The people at UA ask why
Their president whores for DeVry.
“Oh, go lay a fart,”
Says President Hart,
“Fuck off, adios, and bye-bye.”

Sign the petition.

Christopher Hitchens, who wrote that sentence in an essay about Jerry Falwell, would have been fascinated by the brotherhood on view at Donald Trump’s latest rally, where Trump’s warm-up bigot, a loud-mouth diploma mill graduate (not Trump University; another diploma mill), shrieked that Bernie Sanders doesn’t believe in God and must be made to come to Jesus.

I wish Hitchens were here to describe this man.

As pants Ann Hart for extra green
Beyond her package here
So longs her soul for U DeVry
And its free bucks so dear.

For Thee, DeVry, her living God,
Her thirsty soul doth pine;
Oh when shall she behold her check
Thou Majesty Divine?

Why restless, why cast down, Ms Hart?
O let your critics rant;
For thou shalt sing the praise of Them
The bills for which you pant.

Capella, Phoenix, and DeVry
The Gods whom you adore,
Be glory as it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.

… and suffer no consequences. Their universities, now… certainly their universities suffer consequences… but both of these people hold on to their jobs and indeed continue to do what they do.

In the case of the cynic – provost at Southern Methodist University – what he does is overrule faculty committees trying to keep unqualified basketball players from being admitted.

In the case of the pig – chancellor at UC Davis – what she does is accumulate money-for-nothing board memberships – one of them a conflict of interest, and another DeVry! – until some local politician notices and she runs away squealing Sorry Sorry Sorry!

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UD thanks dmf and Wendy.

But who cares? Those of us who want the obscene endowments of schools like Harvard Yale and Princeton seriously spent down will take our allies where we can. And UD thinks Reynolds is serious about these specific things:

We should eliminate the tax deductibility of contributions to schools having endowments in excess of $1 billion. At some point, as our president has said, you’ve made enough money. That won’t end all major donations to the Ivy League, but it will doubtless encourage donors to look at less wealthy and more deserving schools, such as Northern Kentucky University, recently deemed “more inspirational than Harvard” in the London Times Higher Education magazine.

We should require that all schools with endowments over $1 billion spend at least 10% of their endowment annually on student financial aid. That will make it easier for less wealthy students to attend elite institutions.

Everyone who ever had anything to do with pill empresario Martin Shkreli is bailing bailing bailing. We don’t want your filthy money!

Leaving Hunter College and its affiliated high school (which the man himself attended) with a problem. He just gave the high school a million dollars. That’s a lot if you’re a high school. Plus they’re plastering his name all over the endowment. Some lucky scholarship student will enjoy a lifelong association (Shkreli Scholar?) with the man everyone’s calling America’s biggest asshole.

What to do?

… depressing.

… reaches an apotheosis.

No. I’m sure there’s worse to come.

Throwing stones at eight year old girls while calling them whores.

Stabbing openly gay people.

Things are escalating.

I wonder what’s next.

**********

Clarity about the madness.

But the writer focuses only on a certain sick rhetorical strain in his form of religion. One also needs to reckon with the fact of a political class that appeases madmen in order to stay in power.

**********

The entire Orthodox community is responsible for this attack when it cultivates a culture of hatred toward fellow Jews…

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It’s time to take the country back from those who would not be averse to a theologically-driven, ISIS-like Jewish state.

It’s probably too late. Israel has let itself be run into the ground by hugely growing numbers of religious fanatics for whom things like Supreme Courts are a joke. Look at the ultra-orthodox demographics. These people – and the children whom they are, despite the existence of a mandatory national curriculum, keeping in ignorance – are the future of Israel. And they deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state. A most Kafkaesque outcome.

According to Mark Kruea, Myrtle Beach’s public information officer, no shooting deaths occurred this year [there were three shooting deaths last year] and only one person was injured in a shooting …

Kruea said three motorcyclists and one moped rider died in traffic accidents. Other riders filled local emergency rooms to capacity with non-fatal injuries. Several crimes occurred, including robberies and kidnappings.

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Bikers are pissed with all the security measures.

Alonzo Pritchard, a Memphis tire shop manager who attended Bikefest for the 18th consecutive year, said the city had sapped the life out of the gathering… Sean Robinson said he would not be returning [to] Myrtle Beach until officials got rid of the traffic loop, did away with the barricades and let motorcyclists travel without major impediments. As far as he was concerned, he would rather spend his money somewhere more hospitable to riders.

Little by little, even America’s most dissolute locations are refusing to host spring breaks and bikefests. So where’s the American city enterprising and sketchy enough to become the go-to hospitable place for all of this country’s frats and bike clubs?

UD’s putting her money on Reno.

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Note to moped riders: Do what everyone else who lives anywhere near Myrtle Beach does during Memorial Day weekend: FLEE.

Tom O’Dare and Michael Smith, myhorrynews.com:

Myrtle Beach police said in a statement that Reginald Rivers, 23, of Charleston struck a North Carolina man riding a moped on North Kings Highway at 6:42 a.m. Sunday.

According to police, Rivers was driving at a high rate of speed when he struck Brandon Brinson, 21, of Magnolia, N.C. Brinson died from injuries sustained in the crash.

Rivers was charged with felony DUI resulting in death and hit and run resulting in death, along with driving under suspension, possession of a firearm by a felon and five counts of threatening the life of a public official.

