'New York University’s golf coach said he was forced to resign Oct. 12 after university officials learned that he accompanied players to a strip club while the team was competing in Florida in March.

Jay Donovan, the coach since September 2005, told a student newspaper, The Washington Square News, in an article published Wednesday that he and six of the eight players on the trip went to a strip club they passed when they were lost in the Fort Lauderdale area. The team was competing in a tournament in Weston, about 20 miles to the west.

Donovan told the newspaper that the visit to the strip club was revealed after several players quit the team Oct. 12. The newspaper reported that a player younger than 20 consumed at least one alcoholic beverage.

Donovan said the players acted after John Pharr, the team captain, was criticized by Chris Bledsoe, the athletic director, for skipping a practice two days before. When the players’ parents found out they had quit, they called Bledsoe and told him of the visit, Donovan said.

Donovan, 43, said that he only smoked a cigar in the club and that no money of his or the university’s was spent. In such a case, no N.C.A.A. rule would appear to have been violated.'

'CORAL GABLES, FL— University of Miami head football coach Larry Coker, afraid of being scapegoated and fired in the wake of Saturday's brawl involving Hurricanes players and those from Florida International University, defended himself by suspending 13 players, taking full responsibility for disciplining his team, and swinging a Hurricanes football helmet at the heads of athletic director Paul Dee and chancellor Donna Shalala during a press conference Wednesday. "What happened was unfortunate and does not reflect our character as a team or my philosophy as a coach," said Coker, grasping the helmet by the faceguard and delivering repeated blows to Shalala's face and neck. "However, I believe that dismissing me at this time would in fact send the wrong message about discipline to our players and the wrong message about the University of Miami to the public." Dee was physically unable to comment or breathe after the press conference, but Shalala seemed to indicate that she would handle the matter internally as soon as she stopped bleeding internally.'

'Miami has not had 20-plus incidents involving shoplifting, assault, gun charges and failed drug tests over the past two years, as Tennessee has. Miami has not had to dismiss a star player for earning money through a phony job, as Oklahoma has. Miami has not had a star linebacker accused of sexual assault on the eve of its bowl game as Florida State did last year.'

The World’s Largest Non-Alcoholic University-Sanctioned Family-Fun Event and Bowl

Forget the traditional football game, the dry lectures and the meet-and-greet with professors and administrators. At some colleges, parents’ weekend has expanded into a far more elaborate ritual.

Take last weekend’s big-name entertainment and parental pampering at George Washington University.

As many as 5,000 parents descended on the campus in downtown Washington not far from the White House, where they could take an organized tour of city sites, attend a jazz brunch or a silent auction, get massages — and take in a show by Jerry Seinfeld, who performed twice at the university’s athletic stadium. Tickets ranged from $57 to $125; the 4,200 seats for each show sold out.

“This is the most elaborate, and nicest, parents’ weekend,” said Stephen Andolino of Whippany, N.J., outside the parents’ weekend registration area, which was loaded with giveaways, including T-shirts and stress balls.

Mr. Andolino and his wife, Rosalie, have put one child through college and have two others enrolled — one is at Georgetown — so they have a basis for comparison. The couple attended one of the Seinfeld shows with their son, Philip, 20.

Many universities do stick to the traditional template of football game and faculty lecture. Last weekend at Yale, for instance, in addition to the big game — Yale beat Penn by 17-14 in overtime — and performances of the Yale Glee Club, parents could attend faculty lectures on “Tolstoy’s Emblematic Death,” “Plagues and Pleasures” and “The Teaching of Theater in the Language Classroom.”

...[How do] big-time college sports programs, which generate billions of tax-exempt dollars -- CBS pays the NCAA an annual average of $545 million mainly for rights to televise the March Madness basketball tournament -- further the purposes for which educational institutions are granted tax-exempt status[?]

...How does the NCAA fulfill its proclaimed purpose of maintaining ``the athlete as an integral part of the student body''? Only 55 percent of football players and 38 percent of basketball players at Division I-A schools graduate. The New York Times has reported that at Auburn, a perennial football power, many athletes have received ``high grades from the same professor for sociology and criminology courses that required no attendance and little work.'' Eighteen members of the undefeated 2004 team took a combined 97 hours of those courses while at Auburn. Who believes such behavior is confined to Auburn?

In recent decades the NCAA has increased the number of games that football and men's basketball teams are allowed to play. [In a letter to the NCAA, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee] wonders how these changes help athletes improve their academic performances? Perhaps these changes have pecuniary purposes?

The NCAA aims to ``retain a clear line of demarcation between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports.'' But aside from not compensating the athletes in a way commensurate with the money they generate for the universities, how is that line clear?




Some say the tax-exempt status of college sports is justified by the fact -- and it is a fact -- that successful sports teams often trigger increased applications for admission, and largess from alumni and legislatures. But, [the chair] notes, ``federal taxpayers have no interest in increasing applicant pools at one school opposed to another.'' Furthermore, athletic success that causes a surge of giving to universities may decrease giving to worthy charities.

Also, tax exemption is financing an escalation of coaches' salaries. More than 35 college football coaches are paid more than $1 million annually. The University of Colorado athletic department has borrowed $8 million, much of which will be used to buy out the contract of a fired football coach. Noting that several universities pay their men's basketball coaches four to five times more than their women's basketball coaches, Thomas wonders: ``What additional educational benefit do men's basketball coaches provide beyond that which is provided by women's basketball coaches?'' If the disparity has a commercial rather than an educational rationale, why should the commerce be tax-free?

Tax exemption also is a federal subsidy for ever-more lavish facilities: Oklahoma State University, which is receiving $165 million from T. Boone Pickens to improve its athletic facilities, was already planning a $102 million upgrade of its football stadium. OSU charges fans a $2,500 ``annual donation'' just to become eligible to buy tickets for the best seats. The University of Michigan, which has had 198 consecutive sellouts at its stadium that now seats 107,501, is spending $226 million to add 3,200 luxury seats and 83 suites. The University of Texas-Austin is spending $150 million to add 10,000 seats to its current 85,123 capacity. These may be sound commercial decisions, but why should this commerce be tax-exempt?

