… The major job of today’s university presidents is to solicit money, and their largest targets are typically denizens of Wall Street.

For the same reason, boards of trustees are packed with wealthy alumni, often from the Street, who routinely veto candidates for university presidents harboring views they find offensive.

But not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression.

As a Jew, I cannot help but worry, too, that the actions of these donors will fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose – based on the perilous stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.

UD proposes significant American mental health aid to Poland, and pronto. An emergency assistance package for our old friend and ally.

Yesterday the paranoiac leader of the party that’s just been voted out of power trundled up to the podium in the parliament (he did this against all parliamentary rules) and, with an intensity of bitterness that would have impressed Iago, shouted at the new prime minister that he’s a German spy.

Today a schizophrenic parliamentarian, representing a fascist party, unloaded a fire extinguisher on a just-lit menorah in the parliament’s lobby because menorahs are satanic.

What will tomorrow bring? A hebephrenic from Hajnowka shitting on the Kopernika Monument? A catatonic from Katowice collapsing in the middle of St John’s Archcathedral and refusing to get up?

Hope not. She just pled guilty to stealing four million dollars from Facebook when she was an executive there.

I wonder when – if? – Spelman College will take down the page celebrating this contemptible person. And her comrade in crime husband.

Yesterday, Faruk ran onto the field and punched a ref so hard the guy had to be helped up off the ground. Faruk has now been arrested. SO…

Things are getting so much better in world soccer! The last time a team owner ran onto the field and attacked a ref, he did it with a gun!

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photo credit: superlig

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Update: LOLOLOLOLOL

My aim was to react verbally to the referee and spit in his face. At this time, I slapped the referee in the face. The slap I gave did not cause a fracture. [The ref’s cheek was fractured.] After the slap I gave, the referee stood for about 5-10 seconds, then threw himself on the ground.  They immediately removed me from the scene because of my heart disease. Other than that, I am not aware of any incident that took place.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Because of my heart disease, I hereby resign from the club and place myself in jail for assault.

… the compleat criminal, Philip Esformes, whose pardon by fellow fraudster D. Trump lacked full coverage (given that Esformes had around five thousand charges against him). SOOO the feds just picked and chose among the leftover charges and went after Esformes again WHICH has pissed this ultra-pious ultraorthodox person off no end and he’s been appealing up the wazoo.

But every court – now including the Supremes – has ignored him or laughed him out of the building … Cuz you know when you’re committing the largest health care fraud in American history and you get caught doing it, judges prob aren’t going to bend over backward for you.

… against Harvard’s already-embattled president.

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UPDATE: She will stay in her job.

Poland’s new PM represents an inspiring victory for democracy against the tyranny of the now-deposed Law and Justice party, whose bitter senile leader rushed the podium at the conclusion of the vote in favor of Tusk. “YOU ARE A GERMAN AGENT!” he shouted at the PM.

Narges Mohammadi’s Nobel Peace Prize address.

You don’t gotta be on the right, babe.

“The same administrators now cloaking themselves in the mantle of free speech have been all too willing to censor all kinds of unpopular stuff on their campuses,” said [one observer]. “It is such utter hypocrisy.”

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UD‘s favorite example.

Christmas in Oklahoma.

… has resigned.

NYT.

From the U Penn newspaper:

The announcement also comes two months after Wharton Board of Advisors Chair Marc Rowan called for Magill and Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok’s resignation — alleging that the two leaders tolerated “antisemitism” on campus. In addition, Bok allegedly pressured Rowan and at least three trustees to step down after they publicly criticized the University’s response to the Palestine Writes festival. 

So there has been major internecine battle, and one side has definitely won. (Bok has also resigned.)

What’s his dick got that mine ain’t got?

U Penn’s president is probably about to announce her resignation, and Harvard’s doesn’t look too secure either, after what everyone’s calling their “disastrous” congressional testimony. What’d they do wrong?

Same thing that sank Dukakis: Lack of emotion when emotion is clearly called for. A reporter asked Dukakis, a death penalty opponent, about whether he thought his wife being raped and murdered would affect his thinking on the penalty.

“No, I don’t, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.” Perhaps there is validity in the criticism many directed toward [the questioner,] accusing him of injecting an unfair scenario into a policy discussion. Regardless, all I know is that when I heard Dukasis’ words, my brain red flagged, and my heart sank. For the candidate, in his response, came across as robotic, uncaring, and devoid of emotion. That night Dukakis’ poll numbers dropped from 49% to 42%.

On that fateful evening the candidate spoke only with his brain, and he completely disregarded his heart. This catastrophe would have been avoided had he said something like: “Barnard, I would want to murder, to torture, to rip from limb to limb anyone who even dared to hurt my wife or child. But, you see, with all of my heart, I want laws to protect me from the worst of me.”

The presidents need not have said something so vehement; but they needed to communicate their fundamental humanity, their capacity as sensitive human beings to be appalled by the cruelty of (in this instance) anti-semitism, and for whatever reason they didn’t go there. They waxed bureaucratic. Terrible mistake.

— Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.

[In a recent coaching session with the team, Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott] cited the [9/11] hijackers as a group of people who were all able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection. One by one, McDermott started asking specific players in the room questions: …“What tactics do you think they used to come together? … What do you think their biggest obstacle was?” 

While Las Vegas is no stranger to gun shows, staging one in the same city as a highly visible shooting that occurred just days earlier is heartless and prioritizes the opportunity to profit from the sale of deadly weapons above the basic decency and respect of honoring those lost and those who continue to recover from the tragedy.