← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“… [T]he [McGill University Hospital Centre] not only topped up Porter’s $241,000 salary in 2010 with a $63,000 stipend to ensure his ‘increased availability,’ the board of directors also agreed to upgrade his company car from a Mercedes to a Bentley. This came on top of taxpayer-funded memberships in exclusive clubs, a $500,000 low-interest loan and extra pay for research and teaching that Porter may never have actually earned.”

UD‘s not ashamed to say that she has missed Arthur Porter, and that she is therefore mucho excited as Canada enters another round of Portermania. Porter was the much-loved, much-gifted CEO of McGill University’s hospital, until it turned out that he’d rigged a bid on a new facility in order to arrange an 11.25 million dollar kickback for himself. The Bentley just wasn’t cutting it for Arthur Porter, a man responsible for “perhaps the biggest fraud ever perpetrated in Canada.”

UD‘s only regret is that he’s Arthur rather than Joseph Porter; if he were [Sir] Joseph Porter, she could write a whole version of When I Was A Lad for him (sample line: But when the breezes blow, I generally go to Panama.)

But really, beyond that, UD has no complaint at all. The yummy revelations of spectacular greed and corruption at McGill University and environs will keep coming and the whole thing will be far more interesting than (yawn) Rob Ford. Personal collapse stories call for our compassion, certainly; but the Arthur Porter story is about the collapse of a university’s board of trustees as well as a region’s legislative body. It’s about how Quebec continues to claim its title as the most corrupt province in Canada.

Margaret Soltan, May 22, 2014 5:48AM
Posted in: foreign universities

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=44151

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

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

Archives

Categories