From the Telegraph:

Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi was reportedly angered during a tour of a Cairo school when he saw a girl wearing a niqab, the full veil worn by some devout Muslim women which covers the entire body except for the eyes.

Sheikh Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt’s Imam and Sunni Islam’s foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: “The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.”

The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo’s Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.

… Following the imam’s lead, Egypt’s minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab [in] the country’s public universities, Cairo’s Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported.

… Although the Koran does not require women to cover their faces, Sheikh Tantawi’s edict is likely to prove unpopular among fundamentalist Muslims. One popular Saudi cleric has already argued that the niqab is not conservative enough and has called on devout women to ensure they only reveal one eye in public…

Why was I outside? … Watering, right.
Things looked dry, plus we bought
mums yesterday and I wanted to
give them a shower.

The dog was lying in the pachysandra,

watching me.

I set the sprinkler going,
with special attention to
the hydrangea and the new
mums. Then I sat in one
of the gray Adirondacks

and called the dog over.
While petting him, I noticed
a low-flying bird which on
closer inspection was a bat.

Plenty of them in Montgomery
County, and I am instructed to
feel grateful I’ve got them because
they eat my mosquitos.

It was late afternoon. Four o’clock.
The bat kept flying overhead.
For a couple of minutes, around
and around. It’s true I shuddered
a little bit.

Easy.

Be the University of New Mexico.

Background on Locksley here.

… a great classical scholar, has died at 87.    From the Telegraph obit:

… Lloyd-Jones was the product of a type of rigorous philological training in Latin and Greek which was uniquely characteristic of the best English schools in the pre-war period. To this he added a thorough knowledge of the classical tradition and the history of scholarship; expertise as a papyrologist and textual critic; and a thorough grounding in ancient Greek religion and culture. Thus armed, for most of his academic career he engaged in an almost personal war to protect the soul of Classics from the modern age.

… As part of his wartime work, Lloyd-Jones had learned Japanese, and noticed how it was impossible, or at least difficult, to express certain Western concepts in that language. When he returned to Oxford, he set out in an essay for his tutor to refute St Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God by showing the difficulties of expressing it in Japanese…

But really I just wanted to show you this photo.

1978, Cyprus, with his wife, Mary Lefkowitz.

Could they be any more professoresque?

How bad is Manchester University?

Consider how long it took the university to deal with the now-notorious Professor Surprenant; and consider that even now the university has communicated nothing about the whole sordid affair to the students who had to suffer her appalling presence. No updates; no apology. Nothing.

… James Wyatt, who was the Life Sciences School Representative at the time, told [the campus newspaper], “the problem with her teaching style was that she was completely disorganised and a terrible communicator.

“The combination of her often illegible diagrams photocopied from a multitude of textbooks delivered in an order that she often seemed to be confused by, her random rambling, sidetracking, and often inaudible mumblings made for a shocking course of lectures.

“I was one of those who made audio recordings of lectures, these only served to remind me of the appalling lecture delivery the first time round.”

According to another student who took the module, in one lecture the entire room of students resorted to shouting at Surprenant as they couldn’t follow the flow of her teaching, with the room of outraged students described as “a riot.” [Unfuckingbelievable.  How can a university be so contemptuous of its students that even after this incident it would fail to remove Surprenant from the classroom?]

As Surprenant’s lectures became “increasingly chaotic and hard to understand,” student representatives within the Life Sciences Faculty raised the issue at a staff-student liaison committee in October. At this meeting it was arranged for Wyatt, along with Carly Mckenzie, the Life Sciences Faculty Officer for the Students’ Union, and other course representatives to meet with Surprenant herself to discuss the students’ concerns.

However, following the discussion with Surprenant students remained unconvinced of any improvement. “She totally disregarded the concerns put to her [and] tried to imply that we were the voice of a worrying or complaining minority,” said Wyatt.

Students also expressed concern that the teaching they received has ultimately affected their final degree qualification, Wyatt stated: “I wholeheartedly believe that this unit severely impacted on the time and effort that I could dedicate to other course units.”…

She sounds, from the students’ descriptions, quite, quite drunk.

**********************
Update: Then there’s the
politics department.

A professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was one of three Americans awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.

Carol Greider won the prize with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.

But Greider said the work didn’t start as way to find new treatments. Instead, she just wanted to find out how the cells worked.

The resulting Nobel prize is “a victory for curiosity-driven science,” Greider told The Associated Press.

… “It’s really very thrilling, it’s something you can’t expect,” Greider told the AP by telephone.

People might make predictions of who might win, but one never expects it, she said, adding that, “It’s like the Monty Python sketch: ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!'”

