…College sports at the highest level (meaning Division I revenue programs) is mostly about money. Those at the top of professional and major college athletics — whatever pure PR stance is taken, and has to be — understand gambling is part of why their sports thrive. Bottom line, it adds to the interest…

University of Toledo: You Can Bet on It!

… with each other, or with themselves, it ain’t pretty. It can even become, as at North Carolina State University, a bloodbath.

So far the hacks and cronies who gave the wife of the scandal-ridden ex-governor a cushy job at a North Carolina campus and, soon after hiring her, upped her salary eighty-eight percent, have suffered two losses: The provost has had to go, and the chair of the university’s board of trustees is on the verge of going.

The president of the University of North Carolina system has asked McQueen Campbell, chairman of the N.C. State University board, to resign immediately after learning this week that Campbell played a role in hiring former first lady Mary Easley.

Erskine Bowles told The News & Observer on Thursday that Campbell phoned him earlier this week and “went through a whole mea culpa,” then recounted telling Chancellor James Oblinger that Easley was looking to change jobs before N.C. State hired her in 2005.

“He said, ‘I did tell Jim Oblinger in passing that Mary Easley was going to change jobs and he may not even remember that.'” Bowles said. “And I said, ‘What?’ That was about the end of the conversation. I was surprised.”

Campbell was prominently featured in a two-part series last weekend in The N&O, which recounted his friendship and influence with Mike and Mary Easley. Campbell flew the governor often in his planes, sometimes for free, and bragged of his influence in getting key development permits. The governor twice appointed him to the N.C. State Board of Trustees, where he rose to chairman.

Campbell had insisted that he played no role in Mary Easley’s job at N.C. State. He denied having even a single conversation with university officials or Mary Easley before she got a three-year contract at $80,000 a year in 2005, or when she received a five-year, $850,000 contract that touched off controversy.

That story changed with his call to Bowles. Bowles then phoned Oblinger, who said in an interview Thursday that he did not recall being told by Campbell that Mary Easley would be available. Oblinger said he does not deny it might have happened…

The article goes on to cite the idiot head of trustees bragging about how his political connections allow him to break rules and skirt laws. Plus he’s on record lying to a reporter about his involvement in the Easley case. Just the sort of person you want at the helm of a university.

So far the bloodbath has bypassed the governor’s wife, understandably eager to retain her amazingly lucrative position. But the president of the North Carolina system now says, rather darkly, that she “will be reviewed in the appropriate manner especially as we look at where we’re going to place our budget going forward.”

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Update:  McQueen Campbell (great name) obliges.

… writes T.S. Eliot, in The Waste Land.

On the Liffey, however, Samuel Beckett connects Sir John Rogerson’s Quay with North Wall Quay.

Like his mentor, James Joyce, Beckett now has a Dublin bridge named after him:

The Samuel Beckett Bridge, at 120 metres long and 48 metres high, will link Sir John Rogerson’s Quay on the south side of the river Liffey with Guild Street and North Wall Quay on the north side.

Dublin’s newest bridge was designed by Santiago Calatrava, and will be his second bridge in the capital. The James Joyce Bridge, near Heuston Station, opened in 2003.

The new bridge, costing about €60 million, will be capable of rotating through an angle of 90 degrees to facilitate maritime traffic.

It has four traffic lanes, cycle tracks and footpaths.

It arrived on a barge into Dublin Port on Monday morning having charted its way from Rotterdam, across the English Channel and Irish Sea in a week-long journey.

It was constructed for Dublin City Council by an Irish/Dutch joint venture consortium Graham-Hollandia.

The design evokes the image of the Irish harp lying on its side…

What would Beckett say?

“Bridge to nowhere.”

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They put up a bridge for Sam Beckett
And his characters came out to check it.
Vlad and Estragon waited.
And waited and waited.
Then Lucky and Pozzo both wrecked it.