Thomas wants to know how many NCAA members ``generate a net profit on the operations of their athletic departments (excluding university subsidies such as student fees or general school funds and services)? Of the institutions that generate a net profit, how many use the profit for purposes unrelated to the athletic department?''

Thomas is retiring, but if Democrats capture control of the House, the new chairman of Ways and Means, Charles Rangel, may hold hearings into the NCAA's tax-free lifestyle. Such hearings will be embarrassing, if people who operate football and basketball factories are capable of embarrassment.

...[T]he veil, as a political issue, won't go away. The French have banned not only the full veil but head scarves in state schools. Some German regions have banned the head scarf for civil servants too, and they are not permitted in Turkish universities at all. Slowly, the issue is coming to the United States: Just this month a Michigan judge dismissed a small-claims court case filed by a Muslim woman because she refused to remove her full-face veil while testifying.

Critics call the veil a symbol of female oppression or rejection of Western values. Defenders say that it is a symbol of religious faith and that it allows women to be "free" in a different sense -- free from cosmetics, from fashion and from unwanted male attention. Debate about the veil inevitably leads to discussions of female emancipation, religious freedom and the assimilation, or lack thereof, of Muslim communities in the West.

And yet, at a much simpler level, surely it is also true that the full-faced veil -- the niqab, burqa or chador -- causes such deep reactions in the West not so much because of its political or religious symbolism but because it is extremely impolite. Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child -- or even an adult -- a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.

Munro Leaf (December 4, 1905 – December 21, 1976), was an American author of children's literature. He's best known for his 1936 book The Story of Ferdinand, a story about a bull who preferred smelling flowers to bullfighting. The book sparked considerable controversy, as it was seen by some as pacifist; it was consequently banned in Nazi Germany.

Born in Hamilton, Maryland, he graduated from the University of Maryland in 1927, and from Harvard University with a master's degree in English literature in 1931. During the Second World War, he and Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) created the pamphlet, This Is Ann, about a mosquito who spread malaria to men who failed to take precautions.

Women comprised only 21 percent of the academics who accepted tenure-track offers to join the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last year, a startling reversal of a three-year trend that saw that figure rise to 40 percent in 2004-2005.

It’s too soon to tell whether the sheer one-year drop, identified in the first annual FAS report on diversity, represents an anomaly or the start of a new trend. But the finding raises a flag for FAS as it works to increase gender diversity in a faculty where less than 19 percent of 478 tenured professors are women.

The report by Lisa L. Martin, the FAS senior adviser on diversity, called the drop a “troubling reversal.” The dramatic fall in women’s acceptances came even though the fraction of tenure-track offers to women rose slightly, to 39 percent, last academic year.

“It’s hard to know whether this is just a one-year blip or whatever,” Martin, the Dillon professor of international affairs, said in a phone interview. “All this shows is that of the offers made last year to men and women, women accepted at a much lower rate than the men.”

Women Turning Down Harvard’s Offers


While the proportion of women receiving tenure-track offers to join Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences rose for the third straight year in 2005-6, the share of women who accepted positions declined dramatically, according to an internal report.

In what the report’s author calls a “troubling reversal,” slightly more than 20 percent of those who accepted tenure-track offers in Harvard’s main undergraduate college last year were women, down from 40 percent in 2004-5. Thirty-nine percent of tenure-track offers were to women last year.

Women have tended to accept Harvard’s offers at a higher rate than men over the past few years, according to the report, but not so last year.

“It’s surprising that at the tenure-track level, we had a hard time recruiting women last year,” said Lisa L. Martin, the report’s author and a professor of international affairs.

A year ago, Martin was named senior adviser to the arts and sciences dean on diversity issues. The findings on women’s offers and acceptances come from her first annual report, delivered to the college’s faculty last week.

The report does not specify exactly how many women accepted Harvard’s offers last year but sheds light on a university that has publicly dealt with the issue of female faculty. Early last year, then-president Lawrence H. Summers suggested in a speech that one reason there are relatively few women in top positions in science may be “issues of intrinsic aptitude.” The comments created considerable controversy that many say contributed to Summers’s downfall.

Martin said it is hard to say what kind of effect the Summers controversy had on the recruitment of women at Harvard. [I doubt the Summers comment had much of an effect, though the bloodshed surrounding his resignation might have.]

The report shows that Harvard continues to have trouble recruiting female faculty members in the humanities. Roughly 35 percent of humanities tenure-track faculty are women, even though the proportion of Ph.D. earners in those fields who are women is well over 50 percent.

Since female faculty recruitment at Harvard generally improved in the 1990s, Martin said complacency has probably been a factor. “A lot of people thought there wasn’t a problem anymore,” she said. “What this report drives home is that the hiring of women is an issue that requires constant attention.”

Regular factors such as cost of living and family obligations might have deterred some women from accepting tenure-track offers last year, Martin said. The report shows that a growing number of faculty members live outside of Cambridge, and that women said having to leave early from faculty meetings to commute home was an issue. Martin said it is unlikely that faculty members decided to accept jobs at other Ivy League universities en masse, because the competitors see similar numbers.

She added that the data are from early summer, meaning that some female faculty members were still making up their minds. “It’s just one year, and it’s too early to call it a trend, but this is something I want to flag,” Martin said.

Added Jane Mansbridge, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government: “It’s too early to tell if the failure of more women than usual to agree to come to Harvard last year was the result of specific historical circumstances, continuing problems (e.g., finding jobs for spouses), or a statistical random blip in the data. If the trend continues, we will have fairly good evidence that the cause is some combination of continuing structural problems. But at the same time the faculty and deans of the schools will be taking steps to try to resolve those continuing problems. So we may never have a precise analysis of the cause.”

Harvard has already announced efforts designed to turn around the female acceptance numbers. Among them is a new policy that allows mothers in the arts and sciences college an eight-week maternity leave coincident with giving birth — which exceeds the guidelines for maternity-parental leave announced by the senior vice provost this year. Academic departments are also taking part in a mentorship program that pairs tenured female faculty with women in tenure-track positions.