Sally Dear, an adjunct professor at Binghamton, recently received an email from an administrator there. SUNY was firing her because of a “strategic reprioritization of resources across the university.”

Now they’ve hired her back.

Binghamton … reversed the firing of Sally Dear, the adjunct lecturer who taught human development for 11 years before being dismissed earlier this week. Dear believed she was dismissed because she spoke out against the basketball program. The university had cited fiscal reasons. But Dear received a letter Friday saying she would remain an adjunct, although in a different department, during the audit.

“How come they’re firing me due to budget cuts and a reconfiguring of the department and all of a sudden I’m being hired by another department?” Dear said.

Easy answer to that question if you understand the inner workings of university administrations.

SUNY’s engaging in what’s known as “Reverse Rereprioritization,” in which formerly reprioritized priorities are reversed, resulting in rereprioritization.

It is always moving to UD, a writer and literature professor, when historically silenced groups finally find a way to express themselves.

And so it is with America’s doctors, long muted behind ghostwriters in their scientific articles, and corporate scriptwriters in their public presentations. Suddenly this group has discovered its collective voice, its specific forms of speech, and the results are riveting.

At the University of Wisconsin, for instance, a professor of rheumatology, protesting a recent university ban on medical faculty giving promotional talks for drug companies, writes an email to his fellow medical school professors:

We must ACT NOW unless we want (the) administration telling us how to get our education, how we supplement our income and what our ‘ethics’ should be.

ACT UP! Our ‘ethics’ are under assault!

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

This particular doctor is interesting. He thinks performing surgery on people with chronic fatigue syndrone — itself a controversial diagnosis — is a great idea.

He’s particularly keen on this surgeon, whose license to practice medicine was recently suspended.

NEW UPTE MEDIA CAMPAIGN ASKS CALIFORNIANS:
WHO’S UNIVERSITY?

A few years ago, I wrote an essay in the Garrett Park Bugle about why it was important to preserve the architecture and ambience of the town.

The next day, in the mail, I got a silver note card whose careful, beautiful calligraphy read:

MARGARET SOLTAN

TOWN PHILOSOPHER

I was especially flattered because it came from Donal McLaughlin, an eminent Garrett Parker — architect, designer, fellow writer.

Donal was famous around town for being very old — he just died at 102, and the New York Times has a long obit — and for being very political. His calligraphy was all over town on homemade signs which urged us to vote for various Town Council candidates (he supported Mr UD in his successful Council run). There were tons of other signs, most expressing some view of local, national, or international politics.

Donal objected to the expansion of the town’s main commercial building, Penn Place, and after the town voted to go ahead with the project, one of his signs appeared at the entry to the post office:

IF YOU HAVE TEARS,
PREPARE TO SHED
THEM NOW.

Brooding gray letters, funereal background.

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

We used to brood, Mr UD and I, about the fact that in his hundreds Donal still drove. “I just saw McLaughlin in his car again,” Mr UD would say. “Driving it.” We’d look at each other, wide-eyed.

This is what the world will remain Donal for.

He designed the United Nations logo.

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

And speaking of the UN, UD‘s old friend Peter has been, as you may know, fired. Here’s his account of it.

Meyers’ resignation in February 2008 shocked the campus community. She had been president of Webster for 14 years. Her immediate disappearance from campus fueled questions about the circumstances around her departure. But she later told the [St. Louis] Post-Dispatch that she was just so emotional about retiring from being a university president, a position she held for so long.

Women! Just can’t handle it, I guess. Good thing there aren’t too many of them in executive positions.

Here’s the background on Meyers:

Richard Meyers, the former president of Webster University, didn’t leave empty handed after unexpectedly resigning in February 2008. Along with one year’s pay of almost $700,000, he is also receiving more than $700,000 in deferred compensation, according to the latest 990 tax document.

Meyers was the highest paid university executive in the St. Louis area. His salary for 2008 was $696,713, a large increase from his 2007 salary of $572,875. In comparison, the provost of St. Louis University had a salary of $246,000 in 2008 and the chancellor of Washington University made $539,250 in the same year.

The Journal was unable to reach the Board of Trustees for a comment about Meyers’ compensation before going to print.

“When one compares other places, his salary was outrageous,” said Donna Campbell, professor in the department of multidisciplinary studies and onetime member of the salary and fringe benefits committee. “It is unfortunate that the Board of Trustees approved such a large increase.”

… Along with Meyers’ salary and deferred compensation, there are still unanswered questions about his expenses. According to a Journal review of the last nine years of tax documents, Meyers claimed more expenses than most St. Louis-area university leaders combined.

