… The Airborne Toxic Event, a Los Angeles band that takes its name from UD‘s adored White Noise, by Don DeLillo. In this interview, the band’s leader explains how he chose the name.

I read that you took your name from the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo. For those of us who are unfamiliar with the work, what is that referring to?

In the novel, the Airborne Toxic Event is a big cloud that is a result of a giant chemical explosion. The huge poisonous cloud threatens a nearby town. The hero, Jack, gets exposed to it. He’s told by the doctors that he’s going to die. When he asks when, the doctor says, “You may live a week; you may live 40 years.” Which is really unhelpful because that is true for everyone. The Airborne Toxic Event [evokes] his fear of death. It changes him in these really important ways. The same thing happened to me in [the] year I formed the band, with my mom dying and my own health problems.

From Louisiana State University’s newspaper.

University professor William Rowe was like any other student in his 375-person class when, a few years ago, he invited a guest speaker to one of his freshman-level geography classes. He found an open seat in back of the classroom and sat down to listen to the 30-minute presentation.

While taking in the lecture, Rowe saw most of his students paying attention. Some were even taking notes on their laptop computers. But one student’s activity on a laptop immediately caught his eye.

“One guy was perusing pornography, which was causing a bit of a disturbance around him,” Rowe said.

… Tracy Rizzuto, assistant psychology professor, recently instituted a “laptops in first row” rule. She’s been teaching at the University for four years.

“I don’t have an attendance policy — I don’t require people to come. But if they’re one of those people who are surfing the Internet or doing distracting things while taking notes, I want to be able to keep an eye on that behavior,” she said. “It’s easier to monitor what people are doing on their laptops if they’re sitting in the front row.”…

I know what you’re wondering: What if the student perusing pornography who you’ve put in the front row ejaculates on you while you’re teaching?

Here’s what UD recommends. In her day, guys used to go to seedy porno cinemas where they’d be given empty, bottomless popcorn containers along with their ticket. When a professor sees a student masturbating, she should issue him one of these, along with suggestions on how to direct his flow.

——————————

UPDATE: Some context. Feinberg’s famous A Ride on the Bus.

‘WHERE MERKIN LOST HIS WAY’ headlines a Wall Street Journal blogger who invites us to regard Bernard Madoff’s middleman (as the blogger points out, Ezra Merkin did things like “put about $15 million of [Yeshiva’s] endowment into [his] Ascot [fund]. He thus captured a 1.5% annual fee for himself, even though Yeshiva could have given its money directly to Bernie Madoff — who was later treasurer of the university’s board — for nothing.”) as a lost sheep.

Now, sadly, Mr. Merkin seems to have become the latest testament [The writer means testimony.] to the emotional struggle even the greatest investors must undertake to resist temptation. Of all the seductions that can lead a value investor to stray from the true path, perhaps the worst is simply making too much money.

Reader comments are … harsh. (There are twelve comments. The link only opens two of them, so to see them all you need to click on previous.)

Happens all the time. This one happened in Canada. As long as decent people exist, these programs will die on the vine. But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Calling it “incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech,” Queen’s University in Kingston yesterday scrapped its controversial “dialogue facilitator” program.

It caused a scandal last year when it was revealed the six student “facilitators” were mandated to intervene in private conversations to encourage discussion of social justice issues and discourage offensive language.

In a report to the administration, a panel of experts expressed “strong reservations about unsolicited interventions into the lives of students” because of the risk of “making students feel unsafe or under surveillance because of their opinions.”

… The panel faulted Dean of Student Affairs Jason Laker for importing an American model of diversity promotion. [Hey, don’t blame us for your fuckup.]

… The review was launched in response to “a tempest of negative, sometimes searing, comment in the national press.” [Duh.]

… putting photographs of, say, the governor, in every public university classroom would be a bad idea.

But putting, say, crucifixes in every Catholic university classroom doesn’t seem strange. Private schools, founded on and still devoted to a certain creed … Why not?

