What’s the good of majoring in English? Reading Austen will put you on a fast track to understanding the world to come, the world, according to the hottest book out there at the moment, that we are already beginning to see emerge. The concentration of unimaginable wealth in private hands, coupled with remarkable and increasing rates of income inequality, is producing Austenland.
And – to stay with the university for a moment, since it is after all the subject of this blog – we can, relatedly, see emerging … call it The Benefactor Quandary… or call it less formally the Madoff Mess… the Milken Mess… the… Firtash Mess?
Dmitry Firtash is a tragic figure, a harmless well-meaning oligarch caught up in the cruel tides of history. After quietly amassing billions and billions of dollars for himself and his loved ones through massive corruption, he made the mistake of simply being Ukrainian… And here comes the US government after the dude because he’s a friend of the Russkies and we’re pissed with the Russkies! So now he’s been arrested and he’s gonna be extradited to New York or Washington or someplace near UD‘s house so we can make mock of him and take all his money and throw him in jail.
But meanwhile, what interests us here at University Diaries, is this:
A Ukrainian energy tycoon who has made considerable donations to the University of Cambridge has been arrested, with campaigners saying the university must review its ethical investment and donations policy as a result.
Yes, Cambridge fell for Firtash’s oily (if you will) charm and now it’s official knowledge that he’s a crook whereas when they took his many millions in donations it was only privately bruited about that he was a crook.
What to do?
The guy’s been washing his rep via big bucks to Cambridge exactly the way so many somewhat crooked one percenters do at various academic institutions – remember, Steven A. Cohen is still a trustee in good standing of Brown University – and now Cambridge looks like an enabler. This for that – twenty million dollars in exchange for we shed our sweetness and light upon you…
Expect to see more of this as our wealthy rentiers go restlessly in search of legitimacy.