Antony Lerman, in today’s New York Times, notes “the disgraceful antics of the anti-democratic forces that are setting Israel’s political agenda,” and notes also (this blog is interested in education and women’s rights) its social agenda. He touches on Israel’s “strictly Orthodox,” and no doubt has in mind, among other influential and populous communities, the notoriously ignorant haredim. Again and again Israel attempts to get this increasingly demographically dominant group to adopt even a small portion of the country’s national education standards; again and again haredim schools refuse to teach their students mathematics, the use of computers, science, English. It was the same thing recently in Belgium, whose government also insisted that their haredim teach their children how to function and qualify for employment in the modern world. Amazingly, the haredim there responded by arguing

that the restrictions limit their freedom to educate their children according to their beliefs and asked the court to fine the government $6,780 per child for every day the limitations are in place, according to a report by Belga, the Belgian news agency.

You read that right. Make the government pay for every day that the education of one of their children is threatened. Understand? Make the government pay for every day that the government threatens to educate their children.

Lerman writes that in Israel as in all countries “[t]he indivisibility of human, civil and political rights has to take precedence over the dictates of religion,” but he perceives that – as in the example of the Israeli state’s inability to do anything about the growth of an ignorant, illiberal, anti-modern, sexist, and messianic group within it – the understanding of and commitment to this indivisibility is vanishing.

… A $73,002 yearly price for students.

Very poor job prospects.

A dean who “who made more than $500,000 in compensation in 2012.”

Ooh la la.

… is the process by which one writer’s language makes copies of itself and disseminates in plagiarized form throughout academic literature.

Since virtually no one reads the small specialized journals and presses that print most academic literature, this copied material – as plagiarists know – goes unnoticed. Gradually, the plagiarized material may itself be plagiarized, und so weiter, and no one is the wiser…

Plagiarogenesis may for some plagiarists happen so often that their entire career may be said to be founded upon the operation.

The easiest place to find deeply rooted multi-generational plagiarism is in the hard sciences, where it’s not uncommon for readers to discover that an entire article about, say, obscure properties of obscure cells, an article perhaps appearing in a somewhat sketchy journal, has been lifted unaltered from another source. The original source, in turn, will include copied graphs and other stolen elements.

But that is the very basement of plagiarogenesis; more common – especially in the more obscure reaches of the humanities – is the (alleged) approach of Mustapha Marrouchi of the University of Nevada Las Vegas (a determined effort to make sense of his methods appears here), in which his favorite writers seem to be quoted without attribution all over his work.

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Sometimes things get a bit on the psychotic side, as when Marrouchi apparently plagiarizes autobiographical writing by Edward Said and puts it in his own memoir. (This particular taking also demonstrates the plagiarist’s typical move from high-profile to obscure outlet: Said’s personal experience appeared in the London Review of Books; Marrouchi’s personal experience of Said’s personal experience appears in College English.) More often, it’s garden variety theft, of the sort one of Marrouchi’s favorite plagiarees, Slavoj Zizek, was himself recently found to have committed.

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Now that the Chronicle of Higher Ed is making a fuss about Marrouchi, we can anticipate his lines of response. They will, first of all, be many. This charming review of Ward Churchill’s twelve excuses reminds us that the same tireless verbal cocksmanship through which the career plagiarist fathered thousands of illegitimate offspring can be used to generate excuses (the original source was begging for it… the words were just sitting there…) for having done so.

In the particular case of Marrouchi, UD (a veteran observer of plagiarism and plagiarists) would anticipate the following reactions:

1. A lawsuit, or the threat of a lawsuit.

2. A volcanically angry rebuttal which CHE will print and then withdraw when it turns out to be plagiarized.

3. The claim that everyone plagiarizes and Marrouchi’s only being singled out because he’s a man of the left whose powerful critique of imperialism is considered so threatening to the establishment that he had to be silenced.

4. The claim that among people of the left the bogus category “plagiarism” does not exist, since it is founded on reactionary notions of private property.

Whether it’s MIT’s beloved Gabriel Bitran or the University of Kentucky’s much-cherished Dongping “Daniel” Tao, bad boys and certain universities go together like a horse and carriage. Who knows why, with ooooodles of information about these professors’ wrongdoings, these universities just kept on keeping them on? Starting three years ago, Tao’s habit of, uh, enslaving his graduate students was duly noted by higher-ups at UK, but too much bourbon and too much football seems seems to have distracted them… Because they dint do nuthin.

Emboldened, Tao blew off the whole “university professor” thing and used UK as cover for his private consulting business (in which UK grad students were his slaves – this is a variant on the Cecilia Chang story). A kind of cherry-on-top is that he double billed both clients and UK for all kinds of fun travel and restaurants.

