… Senator Chuck Grassley urged the administration to snatch back the [corporate] bonuses. “They ought to give ’em back or we should go get ’em,” the Republican told me. “If this were Japan and a corporate executive did what is being done on Wall Street, they’d either go out and commit suicide or go before the board of directors and the country and take a very deep bow and apologize.”

He was shocked to learn that the Office of Management and Budget, insistent on following the Paperwork Reduction Act, was dragging down a special inspector general’s investigation of what banks are doing with taxpayer money. (After complaints, the O.M.B. yielded on Friday.)

“Once in a while, some C.E.O. comes and talks to me and I wonder if they’re laughing under their breath at having to talk to someone who makes 1 percent of what they make,” he said.

Yes, gross money inequality is a very bad thing. Very undemocratic. Destructive of civic life. UD‘s been harping on that for years in the context of universities with overpaid presidents, universities with millionaire football coaches, universities where professors hawk medical devices on university time. These are the sources of money corruption in the American university, and UD ain’t saying they’re going away any time soon. But she notes Grassley’s persistent attack on university conflict of interest, and Obama’s rhetoric about corporate greed, and she feels hopeful.

This university does not really exist. There’s no there there.

Here’s the latest news.

The trustees of Alabama A&M University are attempting to organize another meeting some time this week to review the three finalists for the school’s top job.

The board of trustees met in Birmingham on Saturday, but five trustees did not attend. Without at least seven voting members, the board could take no official action regarding finalists for university president.

… Jerome Saintjones, who handles public relations for the university, said today that he expects to know by Tuesday when trustees will meet again.

Trustee Robert Avery said he was asked about a possible meeting Saturday, but said he would not be available. Avery, who did not attend the meeting in Birmingham, suggested the board stick to its regularly scheduled meeting at the end of the month.

Lynn Sherrod, a Madison County district judge and A&M trustee, also did not attend the Birmingham meeting. She said she needed more thn 24 hours to review the materials related to the candidates.

“I am very hopeful that this board will come together,” said Sherrod. “The university needs a permanent president, but the board needs to take every precaution to get the best available person.”

Total free fall. Shut it down.

Singularity University, which will be housed on the NASA Ames base near Mountain View and begin classes in June, is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. The two world-renowned scientists were expected to unveil their plans at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference beginning in Long Beach today.

The school hopes to attract students from a cross section of emerging disciplines – including nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology – to tackle huge issues facing humanity. Pandemics and global health care concerns would be typical in scope and import.

… Singularity will consist of a single, nine-week course of study every summer, during which 120 students from a cross-section of disciplines will mix together to tackle weighty issues. Tuition will be $25,000…

On its website, Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum styles itself as “an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary art widely recognized as the finest of such collections in New England.” Now you can color it gone — the Boston Globe is reporting that Brandeis, a highly rated private school in Waltham, Mass., is going to close the museum this summer and sell off its collection of more than 6,000 art works.

Works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg are part of the cache that will come on the market as Brandeis strains to plug what’s reported to be a budget deficit as high as $10 million.

…A major Brandeis donor, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, was hit hard by investing with financier Bernard Madoff, the alleged Ponzi-schemer. It had given more than $3 million to Brandeis in 2007, according to media reports.

And if Merkin also puts his Rothko collection up for sale? Talk about a Modern Movement!

The University of Minnesota – dominated by sports, devastated by medical school scandals – really has slipped. An alumnus writes to the university newspaper:

The latest ethics scandal at the University of Minnesota involving the dean of the medical school and a faculty member she appointed to review and improve ethical practices who turned out to have a whopping and profitable conflict of interest himself, underscores the need for a president who is more interested in the academic side of University life than in the athletic side.

This all happened on President Robert Bruininks’ watch, and one hopes he learned something about how to properly do his job at the Insight Bowl and will give us taxpayers our $700,000-a-year money’s worth — his annual salary. (Maybe the University should establish an Oversight Bowl at its new, needless, wasteful football stadium.)…

We must not allow another ethics scandal to occur on anyone’s watch at our once-proud University.

UD‘s covered the decline of UM for a long time. She concludes that the university needs a new president.

… Yale’s president puts the endowment losses in perspective:

Our endowment only passed the $17 billion mark a little less than three years ago. It’s not like this is a catastrophe.