It’s the only card he has left to play. Even then, it’s not a good one, since he’ll have to claim decades of mental illness.

This would be Emory law school professor Michael J. Broyde, object of multiple in-depth accounts – here – of his very odd behavior. Emory is already reviewing him for having made up internet identities whose function appears to be flacking his own work and excoriating that of competitors (à la the so-far more famous Orlando Figes). This is, to be sure, puerile and malicious of Broyde, and it seems to have put an end to his other career as a religious bigwig.

But there’s more, and with it we enter Woody Allen territory.

Apparently Broyde created another online identity, this one with the purpose of providing historical evidence for various of his theological arguments.

The second identity, claiming to be an 80-something Ivy League graduate and Talmud scholar in 2010, alleged he’d had conversations with now long-dead sages in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The alleged conversations were used to produce a manufactured history of statements from long-dead scholars that buttressed an argument that Broyde had made in a highly-touted article published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Broyde, in a later publication, subsequently quoted this second identity’s alleged findings as further proof of his original argument.

To puerile and malicious, add – if true – academic fraud.

This man was reportedly a finalist for grand rabbi of London.

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UD thanks Tzvee.

Surrealistic layering, I guess you’d call it, in this story involving a grad student scheduled to teach a course called Health and Illness who is herself so unwell that rather than meet the class she phoned in bomb threats to empty the building.

York Minster to be Coated in Fat to Keep Out Rain

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il [is reported to have] died after getting into a fit of rage when he was told that a major dam project had sprung a leak. He collapsed during a briefing about a flagship hydro-electric power plant, but managed to order ‘severe punishments’ for those responsible before he died.

… in which, say, the president of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics is in court for “sexually assaulting [a] woman by intentionally or recklessly touching her on the breast and thigh. The charge also alleges that he asked whether the woman enjoyed being touched by him.”

Those who know him well say that he weighs his words carefully before he speaks.

I’ll say.

… this is about, right? Seems the Hardin County (Texas) GOP treasurer wants to secede from us maggots – them’s the word he used – what done elected Barack Hussein Obama. The Hardin County GOP seems to have rustled itself up a new treasurer real quick.

Morrison was recently “chosen by former State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy to help screen Texas public school textbooks,” but look on the bright side. He can’t do any more damage than has already been done to Texas public school students.

UD‘s pretty sure she’s on the side of Green Mountain College in this dispute about whether to slaughter and then sustainably eat two oxen who’ve had to be retired from the fields.

But she knows she’s enjoying some of the things people on and off campus are saying.

Off-campus enemies of the slaughter and eat approach are, say the provost, “at war, and they don’t take prisoners.”

A student notes: “It’s funny that it’s blown up in such a way, because on any other farm anywhere, this isn’t even a conversation that you would begin to have. It’s something that animals get to a certain point in their lives and they become food. And that’s just how it’s been for years, you know, decades.” Millennia, actually.

It’s Haleem Jubilee College! The place to be if you’re a girl who wants to be protected from molestation and from the “evil things” that phones make happen.

2010 was quite a year for St John’s University.

First there was this guy, St. John’s 2008 Alumni Outstanding Achievement Award winner. So proud was he of this achievement that he wore a big red sweatshirt emblazoned with ST JOHN’S UNIVERSITY to his first TARP fraud court appearance.

Then the dean of their Asian studies school and vp of international affairs had the following federal charges brought against her:

She faces a 10-count indictment including bribery, forced labor [of graduate students] and tax charges. The most serious charge, forced labor, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The mainstream as well as tabloid press is going to town over Cecilia Chang, an out of control person who has already imploded in court, testifying (against legal advice) on her own behalf.

… after they’ve seen … college?

… the farce was just beginning.

Bear-bolstering at the University of Colorado.

Not knowing you don’t have a PhD is the academic equivalent of not being able to find your ass with both hands, thinks ol’ UD.

It’s not as if you can overlook having to write a long manuscript over a number of years and then go to a room full of people and defend its arguments over a number of hours. It tends to concentrate the mind.

Yet the University of Pennsylvania has (had) a dean, a vice-dean of education, who (see this post’s title) has made just this claim. He’s been calling himself doctor for years based on his incorrect assumption that he has a PhD.

It’s like all those German politicians (and one Hungarian) (and millions of Korean) assuring us that they didn’t know they plagiarized their dissertations. It’s just really odd.

Anyway, Penn has put this guy on leave while they untangle the web he weaves.

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UD thanks Ian.

Millburn Police arrested two Kean University students who said they were playing a scavenger hunt game that involved taking as many house number signs from Short Hills as possible.