Her critics become more and more shrill as Karen Wagner’s deception generates outrage; yet Wagner, like the university that employs her, remains absolutely silent.

The University of Texas has issued a few We don’t know shit but uh when we get a chance we’ll look into it statements in response to Senator Charles Grassley’s repeated letters to it about the vice-chair of the psychiatry department’s way-lucrative, hidden conflicts of interest, and of course the campus can’t be happy that Grassley  just reported her to the Health and Human Services inspector general.

In his latest letter, the Iowa Republican says that the amount Wagner didn’t report may be as high as $230,000. The university’s counsel told the Dallas Morning News last week that it has been investigating Wagner for two weeks -– though it got the first letter on the issue eight months ago.

But hey.  If you were an office of sponsored research guy, and you had a choice between going to a football game and staring at a big ol’ Adzillatron, and shuffling through disclosure papers from Wagner in which she makes a fool of you to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, what would you do?

That Texas Adzillatron — the world’s largest — has UD thinking.  What if, during major athletic contests, with the whole nation watching, the university were to pause the stream of ads for a few moments and flash the names of its professors who’ve lied about outside income?  You know – list their names, departments, and the amount of money they didn’t tell anybody about over, say, the last ten years.  Also any sanctions imposed.  If UT takes disclosure seriously, this would be real disclosure.   It would also embarrass Wagner and others, thereby discouraging fellow professors of psychiatry from following their path.

You figure universities are primarily dumping grounds for politicians, their friends, and their families. You figure that because that’s the way it’s always been.

And then things suddenly change on you, and your life becomes unbearable.

The top academic official at North Carolina State University stepped down Thursday, saying controversy over his hiring of the state’s former first lady has become “unbearable.”

Provost Larry Nielsen created a new faculty position and used it to hire Mary Easley, wife of former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, who left office in January after two terms.

The 31,000-student school hired Mary Easley in 2005 to oversee a lecture series and teach three courses. Last summer, a new compensation agreement expanded her role and boosted her salary to $850,000 over a five-year contract. [88% raise.]

The News & Observer of Raleigh has raised questions about why Nielsen was hired as provost even though he was not among an initial pool of candidates.

He served as interim provost during the search, and school officials named him to the post permanently in June 2005, shortly before the university announced Easley’s hiring. The newspaper said Nielsen worked closely with Easley ally McQueen Campbell, who chaired the university trustees’ personnel committee.

… N.C. State is the largest campus of North Carolina’s 16 public universities.

Last summer, Nielsen defended Easley’s increased salary by saying she had new duties, working at the Center for Public Safety Leadership and Strategic Legal Partnership. Before joining the university, she had taught law at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

University of North Carolina system leaders launched a review of the deal but later approved her salary while saying a portion of the pay would come from private funds.

Nielsen said the personal stress had become unbearable and he understands that some people will interpret his resignation as an indication the allegations are valid…

For background on Easley, who, unlike the fragile provost, will tough it out for the sake of the money, go here.

Spanish scientists have detected the presence of cocaine in the air of Madrid and Barcelona by using a new technique for the first time, a research institute said Wednesday.

The scientists looked for 17 components in five different types of illegal drugs — cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid.

The results revealed cocaine is the predominant drug in the air of the two cities, the CSIC institute said.

It was found in concentrations of 29 to 850 picogrammes per cubic metre of air. A picogramme is one trillionth of a gramme.

The study is the result of the first use of a new method for the detection of drugs in the air, adapted specifically for the researchers, who are to publish their results in the review “Analytical Chemistry”.

“Heroin was also found in detectable levels in the samples taken in Madrid, but not in those from Barcelona,” the CSIC said.

This it explained by the fact that the area of Madrid where the sample was taken is close to a district where drug dealers are suspected of operating.

The scientists also reported a higher concentration of the components during the weekend, “suggesting higher consumption this time.”

But it said there was no reason for the public to be concerned.

