… you’ll come a-flying Malaysians with me…

This blog’s been making that argument for years (see categories CLICK-THROUGH U and CLICK-THRU U, as well as TECHNOLUST).

A public university in Texas now tells its professors they have to drag their actual bodies out of the house and teach in the classroom and oh! the humanity! Next thing you know they’ll tell them to knock it off with all the PowerPoint use. Jesus.

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

It also wants them on campus 40 hours a week, five days a week, however, which is ridiculous.

THEORY.

and……

PRACTICE.

‘Dr. Arday … worked hard to silence any questioning of his credentials. When a journalist for Times Higher Education, a respected academic industry publication, asked about plagiarism last year, a prominent British defamation law firm helped kill the article, the journalist said. Dr. Arday later reported the journalist to the police.

When a scholar from another university questioned his work, Dr. Arday turned the tables and filed a racism complaint with the other school…’

The education faculty at Cambridge, according to this heavily sourced NYT article, bears much of the blame. It hired, and defended hiring, a fraudster. Its behavior was bizarre — as if motivated by a desire to destroy the field of sociology.

The New York Times.

When I read this observation the other day, it seemed correct. “[Jason] Arday is a serial fabulist who seems quite unwell.”

True, true. Access has been denied. But we do know antediluvian Islamist Farah Ahmed works there, and her personal page still allows us access.

What about the rest of the Arday/Ahmed/etcetc crew? What else ya got?

Nothing remotely like it will happen; but of course Deresiewicz is right. Some humanities professors should be encouraged to write lively art criticism, for instance, in the sort of places that have a bit of a profile and some actual readers. But the unread hyperspecialized stuff should end.

It won’t.

[W]hen playing a drinking game that involved taping bottles of alcohol to both hands, the student alleged Egolf “offered to assist him with removing his pants to use the restroom.” 

A Georgetown physics professor is living his best life.

Time was that last nugget (this is from a 2024 article) would have knocked us all over: Gee! Tea in BP with the Prince!

Now it sends out alarms – whoop!whoop!whoop! – just as piercing as the alarms set off by the news yesterday that Ariely, Duke U’s highest-profile professor, is mentioned I dunno a billion times in the just-released Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Dey was REAL tight goodfellas.

Ariely was also real close – a research collaborator – with F. Giro, the chick dismissed from Harvard for you-could-die levels of research fraud, and whose life now revolves around an eternal and insanely expensive lawsuit against (and also one from), that institution. Plus you can read with ease many discussions of Ariely’s own uh questionable results.

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

Sing it.

Research fraud. Ok.

He brings in the bucks

Let him stay

But what if we’re fucked

By the Epstein stuff?

When’s enough enough?

Brookline MA is one of the safest neighborhoods in the country, so it’s unlikely the murder of an MIT professor at his home there was random. He was apparently shot multiple times.

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

What happened? It might have been domestic; it might have been a mentally ill graduate student or colleague. We shall see.

 “Lucky Hank,” starring Bob Odenkirk, based on the 1997 novel “The Straight Man,” by Richard Russo, [offers a familiar] vein of disdain, one in which characters say things like: “My book of sonnets on Jonathan Swift has become the benchmark in early feminist 18th century response poetry.”

Jonathan Brown, slavery-apologist extraordinaire, is just Part One.

You can still find Georgetown boasting about hoppin’ Shon Hopwood – sentenced just today for his latest, er, outburst – here. Veteran bad guy Shon was enacting one of those personal redemption stories of which we are so fond until his temper did him in again. Tsk.

And in the Islamic present, this reviewer notes, citing “ISIS’s and Boko Haram’s recent revival of medieval de jure enslavement practices.” That’s a nice wordy way of saying this.

And who can be surprised that an American professor/defender of slavery was the star of the show the other day, as a congressional committee wondered why Georgetown University rewarded this dude (who also called for Iranian airstrikes on American bases) with the chairmanship of a department? Does Georgetown like lecturers who shut down audience… er… misgivings about slavery with comments like “I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody, because we own lots of people all around us and were owned by people, and this obsession about thinking of slavery as property… [Muhammad] had slaves, there is no denying that. Are you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you’re not.”

Talk about a scold! Groveling apologies, Professor Brown! Never again will I arrogantly go against the will of the prophet and question slavery!

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

Vey, vey. Here are UD‘s uncensored thoughts about slavery-apologists like Georgetown’s own.

UD‘s got nothing against the tens of millions of Americans – and other people around the world – who fantasize about sexually and in other ways enslaving others. Enslavement fantasies always fall somewhere in the top ten sexual fantasies, and fine. But JEEZ. Georgetown is a Jesuit school. You’d think it would be particularly sensitive to the possibility of hiring and promoting people who remonstrate in public against people who don’t think giving in to slavery fantasies is a good idea.

No one yet seems willing to broach the child custody dispute that was almost certainly behind the killing. But as the story picks up steam, that should start to happen.

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

Wow. Okay; let’s go.

On his webpage, he announces his commitment to a “proto-feminist” “collective good.” Proto means ‘Primitive: … a basic or undeveloped state.‘ Zat really what you want?

There is something I know you want, and that’s attention. Man, you just waggled your dingus in front of an academic audience!