… comes the sort of information about politics and the university you should worry about (as opposed to what Stanley Fish thinks you should worry about).

Les Gara’s a New York Jew with a Harvard degree who somehow got dropped down into Alaska, where he’s a Democrat in the Alaska House. He reports on a recent hearing:

The University of Alaska is this state’s greatest potential economic engine in the short term – for producing research, jobs, workers and opportunity. Well, last Tuesday University President Mark Hamilton came to the House Finance Committee to present his case for legislative funds. For 15 minutes he took questions from three of my GOP colleagues about why the students at the University were so, uh, politically misguided…

Some of the discussion by legislators went as follows:

“If I ask university staff, the people who are educating our future leaders, if they support the Chukchi Sea development, the Red Dog Mine or the Pebble Mine or any type of industry along those lines, a stereotypical response is they are in opposition . . .”

And

“I found it amazing there was a large disconnect in where the dollars for the state of Alaska come from on a regular basis as far as production of oil on the North Slope goes, and how it is turned into revenue for the state of Alaska and in turn is invested in the university system,” she said.

And

“How should I advocate more funding for an entire group that doesn’t want to see development going forward.”

The tenor of this hearing was troubling for many reasons.

First, there is no “right” or “wrong” view on the Pebble Mine, or offshore development, and lumping students with divergent views in one camp is easier than it is accurate. I don’t find students to be of one mind on these issues, and I find them more than able to justify their divergent views.

Second, universities are for teaching students to learn and explore policy solutions. It isn’t my business whether a student agrees or disagrees with me on these points – I only care that they are interested enough to form their opinions and do some thinking about them. Thinking students can come to conclusions on these issues across the spectrum and I’m glad when they do.

And, finally, if the point is that students should stand up for policies that bring the state money, so we can fund the university – then maybe the students weren’t misguided at all. The “liberal” students stereotyped at the Finance Committee hearing would presumably have voted for the oil tax reform bill we passed last year – which will likely bring in over $30 billion in additional revenue while including oil production incentives to promote development. So, if we’re going to rate these students on how much money they’d bring into the state with their “views”, they, I believe, did a better job for the state than those who voted against the November, 2007 oil reform law we passed. And since offshore oil development on federal lands and mining bring in relatively little state money, it’s not clear how a student’s views on those projects has much bearing on bringing in state revenue to fund the University…

Yes, Gara needs to cool it on the quotation marks.

But he’s on to the real tenured radicals scandal: In states like Alaska, some legislators are politicizing the academy.

Alabama A & M has stopped functioning. Corrupt, inept, the school’s finished. It continues to operate as a set of buildings inside of which taxpayer money is wasted.

The situation fascinates UD, a veteran university-watcher. If a university falls in the forest, but no one gives a shit, does it make a difference? Does the university go on lying there, deadwood drawing state appropriations?

It’s a story worth following.

The University of New Mexico’s corrupt and greedy president, having been tossed out of two prior university president jobs, will soon, UD anticipates, be tossed out of this one.

Look at his Google News page! Nepotist, jocksniffer, anti-intellectual — David Schmidly’s the compleat anti-president.

And yet. After getting ejected from one institution after another, he always seems to dust himself off and find a new one.

From The Daily Texan:

A heated debate at the Senate Finance Committee meeting today led to the resignation of the chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company Board.

The senate committee grilled Chairman Robert Rowling and CEO of UTIMCO Bruce Zimmerman over the $3 million in bonuses paid to the staff, included a $ 1 million bonus for Zimmerman.

The comments and questions by the senators became so heated that Rowling declared his immediate resignation.

“I resign,” Rowling said heatedly, “You can have my job.”

UTIMCO is the first external investment corporation formed by a public university system and oversees investments for UT and Texas A&M Systems.

The controversy concerned a UTMICO CEO Zimmerman’s $1.05 million bonus on top of his $575,000 base salary.

The senators seemed confused by UTIMCO’s decision in the face of a recession and budget deficit…

… 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.