'Maybe economic reality doesn't get much airtime in the University of Illinois-Chicago's English department, which [Walter Benn] Michaels chairs (he gleefully bemoans his $175,000 annual salary), but poverty, inequality and class are major objects of attention in sociology, economics, public policy, ed schools and investigative journalism -- to say nothing of the pages of The Nation. Michaels isn't the loner he pretends to be.

...[Michaels] complains about being one of the highest-paid English professors in the country and ... goes on at some length about his envy of the fabulously wealthy.'

One thing [opera director Jonathan Miller] has certainly not abandoned is the Interview as Performance Art.

Amid bomblets tossed at traditional opera audiences, the Metropolitan Opera, religious Jews (he is Jewish), American political culture, Belgian colonialists and German conceptualist directors, Mr. Miller weaves a narrative of his directing method: a focus on the ''negligible detail'' and ''subintentional actions.'' He cited Flaubert, Chomsky, the James-Lange theory of emotion, the sociologist Erving Goffman, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus, the writer Joseph Roth. He quoted Wordsworth and Auden.

Never far from his demeanor is the loony Cambridge University graduate who helped create ''Beyond the Fringe,'' the satirical revue with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett in the 1960's. A brilliant mimic, Mr. Miller slid into profanity-laced routines: of an Irish Republican Army terrorist accidentally blowing off his hand or of a Jamaican immigrant returning to Kingston for terror training or of Pakistani immigrants plotting in Cockney accents, making serious points about the nature of Muslim suicide bombers.

He wriggled from behind the table to show the pantomimes people adopt in public situations: the exaggerated, apologetic tiptoe, for example, to compensate for a late arrival at a seminar.

Whatever Mr. Miller's plans, a return to the Metropolitan Opera does not look imminent. He called the company ''unbelievably conservative'' and said, ''The infantilism of that audience is well, it's very depressing.''

He was already persona non grata at the Met after a dust-up with Joseph Volpe, the former general manager, over a 1998 ''Nozze di Figaro.'' Though Mr. Miller said he had not closely examined the strategy of the new general manager, Peter Gelb, he did not think that much had changed.

''They mostly seem to be to me show-biz plans,'' he said. ''They're getting more and more movie directors to do things.''

He called the current ''Zauberflöte,'' directed by Julie Taymor, an ''abomination'' marked by ''silly, glamorous, folkloric nonsense.'' Anthony Minghella's ''Madama Butterfly,'' which opened the season, was a ''Japanese fashion show,'' and he ridiculed the bunraku puppet that portrays Butterfly's child.

"Why didn't the obstetrician tell her, 'We've done a scan, and I'm afraid you're about to have a puppet,'" he intoned in an officious American accent. "'We had thought of terminating, but it was too late.'"

'[Y]our college’s mission statement ...will lead you to think that your job is to cure every ill the world has ever known – not only illiteracy, bad writing and cultural ignorance, which are at least in the ballpark, but poverty, racism, ageism, sexism, war, exploitation, colonialism, discrimination, intolerance, pollution and bad character.

... I call this the save-the-world theory of academic performance and you can see it on display in a recent book by Derek Bok, the former and now once-again president of Harvard. Bok’s book is titled “Our Underachieving Colleges,” and here are some of the things he thinks colleges should be trying to achieve: “[H]elp develop such virtues as racial tolerance, honesty and social responsibility”; “prepare … students to be active, knowledgeable citizens in a democracy”; and “nurture such behavioral traits as good moral character.”

I can’t speak for every college teacher, but I’m neither trained nor paid to do any of those things, although I am aware of people who are: ministers, therapists, social workers, political activists, gurus, inspirational speakers and diversity consultants. I am trained and paid to do two things (although, needless to say, I don’t always succeed in my attempts to do them): 1) to introduce students to materials they didn’t know a whole lot about, and 2) to equip them with the skills that will enable them, first, to analyze and evaluate those materials and, second, to perform independent research, should they choose to do so, after the semester is over.

That’s it. That’s the job. There’s nothing more, and the moment an instructor tries to do something more – tries to do some of the things urged by Derek Bok or tries to redress the injustices of the world – he or she will have crossed a line and will be practicing without a license. In response to this trespass someone will protest the politicization of the classroom, after which a debate will break out about the scope and limits of academic freedom, with all parties hurling pieties at one another and claiming to be the only defenders of academic integrity.

But the whole dreary sequence can be avoided if everyone lets go of outsized ambitions and pledges to just teach the materials and confer the skills, for then no one will be tempted to take on the job of moralist or reformer or political agent, and there will be no more outcries about professors who overstep their bounds. The New York Post would have nothing to write about, and organizations like Campus Watch could just disband.

There is an obvious objection to what I have just said. Any course of instruction, especially in the social sciences and humanities, will touch on deep moral and political issues. The materials students are asked to read will be fraught with them. Wouldn’t it be impossible to avoid discussing these issues without trivializing and impoverishing the classroom experience? No, it’s easy. You don’t have to ignore or ban moral and political questions. What you have to do is regard them as objects of study rather than as alternatives you and your students might take a stand on.

That is, instead of asking questions like “What should be done?” or “Who is in the right?” you ask, “What are the origins of this controversy?” or “What relationship does it have to controversies taking place in other areas of inquiry?” or “What is the structure of argument on both sides?” ...[You must] detach [a topic] from the context of its real-world urgency, where there is a decision to be made, and re-insert it into a context of an academic urgency, where there is an analysis to be performed.


.. [The problem lies with] those who believe that the purpose of higher education is to transform students into exemplary moral and political people (as opposed to people who simply know more). That goal is both unworkable and misguided; unworkable because it is impossible to control what students will do with the instruction they receive, and misguided because it forsakes the genuine pleasure of intellectual inquiry – the pleasure of trying to figure something out – for the hallucinogenic pleasure of trying to improve the world.'

Searchers combing the Mississippi River this month pulled out the body of basketball player Luke Homan — the eighth college-age man in nine years to disappear from a city tavern and turn up dead in a river.

La Crosse officials have debated for years how to keep drunken students safe, but some say there may be no answer for a town with three colleges, three rivers and $3 pitchers of beer. [Doesn't say how many bars there are, but let's assume wall to wall.]

