The big story out of Harvard University, one UD‘s been following as it has emerged over a number of years, is the importation of the ethos of radical risk markets to the university.

What is that ethos?

Mindless, dissolute greed.

Harvard, a single university, never needed 35 billion dollars in its endowment. It certainly never needed the one hundred billion or so of which Larry Summers apparently dreamed. Why, then, did Summers, and his money managers — to each of whom he paid thirty million dollars a year in compensation — damage and humiliate a great academic institution through reckless money play?

They did it because Harvard, with these people, had the perfect storm: A hubristic president who believed he could do clever things with interest rate swaps, and who thought prudent management meant taking huge amounts of money out of safe places and giving it to greed-crazed investment fund managers.

Unprecedented. A university. A university president. What happened during the Larry Summers presidency of Harvard University was, on one level, the looting through arrogance and negligence of our greatest academic institution.

More importantly, for anyone who thinks and cares about universities, it was the total disappearance of the university as such, and its evolution into a pure case of market gigantism. Deep in the background of Harvard’s money-immensity you can still glimpse moving about a few students, a few professors; but, post-Summers, Harvard’s story is really the story of a great university’s transformation into just another shabby cautionary tale.

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UD is grateful to veblen for some of the links.

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Update for those with yet stronger stomachs: UD‘s friend Rita links her to this Crimson article.

Don’t forget. Harvard’s a non-profit. Our tax dollars are supporting this activity.

One of Raj’s insider trading associates — the man on the left, Mark Kurland — sports an elegant sweater for his perp walk.

UD finds the detail on Kurland’s sweater of the little man playing golf strangely moving, in a Great Gatsby sort of way… This guy’s saying goodbye to his world… The world he’s wearing on his sleeve…

Ave atque vale, Calusa Pines.

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UPDATE: This photo, from

the LA Times, suggests

that the sweater

in fact features three

golfers, each representing

different part of the swing.

From the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Kentuckians will probably never really understand what inspired University of Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart to hire Billy Gillispie as the men’s basketball coach. But we do know what it cost to undo that decision: about $3.25 million in go-away money that includes $265,000 to cover the former coach’s legal bills. Throw in about $4.7 million more in paychecks for two uninspiring seasons, and Courier-Journal sports columnist Rick Bozich estimates that Mr. Gillispie earned about $192,500 per win.

… [T]his bungled episode cost $8 million or more. That’s a lot of money, and whatever the source, it is not now available for other, better purposes. In a poor state beset by economic problems, wasting resources on that scale is appalling…

President Obama is concerned about how Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai will react to the United Nations-backed Electoral Complains Commission’s ruling which administration sources say will likely show that Karzai actually received less than 50% of the vote in Afghanistan’s election, once fraudulent ballots are removed from the final tally.

UD’s old friend Peter Galbraith is paying a high price for being right.

But there’s a great deal to be said for being right.

A professor at Wellesley gets her bike back by writing to the idiot who stole it and then tried to sell it on Craigslist.

… is a tag UD‘s used so much on this blog that she’s decided to make it a Category.

She’s about to use it again.

She’s always warning universities about their business school faculty. Her experience of this group, as she’s come to know it from keeping this her blog, convinces her that though to be sure most of its members are decent and upright, a disproportionate number of them (disproportionate to other faculty, that is) gets in serious financial and legal trouble. UD’s followed any number of stories of B-school professors – and B-school alumni – whose side or primary businesses become quite the embarrassment for their universities.

Take Wharton, at the University of Pennsylvania. One of its most beloved grads, Raj Rajarantnam, has just been arrested in “a $20 million insider trading scheme by federal prosecutors.” He and five others are charged with “using insider information in 2008 and 2009 to trade in shares of companies including Google Inc., Polycom Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., according the complaints filed in Manhattan federal court today.”

It’s awkward for U Penn. Not only do various fellowships and scholarships have his name on them; Wharton’s admiration of him in alumni publications now scans a bit ironic:

… Managing General Partner of the Galleon Group, Mr. Rajaratnam notes that Wharton was “an important credential” when he founded the company more than a decade ago. He also recognizes the School for helping him to land his first job in financial services, and for the skills he has used to succeed since then.

His experiences at Wharton continue to shape his life—in particular, through the relationships he formed. Having recently celebrated his 25th reunion, he says, “my classmates are among my closest friends and colleagues. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t interact with Wharton alumni.”

For Mr. Rajaratnam, he wished to give something back to “the institution that was so important to me personally and professionally.” In so doing, he is helping to create a community on campus that reflects the global business environment Wharton students are trained to lead.

