From The Daily Texan:

A heated debate at the Senate Finance Committee meeting today led to the resignation of the chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company Board.

The senate committee grilled Chairman Robert Rowling and CEO of UTIMCO Bruce Zimmerman over the $3 million in bonuses paid to the staff, included a $ 1 million bonus for Zimmerman.

The comments and questions by the senators became so heated that Rowling declared his immediate resignation.

“I resign,” Rowling said heatedly, “You can have my job.”

UTIMCO is the first external investment corporation formed by a public university system and oversees investments for UT and Texas A&M Systems.

The controversy concerned a UTMICO CEO Zimmerman’s $1.05 million bonus on top of his $575,000 base salary.

The senators seemed confused by UTIMCO’s decision in the face of a recession and budget deficit…

… of making community colleges the playthings of politicians endures.

Politicians direct money to the colleges, and by way of response the colleges create pretend administrative positions for the politicians that pay them a whole lot of money.

The math’s so simple even UD gets it. Northwest Florida State College gets a $35 million appropriation courtesy of a guy named Sansom, the head of the appropriations committee in the Florida House. In exchange, it gives the guy “a part-time position that paid $110,000, and which was never advertised, nor was anyone else interviewed for it.” So little for so much!

Plus there’s the airport thing.

Sansom secured $6 million for a facility at the Destin airport that the college says will be used as an emergency training center. However, it also is virtually identical to something Panhandle developer and Sansom campaign contributor Jay Odom wanted to build on the same spot to shelter his airplanes during hurricanes. It’s interesting that the state denied the city’s request for funding Odom’s project, but the money materialized when it became a Northwest proposal – Sansom tapped a fund designated for capital projects at colleges.

The guy’s a miracle worker, and you’d have to be pretty smart to see the similarities between the two projects, but I guess the reporter for this here paper figured it out.

And then I guess absolute power corrupts absolutely or however that saying goes, because once Sansom got elevated to Speaker of the House, while keeping his thing at Northwest Florida State College, he got a little arrogant.

Maybe he’d been reading about those real exclusive Palm Beach country clubs Bernard Madoff belonged to…. Whatever the reason, he set up a closed meeting with the College’s trustees in Tallahassee, at a private club which, in the epitome of exclusivity for that part of the state, “overlooks the football stadium on the campus of Florida State University.”

But, you know, trustee meetings are supposed to be public.

… Sansom is a member of the club and the event was booked as the ”Sansom dinner,” not under the Northwest Florida State College trustees.

… The latest disclosure casts new light on one of the controversial elements of Sansom’s relationship with the school, which derailed his tenure as House speaker and triggered a grand jury investigation. Sansom also faces review by a House special investigator and the state Commission on Ethics. [Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you that Sansom has left politics because of some sudden legal difficulties.]

Sansom, R-Destin, has previously described his role in the meeting as a mere participant and said, as the only lawmaker there, that the Sunshine Law on open meetings did not apply to him. The college contends it did not break the law, calling the meeting a legislative briefing.

… But Sansom was the only legislator there and last month, the trustees approved a set of minutes created nearly 10 months after the meeting. [Retroactive minutes. Best kind.]

… As a public school, a meeting of the trustees must be open to the public, which requires advertising the time and place so people can attend. The college did provide public notice, with an ad that was published one week before the meeting, in a newspaper in Okaloosa County, 150 miles from where the meeting took place.

That was Richburg’s idea: ”It’s probably the only way we can do it in privacy but with a public notice here,” he wrote in his e-mail to Sansom….

Old UD sometimes finds herself wondering… What would have happened if these guys had been able to get real college educations? Might they have turned out less stupid?

UD thanks Roy for sending along one of the articles.

… and a diplomat on his first mission, has been killed in Ethiopia.

*****************

A commenter points me to an excellent article about Adkins in the GW newspaper.

… and so far I’ve come across one alumna of University Diaries — the dread Jane L. Dolkart. Let’s take a careful trip down Memory Lane…

On Wednesday, June 8, testimony began in the case of [Southern Methodist University] Dedman School of Law professor Jane L. Dolkart, accused of hitting bicyclist Tommy Thomas with her car in May 2004.

Less than a week later, a Dallas jury found Dolkart guilty of aggravated assault but decided not to sentence her to jail time, opting instead for a penance of five years of probation and two years of community service.

The jury, according to media representatives inside the courtroom, ‘determined that Dolkart intentionally struck … Thomas with her car at White Rock Lake.’

In his testimony, Officer Craig Bennight explained that when told of Mr. Thomas” original accusation, Dolkart said she ‘only meant to tap him.’

After investigating the details with his partner, Bennight said, ‘We both concurred there was no evidence it was an accident. Ms. Dolkart never said it was an accident.’

Though she and defense attorney Mike Gibson were able to avoid the maximum of 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, Dolkart still elicited strong emotions from bicyclists across the metroplex.

One avid cyclist, who asked to remain anonymous, remarked, ‘As we all know, a “tap” from a two-ton auto can kill. … If there is justice in this world, she should pay big time.’