Yet Boston College, the Jesuit school which produced Harry Markopolos, has run into a bit of trouble along these lines lately.

… [S]uddenly, in all 151 classrooms, there is a Catholic icon, in most cases, a crucifix above the lintel.

Students and faculty returned to campus after winter break to find that Boston College had quietly completed, without announcement or fanfare, an eight-year project to dramatically increase the presence of Roman Catholic religious symbols on campus. The additions are subtle but significant, as the university joins other Catholic institutions around the nation in visibly reclaiming its Catholic identity.

… A meeting last month of arts and sciences department chairs turned into a heated argument over the classroom icons; a handful of faculty have written to the administration to protest, and some unsuccessfully circulated a petition asking to have crucifixes removed.

“I believe that the display of religious signs and symbols, such as the crucifix, in the classroom is contrary to the letter and spirt of open intellectual discourse that makes education worthwhile and distinguishes first-rate universities from mediocre and provincial ones,” Maxim D. Shrayer, chairman of the department of Slavic and Eastern languages and literatures, said in an interview.

“Christian iconography and symbols permeate this place and always have,” said the Rev. John Paris, a Jesuit priest who teaches bioethics at BC. Paris said he finds “offensive” the notion that a crucifix impedes the ability of students or faculty to think critically in a classroom and called the criticism “the narrow and bizarre musings of a few disgruntled folks.”

“This is a small problem for those with small minds,” Paris added. “This is not a serious controversy.”

Paris is wrong. It’s not a small problem. Big minds can profitably think about the extent to which a religious university visually presents itself as such. Is there, for instance, a kind of tipping point, in which reasonable people, religious or not, might find too many icons on campus?

How many icons is too much? UD would suggest that you’re in an over-rich iconic environment when your mind is directed too insistently, too often, to a particular doctrine…. When, as you enter a particular university’s gates, and as you walk through its interior and exterior spaces, you feel a bit mentally constrained in terms of thought that has to do with something other than a particular religious tradition.

If it feels, that is, as though the campus is designed to enforce, rather than prompt, spiritual reflection, there’s a problem.

I’d also say there’s an aesthetic issue here. Jam-packing your setting with anything is simply ugly, and it probably has an effect quite different from the one you want: It turns people off because it makes them feel manipulated.

These are subtle matters – theologically, aesthetically, institutionally.

… little essay in today’s George Washington University newspaper quotes your UD.

There are a few errors of writing in this piece, which I will hereby diplomatically correct.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm keeps her trap shut when UD‘s getting any form of media attention. Rule Number One of this blog.

Some excerpts.

The excerpts that quote me.

As a new generation of writers, we cannot help but … internalize [the recent] deaths [of significant American novelists], some more deeply, or strangely, than others. This is because these artists […] matter greatly, because we make them matter. We internalized their sense of story structure, if only to reinvent, criticize or recreate what they meant.

“It does have an impact on you [as a generation] that these people are gone,” said GW English professor Margaret Soltan, known for her widely read blog, University Diaries. “They produced a version of the great American novel, but at the same time, it seems to me that you’re from a different world.”

We are from a different world, and our literature – with its adeptness [at] switching scenery and [its] emphasis on the self-reflexive, reflects this, perhaps best embodied in the work of David Foster Wallace …

“I would argue that the basic theme of human existence – everyone trying to organize their life so it’s not painful – that theme has been with us since Shakespeare. The basic dilemma of being is not changing,” Soltan said.

Whether we like it or not – personal preferences aside – these writers are important to us, because we have either read them, been influenced by them, or because we were told that they were important. For this reason, we exist in their shadow. To be relevant artists, we are … either [going to] be influenced by their work or make an informed move away from it.

“The whole question of influence and how powerful[ly] you’re going to be influenced is in play here,” said Soltan … Even the notion of artistic trauma is at play, she said.

“Why does an artist’s life seem more difficult, and does that have to continue to be the model?” she asked.

Must future work depend on the trope of the suffering artist? Perhaps not…

… said Mr UD this morning, irritably. “Key West is obviously one of those places where excellent tea is easy to find.”

