… what they seem, sings Buttercup in Pinafore.

And ain’t it the truth. He’s a resident assistant in a Hofstra University dorm; she seems a nice Jewish girl. But he assists students in buying drugs, and she’s a gangster’s moll.

A once-prominent art dealer was arrested on Thursday on an indictment charging that he stole $88 million from investors, collectors and artists who had consigned paintings and sculpture to his Upper East Side gallery, the authorities said.

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said the dealer, Lawrence B. Salander, sometimes sold the same painting to more than one buyer. Aides to Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. Salander sold one painting to three people, promising each a 50 percent share.

“Why sell it once when you can sell it three times?” Mr. Morgenthau said at a news conference called to announce a 100-count indictment accusing Mr. Salander of grand larceny, falsifying business records, scheming to defraud investors, forging documents and perjury.

Mr. Morgenthau said the charges covered transactions with 26 victims going back to 1994, among them the tennis star John McEnroe. Mr. Morgenthau said the investigation was continuing, raising the possibility that the extent of the theft could climb. One official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the authorities believed that Mr. Salander’s take actually exceeded $100 million.

… Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. Salander used the money he pocketed “to finance his self-imposed mission to corner the market in Renaissance art” and to support “his extravagant lifestyle,” which included travels in a private jet. Mr. Morgenthau also said Mr. Salander had spent $60,000 on a party for his wife at the Frick Collection, around the corner from the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries on East 71st Street.

The arrest came 17 months after Mr. Salander’s gallery was shut down and 16 months after he filed for bankruptcy. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison on each of 13 counts of first-degree grand larceny and up to 15 years on each of 10 counts of second-degree grand larceny, along with additional time for the other charges…

What a delicious synergy it would be if Salander were Ezra Merkin’s dealer…

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Update: They were neighbors!

… Hofstra University … saw a board member, 1960 graduate Bernard Madoff, arrested for fraud. It … escaped financial consequences. The school … has a ban on investing with board members.

“Not a cent,” said Stuart Vincent, Hofstra’s assistant vice president for university relations. “There is a policy on our board that none of our trustees are allowed to do business with the university. It wasn’t just happenstance.”

Other nonprofits weren’t so lucky. Board members such as Madoff and those who channeled money to him made nonprofits casualties of both bad investments and faulty board policies.

Madoff was treasurer of the board of trustees at Yeshiva University, which lost more than $14 million after fellow board member J. Ezra Merkin, chair of the board’s investment committee, funneled money to him…

… Most athletes at NCAA Division I-A schools receive unlimited free tutoring. More and more schools require mandatory class attendance for athletes. Athletes generally are ushered into classes where their chances to succeed are, shall we say, outstanding.

It takes more work by an athlete to fail these days than to succeed. Eric Hyman, [University of South Carolina’s] athletics director, says time and again that mandatory class attendance has a direct correlation to success in the classroom. How can they not graduate?…

From the University of Maryland Student Government president:

After one of the longest meetings that I have attended, the Senate amended the Post-Tenure Review policy nearly 10 times before rejecting the final version. Faculty members of the Senate called this a direct “assault” on tenure and echoed each other on how terrible this proposal was.

The faculty members of the Senate should be absolutely ashamed of how this debate went. For whatever reason, the Senate limits their meetings to an hour and 45 minutes, which was extended to two hours 15 minutes at one point during the meeting. As soon as the clock hits 5:00 or in this case, 5:30 the Senate is automatically adjourned. Myself and the President of the Graduate Student Government (GSG) were next in line when one of the Senators motioned for a vote. This took place after hearing not a single other perspective to their endless barrage of hate for this proposal and after not hearing a single student speak on the value of this proposal.

The truth is that the student body, undergraduates and graduates, were united in support of the new Post-Tenure Review process. Professors, tenured or not, should be accountable to the taxpayers of Maryland and face consequences if they are grossly underperforming.

Some of the debate was also disgusting in suggesting that faculty are not “employees” but rather above the system because they are academics. When, in reality, they are accountable to the taxpayers of Maryland who sign their checks just as anyone who works for the University and is a member of the community would be.

Everyone seemed to get overly fixated on the salary-reduction aspect of the proposal, which only happens if a professor repeatedly fails, even after composing for them a development plan to avoid any reduction from happening.

Real objections, as in what this would mean to administer the process, like that of Professor Karol Soltan from BSOS were hushed by overly antagonistic and personal decrees of any idea of salary reduction even for “deadbeat” professors. Professors who would be in violation and subject to a salary reduction are professors that are an embarrassment to our University and our community and weigh departments down.

The faculty Senators should be ashamed of how they behaved yesterday and the Senate should amend their by-laws to allow for healthier debate and time divided equally among differing viewpoints.

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Update: Mr UD speaks, in response to a question a commenter on this thread asked:

We already have of course annual review of all faculty for merit increases. The proposal claimed that the new form of post-tenure review could be just blended in, but when you considered the actual detail of how it would be implemented, it began to look like we would need two committees doing very similar evaluations every year, or we would have to seriously compromise on the way both tasks are done.

The key point in any case is that we already have post-tenure review, every five years (a lot of reporting misses this rather crucial point). It is apparently not implemented in some (many? I don’t know) departments. But in mine, for example, it is implemented. And every five years one can do a far more serious and long term review. So for those departments like mine the proposed change would increase administrative cost, and lower the quality of the review.

Given the great variety of departments and other units that we have, that any large university has, it is very unlikely that one system will work well everywhere. Through the debate I became convinced that the system we have is not implemented across the board, because it is hard to implement in small departments (I am in a large one), so the solution is to allow a number of systems of post-tenure review, different ones for different units. It would have been very difficult to amend the proposal we were considering in the way that would incorporate what I think is the necessary diversity. So I voted against it.