But the penalty from the city of Dallas is only half of the price Dolkart can expect to pay. A member of the Washington, D.C. bar association, Ms. Dolkart”s future as an SMU professor is under investigation.

The day after Dolkart”s sentence was handed down, the University issued the following statement:

“SMU is aware of the jury”s decision in the case involving Professor Jane Dolkart. Under University policy, SMU will conduct an internal review of the situation to determine an appropriate course of action.’

So don’t call Harry Markopolos paranoid.

Was this, as at least a few suspect, a Mafia operation in which billions upon billions were siphoned off by the mob?

A Johns Hopkins professor who co-authored a study suggesting that huge numbers of civilians have died during the U.S. war in Iraq was accused of ethics violations yesterday by a prominent group of polling researchers, and university officials announced that they are conducting their own review.

The rebuke, by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, came after an investigation into how Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Bloomberg School of Public Health determined that nearly 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath. The results – which estimated hundreds of thousands more deaths than the Bush administration had reported – were published in 2006 in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

Officials of the association, of which Burnham is not a member, said Burnham refused to disclose the wording of his questions and basic methodological details of his research, a violation of the group’s code of ethics and practices. That makes it impossible for other researchers to verify the work, said Mary E. Losch, chairwoman of the AAPOR’s Standards Committee….

Burnham does not seem to list the Lancet article on his webpage, though he has written other pieces for the Lancet.

Note the blizzard of skeptical questions for Burnham here.

Press release from AAPOR.

Recall the similar case of Michael Bellesiles.

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Update: A reader, David, points out that the likely article is indeed listed on Burnham’s website. I overlooked it because it’s the only listing that doesn’t include a date of publication. Here’s the citation:

Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, Khudhairi J, Burnham G. Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. Lancet, 364:1857-64.

UD thanks her reader.

… Walter Wendler.

From the Telegraph.

A political blog written by Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, has been found to be riddled with spelling mistakes.

The Labour MP’s website was also found to contain typing errors and grammatical oversights.

The mispellings of Mr Knight, who was educated at Cambridge University, include “maintainence”, “convicned”, “curently”, “similiar”, “foce”, “pernsioners”, “reccess” and “archeaological”.

Mr Knight, who is responsible for raising education standards, also clearly has problems with the “i before e, except after c” spelling rule taught to primary school pupils.

He spelled “achieving” and “received” incorrectly.

Mr Knight, 43, gives his opinions on local and national issues regularly on his website, which reveals he attended the fee-paying Eltham College, in Mottingham, south east London.

He went on to study geography, and social and political sciences at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 1984 to 1987.

Mr Knight, MP for Dorset South, said: “When I was at school the teachers told me to always check my work. While my spelling is generally pretty good, I need to focus more on checking.”

Rob Wilson, the Conservative education spokesman, said: “He will be disappointed with his efforts in class but I’m sure he’ll make every effort to improve now teacher has noticed he’s falling behind.”

Words the education minister got wrong:

maintainence (maintenance)

convicned (convinced)

curently (currently)

similiar (similar)

foce (force)

pernsioners (pensioners)

reccess (recess)

archeaological (archeological)

acheiving (achieving)

receieved (received)

UD thanks her sister for the link.

… for mixing metaphors?

When you’re all hepped up and you want your writing to be red hot.

Beware, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

He took Capitol Hill by storm Wednesday, unleashing a double blow of written and spoken testimony that painted a devastating picture of the alleged Ponzi schemer Madoff and unleashed withering criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Calm down, laddie! Your writing’s a withered painting that really blows.

The names of several thousand clients who lost money investing with Bernard Madoff have been released in a court filing that reads like a Who’s Who: former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, actor Kevin Bacon and even Madoff’s defense lawyer.

Defending a man who stole your money from the charge that he stole your money. Hm.

UD‘s campus, George Washington University, also begins to acknowledge the obvious.

Facebook, video-chatting and instant messaging may soon be a thing of the past – at least in some GW classrooms.

A growing number of professors are banning or restricting the use of laptop computers in their classrooms in an attempt to get students to pay attention and engage in classroom discussions.

… Sophomore Joe Goldman … said he does not mind that his professor bans laptops in his class.

“I find the use of a computer to be terribly distracting. I already have a BlackBerry, if I had a computer in class I’d literally be staring at a screen all day,” he said.

… “Students pay a lot of money to attend this institution, but I’m sure it’s no one’s intent that people should be throwing that money away,” [one professor said]. “If lectures are being compromised, it’s not in anyone’s best interest to use them.”

… Georgetown Law professor David Cole said 80 percent of his students who were anonymously surveyed reported that they are more engaged in class discussion when they are laptop-free, 70 percent said that they liked the no-laptop policy, and 95 percent admitted that they use their laptops in class for “purposes other than taking notes.”

GW professor Tapan Nayak also said he has banned laptops in his statistics courses.

“In the past, some of my students were using laptops to do other things, checking e-mail, surfing the Internet,” Nayak said. “For my class it is not necessary or that helpful to use a laptop.”

