From the obituary of Princeton engineering professor Norman Sollenberger:

… Sollenberger was a fine teacher who deeply cared for his students, according to colleagues. He once devoted many hours to ensuring a young civil engineering student from Hong Kong, a rarity in the 1950s, would graduate. That engineer, Gordon Y.S. Wu, went on to help found a major Hong Kong-based construction firm. When he returned to Princeton years later to announce a record-breaking $100 million gift to the University, the first person Wu asked to visit was Sollenberger.

… from UD‘s old friend, Steve Elkin.

“I was his thesis student and his research assistant.

Beer, as Harvey Mansfield once put it, was ‘manly.’ He was virile looking, with a red Guards mustache, a lionesque face and a strongly built body. He also had a boxer’s nose.

I first met him at a reception for new graduate students. He was dressed in an English cut pin-striped suit and leaning on a cane.

I asked whether he had hurt himself.

Yes, he said, taking a sip of sherry; he’d been sky-diving.

What else. He was a gentleman — courteous and forthright. Intellectually, he had the gift of being able to combine acute historical analysis, theoretical propositions in comparative politics, and political theory. Indeed, he was the master of combining these things, and in doing so defined the study of British politics for half a century.

He also wrote a first-class book on the American political order, showing the roots of American thought and practice in early modern and medieval arguments.”

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This Harvard Gazette article, which shows you what Beer looked like at ninety, quotes him saying something wonderful:

Beer summarized his intellectual odyssey in a few brief, thought-provoking words: “In my case, it’s been a journey from the land of reason to the land of imagination. I believe that thought advances through metaphor rather than through precept. I really believe that metaphors – those corny expressions, almost a kind of street poetry – tell you more about the future than the think tanks do.”

Samuel Beer, legendary Harvard professor, has died at age 97.  He taught, for decades, Social Science 2, and since Mr UD not only took it with him lo these many years ago, but saw Beer recently, I’ll let him do the talking.

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“I saw him at the Harvard Memorial Church, at the memorial for John Kenneth Galbraith, and I talked to him after the event at the Galbraith house.

I said ‘I enjoyed your course,’ and he smiled and made a funny remark I don’t remember… His wife said he gets that a lot.  They were in the Tokyo airport not long ago and someone stopped him to say he enjoyed his course.

Soc Sci 2 was a very famous course – there’s an edited volume based on it.  Don’t know the title; came out a long time ago.  [Is it this?]  About the same time I was an undergraduate.

It was a core course , a social science requirement, and it was a great course.  Quite a number of interesting intellectual types went through it as teaching assistants.  It was a year-long course devoted to revolutions.

He started with the Gregorian revolution, so that was an unusual thing… The great changes starting in the 11th century and developing through the 12th and 13th – church reforms , struggles between the papacy and the emperor.

One could argue that modern revolutions have their roots there… Then he did the English revolution…  Then the great revolutions of  the 18th century… The Russian revolution… I think the last one was the Nazis…

Sam Beer was important to me intellectually … I’m glad that I had a chance to tell him at the Galbraith event that I enjoyed his course.  It was really kind of a crucial course in my intellectual development.  I could have gone a more conventional route; I was a government major, but I didn’t want to take a course in American government.  It struck me as incredibly boring.

I took his course, which was kind of history-heavy social science… Looking for patterns and so on.  I very much liked that and I switched into social studies.

[UD:  It says in the Crimson story about him that he sometimes wore his military uniform to class.  Do you remember his doing that?]

No.  When I was a student at Harvard, that wouldn’t have been a good idea.”

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… at our house on Capitol Hill many years ago.  I recall a calm, unpretentious man with whom it was instantly easy to chat.  I think I recall correctly his disappointment with our pathetic liquor cabinet.

Mr UD , who studied with him at the University of Chicago, admired his independence, his strong sense of individuality.  He did his own work, utterly unreliant on any form of received wisdom.

Brian Barry, who has died at 73, had a political philosophy “best … described as egalitarian liberalism – the view that, along with protecting traditional liberal freedoms, the ‘just’ state must promote economic redistribution from rich to poor and provide equality of access to public services.”

Barry was famously pugnacious in argument and uninhibited in his criticisms of those with whom he did not see eye to eye. Colleagues who bought his books would quickly pass over prefatory tributes to Gertie the cat and go to the index to discover the identities of his latest victims. Terms such as “astonishingly crass”, “obscurantist”, “cavalier” or “complete rubbish” were characteristic put-downs.

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UPDATE: Excerpts from an exclusive interview this evening with Mr UD, who worked closely with Brian Barry at the University of Chicago.