"I'm not sure anything we do can prevent a future tragedy," Mayor Mark Johnsrud said. [There's a good deal the city can do, but as the rest of the article will explain, it doesn't want to do anything.]

Some officials want to rein in the binge drinking culture. [Too vague. What does this mean?] Others have proposed fencing off the scenic waterfront. [This would discourage tourism and be ugly.]

But solutions have so far eluded this community where drownings and drinking have claimed lives for years. The city's first recorded alcohol-related drowning was in 1867, according to the mayor. [Quite a tradition.]

The more recent string of deaths began in July 1997, when searchers pulled 19-year-old Richard Hlavaty's body from the Mississippi River near a park. College wrestler Jared Dion became the seventh drowning in 2004 when his body turned up in the same park.

The community is saturated with thousands of students attending the University of Wisconsin's Lacrosse campus, as well as Viterbo University and Western Wisconsin Technical College. Downtown bars cater to young drinkers, offering booze at dirt-cheap prices.

The Vibe, where Homan was last seen alive, offers an all-you-can-drink special for $5. Shots are just $1. A sign in the bar's window proclaims: "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." [Good journalism. Excellent details.]

Down the street, Brothers offers bottles of beer for a buck on Wednesdays. The Helm boasts 50-cent schnapps and $3 pitchers from midnight to 1:30 a.m.

The community has a long tradition of drinking. Thousands of people converge on La Crosse every fall for its Oktoberfest, a dayslong party with abundant beer. And on days when the wind blows just right, the smells of City Brewery waft through downtown. [Parents might want to keep these elements of the city scene in mind when considering where they want their little ones to go to school.]

"The problem is the culture is already up on a pedestal in this town," said University of Wisconsin senior Cathy Long. [Note: Up on a pedestal. Not tolerated. Not ignored. Worshipped.]

The city also lies where the Black and La Crosse rivers empty into the Mississippi. Hemmed in by rugged bluffs, LaCrosse is well-known for its scenery.

But the waterfront can be deadly. Investigators believe Dion fell off a levee that doubles as a pedestrian walkway and a dock for visiting paddlewheel boats. The levee had no railing, allowing him to tumble 10 feet into the frigid Mississippi.

His death brought to a head years of fears that a serial killer was stalking drunks. Police held a town meeting to reassure people, explaining that none of the victims was attacked. Investigators said the students had been drinking heavily and noted that Riverside Park is just two blocks from downtown bars. [Are you getting this picture? The place is a controlled experiment in drunk drowning.]

A task force appointed to investigate the drownings made 19 recommendations ranging from building gates to the levee to creating alternative forms of entertainment and limiting Oktoberfest to one weekend.

But only a handful of those suggestions were adopted, including police patrols of house parties and an extra police shift to patrol bars.

Over time, the focus on drownings faded, Alderwoman Andrea Richmond said.

"Everybody kind of let it drop," she said. "We've done nothing."

Searchers found Homan's body Oct. 2, not far from where Dion was discovered. Preliminary toxicology reports put Homan's blood-alcohol level at 0.32 percent, four times the legal limit in Wisconsin.

Joe Werner, 22, a senior on the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse basketball team, compared Homan's death to losing a brother.

"They need to do something more down by the river," Werner said. "If enough would have been done, it wouldn't have happened again." [The town must provide a risk-free world for its drunks, says Werner. And in a way he has a point. This town obviously owes its existence, its traditions, its sense of self-worth to alcoholism. Its merchants depend upon revenue from bingers of a certain age. The town government has decided that there's an acceptable level of mortality within its sodden boundaries -- one death a year seems about right. But it risks both peasant revolts and lawsuits as its inebriates begin to understand what's happening.]

Students have taken it upon themselves to patrol the park since Homan's death, but residents are calling for some kind of barrier.

But the mayor does not want fences or gates to mar Riverside Park's natural beauty or send a message that La Crosse is a "playground" for binge drinkers. [Bit late to worry about that message.]

His solution: Spend $60,000 on motion-activated lights in the park to startle drunks and alert them they are close to the water. The City Council is set to consider the lights in November. [That might work. Or you could have something like what pilots have in the cockpit -- Instead of shouting "PULL UP PULL UP" it'd shout "GET AWAY FROM THE WATER DUMBSHIT."]

Meanwhile, the mayor said, community groups need to keep warning students about the dangers of binge drinking, he said.

"It's a behavior issue," he said. "People are going to do what they want to do."

Mary Torstveit, assistant director of prevention services at the University of Wisconsin, said students living off-campus are largely on their own.

Drinking "just seems to be such a standard part of Wisconsin culture and La Crosse culture. We'll always be fighting that," she said. "At some point, we have to start working on personal responsibility. That's probably the biggest thing. You can't have somebody looking out for you your whole life."

'A former dean of a University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey school remains on the payroll as a highly paid professor.

Dr. R. Michael Gallagher, the former dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, is being paid $128,695 a year nearly six months after resigning his administrative post.

Gallagher resigned amid allegations that he improperly billed UMDNJ for more than $200,000 in questionable expenses, including expensive liquor, restaurant meals and hotel stays.

According to a report issued in the spring by a federal monitor overseeing UMDNJ, Gallagher also directed subordinates to doctor financial records so he could qualify for bonuses.

Gallagher and his attorney, Jeremy Frey, have declined comment on the allegations.

UMDNJ officials are moving to terminate Gallagher's tenure, spokeswoman Anna Farneski said, adding that he is a clinical professor who does not have classroom duties. [$128,000 is a lot of salary for a disgraced professor whose university is trying to fire him. On the other hand, at least he doesn't work for it.]

Under the faculty contract, professors may appeal recommendations to terminate tenure through arbitration by the state Public Employment Relations Commission.

The timetable for termination cases varies wildly, said Debra Osofsky, executive director of the UMDNJ faculty union.

"It is very rare to have the administration try to terminate a tenured faculty member," Osofsky said. "We're assuming that this case is going to go all the way."

At Rutgers, only one professor has been stripped of tenure in the last few decades, and the process was extremely slow, said Robert Boikess, a former chairman of the union's negotiating committee.