“Even if we lived 1,000 years we would not consume the equivalent of a dose of cocaine through the air,” said one of the scientists, Miren Lopez de Alda.

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Cocaine rains on the plains of Spain.
Candycaine grains stain trains and lanes.

The best brains fight the bane in vain:
“No pain, no gain… But this is insane!”

Children crane.
In their panes it wanes.

… we’re getting our education in academic medicine.

Thanks to Senator Grassley, the weird science of some university-sponsored research reveals itself, and even UD, who’s been around, finds it head-spinning.

Here, for instance, is a professor at Washington University defending his colleague, Timothy Kuklo, charged with falsification of data, forgery of documents, and other stuff:

… The inquiry also found that Kuklo falsely claimed other Army doctors helped write the study. … [A colleague said, in defense of Kuklo, that] it’s not uncommon for a researcher to sign other authors’ names to a study after getting verbal consent. It is a practice that is done, for example, when other authors are abroad and do not have easy access to fax machines.

Since Kuklo has so far refused to respond to anyone – in the press or the military – about any of this, we can’t know whether he got the four faxless horsemen’s verbal consent… Or what that consent was for. We do know that sticking lots of names on articles – names of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the project – represents one of many curious folkways of UD‘s fellow professors in med schools around the country. No doubt it’s a short jump from rounding up friends who have nothing to do with your work and pretending that they helped you with it, to just going ahead and putting their names down… forging their names… on the cover page of your study… without permission:

… [Kuklo] falsely claimed had a 92 percent success rate in healing shattered legs of wounded soldiers injured in Iraq, and Medtronic [his client, and maker of the device at the heart of the study] has supported his research, the Times reported.

Kuklo’s study was retracted in March after [the] paper’s publisher, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, received notification from Walter Reed questioning the validity of the report’s conclusions.

“It was further disclosed that much of the paper was essentially false,” the retraction read.

Additionally, four doctors listed as co-authors on the report said they had not seen the manuscript prior to publication, and their signatures were forged on the article before its submission…

But wait! They were detained abroad, bereft of faxes …

It’s not only the weird ways of research we’re learning about. It’s the yet weirder ways in which other researchers defend the research.

For generations, students at the University of Texas have believed that if, on your way to a test, you see an albino squirrel on campus, you’ll get an A.

But a biology professor at UT says: “The squirrels — at least the ones I’ve seen on campus — are not true albinos… I have actually seen several color variants of squirrels on campus with light-colored hair but all with normally pigmented eyes. … There are squirrels that lack or have reduced production of eumelanin, or black pigment, which are known as amelanistic squirrels.”

Not only that, but a student comments in response to the article:

I saw an albino squirrel and had a threesome later that night ….

… are the latest schools housing professors charged with serious professional misconduct. Wash U’s faculty member faces falsification of data charges (details here, at The Periodic Table). Federal prosecutors (as I note in the post below) charge the Dartmouth professor with conflict of interest. He could go to jail.

I must say, psychiatry departments at American universities look almost as troubled as campus athletic departments.  Both places often seem epicenters of greed, stupidity, and criminality.

Call UD old-fashioned, but she doesn’t immediately associate that set of values with universities as we’ve come to know them.

Federal prosecutors have filed conflict of interest charges against a VA hospital psychiatrist, alleging that he supervised contracts in which he had a financial interest.

Dr. William Weeks of Lyme, N.H., is accused of misconduct in five contracts between the White River Junction VA hospital and Dartmouth College. He acted as both a VA representative responsible for approving payments to Dartmouth and as Dartmouth’s principal investigator performing work on the contracts, prosecutors say.

If convicted of the misdemeanor charges, he faces a year in prison and fines of up to $100,000 for each charge. He also faces up to $1.3 million in penalties in an 11-count civil complaint.

