What? You mean they can’t handle the way American universities – the University of Kansas, in this case – become trampy little soap operas when recruitment season rolls around? Because they’re so so desperate to recruit one-year non-students who can throw balls that the schools’ anxieties over recruitment paralyze the campus?

The Henry guys, the two guys KU wants so bad it hurts, drive a Hummer and a Range Rover and live in opulence and really REALLY don’t want to go to class. They’d go pro and get rich right now if they could. KU means shit to them. But KU LOVES them. It’s just as excited as Alabama was when Coach Saban said Yes!! Yes, I’ll take six million dollars to coach your team! YES! We got Coach Saban!!!!

But will KU get the Henry guys? Today it looks pretty good, but yesterday… Man, yesterday I thought their father was saying something that sounded kinda negative… I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, thinking about it …

… The kids don’t want to be there. It doesn’t matter how pretty the campus is or how historic the arena or how good the team’s chance is at winning the national title.

For the participants, college hoops lost its cool points.

Pushing a Maybach, sporting the most dazzling ice and making it rain inside America’s top strip clubs long ago replaced hitting on the finest girls from Delta Sigma Theta and Xi Omega during psychology class.

You can grind your teeth and reminisce about how much better things used to be, but you’re not going to make kids (or their parents) buy into the current system. It’s a farce…

Shaddap. I LOVE these guys. Everything’s going to be GREAT. Go KU!

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UD thanks Dave for telling her about the events at KU.

I’m not clever enough. But the student journalists at Washington State University are.

UD thanks Dance for sending her this.

Yes. That’s it. Click on the word this. Click on it.

And enjoy.

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PS: SOS just wrote to the editor about the misspelling in the article’s title.

Vanity Fair’s at it again.

Last month, an après le déluge article full of insider sniping about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared; this month, it’s an après le déluge article full of insider sniping about endowment fuckup Harvard.

McPalin fans can’t complain that VF‘s a tool of liberal elites, singling out their girl for ridicule; even a glance at highlights from the Harvard article tells you that Cambridge — epicenter of the snooty left — is going to take a very big hit.

Some of this stuff you already know — I mean, if you read University Diaries you already know it — but the VF writer runs some blood through the numbers. Like frinstance you know about “the eight-figure salaries some of [the] managers were pulling down” — (That’s eight, as in thirty million dollars a year apiece … Count the zeroes… 30,000,000 … Non-profit work… Good for the conscience… And good for the pocketbook!… ) — but maybe you didn’t know about the personalities raging around the numbers:

The longtime head of Harvard Management Company, Jack Meyer, quit to start his own hedge fund in 2005 after growing fed up with criticism over the eight-figure salaries some of his managers were pulling down and with persistent meddling from top Harvard officials. Two particular annoyances were Summers, who had been questioning Meyer’s investment strategies, and Robert Rubin, a member of the Harvard Corporation, who frowned on Meyer’s aggressive strategies and wound up on the “warpath” with Meyer, as one person put it.

When Meyer left, he took much of Harvard Management Company with him — including 30 portfolio managers and traders, as well as the chief risk officer, chief operating officer, and chief technology officer. The place became “like a Ferrari without the engine,” according to a portfolio manager who arrived after Meyer left. This angered Rubin, according to someone who knows him well: “In Rubin’s opinion, Meyer crippled the institution.”

If only Summers and Rubin, with their I-know-better-than-you personalities, had let things alone! The managers would have been happy with their ever-increasing salaries (Keep in mind that they were graciously taking a cut from what they’d have gotten in the private sector, and Meyer would understandably have wanted to reward them with tens of millions more in pay every year.); one university in the United States would have gone from having the GDP of Bulgaria to, say, the GDP of … the United States? And that would have done wonders for school pride… We’re Number One!… And instead of Meyer deciding that the best thing he could do with this meddling issue was take down his entire operation and destroy a school, he’d still be sitting there, happy as a bug!

Here’s a snippet of sniping:

The Harvard endowment soared from $4.8 billion in 1990 to $36.9 billion as of June 30, 2008, and in the last half-decade or so, the men and women who run Harvard seemed to have convinced themselves that the university’s fund would grow at double-digit rates for, well, eternity. “Apparently nobody in our financial office has read the story in Genesis about Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream—you know, during the seven good years you save for the seven lean years,” says Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School since 1967.

Dershowitz himself, though, doesn’t know much about economizing. He hires far too many people to write his books for him.

Fact is, Harvard — as I’ve suggested on this blog before — is an all ’round out of control drunk. Money and power, you know.

As with the Palin fiasco, when things come crashing down in the sober light of day, Vanity Fair moves in, with its glossy photojournalism and pesky reporters.

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UD thanks Tony.

From the Canadian Jewish News:

… In his keynote address [at a Yeshiva event in Montreal recently], [Richard] Joel, who has been YU president since 2003, made an appeal for greater financial support from Montrealers, as well as for them to send more of their children to YU.

He said the university spends about $2.5 to $3 million a year educating those Montrealers, but receives only about $750,000 to $850,000 in revenue in any given year from Montreal.