“Well, but they probably won’t have Marco Polo,” whimpered UD.

“You like black fruit teas, right? This will be a chance to explore new ones.”

Fine. UD won’t devote an entire suitcase to tea canisters.

And it’s true that she’s looking forward to sitting in internet cafes and exploring new teas.

She leaves in a few days.

… 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.

[The Bowling Green University safe sex] carnival wasn’t all fun and games. Safe sex was being promoted in the form of what [an organizer called] “info-tainment.”

One side of the room had a table full of pamphlets pertaining to safe sex, while the other side of the room had the Wall of Knowledge.

The Wall of Knowledge contained information about chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital warts, syphilis and scabies, and also had pictures of what each of the sexually transmitted diseases can do to the body…

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.

A former Western Kentucky University professor pleads “guilty” to federal program fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says Katrina Phelps entered into a “plea agreement” today, where she admits intentionally misapplying $27,087.20 from Western Kentucky University.

[“Guilty”? “plea agreement”? Why the quotation marks? Did she not really plead guilty? Is it not really a plea agreement? Am I living in Upper Volta where we don’t use terms like guilty and plea agreement, so you have to put them in quotation marks to introduce them to me?]

Phelps admits from March 2005 to December 2007, she took the proceeds from 16 checks from a justice department grant, and misapplied the funds.

As part of her plea agreement, Phelps agrees to pay full restitution to WKU, prior to her sentencing.

The maximum potential penalties for Phelps’ offense, include ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and supervised release for up to 3 years.

Adds piquancy that these were from the justice department… “Background” “here.”

… [O]nline education doesn’t translate into better learning outcomes, said respondents in [a] faculty survey. More than 10,000 faculty members at 67 public campuses responded to the survey.

While 30 percent of faculty members surveyed felt that online courses provided superior or equivalent learning outcomes when compared with face-to-face classes, 70 percent felt that learning outcomes were inferior…

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Surfing the Web may soon disappear entirely from Georgetown [University] classrooms, as a growing number of professors enact policies either banning or discouraging laptop use during lectures and discussion sections.

For David Goldfrank, a professor in the department of history, the turning point came at the beginning of a World History II discussion section in 2007.

“I started with a directed question, and the student replied, ‘Wait a minute, please. I need to turn on my computer where I have my notes,’” Goldfrank said. “[ … As a professor,] I don’t want to know what is in your computer; I want to know what is in your head.”

… [Professor David] Cole claims that students who use their computers to take notes become stenographers rather than actually processing the information, and those who are surfing the Internet are simply not engaged.

… “I don’t have much self-control,” Cristina Cardenal (COL ’11) said. “When there’s a lull in conversation and I have my laptop … I want to go on the Internet.”

… “The few advantages, such as a student’s targeted looking up a disputed or unfamiliar fact during a lecture, could not come close to balancing the negatives,” Goldfrank said…

This university’s highly paid president maintained the financial criminal of the century and his victim supplier in positions of enormous campus power and influence. The school lost tens of millions of endowment funds to these men.

The president continues to oversee a board of trustees bursting with conflicts of interest. UD expects at least one more member of that board to be dragged into the Madoff debacle. Yet despite calls from outraged alumni to dissolve the board, the president has done nothing.

Now, finally, faced with the loss of its financial base and any integrity it might have had after being run into the ground by its beloved Madoff and Merkin, Yeshiva’s president acts. He fires sixty innocent people.

The guilty parties – the president and his board of trustees – remain in place.

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

UD thanks Tzvee for the link.

From a Philadelphia Inquirer profile of Senator Charles Grassley:

Jerome Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and an expert on conflicts of interest, applauds Grassley’s efforts [to go after academic physicians guilty of conflict of interest], but wants changes that would abolish speaking fees, trips, and other payments to doctors that help drug companies promote their point of view.

“Transparency is only a partial solution to conflict of interest,” Kassirer said.

Grassley has told him he’s just getting started.