… scoots.
The board of trustees is also on its way out.
It’s a start.
Plenty of background on the U of Smell: Put Louisville in my search engine.
… scoots.
The board of trustees is also on its way out.
It’s a start.
Plenty of background on the U of Smell: Put Louisville in my search engine.
Coverage here.
**********
Now confirmed: A graduate student “despondent about his grades” kills his professor.
Clawbacks, UD has come to know, ‘ardly hever ‘appen (to quote Eliza Doolittle), but it’s fun to watch universities who could have danced all night with Bernard Madoff (Yeshiva U.) or Finn Caspersen (Harvard) studiously avoid looking at their dance card when the financial shit hits the fan.
Caspersen, who a few years ago committed suicide with the feds on his tail, was able to afford the largest contribution in the history of Harvard Law School by allegedly hiding in Liechtenstein a hundred million or so of the tax dollars he owed us.
As American taxpayers, we’re able to help struggling non-profits in not one but two ways: tax exemption and tax evasion. What a good feeling.
It’s even better to know that the next generation of Harvard-affiliated Caspersens features a son just arrested at LaGuardia Airport (Caspersens really don’t like facing up to consequences) for defrauding investors (including charities) of $95 million through fake investments.
Madoff’s father was also a white-collar criminal. These father and son white collar criminal stories are always touching. They always make UD think of those wonderful Philippe Patek watch ads.
Trump-Hitler Roundup: Here’s Who Compared Donald Trump to Hitler This Weekend
… has died.
Details of her life – spent with her sister, who “practiced law in her 90s, and died in 2014 at 103” – here.
THE MOTION OF THE WIND IN HANFORD
The motion of the wind in Hanford
Or of the ocean in Livingston
Or imperfections in the light
Through fluctuations in the grid…
The jittering of single atoms
Within mirrors
Or distant lightning storms…
Interferences beyond reckoning
In earth’s purest vacuum!
A trillionth as dense
As the atmosphere at sea
Yet somewhat undone by
Miniscule seismic tremors
Or passing cars
Or aeroplanes
Or wolves.
***************************
(In the style of Wallace Stevens.)
… George Washington University has now decided to revoke Bill Cosby’s honorary degree.
We can put a person on the moon, but we cannot figure out a way to revoke a medal.
In a July press conference, President Obama said he could not revoke the medal, which President George W. Bush awarded to Cosby in 2002. “There is no precedent for revoking the medal,” Obama said. “We don’t have the mechanism.”
But… Yes We Can. I just know we can.
For instance, here’s one possible mechanism which UD arrived at after hours of deep thought.
Send a letter from the President to Bill Cosby asking him to return the medal.
Maybe
I fucked up on
Those leftover debts
Funny
But here’s that rainy day
Here’s that rainy day
They told me about
And I laughed at the thought
That it might turn out this way
Where is that Ponzi scheme
That I used to love
After it brought their cash so near
Funny how fraud becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here
… has just been sued by Irving Picard – the guy in charge of returning swindled money to Bernie Madoff victims – for very large sums of said money.
Here’s the list:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem ($36 million)
Ben Gurion University of the Negev ($18 million)
Weizmann Institute ($13 million)
Bar Ilan University ($10 million)
Tel Aviv University ($6.5 million)
Technion Israel Institute of Technology
The universities’ response is, as you might expect, we didn’t know, we already spent it, fuck off.
But bulldog Picard, who has, since 2008, clawed back impressive amounts of Madoff’s billions, can be expected to sue hard, citing “unjust enrichment” laws (and after all, don’t most Israelis – most people – consider it axiomatic that art stolen during the Holocaust, for instance, has to be returned even if a particular owner is ignorant of the original theft? — “Holocaust-looted art bears a ‘mark of Cain’ which, under international law, infects all transactions relating to it, including transfers to third parties.”).
Picard also points out that the now-defunct charitable group that gave the Madoff money to these institutions (Picard is also suing this group) had financial as well as charitable motives:
Picard’s complaint in the court claims that the Horowitz Association did not transfer these huge sums only as a donation to encourage research in Israel; it chose to act as an investor with economic interests, and made receiving the money contingent on the provision of proceeds through royalties.
Picard notes that several other institutional beneficiaries of Madoff – Hadassah, for instance – immediately returned their Madoff money on learning that they harbored it.
By refusing to take the moral and respectable path, the [universities] associate themselves with the thief – Madoff – and not the victims.
Will the universities decide to settle some amount or other on the victims, in order to make this embarrassing lawsuit go away?
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