The Board of Trustees Audit Committee and an independent accounting firm, BKD LLP, audited Meyers’ expense claims in 2005. Both found he had claimed some personal expenses as business expenses during 2004 and 2005, according to WU’s 990 tax filing for 2005.

WU officials and the chair of the audit committee, Michael DeHaven, would not disclose how much money was declared personal expenses by the independent audit or whether it has been repaid. In an April interview with The Journal, DeHaven said anything that had to do with expenses and compensation was a “personnel-related matter” and could not be discussed.

Between the fiscal years of 2000 and 2008, Meyers claimed a total of $675,611 in expenses, according to WU’s tax documents. That is an average of more than $75,000 per year. At least a small portion of these expenses, however, were personal expenses that Meyers should not have claimed, according to an audit report listed in WU’s 2005 990 filing.

Meyers, contacted in April 2009 when The Journal began working on this story, would not comment on the money in question, saying it is a matter for the Board of Trustees.

… In October 2005, WU’s Audit Committee authorized an independent tax review of the expenses in question. The accounting firm that conducted the review, BKD, had been used by WU in the past for yearly audits and financial advice, DeHaven said.

After this review, the Board of Trustees required Meyers to repay, with interest, all of the expenses determined to have been personal. As of April 14, 2006, Meyers had still not repaid any of the money, according a report included in WU’s 2005 990 tax filing.

It is unknown if the money has been repaid because Meyers, DeHaven and Chancellor Neil George would not comment.

You just know that girl hasn’t repaid it. She’s too emotional to repay it.

Anyway. She’s gone to a far, far better place.

She is now the president of Fielding Graduate University, an online-based distance learning university based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Bernard Madoff was a Yeshiva University trustee… He was treasurer … But that’s old news.

Jeffrey Cohen is an Indiana University trustee… Chair of the board’s Finance and Audit Committee… His securities fraud charge is new news.

The school hasn’t taken his name off of its website.

Neither has Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, where he’s on the Board of Advisors.

He’s got lots of university board positions, huh?

Universities love big money boys on their boards, and who can blame them?

But there’s a big risk factor.

The Indianapolis office of securities firm Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. is facing charges that it improperly advised more than 100 Indiana clients to invest $54.9 million in a complex securities auction that later collapsed.

As a result, the investments have been frozen, and it is unclear whether the investors will be able to recover any of their money, despite being told the investment carried little or no risk and could be redeemed within weeks.

The firm is charged with securities fraud, failing to supervise and train employees, and selling unsuitable products, according to an administrative complaint filed Thursday by the Indiana secretary of state’s office.

Of the 141 people who invested, 92 were clients of Jeffrey Cohen, managing director of the office. Cohen is also a member of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis board of advisers and a trustee for Park Tudor School.

According to the complaint, Cohen said he did not receive any special training on the securities in question, had no knowledge of auction failures and did not disclose any risks because “most of the clients in the real world don’t want to hear, you know, every single risk factor.”

He could not be reached for comment at his office…

… and then a longer canal walk
through Georgetown, where
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
cuts through Washington.

UD stopped to pay her
respects to William O. Douglas,
an environmentalist who saved
the canal from people who
wanted to turn it into a
parkway. He was a Supreme
Court Justice too, as I’m
sure you know.

[Yes, it’s a creepy photo.
Only good one I could find.]

We saw many cormorants
in the trees, gazing at the
kayakers as if trying to decide
which ones to eat for lunch.

During last Saturday’s walk,
we decided we’d eventually
like to divide our time between
an apartment in Cracow, on
or near the Rynek, and an
apartment in Key West.

Today we decided we’d
eventually like to divide our
time between an apartment
in Old Town Warsaw and an
apartment one block off the
Boulevard Saint Germain.

Taking a page from SUNY Binghamton, the University of Massachusetts has dumped a bunch of football players for drug stuff.

The University of Massachusetts has one of the highest levels of on-campus violence of any university UD‘s covered on this blog. It admits amazing numbers of assholes — quite a few of them, recently, on the lacrosse team — and when the school loses a big game, everybody gets together and puts on a big riot.

It’s not pretty at U Mass, and it just got not prettier.

… Gazette has been interviewing UD this afternoon about what it’s like living in Ferdinand House — which is what Les UDs call their Garrett Park house. The last owner of the house was Munro Leaf, who wrote Ferdinand. UD knew his widow, Margaret Leaf, slightly.

A photographer’s coming to the house this Sunday – the article will feature the two topiary bulls we have in the front yard.

UD will link to the article, of course, when it appears.