To be sure, Wharton gave him a credential… Which must have made it easier to do what he is accused of having done. And as for the global business environment, if the charges are true, he has certainly done a number on it.

… wants to open a new law school. First there was California, whose many law schools already graduate thousands of unemployed attorneys. California just opened yet another law school, at UC Irvine, so taxpayers there can spend yet more of their money on law professors who graduate yet more unemployed attorneys.

Now it’s Massachusetts. The Boston Globe points out the obvious:

With state tax revenues plunging, this is a baleful time to entertain the creation of a public law school at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

… [T]he state’s fiscal picture has become downright bleak… with tax revenues falling by as much as $200 million below projections in September alone. Students interested in a legal education can still turn to eight law schools across the state.

…[The] plan aims to return a portion of the tuition to the general fund rather than hold it in a trust fund managed by law school leaders. But the promise that the school won’t fall back on taxpayers relies on optimistic assumptions about tuition and enrollment levels – and appears unrealistic, especially in tight financial times. A new school could well find itself strapped for operating funds in the same way that the state college system often finds itself. Earning accreditation is neither cheap nor predictable. Significant costs include the need to build a sizable library collection, maintain an adequate student-teacher ratio, and recruit well-paid law professors capable of both teaching and publishing…

Now, multiply-billioned Harvard University, whose law faculty has grown in the last few years to fill its football stadium, could of course see an opportunity here…

I know, I know. Harvard’s so poor now. Only 25 instead of 35 billion in its endowment… But say they’d like to save a little money and spin off a whole bunch of law professors hired in flush times at four, five hundred thousand apiece. They could offer that group not termination but relocation at a lower salary… See where I’m going with this?

He acted heroically during the mass shooting last year at Northern Illinois University, but NIU’s police chief has always been a bit unhinged, and students, with whom he has been abusive, want him out:

… [A]n editor of the campus newspaper [has] accused [Donald] Grady of threatening and shouting at him during an interview that became a three-hour tirade.

“It’s time to put an end to this mess. It’s time for a change,” the Northern Star student paper wrote in a blistering editorial calling for Grady’s removal. It accused him of employing intimidation to get his way.

School officials put the 56-year-old Grady on paid leave for 30 days starting last week while a panel reviews the allegations …

DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott is among the officials who have publicly backed the paper’s call for Grady’s ouster or resignation.

“NIU has isolated itself under his leadership,” Scott said.

… Controversy has dogged Grady, who also is from Beloit, Wis., during his career. After becoming Wisconsin’s first black police chief in the mostly white town of Bloomer in 1989, he created a stir by issuing nearly 300 tickets, including to himself, for violations of a snow-shoveling ordinance.

When he became Santa Fe, N.M., chief in 1994, he ordered officers to stop accepting free cups of coffee on the job and banned bolo ties.

Police responded with a 103-to-5 no-confidence vote in their boss. After digging in his heels for two years, Grady resigned, saying his reforms had encountered too much resistance.

And at NIU, well before the shooting, staff of the student newspaper had already complained that he often withheld standard crime reports, requiring the paper to file Freedom of Information Act requests…

Some intriguing thoughts about the essay and the blog post — from a panel of Stanford professors. Excerpts:

[The speakers all agreed that] the essay is undergoing metamorphosis. Its very definition is becoming blurred – with photographic essays, musical essays, documentary essays and even audio essays potentially diluting the term.

… [One noted that] Stanley Fish’s game-changing blog posts qualify as essays, allowing reader response and follow-up posts. For example, Fish’s New York Times blog post last August, “What Should Colleges Teach?” inspired 619 responses.

“That’s what makes the Internet exciting,” said [one participant]. In the past … the reader “could throw the book against the wall – but that was the limit of engagement.”

… Essays differ from academic writing, which relies on evidence, depending more on the power of language instead: “As an academic, you can get by on so-so language,” [a speaker] said, but not so with the essay. The essay can nevertheless be “much more influential than weighty tomes.”

“The identity of an author is just as important in persuading as the arguments,” said [one professor]. “Paul Krugman doesn’t need pie charts and tables to persuade us of the soundness of his arguments. He just has to sign his name.”

… “Without the heavy armature of footnotes,” [a participant] noted that the Internet offers new ways to incorporate evidence. The hyperlink, for example, “makes the citation part of the essay itself … without making a big fuss about it.”

[One speaker offered a definition of the essay:] “[A] condensed meditation on one topic with a personified voice.”