It’s very hard to uncover fraud when you’re … well, how to put this kindly…

… is that you’re an elitist hypocrite. As such, you make it easy for people to attack you. Even people on the wrong side of an issue. Like the NRA.

You probably should have thought of this problem when you, for instance, “land[ed]” one of your “many helicopters at a heliport on the east side that’s conveniently located closest to [your] townhouse. Sure, there are antiquated ‘rules’ closing the landing pad on weekends, and some ungrateful area peons have been whining about the noise…”

How was he supposed to know — yes, the chart handed to all helicopter pilots lists the heliport as closed on weekends, but he’s the mayor, not a helicopter pilot. Oh, wait. [He is a helicopter pilot.]

Well, it’s clear that David Lassner’s days are numbered. University of Hawaii football – a total bankrupting university-destroying joke – will have to be maintained via things like “tuition hikes, student athletic fee hikes,” and it looks as though Lassner might not go along with that. Soaking students for sports in which they have zero interest (their mistake is having instead an interest in academics) is a time-honored tactic in the world of university revenue sports, and why shouldn’t UH do it too? It’s not as though it has a great university to defend against these maneuvers. UH is already mediocre and looks likely to stay that way. Where’s the damage? Just keep scraping along overcharging students and putting on games no one attends.

… note that when the New York Times went in search of a sage, gravitas-rich voice on the absolutely shocking academic fraud at Notre Dame, they could only find Dave Schmidly.

Schmidly! Dave! Dave – comic-book ex-president of the unbelievably corrupt University of New Mexico; a man who tried hiring his son for a high-level university position [scroll down for some Schmidly posts]; a man drummed out of office by faculty… Yes, get Schmidly on the the phone! He’ll have something sage to say!

And he does. He obligingly knits his brow for the New York Times about how, you know, competition to recruit the best football players “increases the likelihood of people cutting corners.”

Dave would know about that! Why interview lots of people for a $90,000 a year UNM job when your kid’s sitting right here?

… Eh. It’s not as though the NYT could find a clean president of a big-time sports university to interview. It’s more a kind of how far down the list do we want to go thing… Donna Shalala? Yikes. No. Hey, there’s Tressel! He even used to be a coach! … Oh yeah. Scratch that…. Next…?

A young doctor at NYU commits suicide by throwing himself off of one of the university’s residence halls. He is remembered here.

… instablogging. Strange bridge. Its long long span over the bay and the boats is daunting at this early point in the drive. The girders and struts curve impossibly in front of you. The overcast sky darkens the container ships in the distance. There’s a line of them, like a funeral convoy.

Traffic is slow. UD and her sister listen to Eva Cassidy sing a Paul Simon song. The opposite shore is flat long and dark, like the container ships. No white-sailed pleasure boats out there on a Tuesday afternoon.

And here are the yellow-jacketed construction guys whose work is the reason we’re moving so slowly. We’re at the very highest point of the bridge. The sun begins to emerge.

Okay, we’re going like gangbusters now. Descending into Queen Anne’s County.

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Starting point for today’s walk: Cambridge, Maryland. A bayside hamlet we’ve never visited. We’re not expecting to be impressed. Small bay towns tend to be a bit thready.

But the drive… Once past the bridge, you settle into a trance as flat corn and soy fields sidle by. Tobacco? Probably still some of that being planted.

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In the event, we are pretty impressed with Cambridge. Sunny day, charming marina, lighthouse, seabirds, sailboats. We walked around the piers and docks, gazed at the bridge over the Choptank River.

And now we’re having lunch overlooking the water at the Hyatt.

…instablogging from UD. It’s a reasonably pleasant summer day in DC, and UD’s walk will consist (maybe; she’s so wild and crazy and hip and bohemian that she could change her mind at any moment) of a metro trip to the United States Botanic Garden at the foot of the Capitol building.

Even at this late date UD remains surprised at her interest in gardens and gardening; her mother was a serious and accomplished gardener, yet UD showed zero interest in the matter during her mother’s life. She’s far from knowledgeable, having read enough books and skimmed enough magazines and clicked through enough sites to have at least gotten the measure of her own big wide shady deer-infested huge-tree-menaced landscape… I mean, she doesn’t plant anything rankly stupid, like lavender or tomato… She gets that she has a shade garden. She has even done some savvy japanese things with the front of her house, if the appreciative comments she’s gotten from passersby and neighbors are sincere. But she is aware that with her amazing amount of space (her lot is both wide and long, with forest on either side) she could do any number of showy eco water-retentive things…

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A quick walk from Judiciary Square metro to the National Mall (National Gallery of Art to your immediate right) has brought me to this walk’s announced target: the US Botanic Garden. UD power walked through the outside plantings, letting massive grasses and meticulous mosaic fountains flash by as she remembered to pump her arms and plant each heel hard.

