels of justice… UD only hopes they nail Adelson (and his mother?) before Markel’s elderly parents die.

July 28th, 2022
Wants to spend more time with his about to be subpoenaed family.

Clarence Thomas is too busy with this and that to teach at UD‘s GW anymore. The instructor of the formerly co-taught course writes:

“For those of you still interested in taking the course, I assure you that we will make the best of the new situation.

Indeed he will. Apparently John Eastman will step in for Thomas, giving GW law students exclusive access to the constitutional foundations and legal rationales for the position that the vice-president of the United States alone determines who the country’s president will be. Eat your heart out, Harvard!

July 18th, 2022
Waxing Myalgic

Amy Wax is one big pain in the ass. A bombastic white supremacist, she likes to spoon with Tucker Carlson and pant about the beautiful paleskin future.

She is also a walking advertisement for the perils of tenure, because U Penn can’t think of any way to get rid of this every day/every way embarrassment. She’s eminent, see, with spectacular credentials (Yale College! Harvard med! Columbia Law!) and impressive research. As with her Harvard doppelganger, Adrian Vermeule, you can’t just toss berserk brahmins out on their behinds; but you do need to find some way to sorta neutralize them until they die or leave (Wax is almost seventy, and getting nuttier by the minute; Vermeule, at 54, has many years of Harvard-havoc-wreaking ahead of him). What to do? Free speech being what it is, what to do?

Well, Penn has lately pulled together a faculty committee to review her years of vile banter, with an eye toward rigging up some sort of official justification for booting her. She’s so out of touch with their institutional ethos that she is actually a force of destruction, especially in regard to students. Something like that.

I say don’t go there. I say stuff like that imperils free speech for everyone. I say do two other things:

  1. Get really serious about students boycotting her classes. Publicize her horribility among entering students as openly as you can, short of encouraging a boycott. That the university cannot do. But organizations of law students certainly can talk boycotts, and should.
  2. Denounce her aggressively, and often. She is indeed a grotesque blot upon the school, and the school should not hide from this, but on the contrary should dramatize it every chance it gets. On its website, for instance, under faculty news:

ANOTHER BLACK EYE FOR U PENN LAW

Professor Amy Wax once again brought shame on the school when she sat down recently with Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and spewed disgraceful racist rhetoric.

Etc. Don’t look Ivy Leaguily away. Get down and dirty.

June 7th, 2022
Jonathan Chait on the Ilya Shapiro Dustup at Georgetown University

I don’t agree with the idea conservative lawyer Ilya Shapiro expressed in January, when he objected to President Biden’s promise to appoint a Black woman to the first Supreme Court opening. (I wrote a column attacking his position.) But rather than simply refute his easily refutable arguments, Shapiro’s critics demanded he be fired by Georgetown, which had just hired him to teach at its law center…

Georgetown’s official policy pledges to safeguard the “free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate in all matters, and the untrammeled verbal and nonverbal expression of ideas.” Protesters depicted Shapiro’s [Supreme Court] tweets as causing damage so severe they could not tolerate his continued employment.

Georgetown’s solution was to evade the contradiction. It concluded its investigation by determining Shapiro could not be punished because he had not yet begun his job at Georgetown… [In effect, Georgetown’s policy allows] anybody to claim that ideas they find offensive have harmed or threatened them, and obligates the University to punish whoever has uttered them.

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Both Chait and Shapiro (who has resigned from the law school in protest) mention wild and crrrraaaazy and in absolutely good standing G’town law professor Carol Christine Fair, the Johnny Depp of tweeters (Kavanaugh hearings: “Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”), as a rather, uh, decisive argument on their side, which reminded UD that she blogged about this self-same hothead not long ago on this here blog.

[Personnel at the Frankfurt Airport] told [Fair] her deodorant was basically a liquid and she couldn’t carry it on the plane. She freaked and called them nazis, which as you may know in Germany is not at all, legally speaking, a good idea. After she was hit up with a fine, she wrote an essay blaming it on sexism (German police do this to so many women at airports!), or on a young man with a nazi haircut nearby who upset her, or some such bullshit.

So a lefty Georgetown law professor can shit her untrammeled guts out all over the place (we won’t even mention her other high-profile YOU’RE A NAZI freakout against Richard Spencer, who is indeed a fascist, but the owners and patrons of the gym where Fair did her freakout were… upset… ) (Oh, and then there’s this.) and waltz right through institutional life, while a far more trammeled … righty … well …

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Interesting post-script: Professor Fair, who knows on which side her bread is buttered, strongly supports Shapiro:

Professor Fair said she was one of only a few Georgetown faculty members who signed a petition supporting Mr. Shapiro after the ruckus about his posts. And she said that without knowing him, she did not think his tweet was racist, given that “he actually put forward a person of color.”

But student complaints are “the death knell,” she said.

“I am a fundamentally principled person,” she said. “I have no patience for cancel culture. None. And I don’t care who’s arguing for the cancellation.”

G’town’s Shapiro fiasco is the beginning of a process that will eventually also gobble up Carol Christine Fair, and she knows it.

April 7th, 2022
‘“The work of the investment office over the years has been a huge compliment to the school’s efforts to run a modest budget surplus and to the generous support from alumni and friends,” former Dean of the Yale School of Management Ted Snyder wrote to the [Yale Daily] News.’ 

The school will be directing one billion dollars in the coming years to faculty spelling lessons.

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