"It's extremely lengthy," Boikess said, adding that the process entailed 35 meetings, followed by 10 years of litigation.'

'The[se] are ... very wealthy institutions, with endowments that in most cases run into the billions. Stanford, for instance, has an endowment of around $15 billion, making it the third largest among universities, behind only Yale and Harvard. (Harvard’s astounding endowment is now nearly $30 billion.) And of course if you’ve ever visited Stanford — with its fantastic medical complex, its professional-quality athletic facilities, and its gorgeous campus — you know that what is most striking is not how much Stanford seems to need, but how much it already has.

All of which made me wonder: does Stanford — and Yale, and Brown and N.Y.U. — really need to raise ever more billions to add to the billions it already has? Or is this an example of fund-raising run amok, a case of the rich getting even richer — just because they can?

“I like to say that if this campaign ends up only being about $4.3 billion, we will have failed,” said Martin W. Shell.

Mr. Shell is the vice president for development at Stanford — i.e. the chief fund-raiser — and he was making the case that the sum of money the university was trying to raise, eye-popping though it is, was far less important than the way the school planned to spend that money.

The list of goals for the Stanford Challenge is undeniably impressive. .... It is hard to criticize any effort to raise money that might help cure disease, and far be it from me to try. ... [But] at least some of these initiatives dovetailed with issues that were already on the minds of potential donors. For two years before the introduction of the capital campaign, Stanford was raising money during what’s called the “silent phase,” talking to donors, gauging the market and getting a sense of what alums and others might be willing to fund.


... These competitive pressures among the elite universities have led to an odd result — or at least odd when you think how competition normally works. Competition normally causes prices to go down. But ... in the case of the nation’s most prestigious universities, competition actually causes prices and costs to rise because the ever-upward spiral of bigger salaries and better facilities and all the rest of it makes the running of the university that much more expensive.

One thing that surprised me was that so few people in the world of higher education seemed bothered by this. Whenever I asked about the high cost of tuition — and why these campaigns and huge endowments didn’t stop the relentless annual tuition hikes — I was told that tuition only covers about 60 percent of the cost of education, and besides, a great deal of money raised in capital campaigns went to financial aid. (Stanford tuition is currently $32,994, with room and board adding another $4,796.) Those students who are paying full freight — and their parents — have certain expectations about the kind of facilities they will have access to, the professors who will teach them, the computers they will use, and the schools are raising money in order not to disappoint. “They are responding to market demand, in which parents and students select the fanciest, most luxurious, best-equipped schools — and everyone wants their tuition discounted,” Mr. Lombardi said. The money raised in capital campaigns helps the elite institutions market themselves.

There is no question that the rise of the elite American university is one of the great success stories in modern life. In their own way, they are global leaders. The competition among them have made them all better. But it has also drained talent and money — and made life more difficult — for all the hundreds of universities that do not rank, in the public mind, with Harvard and Stanford and Yale. These other universities are the schools that educate the vast bulk of American college students. They can’t conduct $1 billion fund drives. And so, ever so slowly, they are falling behind. That’s not Stanford’s fault, or even Stanford’s problem, but it can’t possibly be good for the country.

One other thing about capital campaigns. Whenever I asked anyone involved in one whether they were trying to trump someone else’s campaign — whether, that is, the amount of money they were trying to raise was itself a form of competition — I was told that nothing could be further from the truth. Robert M. Berdahl, the president of the Association of American Universities, told me flatly: “You don’t have a capital campaign because one of your peers is having one. It is about the university’s need for resources.”

But then, a few days ago, something happened that made me wonder about that claim. Cornell got wind of what I was reporting, and a public relations executive sent me a series of e-mail messages trumpeting its own capital campaign, hoping that I would mention it in this column.

So here goes. The campaign will be announced Thursday in New York, and though the executive wouldn’t tell me its size, she strongly implied that it would be right up there with the big boys.

The Cornell campaign, she wrote me, would establish “a new Ivy lead in the ‘race for the top dollars.’ ” Competition, indeed.'

'Richard Grasso should have taken John Reed’s advice.

Mr. Reed was brought in as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange after Mr. Grasso was forced out in the wake of the disclosure of his $139.5 million in pay. He commissioned a report on Mr. Grasso’s compensation that was scathing in its criticism of both Mr. Grasso and the Big Board’s directors, most of whom seem to have had lttle understanding of just how much they were paying Mr. Grasso.

In talking to reporters, Mr. Reed said that “If I were” Mr. Grasso, “I’d call me up and say, ‘John, let’s talk.’ ” He suggested that Mr. Grasso should agree to “write a check for $150 million” to settle the affair.

Mr. Grasso, a proud man, would have none of that. He said he would settle only if he were paid more millions, and filed suit demanding that he be paid $48 million he had previously agreed to waive. He also sued Mr. Reed for defamation.

...I have known Mr. Grasso for two decades, and spent some time with him while this was blowing up.... '

A New York judge ruled yesterday that Richard A. Grasso, a former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, would have to return as much as $100 million he received as part of a fiercely contested $139.5 million payout.

The judge ... said that Mr. Grasso did not disclose to his fellow directors on the board of the exchange the extent to which his soaring compensation had caused his pension and savings to balloon in size and that he violated his contract by withdrawing $87 million before his retirement. Interest and money from a separate retirement account would raise the total.

The ruling was not the judge’s final word on the dispute — he did not directly address the central claim in the lawsuit brought by Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, that Mr. Grasso’s compensation was unreasonable under the state’s not-for-profit law. [This is where Papa Doc Diamandopoulous came in handy.] But the ruling bolstered Mr. Spitzer’s main argument in support of that claim — that the exchange directors were not fully informed about Mr. Grasso’s compensation.

Whether his pay was reasonable or not is to be decided at a subsequent trial — one that would likely focus on the $80 million he was paid between 1999 and 2001. [Sounds reasonable.]

Mr. Grasso said yesterday that he would appeal, which would further delay a nonjury trial that had been scheduled to start last month.