At a 6 p.m. Sunday bond hearing, Myrtle Beach chief municipal judge Jennifer Wilson said she couldn’t set bond on the felony DUI and hit and run charges because Rivers was already out on bond on an armed robbery charge in Charleston.

A circuit court judge will have to hold a bond hearing on those charges.

Wilson did set a $50,000 bond on the five threatening the life of a public official charge, $20,000 on the possession of a firearm by a felon and $544 on the DUS charge.
Rivers told the judge that he couldn’t be charged with the DUS “because I don’t even have a license.”

When Rivers was brought into the city courtroom, he was very unsteady on his feet and continuously talking to which Wilson admonished him a number of times to remain quiet.

After several rambling conversations, Wilson tacked on a 30-day contempt of court charge because Rivers would not be quiet and follow the judge’s instructions.

For the city charges, Rivers faces a court date of June 10.

No date was set for a bond hearing for the charges of felony DUI and hit and run.

Wilson appointed a public defender for Rivers though he told the judge that he already had a public defender in Charleston on his other charges pending there.

He asked Wilson how long it would take to get a bond hearing in General Sessions court because he was afraid it may take a long time.

“I have no idea,” Wilson said. “Mr. Rivers looking at your record, you should know how the court system works.”

True, when you’re on trial for having used your position as chair of a university’s board of trustees to steal large sums of money, getting the word out on what a great guy you are is going to be difficult.

I think I’m paraphrasing Jonathan Pinson’s defense attorney correctly…

He’s off to prison for five years; but South Carolina State University, one of America’s most pointless and corrupt dropout factories, keeps grinding on.

University Diaries has followed the very strange public university system of Massachusetts for quite some time. Virtually all of its campuses clamor for attention. There’s the pointless bankrupting football program, the drunk and violent students… and, of course, the spanking new law school.

Yes. Law school. New law school. In the current climate for lawyers, U Mass opened, just a few years ago, a new law school.

Everyone with half a brain tried shouting it down, but up it went, with all sorts of cretinous promises (“the state would even earn a profit as enrollment was projected to more than double by 2017″). Its first president was quickly fired for financial malfeasance. It’s almost four million dollars in debt, and it’s shrinking its enrollment. Plus it’s not yet accredited.

UD is speechless.

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UD thanks Andre.

Same old same old at West Virginia University.

Galbraith’s famous observation is also true of some university presidents. Like the guy who just left Brandeis after only five years.

[W]hile faculty were subject to caps on salary increases, Lawrence’s compensation soared from about $589,000 in 2010 to $878,572 in 2013, the last year for which data is publicly available.

You do wonder about people sometimes.

… just go to this page, and remind yourself that Sheldon Silver won the 2012 William M. Bulger (once president of the University of Massachusetts!) Excellence in State Leadership Award.

Yech.

********************

Oh goody. There’s a university professor involved. So far unnamed. UD‘s thinking identifying the person ain’t gonna be too hard.

[It is alleged that] Silver directed state research money to a university doctor in Manhattan, and that the doctor referred lucrative asbestos cases to Silver’s firm of Weitz & Luxenberg. The doctor is described as a “well-known expert” who “conducts mesothelioma research” and who had created a center at his university by or before 2002 related to that subject. The doctor, not named in the complaint, “has entered into an agreement with the USAO SDNY [U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York] under which he will not be prosecuted for the conduct described herein, and that obligates him to provide truthful information to and cooperate with the government.”

As for Preet Bharara, without whom this corruption-besotted blog could not function:

[N]othing about Bharara’s pedigree suggested he planned to burn down the New York State Democratic Party [UD is a deep-blue Democrat. She owns a house in New York State. But she’s got no loyalty to that state’s notoriously corrupt political establishment.]… Bharara, with two more years in office, is that particularly dangerous and rare political figure: a federal prosecutor who doesn’t give a fuck.

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Oh. Okay. Well that wasn’t any challenge at all. Taub’s name came up immediately in a Google search; but here it is all over the papers.

The state money was provided to Dr. Robert Taub [another Yeshiva University grad] for research by the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation — with some of the additional funds going for unspecified “additional benefits” to the doctor’s family, the court papers charges.

Taub, who is affiliated with Columbia University, is cooperating with the FBI, court papers revealed. Silver sponsored a May 2011 “official resolution” by the assembly honoring Taub.

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He’s a recipient of the “Collaborator Award,” which has a special ring to it now.

… is as rare as it is beautiful.

A University of Vermont professor, who took an academic leave to direct a $540 million development project in Senegal — and funded by the United States — is among the top 100 delinquent taxpayers in Vermont.

Taxes from thee, but not from me; and to make it even better his academic specialty is anti-corruption and building civil societies.

[T]he state Tax Department has sued [Moustapha] Diouf twice in recent years in an effort to get him current with his state taxes.

The first lawsuit settled for $30,320 in November 2011 and required him to pay $50 a month, records show. That would take 50 1/2 years to pay off the agreement, but did not include any interest or penalties that might be imposed. It was to cover income taxes owed from 2002 to 2009, records show.

The state sued again in November 2013 to cover taxes for 2011 and 201[2]. He reached a settlement one month later to cover both cases for $43,428, records show. He agreed to have UVM to start sending the state $500 a month in December 2015 and that would take over seven years to become current, plus interest and penalties.