“In general I’d say that laptops are kind of like a double-edged sword in the classroom. We are only using what is given to us, but we all know what people are going to do in the classroom and that’s not pay attention,” said Zach Hanover, a student in SMPA professor Carole Bell’s class. Bell has also banned laptops in her class….

UD thinks that eventually the only professors to encourage laptop use will be those who already stuff their classrooms with PowerPoint and clickers and anything else that will allow them the same screening from their students that the screened students have from them.

If UD‘s right, students who want to stay on Facebook during class should identify professors suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome. Or borderline Asperger’s.

And you can see why. He has presided over a university which appointed Bernard Madoff treasurer of its trustees and chair of the board of directors for its business school.

Don’t forget – it was only a few months ago that Madoff retained these positions at Yeshiva.

Harry Markopolos, in his testimony today, tells us the sort of person Yeshiva’s president maintained in these positions of responsibility.

Markopolos feared for his life while investigating Madoff. Why?

I don’t consider it paranoia. And the reason is, Mr. Madoff was running such a large scheme of unimaginable size and complexity, and he had a lot of dirty money. And let me describe dirty money to you. When you’re that big and you’re that secrective, you’re going to attract a lot of organized crime money, and which we now know came from the Russian mob and the Latin American drug cartel, and when you are zeroing out mobsters, you have a lot to fear. And he could not afford to get caught … And he would’ve known my name and knew he had a team tracking him, I didn’t think I was long for this world.

A blogger explains Richard Joel’s compensation:

Yeshiva University paid its president Richard Joel $698,495, plus the institution gave him an expense account of $84,869, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education, Facts and Figures, Executives’ Compensation at Private Institutions. That’s an $80,000 raise from his compensation package of the previous year. At that rate of increase it’s fair to assume that two years later, i.e., this year, 2008-9 his compensation is more than $940,000.

So – a million dollar a year salary… And how do you earn it? At a religious institution? By putting the fate of your campus in the hands of organized crime.

Strange incentive system.

… Senator Chuck Grassley urged the administration to snatch back the [corporate] bonuses. “They ought to give ’em back or we should go get ’em,” the Republican told me. “If this were Japan and a corporate executive did what is being done on Wall Street, they’d either go out and commit suicide or go before the board of directors and the country and take a very deep bow and apologize.”

He was shocked to learn that the Office of Management and Budget, insistent on following the Paperwork Reduction Act, was dragging down a special inspector general’s investigation of what banks are doing with taxpayer money. (After complaints, the O.M.B. yielded on Friday.)

“Once in a while, some C.E.O. comes and talks to me and I wonder if they’re laughing under their breath at having to talk to someone who makes 1 percent of what they make,” he said.

Yes, gross money inequality is a very bad thing. Very undemocratic. Destructive of civic life. UD‘s been harping on that for years in the context of universities with overpaid presidents, universities with millionaire football coaches, universities where professors hawk medical devices on university time. These are the sources of money corruption in the American university, and UD ain’t saying they’re going away any time soon. But she notes Grassley’s persistent attack on university conflict of interest, and Obama’s rhetoric about corporate greed, and she feels hopeful.

This university does not really exist. There’s no there there.

Here’s the latest news.

The trustees of Alabama A&M University are attempting to organize another meeting some time this week to review the three finalists for the school’s top job.

The board of trustees met in Birmingham on Saturday, but five trustees did not attend. Without at least seven voting members, the board could take no official action regarding finalists for university president.

… Jerome Saintjones, who handles public relations for the university, said today that he expects to know by Tuesday when trustees will meet again.

Trustee Robert Avery said he was asked about a possible meeting Saturday, but said he would not be available. Avery, who did not attend the meeting in Birmingham, suggested the board stick to its regularly scheduled meeting at the end of the month.

Lynn Sherrod, a Madison County district judge and A&M trustee, also did not attend the Birmingham meeting. She said she needed more thn 24 hours to review the materials related to the candidates.

“I am very hopeful that this board will come together,” said Sherrod. “The university needs a permanent president, but the board needs to take every precaution to get the best available person.”

Total free fall. Shut it down.

… Republicans had also signaled that they would grill Daschle on conflict-of-interest issues, noting that the president’s choice to lead a healthcare overhaul had accepted more than $5 million in speaking and consulting fees from the healthcare industry in the past two years.

From Talking Points Memo:

Daschle’s coziness with corporate interests, many of whom will have key business before Congress and the Obama administration, could complicate the larger task of reducing the influence of the private sector in Washington.

… [T]here’s nothing explicitly nefarious about Daschle’s work on behalf of health insurers. But interests like AHIP and UnitedHealth have, by and large, stood in the way of efforts to remove our healthcare system from the grip of private interests, which many see as a prerequisite for real reform. Of course, that likely won’t happen without at least neutralizing the opposition of the private insurers — so perhaps Daschle’s ties to those insurers make him ideally suited for the role. But at the very least, it would be nice to know what kind of “policy advice” he gave his corporate clients.

… notable Americans beginning to come in.

Number one: Nils Lofgren.