In September 2003, Mr. Grasso was forced to resign as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s largest stock market, amid an outcry over the disclosure of his $139.5 million compensation package, all of it tied to accrued pension and retirement savings. [$139.5 million. An amount that might excite the eye even of a Harvard fund manager.] John S. Reed, Mr. Grasso’s temporary successor, commissioned an inquiry into Mr. Grasso’s pay. That report was passed on to Mr. Spitzer, who sued in 2004. Since then the two sides have been embroiled in a drawn-out series of legal skirmishes.

The ruling is a major legal setback for Mr. Grasso, who for the last three years has battled to make the case that the exchange’s board was well aware of all aspects of his pay and approved the package accordingly.

Justice Ramos also ruled yesterday against Mr. Grasso’s claim that he was terminated and thus due an additional $95 million in severance pay. [Oh yeah, and I want an EXTRA $95 million.] And the judge dismissed a countersuit for disparagement that Mr. Grasso had filed against his temporary successor, Mr. Reed. [PLUS disparagement money from Reed.]



In his ruling, the judge was responding to several legal motions filed by Mr. Spitzer, claiming that Mr. Grasso violated his contract by withdrawing pension savings before his retirement and failed in his duty as chairman of the board by not keeping his fellow directors informed of his escalating pension.

Mr. Grasso said in a statement: “Today’s ruling is riddled with errors. One month ago, the Appellate Division told Justice Ramos not to try this case himself until the Appellate Division had decided important legal questions before them. Today, Justice Ramos somehow rejected the testimony of dozens of directors that they approved every dime they paid me [Dime. Quaint.], and decided that these men and women did not know what they were doing.”

Mr. Grasso said that he had instructed his lawyers to appeal and that he looked “forward to the jury trial that the state constitution promised me.”

For Mr. Spitzer, who leads his Republican opponent in the race for New York governor by a wide margin, the ruling is a welcome riposte to the criticisms he has faced that in place of winning in the courtroom he has bullied companies and executives into reaching settlements.

“I have maintained since the beginning that the principles at stake in this issue were clear and the facts were egregious,” Mr. Spitzer said in an interview yesterday. “At every turn the government perspective has been vindicated. The defendants have done nothing more than scream louder and louder and their arguments are vacuous and wrong.”

In his ruling, Justice Ramos said he wanted to reach a payment solution within the next 30 days.

In the unlikely event that Mr. Grasso follows the court judgment and writes a $100 million check [Oh all right I guess it's the decent thing... Here's a check for one hundred million dollars...], Mr. Spitzer would be expected to drop the case, as he could claim that he had received the amount he had originally asked Mr. Grasso to return. Mr. Grasso would still be a wealthy man, getting to keep tens of millions of dollars in compensation from his more than three decades at the exchange. [This is the part of stories like this one that always gets to me. I think it's a guy thing because I really don't understand. Grasso's no spring chicken. He could pay up, take the tens of million of dollars he'd get to keep, and enjoy a lifestyle in his latter years that would be the envy of Walter Benn Michaels. Why doesn't he do that?]

While having to return a significant portion of his pay package carries its own financial punishment, it is the judge’s sweeping rejection of Mr. Grasso’s long-held contention that the exchange board had been aware of his growing pay that represents a more resonant defeat.

Justice Ramos said it was “shocking” that the board could have been “unaware of a liability of over $100 million,” and he said that Mr. Grasso violated his fiduciary duty as a director to keep his board fully apprised of how quickly his pension benefits were accumulating. “Mr. Grasso’s duty is to be fully informed and to see to it that the board was fully informed,” he wrote. “He failed in this duty.”

Between 1999 and 2002, as Mr. Grasso’s annual pay soared to a high of $31 million, his pension plan, a supplemental executive retirement plan, or SERP, grew at an even faster clip, topping out at over $80 million in 2003, when Mr. Grasso made the decision to withdraw his funds. [Zoom zoom zoom zoom RUN]

That decision, which according to the depositions of several directors he made because he was fearful that another board would prevent such a withdrawal, set in motion the events that would lead to the public controversy over his pay and his eventual resignation. In the subsequent years, all the participants have been deposed over the matter, with many directors on the wider board claiming that they had no idea how fast Mr. Grasso’s SERP had grown. [What big SERPs you have! The better to eat you with, my dear...]

In his decision, Justice Ramos draws the crucial conclusion that Mr. Grasso did not inform members of his board about his escalating SERP. “Mr. Grasso’s failure to disclose the amount of his SERP thwarted the compensation committee from performing its duty,” he wrote. “Year after year, it made decisions to pay him without knowing his true compensation.” [Shades of Benjamin Ladner.]

At the crux of the judge’s ruling is his decision that Mr. Grasso must return the $87 million in pension savings that he withdrew from the exchange before he retired. And it also supports a similar argument made by directors like Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Goldman Sachs chief and current Treasury secretary who led the campaign for Mr. Grasso’s ouster. In his decision, the judge said that the pension withdrawals that he made in 1995 and 1999, totaling $35 million, were unlawful transfers and should be recognized as loans.

Lawyers from Mr. Spitzer’s office calculate that Mr. Grasso would owe interest of about $15 million on that sum. Mr. Grasso will also be required to return money from a separate retirement account that is not yet vested.

That brings the total to close to $100 million, representing a significant portion of the $185 million he was paid as head of the stock exchange from 1995 to 2003.

The returns still are coming in from the Miami-Florida International football brawl Saturday, but for now the tally stands at a total of 31 players suspended or dismissed from both teams.

After watching the tape of the vicious brawl, again and again, I can't help wondering where the criminal charges are, why somebody from the thugfest -- maybe a bunch of somebodies -- isn't in jail.

After all, former Hurricanes player-turned-TV analyst Lamar Thomas was swiftly fired after he merely spoke about the mayhem as it was going on, saying a little too eagerly that he was almost ready to take the elevator down and join the brawl.

''You don't come into the OB [Orange Bowl] talkin' smack, not in our house,'' said Thomas, who offered this solution: ''Why don't they just meet outside in the tunnel after the ballgame and get it on some more?''