K

… [Jonathan] Leo had first notified JAMA of problems with the study, but had heard nothing from the editors for several months. So he decided to go public. The editors said that on the day Leo posted on the Web site, JAMA was six days away from publishing a letter and detailed correction about the study. In other words, they say Leo was right, but he should have been more patient.

JAMA, you’re not looking good here.

Leo says he uncovered the conflict in a simple Google search, the kind that anyone, say, at JAMA could do in a few minutes. He wonders why JAMA took so long to confirm the information.

Good question….

Background here.

… With Bryant Gumbel interviewed me yesterday about the Florida State scandal.

In the works for UD: Color commentary at the next Auburn v. Alabama game.

From an interview with Michael Ignatieff way back when.

“… [M]y own writing isn’t plain enough yet and isn’t transparent enough yet. There’s too much kind of straining and pretending to be a writer in it. I love writing where it just feels so completely natural. So that makes me a great fan of Richard Ford and Raymond Carver and that school. Very, very fond of Don DeLillo.”

DeLillo recently won the Common Wealth Award.

… Full Professor?

Subpoena.

… will now investigate, via a special committee, how it came to appoint a couple of bullies to edit its journal.

A professor at [Turkey’s] Antalya Akdeniz University was fined 100 Turkish Liras yesterday by the university for whistling a traditional folk song in the faculty corridors.

Professor Orhan Kuruüzüm, an academic in the management and economics faculty, was accused of “whistling in the corridor while holding a tea glass” and “continuing to whistle until he entered his room” earlier this month. The deputy dean of the faculty, Professor Şafak Aksoy, filed the complaint. A professor from the agriculture faculty assessed the complaint and suggested a “warning” as a punishment for Kuruüzüm’s conduct.

The dean of the faculty of management and economics, Professor İsrafil Kurtcephe, argued the punishment was too light for the act, increasing to a fine of 100 Turkish liras.

Kuruüzüm’s lawyer Mustafa Necati Şahiner said his client faced persecution by the faculty, arguing that the faculty management’s aim was to create the environment where they could fire him. The fine is the fourth such punishment the 15-year academic has faced since Professor İsrafil Kurtcephe took over as the dean of the faculty in November. The first inquiry focused on claims that Kuruüzüm had called Kurtcephe “worthless” and “appointed from the top.”

In addition to the whistling charge, Kuruüzüm has been accused of “untoward acts in the faculty building and at official meetings,” “defiance” and “failure to respond to questions by the deputy dean.” When the inquiry faced by Kuruüzüm first made the headlines earlier this month, many in the province of Bolu were offended because the folk song whistled by the professor originated from there. The tune Kuruüzüm whistled was a traditional song called “Halimem.” Güllü Yaman, the branch chief of the Bolu Education Personnel Union, or Eğitim-Sen, at the time condemned the inquiry against Kuruüzüm, calling it “politically motivated.” Kuruüzüm has appealed against the previous three penalties at local courts and is expected to do the same again.

… makes contact with Morrissey at his Philadelphia concert. The photo ran in the Philadelphia City Paper.

UD‘s impressed.

A man of principle.

… with Paul Thacker, a Charles Grassley staffer.

They ate at Two Quail, a place UD used to go to quite a lot when she lived on Capitol Hill, and which now seems to have gone out of business.

Tufts University invited Senator Grassley to speak at a conference there on conflict of interest, and because he wasn’t able to attend, he suggested to Tufts that Thacker, a specialist on the matter, attend in his place. For reasons that remain obscure, Tufts said no to Thacker.

One of the conference organizers has pulled out, in protest.

… Sheldon Krimsky, an environmental-policy professor at Tufts who is co-chairman of the university’s Committee on Ethics…. wrote [in an email message] that he had recused himself after feeling his role as organizer had been “compromised,” and the university’s commitment to academic freedom diminished, by the refusal of Tufts administrators to accept Mr. Thacker’s presence.

Bravo, Krimsky. Just because some of what Thacker says at the conference will embarrass your university doesn’t mean university officials should bar speakers and shut down discourse. Major black mark for Tufts. If I were Grassley, I’d take another look at my schedule and figure out some way of attending this conference.

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Update: An insider’s account, from the excellent Carlat Psychiatry Blog.

… a powerful writer, gets to the core of a complex situation. This is from today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

… Virtually all researchers say they are not influenced by drug company money. Doctors rarely out-and-out lie about their research, but spin influences how a study is set up, its statistical analysis and interpretation. Research on drug studies repeatedly shows that drug trial results are tilted toward a positive description of the drug’s effects when the research is funded by a drug company rather than the government or an independent agency.

Big Pharma money is most powerful when promoting [Joseph] Biederman‘s research and point of view over competing models. Drug companies copy and mail his important papers on psychiatric drugs to every American physician working with children. A member of the Biederman team is at every important meeting on children’s psychiatric issues and medical education. Their presence, and often the conference, itself, are supported by drug industry dollars.

Only when children die or side effects are severe – as in the FDA hearings on children and antidepressants in 2004, and in the recent publicity over obesity and diabetes caused by the bipolar drugs – do opposing viewpoints get the country’s eyes and ears.

Biederman’s conflict of interest problems have exposed his strong pro-drug views to the public for scrutiny. Until now, fear of the Biederman team has operated quietly on the small club of child psychiatric researchers. Only when 2-year-olds started taking three psychiatric drugs simultaneously under a Biederman protocol for bipolar disorder did the emperor’s clothes become so invisible as to begin the naming of names…

Two-year-olds on three drugs simultaneously. Jesus.