“The economy is awful, and we are operating in a major deficit,” he added.

Joel did not refer to the $14.5 million YU has said it lost in the fraud allegedly perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, who was a member of its board of trustees…

I found it here.

For Souter’s departure today, much reciting of poetry, all of it written by Robert Frost. In his farewell letter to his colleagues, Souter describes the joy of his work at the court as he and his fellow justices contended over “those things that matter to decent people in civil society.”

He quotes from Frost’s poem Two Tramps in Mud Time — a poem, he writes, that expresses “the ideal of the life engaged, ‘…where love and need are one…’ … That phrase accounts for the finest moments of my life on this court…”

The poem describes the poet and his love of chopping wood. He both needs the wood for his fires, and loves in itself the act of chopping the wood:

The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

These are goods in themselves, the ideal here that of the human body deeply engaged, in zenlike self-transcendence, in an act. But beyond the engrossing physical pleasure of this natural movement lies something else:

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

The only really meaningful act has this double aspect of vocation — a job that must be done to satisfy a human need — and avocation — a playful gratuitous act of sheer joy. Iris Murdoch calls art “close dangerous play with unconscious forces.” It’s the same idea: Souter is evoking the serious play — often, indeed, at the court, with dangerous forces — that work as a justice has represented for him. Play for mortal stakes.

In keeping with [author Mark] McGurl’s love of systems, diagrams dot The Program Era, a feature that some early reviewers have found off-putting. Charles McGrath did some eye-rolling in an early, unkind review for The New York Times in which he likened writing programs to Ponzi schemes and chastised McGurl for cluttering his prose with academic jargon — which hardly seems fair, given that The Program Era is a scholarly book, published by a university press and intended for an academic audience.

So if a book’s intended for an academic audience, it’s supposed to have prose cluttered with academic jargon?

… [A]nybody looking for a measure of [Ruth Madoff’s] integrity might do well to take a peek at her cookbook, The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher. Published in 1996, the book lists Madoff and her friend Idee Schoenheim as executive editors. In truth, however, the work was done in its entirety by Karen MacNeil, a food expert who has been quoted as saying that Madoff “was interested in having her name on something that would allow for some sort of fun.” McNeil is listed as an editor.

In the grand scheme of things, claiming authorship of a ghost-written book is a minor offense, the kind of thing that will get one a window seat in an outer, more pleasant, circle of Hell; certainly, it pales beside the crimes of Ruth’s husband. However, a case could be made that someone who will lie about the small things may be inclined to lie about the big ones, and that someone willing to take credit for another person’s work has exploitative tendencies…

Ruth’s approach to publication has much in common with the approach of thousands of American medical school professors. They too are interested in having their name on something that would allow for some sort of fun.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

CUOMO TO SELL MERKIN’S ART

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is selling art owned by financier J. Ezra Merkin in an effort to repay his investors who lost millions in the Madoff fraud.

The sale of several Mark Rothko paintings and Alberto Giacometti sculptures belonging to Mr. Merkin and his wife will yield $191 million for investors.

Mr. Cuomo’s office arranged for the artwork to be sold to an anonymous buyer for $310 million…

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A few more details here.

UD takes this typically dull sentence from a book written by committee and full of dull sentences.

Unfortunately, the book is extremely important, making the case, as it does, that conflict of interest in academic and non-academic medicine is an immense national scandal.

This being University Diaries, UD pays attention only to that small part of the scandal that involves universities with medical schools. But there’s so much more, and this book covers it all. Dully.

Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice (note titillating title), published by National Academies Press, may be bought, downloaded, skimmed online … mainlined via hypodermic… what I mean is, there are many, many ways to read this book. Is what I’m trying to get across.

An option that doesn’t exist is reading its important and even dramatic material in a way that doesn’t make you bitter about how old you’re getting. (Though this might just be me.)

The University of Florida medical school can’t even find and retain forms it’s been sent to complete on conflict of interest.

Because of this pathetic failure, the American Medical Student Association gave the school an F grade on its widely publicized national measurement of how well universities are handling conflict of interest in their med schools. The university had to plead with AMSA to change its grade to in progress,which AMSA graciously allowed.

And now a blowhard UF dean, interviewed by the student newspaper, comes out with this:

“[AMSA] is the least knowledgeable [in conflicts of interest policies],” Flynn said, referring to the fact that AMSA is an organization made up of medical students. “[No offense to them, but] they’re not even in the profession yet. We’re doing this because we feel it’s the right thing to do, not because of them.”

Yes, the wee babes of AMSA! We big boys who’ve been at the conflict of interest game for decades know how it’s played. These innocents, these hyper-moral fools, these fanatics, waltz in with their little questionnaires and think we have to notice! No offense, but they don’t know shit. We threw their presumptuous little form in the trash the minute we saw it… Now it turns out people actually pay attention to the fuckers…. We had four secretaries scrounging through garbage to find the thing! But no go. We’ve had to kiss up to the assholes…

The contest in which you are asked to write the worst possible opening sentence you can think of for a story or a novel has announced this year’s winners.