There's no doubt part of the soft landing for the players -- and their coaches -- can be blamed on Dallas Cowboys center Andre Gurode, who inexplicably refused to bring charges against Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth recently after Haynesworth danced with his cleats on Gurode's helmet-less face to the tune of 30 stitches.

Precedents matter.

When you see what some of the Miami players were doing in the brawl, the thing that comes to mind is not a sports fight, but a beatdown.

You think of a back-alley mugging.

You think of cowardice and rioting.

You think of mobs.

You think of the popular underground videos going around of authentic street beatings, of surveillance cameras catching thugs trying and sometimes succeeding in killing victims.

Miami safety Brandon Merriweather was very active in the brawl, stomping on downed FIU players with his cleats, among other things.

In old-time fights, men stood and fought each other one-on-one with their fists or wrestled one another to the ground. If it was wrong, there was still a certain code to the nastiness.

Merriweather's actions had no code except to maim or kill.

''As a team captain, I have come to expect more from myself,'' Merriweather wrote in an apology.

Team captain. Wow.


Blame starts at the top

And so we are left to wonder about the state of Miami football and the state of NCAA big-time revenue-producing football generally.

Yes, Florida International figures in here somehow, but, be honest: Had you ever heard of the school before this?

Miami has won more national titles in the last quarter-century (four) than any other university. It has won them under four different coaches, and current coach Larry Coker is the most clueless of them all.

''I think this will affect the image of our program,'' Coker said post-fight, ''but in a very positive way.''

What?

There is a wealth of football talent in the high schools of South Florida, and Coker has seen fit to ride that talent to his own national title in 2001. But his control of his charges -- like the control of former Miami national-championship coaches Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson -- seems at times nonexistent.

Just as the management of the school seems to have no control, or rather, to enjoy the fruits of victory that comes from an out-of-control program.

Maybe this is just thug life -- as tattooed on iconic and murdered rapper Tupac Shakur's belly -- infiltrating America's educational and entertainment system with the technical assistance of the computer era.

Maybe it had to happen, the gangster world and the sports world melding.

But it has been building, and see-no-evil apologists such as Miami president Donna Shalala -- formerly of the Clinton administration, formerly coach Barry Alvarez's landlord at the University of Wisconsin -- are part of the problem.


'Do that again and you're grounded'

''We will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or reputation,'' Shalala said. ''I will not eliminate their participation at the university. I will not take away their scholarships.''

She added that Miami now has a ''new standard,'' that says, ''Do this again, and you're off the team.''

My goodness. Maybe Shalala will be giving all the fellows apples before bedtime, too.

Let me tell you about Miami's past.

In 1984, I wrote a story for Sports Illustrated about the Canes' stellar offensive line. In the accompanying photo, two of the five linemen are giving the the camera the finger.

In 1986 I wrote about star Miami linebacker George Mira Jr., not long after he had been arrested by campus police and charged with disorderly conduct, battery on a police officer, assault, fleeing a police officer and possession of steroids without a prescription.

In a 1995 cover story, after many more NCAA violations and legal offenses by players, Sports Illustrated blared in bold type, ''WHY THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SHOULD DROP FOOTBALL.''

The Hurricanes got into a postgame fight with LSU last December at the Peach Bowl, and they started a near-brawl before this year's Louisville game by stomping on the Cardinals' midfield logo.

No, this is not new territory for Miami, nor for the NCAA football money machine that now gives us $3million coaches and games virtually every night of the week in lieu of integrity, education and honor.

Hell, there was even a brawl last week at the end of the delicate Dartmouth-Holy Cross game.

Thug life. Live it.

A UC Berkeley physics professor and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist was found dead at the lab Tuesday afternoon hours after telling his students he was suffering from depression.

Michael T. Ronan, 57, was discovered behind Building 50B after apparently suffering a fatal fall about 4:38 p.m. according to witnesses near the scene, a statement from the lab said.


...Ronan was the professor for a Physics 8A class on campus and during review of a midterm on Tuesday told his students he was suffering from depression and would not continue to teach the class.

Following his announcement to the class, Ronan spoke to The Daily Californian yesterday about 2:30 p.m.

“I wanted to say goodbye to the class,” he said. “I had troubles and just couldn’t handle it and just came to the point that I just had to give up. I’m just depressed.”

... One student, UC Berkeley junior Rebecca Chien, described Ronan as a “normal person” who was down-to-earth. She said she did not recognize signs of his depression, but said Ronan had become more disorganized as the semester progressed.


... “It’s very shocking and tragic to happen anywhere, but having it happen sort of 20 feet from where your office is, somehow makes it even more real,” [a colleague] said.

Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry are shown hobnobbing and sharing laughs with high-powered lobbyists at a Nantucket reception for top Democratic donors, in a film clip posted on the ABC News website yesterday.

In the clip, lobbyists who gave $25,000 each to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are shown enjoying special access to the Massachusetts Democrats and other Democratic senators at an open-air lobster dinner at the Harbor House Village hotel in July.

Kerry, a gray sweater tied around his neck, was filmed putting his arm around one attendee a few feet from where Senator Carl Levin , a Michigan Democrat, was talking with another donor. And Kennedy is shown at a podium delivering a limerick for attendees.

Kennedy told the audience: ``There once were Senate Democrats on Nantucket, Republican tide -- they all aimed to buck it. They fight hard to win, these women and men, and in November control they re took it."

The report, which also includes film of Republican senators at a golf retreat with donors, does not suggest that any senators broke ethics or fund-raising laws by attending the events or speaking with lobbyists.

But ABC quotes a government watchdog group as saying that the videos show that representatives of big companies and special interests continue to enjoy privileged access to lawmakers, despite the scandal involving disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff .

``They talked the talk, but they didn't walk the walk," said Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, referring to the failure of Congress to pass ethics and lobbying reforms this year.

ABC plans to air a report that includes the videos on its newscast tonight, according to a network spokeswoman.

She said the video was shot by ABC using a hand-held camera from a public sidewalk outside the Nantucket hotel.

ABC reported that 40 registered lobbyists were on the Democrats' guest list, with lobbyists' clients including drug companies, the telecommunications industry, Indian gambling interests, and labor unions.