… here, on a  Wharton School blog.  University Diaries follows lots of campus stories involving pharma-compromised professors and conflict of interest, and it’s easy to get lost in all the cases.  This article provides the big picture.

And they’re fine, fine. Sensible, fine. But as UD ponders her own gratifying media stuff over the last few years, she thinks she might have something to add to the GW list… Scathing Online Schoolmarm also has a few things to say…

Here are some of UD’s university’s suggestions for faculty on how to handle media appearances, with UD/SOS adding some thoughts in blue ink.

* Are you the right person? Only agree to talk about what you know about. If you can’t help (i.e. if you are not the right person), offer to find someone who can. [Pish posh. You’re the right person. Go for it. Is UD an expert on the Dan Brown oeuvre? Wing it.]

* Be prepared. If the call takes you by surprise, tell the reporter that you’re busy but will call back in 15 minutes or so. This will enable you to collect your thoughts, gather information, and make notes. [Maybe I’m in a faster lane than GW, but I wouldn’t recommend this. Er… gimme a few minutes to collect my thoughts… I’ll call you back… Meanwhile the producer’s on the line to someone who shoots answers back immediately…. See, this is the sort of thing a professor will do … Lemme check a reference or two and… Nein. Just do it. Go with it.]

* Stay positive. Be friendly and conversational, even if the reporter seems to be adversarial. However, don’t be lulled into flippancy or forced humor. [I guess this is okay, but it’s drifting toward bland. Be yourself. If you’re un p’tit peu non-standard, not entirely amiable, go with it.]

* Avoid jargon and complex language. Use plain, simple language as though you were talking to a friend or neighbor. Define technical terms and use examples, anecdotes. [Absolutely. Excellent advice. For talking or for writing.]

* Speak slowly and clearly. Reporters are writing down notes or typing them into a computer. They will be more likely to get it right if you take your time. [This may be true for talking to a reporter from the Washington Post on the telephone; but television appearances tend to be a little sharper, a little faster-paced in terms of speech, in UD‘s experience.]

* Stay on message. Repeat primary points to make sure message is clear and accurate. Don’t veer off topic. [I guess this is true. Though the other day in my DeLillo class I suddenly for no particular reason started talking about the new scary film, Paranormal Activity, and the place LIT UP.]

* Never go “off-the-record.” Expect everything to be quoted. That’s no reason to be nervous—just be aware. [SOS says: Lose the quotation marks.]

* Avoid “no comment.” It implies confirmation. If you can’t comment, provide an explanation, i.e., a personnel matter, pending legal issue, etc. [Lose the effing quotation marks.]

* Stay calm. If you “flub” an answer, start over and rephrase your response. [What did I tell you???]

One final piece of advice: Don’t watch tv. Don’t own a tv. UD doesn’t watch or own a tv, and look how well she’s done with the medium. Possibly there’s a connection.

From the Chicago Trib:

The Mortuary Science program at Wayne State University is opening its doors to the public, offering a look at how people are autopsied, embalmed and buried.

The program holds its annual open house from 6-9 p.m. Thursday. It’s a tradition that began in 1991 and drew 900 people last year.

This year’s event includes a chance to see a bomb response unit of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a display on celebrity funerals and the history of burial customs.

The university says visitors also can tour “embalming, anatomy restorative arts and microbiology laboratories.”

One area displays caskets, burns, vaults and other funeral accessories.

A Blacksburg orthopedic surgeon who serves as Virginia Tech’s team physician was charged yesterday with felony property damage. Blacksburg police Lt. Joe Davis said Marc Siegel, 56, was released on $5,000 bond.

Davis said police were called to Montgomery Regional Hospital on Oct. 7 to investigate damage to a vehicle in the physicians’ parking lot. Police determined that a staff member had damaged a colleague’s vehicle.

Siegel has served as Tech’s team surgeon since 1997.

AP

…as Mel Brooks said; and one perennial danger for long-serving university presidents is indeed a slide toward the regal. The trustees and the alumni organization love the big guy and do his bidding … He makes far more money than the governor of his state… the president of his country… It goes to his head.

The creepingly kinglike president of North Dakota State has just resigned, announcing that it’s “not fun” to have his expensive travel and house and everything criticized all the time. If he wants his wife on the booster club payroll and if he wants a personal bodyguard who’s captain of the campus police force, it’s his business.

NDSU’s president has been pressured out just in time. You want to keep an eye on the regal slide and interrupt it, as they have in Fargo, at mid-slide. Otherwise you’re on your way here.