I like the three winning sentences quoted here, but none of them can touch this one, a winner from an earlier year:

The widow Hasha Brown, whose agrarian husband had died from an unfortunate accident involving a hoe, leaned on the filigree railing of her balcony, overlooking her lavish, ornate Idaho estate, her dewy breasts protruding from her Pucci-print dressing gown like subterranean tubers saturated and distended from the vernal rains.

Winner and still champeen.

Longtime readers know that UD likes to make poems out of words and phrases in newspaper articles.

Here’s one. Article first.

Quiet please — Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is preparing to have her swans counted.

Buckingham Palace has announced that the annual Swan Upping, a tradition dating back to the 12th century which involves a census of the swan population on the River Thames, will be conducted by the queen’s official Swan Marker from July 20-24.

“With the assistance of the Queen’s Swan Warden, Professor Christopher Perrins of the University of Oxford, the swans and young cygnets are also assessed for any signs of injury or disease,” Buckingham Palace said in announcing the count.

The process involves the Swan Marker, David Barber, rowing up the Thames for five days with the Swan Warden in traditional skiffs while wearing special scarlet uniforms and counting, weighing and measuring swans and cygnets.

It may seem eccentric, but it is very important to the queen.

According to custom, Britain’s sovereign owns all unmarked, mute swans in open water, but the queen now exercises the right only on stretches of the Thames and its nearby tributaries.

In medieval times, the Swan Marker would not only travel up the river counting the swans, but would catch as many as possible as they were sought-after for banquets and feasts.

This year, the Swan Marker and the Swan Warden are particularly keen to discover how much damage is being caused to swans and cygnets by attacks from dogs and from discarded fishing tackle.

It is also an important year because Queen Elizabeth has decided to join her team of Swan Uppers for part of the census.

She will follow them up the river and visit a local school project on the whole subject of swans, cygnets and the Thames.

“Education and conservation are essential to the role of Swan Upping and the involvement of school children is always a rewarding experience,” Buckingham Palace said.
 

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Swan Upping

Up the Thames the Marker rows,
Swans and cygnets counting.
Buckingham’s announcing
This year the sovereign follows.

Swan Warden, particular keen,
Eyes discarded tack,
And signs of dog attack,
On the mute unmarked of the queen.

Swan Uppers when medieval
Sought after fowl for feast.
Now they assess disease
On tributary travel.

They’ve put together a Facebook campaign to keep their ridiculous board of trustees from renaming one of their campuses after His Excellency Mitch Maidique, FIU’s money-grubbing, football-mad, just-retired president.

Cast your eye over UD’s Maidique posts over the last few years to get a sense of this absurd character, and then consider signing the students’ petition. My signature is Number 447.

The students worry about the cost of renaming buildings and all at a time of austerity. Which is fine. It’s a fine worry. But they should also worry about rewarding a president for having done a bad job, and about permanently embarrassing an ambitious school by plastering this guy’s image and moniker all over the place.

As we await Madoff’s sentencing today, we revisit unapologetically ill-run Yeshiva University.

[Many institutions connected to Madoff] not only need to more formally organize their investing and giving along more official corporate governance lines — Yeshiva University in particular has been cited for this type of needed reform. [T]hey may need to address their own unwitting complicity in the dissipation of the assets of Mr. Madoff’s victims.

Madoff, recall, was Yeshiva’s treasurer, Ezra Merkin an influential trustee. There’s been no public reckoning with this history on that campus, and conflict of interest remains the all-male board of trustees’ middle name.

Sure, Yeshiva lost money through Madoff. It also made plenty of money – for itself, and for its trustees. Yeshiva has said nothing by way of acknowledgement of the depth of its misdeeds.

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Update: It’s also a good day to remember this letter, written last year to the president of Yeshiva from one of its law school graduates, Andrew Sole. Here are its closing paragraphs:

[H]arm has come to this distinguished University, both in financial loss and worse, in reputation. It is my view that the harm today is directly attributable to the failed performance of our trustees. As fiduciaries they lost sight of their primary mission, to safeguard the long-term interests of Yeshiva University. Whether their activities were merely negligent, or worse, that judgment is best left for others.

In my view it will take a generation to repair the damage inflicted upon Yeshiva. And that is very sad. But what would be even sadder, and which would also give grave concerns to Yeshiva’s many supporters, would be for the University to continue to allow the current Board of Trustees to serve as fiduciaries going forward.

The honorable course (and we have seen virtually no honorable behavior in American corporate boardrooms, nor in our public servants, in 2008) would be for the University’s President, and its legal counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell, to demand the immediate resignation of the entire Board of Trustees. The University’s counsel, government regulators, and law enforcement will conduct their proper investigations, but the proud students, graduates, and supporters of Yeshiva University should not have to wait that long for credible and therapeutic action to be taken by this University.

Yeshiva has the opportunity to begin the healing process today by installing new fiduciaries that are untainted by scandal and embarrassment. I hope you will take this letter to heart and I wish the University the best during these incredibly trying times.

Yeshiva responded to Sole with a form letter brush-off.

And all of those men, those hands-in-each-others’-pockets men, those Madoff and Merkin men, remain on the Yeshiva University board of trustees.