Aides to Kennedy and Kerry bristled at any comparison between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to cozy relationships with lobbyists. One Republican House member -- Bob Ney of Ohio -- has pleaded guilty to corruption charges because of his ties to Abramoff, and several incumbents are in tight races in part because of their relationship with the former lobbyist, who has pleaded guilty to bilking clients.

A Kerry spokesman said there is nothing wrong with Democratic senators appearing at events with the goal of trying to elect more Democrats to Congress.

Free-speech Group Decries
Marquette Removal of Quote

University official took humorist's gibe
from office door of assistants

Marquette University came under attack from a national free-speech organization on Wednesday after a university administrator refused to allow a quote from humorist Dave Barry to remain posted on the office door of four teaching assistants.

The quote: "As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government."

Stuart Ditsler, a teaching assistant and graduate student in the philosophy department, said he put it on the door of an office he shares with several other graduate students several weeks before classes started because, as a libertarian, he identified with the sentiment. He said that it's not uncommon for professors and teaching assistants to post cartoons or articles with political viewpoints on their doors.

But shortly after the quote went up, it was removed by the department's chairman, associate professor James South. In a Sept. 5 e-mail to Ditsler and the other teaching assistants, South called the quote "patently offensive." He said free-speech zones required him to take it down.

"I'm afraid that hallways and office doors are not 'free-speech zones,' " South wrote. "If material is patently offensive and has no obvious academic import or university sanction, I have little choice but to take note."

Ditsler said South's decision was made in conjunction with the department's executive committee, which is made up of faculty. Infuriated, Ditsler contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, a non-partisan organization that takes up free-speech battles on college campuses.

FIRE sent a letter of protest to Marquette President Father Robert A. Wild on Sept. 27. When the organization had not received a response by Wednesday, it decided to release a public statement lambasting the university.

Marquette's student handbook protects the "right of the members of the university community freely to communicate, by lawful demonstration and protest, the positions that they conscientiously espouse on vital issues of the day."

Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, said prohibiting Ditsler from posting the quote violated this policy. Lukianoff said "patently offensive" is a term used to describe unprotected speech in the context of obscenity law, and that it is applied only to hardcore, pornographic language.

"I thought it was hilarious to characterize a fairly benign quote by a humorist as offensive," said Lukianoff, who also took issue with the university's use of free-speech zones, which he said were becoming increasingly common on college campuses.

South [the author, by the way, of "The Dialectic of Self-Knowledge in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"] did not return a phone call or e-mail seeking comment Wednesday. The philosophy department referred questions to the university's press office.

Marquette spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien Miller said South's decision was primarily a workplace issue, not an issue of academic freedom, and that he was responding to complaints regarding what "some felt was offensive material."

She offered up a letter from Wild to FIRE dated Oct. 16, in which Wild said that because the quote was posted without attribution, "someone reading the quotation may not have understood the humor/satire of Dave Barry."

Miller said the posting might have been handled differently if it had included the attribution. She said there is no university policy dictating what can or cannot be posted on office doors.

Alan Bennett, commentators like to say, is heir to Betjeman as the nation's teddy bear. On the evidence of his all-conquering play (and now film) The History Boys he is also the outright winner of the Evelyn Waugh memorial "Brideshead" award for the nation's arch-educational snob.

I watched the film in the Odeon, Camden Town. As readers of Bennett's diaries will know, it's home ground - opposite Fresh and Wild, where the playwright likes to shop. To say the audience was friendly to their Parkway Laureate would be an understatement. There were anticipatory titters as the credits rolled round. The aisles, thereafter, were scarcely wide enough for all the rolling around in them.

The History Boys is a brilliant play, and a good film. It is also permeated with odious class prejudice. The tittering, at the Odeon, for example, reached gale force with every appearance of the headteacher, played in grotesque caricature by Clive Merrison - a portrayal which actor and dramatist seem mutually determined to steep in contempt.

An oaf, a bully (and, as we eventually discover, a groper of his secretary), the head stumbles hilariously when trying to join in suave French conversation that Hector is conducting with "his" boys. Ignorant buffoon. His English accent (scarcely better than his French) betrays vulgar origins. He believes in one thing only: "results". A philistine.

And then, the shameful confession. He "tried" for Oxford. But he has a geography degree from - wait for it - Hull. At this revelation, the audience exploded with mirth. Why? What's funny about that? Those who care to check will see the department which the headteacher attended was rated top in the official 2005 student satisfaction survey and, as its website proudly proclaims: "We are now ranked amongst the top 20 geography departments in the recent Guardian national league tables." Not Oxford, certainly, but neither the academic pits.

Is a geography degree from Hull an intellectually shameful thing? Should those who have earned one, and reached a top post in a grammar school, wear a scarlet "H" on their breasts, carry wooden clappers, and shout "Uneducated! Uneducated!" whenever Oxonians are sighted? It's not just Hull. The film is punctuated with sarcasms against municipal, provincial, and redbrick institutions. Loughborough (all those bone-headed rugby players) gets its sneer, as does Leeds (a scrap heap for those who fail Oxbridge)...



...Since graduating from Leicester (I have three degrees from the place, which makes me, in Bennett's terms, a triple-died loser) I have taught at Edinburgh, London, and Caltech, in Los Angeles. These metropolitan institutions have instilled in me the belief that when it comes to provincial, it doesn't get more so than Oxbridge.

I am clearly prejudiced. And bitter. And probably wrong. But I think it's a better class of prejudice than Bennett's, and my bitterness and wrongness are, I believe, honourably shared ones. Many more Guardian readers, for example, will have attended non-Oxbridge than Oxbridge institutions. A good many may have read geography at Hull. Must they go through life with an inferiority complex, and the sound of the Bennett sneer in their ears?...

Here in America, we have what we at [this newspaper] like to refer to as 'freedoms.' You know, there are a whole bunch of them promised to us in that Constitution-thingy, like freedom of speech, freedom of expression and (our personal favorite) freedom of the press.... [I]t's doubly hypocritical that professors, the people who are supposed to be helping students grow as people and thinkers, are the ones leading the charge to censor the exhibit. In fact, you could almost call it betrayal.