This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

T. Boone:
He Might Have Wasted Millions
On a University Sports Village,
But at Least he Did it Unethically


All billionaire T. Boone Pickens did was give a humble $165 million to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, to fund a charity for the benefit of the school's golf program, and that has teed off some folks. According to The New York Times, not long after the money landed at the school, the charity, O.S.U. Cowboy Golf, invested it in BP Capital Management, a hedge fund run by Pickens. Mike Holder, who sits on the board of the fund, says it was his decision to put the money in BP and denies that Pickens made it a condition of the contribution. The billionaire, according to the Times, got a nice tax break for the donation, thanks to a clause in Hurricane Katrina relief law that allowed "a deduction for charitable gift equal to 100% of his adjusted gross income," double the norm. Some lawyers question whether Pickens should get the deduction, given where the money ended up, though they say it's all legit. Making the point that there is no conflict, Pickens spokesman Jay Rosser told the Times, "We've waived all fees and our share of the profits on their investment."