“What did he look like? Big teddy bear…

I had just finished studying John Rawls with John Rawls, at Harvard. His big book on justice had recently come out, and the course there was basically Rawls responding to his critics. It wasn’t until I took a two-semester seminar in justice with Brian at Chicago – a course that featured Brian’s critique of Rawls – that I began to understand Rawls. In other words, I didn’t get Rawls as well, studying with Rawls, as I got Rawls studying Rawls with Barry. If that makes sense…

I went to his office to introduce myself before the semester started. I was already an admirer of his work. Finding him was a little difficult, because there was a geography professor on campus also named Brian Barry, and it was Barry’s first semester, and it wasn’t entirely clear where his office was… I found him, and he was really welcoming; we had a long chat, and he ended by saying “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you!” I remember his office was very dark; he kept all the lights off…

The seminar was great. After it was over he organized an informal weekly gathering at his apartment so we could continue talking about justice. Various faculty gave papers; Brian served beer.

You know that book we have, The Incomplete Book of Failures? He introduced me to that book. He used to read out of it during class. He especially liked to read from the famous phrasebook, English As She Is Spoke.

I once bumped into him coming out of Regenstein Library. His arms were full of books — twenty of them, say. I said something like I see you’re finally reading a book or two. And he said I just finished writing a book on utilitarianism and now I have to read up on the subject to put in some footnotes.”

… the University of California Riverside professor who wrote a generous blurb for Jenny’s and my book, has died.

… Mr. Elliott grew up in a three-room apartment in a gritty Baltimore neighborhood. His father drove a truck. His mother operated a loom that produced corporate emblems.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, his family’s first college degree, from Loyola College in Baltimore, he got his master’s degree from Bowling Green State and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

After 17 years teaching at Princeton, he came to UCR for the opportunity to shape a growing campus, he said in a previous interview.

… Liam Corley, who earned his Ph.D. at UCR in 2004 under Elliott’s guidance, also remembered him fondly. Corley, an assistant professor of English at Cal Poly Pomona, is deployed to Afghanistan with the Navy.

“Emory was a selfless man,” Corley wrote in an e-mail to UCR officials after they informed him of Elliott’s death. “He was always in high demand as a mentor, teacher, speaker and scholar, but he had the generous gift of always paying attention to the person before him.”

UD‘s impressed.

A man of principle.

Ward Churchill, that is. And yes, you’ve noted correctly that UD isn’t covering Ward’s trial. She’s had enough of Ward. I think you can watch the whole trial on Fox News or something.

But Ward’s vile words about 9/11 look almost mild compared to those of his British counterpart, who has now been suspended from his university post because of the violence of his threats against capitalists.

Chris Knight, of the University of East London, told BBC Radio 4 things “could get nasty” after ex-bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin’s Edinburgh home was attacked.

The university confirmed in a statement the professor of anthropology had been suspended from duties on Thursday.

An investigation was being launched into his comments, it said.

… The professor was interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s PM programme after the home and car of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred were attacked by vandals early on Wednesday morning.

Mr Knight, who was organising [G20] protests next week, said: “We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred [Sir Fred Goodwin] from lampposts on April Fool’s Day and I can only say let’s hope they are just effigies.

“To be honest, if he winds us up any more I’m afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts and let’s hope that that doesn’t actually have to happen.

“They [bankers] should realise the amount of fury and hatred there is for them and act quickly, because quite honestly if it isn’t humour it is going to be anger.

“I am trying to keep it humorous and let the anger come up in a creative and hopefully productive and peaceful way.

“If the other people don’t join in the fun – I’m talking about the bankers and those rather pompous ministers – and come over and surrender their power obviously it’s going to get us even more wound up and things could get nasty. Let’s hope it doesn’t.”

…writes a student on her RMP page, and I guess it’s true.

A creative writing professor at Drake University seems to have beaten up her boyfriend, and is under arrest for “domestic assault, first-degree burglary, criminal mischief and obstruction of emergency communication.”

[Anzalone] began yelling and threw a Yankee Candle at Peterson, which struck him at the base of his head. Peterson eventually went to Mercy Hospital where he was treated for minor injuries.

Anzalone allegedly followed Peterson through his house and tore a picture off of his wall and threw it down the bedroom hallway, according to the police report.

She then took his cell phone as he was trying to dial 911. Before she left, Anzalone hurled a glass vase at a double-pane window, shattering both panes, the police report said.

Peterson called police from a neighbor’s house. When police arrived, they went to Anzalone’s home and called Peterson’s phone. A phone rang on the bookshelf that showed the officer’s phone number in the caller ID, police reported.

When officers asked why Peterson’s phone was in her possession, Anzalone said that Peterson must have left the phone there the last time he visited.

… describes the University of Maryland faculty’s recent rejection of a rather too-harsh post-tenure review proposal.

Mr UD, a department representative to the UM faculty senate, was very much involved in the thing.

… that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand 16th March, 2009, at his home in Alaska. He had been battling depression for some time.”

Sylvia Plath’s son has killed himself.