In court papers filed Friday, Acting U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf said Weeks sought $1.1 million in contracts from the VA for Dartmouth, and then did the work for significantly less by hiring fewer people and at lower rates. An estimated $567,000 was left over and deposited into an account at Dartmouth in Weeks’ name.

Weeks also is accused of participating in other contracts with the VA and Dartmouth while holding the dual positions…

It says Comments are closed on that last post, but they’re not. I mean, as always, I welcome comments. If you’ve been trying to comment, I apologize. I’m working on fixing it.

Comments don’t seem to be closed on this post. Feel free to put your comment here.

Black will be played by Robert Zemsky, historian.

White will be played by Tim Curley, propagandist.

Dead All Over will be played by Michael Adams, president of the worst university in America.

Today’s meeting of the Knight Commission on university athletics opened with White, proud member of what he calls “the Penn State family,” where he’s Athletic Director.

White speaks:

College athletics is today the healthiest I’ve ever seen it. Everything’s looking great. Everyone here should be celebrating the positive values of university sports. We’ve learned we can be the great success we are and at the same time we can govern ourselves. We don’t need to be governed by outsiders. We’ve made incredible progress on all fronts. Enthusiasm and excitement and participation and profit is at an all-time high. Yes, escalating salaries stress the system. Yes, we continue to be challenged with our expenses. But these things are out of our control. Every one of these expenditures is necessary. We live in a market society, and we have to respond to market conditions.

Black speaks:

Trying to describe the place of athletics in the larger context of higher education is like trying to describe a burnt-out desert. You see, this discussion today — it isn’t going anywhere. We came here to talk about cost-containment, and it isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because any sense of values is missing.

Since you people don’t have any values, you put the marketplace up as the only thing that matters. That’s why you’re not ever going to reform at all. You’re part of the general loss of aura, loss of particularity, at our universities in America. Football on your campus is just like the NFL, you say, and, see, you’re proud of it. So what makes you a college? Absolutely nothing.

Used to be universities were supposed to be like churches — separate, special places, dedicated to higher things. They’re not special anymore. They’re just like any other business. So why tenure? Why tax exemptions? Look at Harvard and places like that. University endowments aren’t charitable donations; they’re hedge funds. University presidents make million dollar salaries, just like other CEOs.

It all tears at the fabric of the specialness of the university. You’ve all helped make that happen. Since you’ve been in business, things have gotten a whole lot worse. The university athletics engine will certainly stop running. But it will never reform itself. It’ll just run out of gas.

Dead All Over:

I resent this negativity. Why, at the University of Georgia we’ve got a heck of a program…

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Update: This post is now comment enabled.

… UD heads downtown for the Knight Commission meeting on university athletics.

She’ll blog about it later this afternoon.

Remember when I went after Mark McGurl, author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing? I quoted Charles McGrath’s citation of a cryptic sentence from the book, and went to town on it here.

But note the updated correction to the piece. A reader, this morning, pointed out in the comment thread that McGrath had gotten part of the quotation wrong.

And now I’ve heard from the author of the book himself, who points out that “what McGrath describes as a sentence is in fact only half of the sentence,” and who asks if he can send me the book, so I can judge its writing for myself.

UD‘s delighted – not merely by the prospect of receiving the book (she has more than a passing interest in creative writing programs), but also by the gallantry of its author, who responds to snarling SOS with forbearance.

My punning is a real embarrassment, isn’t it? I mean, it would be, if I were capable of being embarrassed.

It’s going to be hard to beat The George Washington University in famous-for-D.C. star power at its commencement ceremony. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will deliver the school’s keynote address on the National Mall on Sunday, May 17.

Strengths: Incredibly powerful politician and policy leader + charismatic, passionate personality = commencement speaker gold. Also, many ladies of our acquaintance insist he’s easy on the eyes. Who are we to argue?

Weaknesses: He’s always got the potential to go off script and say something provocative or even offensive, embarrassing poor grandma. But this could just as easily be listed in the “strengths” category.