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(Tenured Radical)

Friday, June 10, 2005

LET ME TAKE YOU DOWN

Whenever UD takes her eye off of the public university system in Florida, even for a second, all hell breaks loose. She won’t even mention the Sami al-Arian business. You don’t need to check a blog for updates on that one. But at the same university that hired al-Arian, you’ve now got the unseemly spectacle of a couple of political science professors coming to blows after a faculty meeting.

This is one of those he said/he said stories:

Police Report Filed
Against Professor
by Colleague


A government and international affairs professor filed an assault and battery complaint with University Police, claiming that a heated argument with a departmental colleague escalated into a physical altercation. …Michael Gibbons filed a complaint against Harry Vanden on April 29, claiming Vanden "shoved up against him" in an intimidating manner following a departmental meeting on April 22. …Gibbons' …account is disputed by Vanden, according to department chair Mohsen Milani, who was present when Gibbons and Vanden exchanged harsh words, but said he had his back to the pair when the disputed incident occurred. Milani said that when he later asked Vanden about Gibbons' complaint, Vanden denied that any physical contact took place. "(Vanden) told me straight to my face he did not do it," Milani said.

…The chain of events started after a departmental meeting during which Vanden interrupted Gibbons several times. Gibbons asked Vanden to stop interrupting and asked Milani to intervene; both requests, according to Gibbons' statement, were not acknowledged. After the meeting, Gibbons, Johnston and Milani met and were in discussion in the entrance of Johnston's office when Vanden approached the group. According to Gibbons' statement, Vanden tried to interrupt the meeting by telling Milani that it was late and he should probably leave. Gibbons responded by telling Vanden that he should cease his attempts to interrupt a meeting he was not a part of.

"At that point, Dr. Vanden shoved up against me with such force that I had to shift my feet to keep from being knocked over. He positioned his face within six inches of mine and said in a venomous and threatening tone, 'I will take you down.' I responded to Dr. Vanden, saying that his physical assault would not silence me," Gibbons said in his written account. …Gibbons said he was aware of Vanden's proficiency in martial arts , which "combined with the threatening statement made by Mr. Vanden, created fear in Mr. Gibbons that the potential for greater harm existed." …Gibbons' accounts also state that after the altercation he asked Milani what he was going to do about the incident, to which Milani responded that he did not see the interaction. When Gibbons pressed him further, Milani said he was not the "department's policeman." Even though Gibbons told Milani that he would have to give a witness account of the incident, Milani insisted that he was so "rattled by events at the meeting, he did not notice what happened one way or the other," according to Gibbons' statement.

Due to Gibbons' complaint, Guilford formed a committee to "investigate misconduct in the workplace." Guilford said that Milani is on the list of witnesses to be interviewed in the investigation by his appointed committee. The first meeting for the committee, which Guilford characterized as a fact-finding body, is today. The committee is charged with interviewing everyone involved, as well as all possible witnesses. Guilford, who formed the committee after he was sure the incident was no longer a criminal investigation, stressed that it is a civil investigation. …Although Gibbons decided not to press charges, he has kept the option to do so at a later date, the police report states. ..Milani said the dispute was not typical of the working atmosphere in his department. "There has not been a single grievance in the past seven years that I have been chair," Milani said. "This gives a very wrong impression of what our department is like.”



What actually happened here? We won’t get very far following the actions and statements of Mr. “I’m not the department’s policeman,” a man so “rattled” by a faculty meeting that he refused afterwards to notice a loud fight right in front of his eyes…. Vanden’s statement that “I will take you down,” combined with his background in martial arts, is interesting, however. UD consulted Ask the Sensei: Questions Sent to the Judo Information Site,” to find out how the term “takedown” is used:

' Q I … want to learn a certain judo takedown that has been utilized in rubgy in recent years to tackle opponents and place the ball on your team’s side. I don't know if I will have any luck. Have you heard of this "rugby/judo takedown"? And if so do you know what the name of it is?

A There are many Judo techniques that could be used successfully in rugby. Here is an answer from Iain Cunningham, 1st Dan (BJA) & Wing Forward (Jaguar RFC 1st XV):
"I would suggest that Mr Lawson wishes to learn a variation of Sumi-Otoshi, since when a player is driving at someone while holding the ball they will tend to lower their head and shoulders into a position similar to that exhibited by someone who has just had their Uchi-Mata attack side-stepped. They are then very vulnerable to the technique as they run past a suitably experienced rugby player. The momentum of the take-down can then be used to ensure that the tackler rolls the ball carrier into a position where the tackler's team is able to get a turn-over. Yours in Judo." '



Voila les combattants:

Professor Vanden.
Professor Gibbons .


Franchement, not much to choose from. Colin McGinn, nearby at the University of Miami, would have made this more interesting.




The other story comes from the virtually moribund Florida A & M University, where the latest scandal involves endowing a chair and then filling it yourself and then never showing up for work and then taking one hundred thousand dollars a year in salary and twenty-five thousand in benefits. That was a run-on sentence, but bad things at FAMU do run on.

‘ [A] donor, Kentucky lawyer Shirley Cunningham Jr., appeared to have received a law-school salary without teaching, part of a deal for him to award a $1 million gift to the college…‘It is not customary for someone to make a donation to an institution . . . and present conditions of employment as a condition for it,’ [an administrator] said.…Recent reports in the St. Petersburg Times and the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader said Cunningham received $100,000, plus $25,000 in benefits as part of the donation deal. Cunningham disputed those figures, however, and said he planned to release his own accounting of it….At the time of the donation, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the first professor to fill Cunningham's endowed chair was "likely to be Cunningham himself." ...Bryant said Cunningham's work -- or lack of it -- for FAMU came to light in a payroll audit she pushed as part of a larger review of spending and finances on campus.’

Why do they do it, you want to know? Why would a guy who already has plenty of money do something like this? Some people really like to hear themselves called "professor."