From the Fairbanks News Miner:

Friends in Alaska are mourning the death of Nicholas Hughes, who studied at Oxford and became a prominent fish biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The news of his passing has prompted headlines around the world because his parents were poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

… [T]he 47-year-old Fairbanks resident …became an authority on grayling, salmon and trout. He developed computer models to show the relationship between fish behavior and stream characteristics. He was an incredible cyclist, as well as an ardent gardener and fisherman.

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Update: From the same News Miner writer:

A few times, I called him to let him know I would like to write about his life and his family connections, whenever a news story about his parents appeared, but he did not think it was a good idea, so it never happened. He deserved his privacy. By and large, people in Fairbanks respected that, which is a good comment on our part of the world.

In Alaska, he had the freedom and the opportunity to live on his own terms and be recognized for his own accomplishments. Here he was not a literary figure forever defined by the lives of his parents.

But he was their son and his death will generate headlines around the world.

The statement from his sister, quoted in the Times Online, said: “His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father (many of whose poems were about the natural world). He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan.”

… when you learn one little extra thing about a person, and then go back and read something about them, it reads completely differently.

For instance, Robert Hebbel is a professor who uses his wife’s disability parking permit illegally. He was just fined $500 for doing it at the school where he works, the University of Minnesota.

So here’s an article written about him not long ago. UD has enjoyed snickering through it with this new information.

Start with the headline.

DR. ROBERT P. HEBBEL IS DRIVEN TO DISCOVER HOW THE BIOLOGY OF SICKLE CELL DISEASE WORKS

[Dr. Hebbell is] a fellow who’s very busy and very driven.

… Hebbel was attracted to the problem solving approach of internal medicine. “”I love the chase! I love using your wits to design an experiment to solve the problem,” he says. “I love the “aha!” moment, finding out how something works in biology.” [The chase! Problem solving! Using your wits! You can experience the very same thrills figuring out how to take parking spaces away from disabled people.] … I do things that are risky,” he says. … “I’ve always just done what seems to be interesting to me in the moment.”

The University of South Florida professor who stepped down from his position earlier this week wants to take back his resignation.

Dr. Abdul Rao, an associate dean and professor at USF’s School of Health, says he was rushed into a resignation after he was caught on tape and admitted to stealing a graduate student’s bicycle.

Rao accepted a 50,000 dollar buy out to resign from his 384,000 dollar per year position.

“Our position is his employment is over,” University Spoke[s]man Michael Hoad said. “And, anything different, his attorney will have to talk to our attorney.”

Professor Rao’s discovering that when you’re a thief — with a YouTube recording the fact, and a court case pending — jobs are scarce.

She teaches only one course a semester at the University of Florida.

In the sort of dinky program that assures small classes.

And she’s complaining.

Because her university wants her to teach two.

UF’s authority to change the agreement under which faculty are hired without their consent was questioned Thursday in a six–hour arbitration hearing.

UF and the faculty member in question each presented evidence concerning the university’s right to adjust her course load without her permission.

When Florence Babb, an endowed professor and graduate coordinator of UF’s Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, received her agreement letter in March 2004 outlining the terms of her hire, it determined she would teach one course per semester and promised her a research assistant.

Endowed faculty are expected to increase the university’s prestige with their contributions and research, and thus they often have lighter teaching loads.

Last March, Babb was informed via a letter from then–interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Joe Glover, that her teaching load would be increased from one course per semester to two courses per semester “because of the state’s fiscal difficulties and the severe budget cuts applied to UF.” Babb said to her knowledge she was the only endowed professor to receive such a letter at that time. She was also relieved of her research assistant. Babb said the lower course load allowed time to conduct research.

She filed a grievance in April 2008 and said that UF violated an agreement it has with the United Faculty of Florida, or UFF, the faculty union…

Icing on the cake: Her grievance will cost the university a lot of money.

The University of South Florida dean who steals bikes has embarrassed his university, of course, and serious punishment makes sense.

But this detail from the story explains why USF did well to fire him.

After Rao learned he was captured on tape on Wednesday, [the bike’s owner, a graduate student] said, Rao called him into his office and pressured him to tell police that the matter was the result of a misunderstanding.

“This (research) is an ethical profession, and Rao is an unethical man,” Boyd said. “I don’t want him in here in my profession. I hope he’s fully investigated, because I would be interested to know what else he’s done.”

The student’s correct. Rao’s behavior throughout suggests a degenerate sense of entitlement.

Although he earns over $700,000, a dean at the University of South Florida stole a bicycle. 

He was captured on camera doing it.

He’s on leave.

UD thinks you can tell from his photo that he’s trouble.

That’s a USF clip he’s got on, which is already pretty weird.  He’s anxious for you to see his way big gold watch.  Bad sign.  He looks smug.  UD‘s theory is that he thinks he owns the clinic he works in, and all the objects in it.  (He stole the bike from his building.)  If he needs a bike, for instance, and he sees one, it’s his.