Morticia-like UD likes black plants and already has some black liriope; ebony streamers pouring out of large planters caught her eye here as she sped through the federal government’s exhaustive efforts to plant-up the foot of the Capitol.

Inside the conservatory, UD kept up her pace despite the turtle-like tourists. Signs melded in odd ways (World Deserts Restrooms) as she motored along. She heard a mother say to her daughter And how do you find nourishment for yourself?

She powered up the metallic steps to the insanely lush jungle garden with piped in crazy bird songs. Everywhere she went, soft mists exhaled from the walls, and these made her and everyone else very happy – unexpected sprays on a hot day in a hothouse.

Now, finally seated, in the long Alhambra-style fountain room, UD finds that the mist and the new age music have her thinking she’s due for a facial.

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Okay, UD has walked from the Botanic Garden to the Navy Memorial, behind which is Teaism, where she’s enjoying the air conditioning and a ridiculous cold jasmine tea. (Tastes like nothing.) She’s now going to jump up again (after three sips) and find the closest metro. Home again, home again.

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Now au metro, UD reflects that the stylish and sweltering streets of DC in August are perfect if you’re in the market for a long sweaty non-boring walk. Lean left a tad and all of Mary Cassatt’s output pops off the walls; to the right is the delightfully trashy Newseum (even its name is trashy). And speaking of trash, if you take a few extra steps along Pennsylvania Avenue, you can check out whether Donald Trump’s begun redecorating the Old Post Office.

In re humanoids, the wide hot avenues of the capital are packed with them – four generations of Australians stumble along reading their maps and mopping their brows; a sad young woman in sensible flats tries to flag a cab; a half dozen infinitely trim government lawyers (probably) chat about the sheaves of paper in their hands.

You’ll find them at all sports factories, periodically emerging from the stygian gloom to express their concern that – as Youngstown State’s professors put it recently – “the university’s athletic budget is increasing while everything else is decreasing.”

When you realize that YSU’s professors put this concern to their new president, who is a football coach, it’s easy to see why, like cicadas, they spend most of their lives underground. Why go there? Why bother? To get screwed over and die?

They’re just as concerned at the University of Hawaii.

Most UHM students look to us for their classes, yet we are being brutally defunded to pay for embarrassing mistakes, poor management, and ill-conceived growth within the Cancer Center and the large athletic programs.

For years we’ve made a point, on this blog, of covering UH’s amazing athletic programs… It’s not that those programs are different in kind from lots of other university revenue sports programs; it’s the total emptiness for ever (to quote Philip Larkin) that UH has attained which sets it apart.

See if you can squint hard enough – or open your eyes wide enough – to perceive a university as an institution having something to do – in a primary way – with education.

Then follow all the news we ever get out of Colorado State University. Follow the activity that has preoccupied its president pretty much to the exclusion of everything else from the moment he took the job. Follow the issue that preoccupies both the people on campus and the people in the surrounding city. It’s the new football stadium and whose lie about its funding gets to be released to the public.

[CSU’s just-fired Athletic Director] said he was upset when CSU’s vice president for advancement, Brett Anderson, told The Coloradoan last month that the school had raised [a pathetic] $24.2 million toward the stadium project. [A university spokesperson] said Tuesday the university stands behind that figure, based on national standards for counting donations.

That figure was first reported a day after [the AD] told a local business group that fundraising was going well for the stadium.

“It was at least twice that much,” [the AD] said of the money that had been raised at that point. He said another $15 million to $20 million was “imminent, in the funnel” that would have been finalized by October. That is the deadline set by [CSU’s president] and the CSU Board of Governors for raising at least half the estimated construction costs for the stadium plan to move forward when conditional approval was given in October 2012.

The 50 percent figure, [the AD] said, was quickly ruled too optimistic by [the university’s vp for advancement], who told administrators no university had ever raised that kind of money in private donations for a project like the stadium.

So, [the AD] said, university officials set a “private goal” of raising $75 million by October while still publicly stating the target was $110 million. That is half of what now is estimated as the $220 million “athletics portion” of the stadium that also will include and additional $34 million worth of academic space.

That was based on the premise the university could still finance $125 million, half of the original estimated cost, through revenue bonds. It also put the $30 million that Hughes Stadium needs in what [the president] said is “critical maintenance” toward a new stadium.

The “funding scenario suggested by [the AD] is factually inaccurate,” [a spokesperson] said, noting the Board of Governors’ goal for philanthropic fundraising for the stadium remains $110 million.

How… seemly. The leadership of a university squabbling about how they’re going to jigger – for public consumption – the actually hopeless numbers on football stadium payment. A “private” goal and a public goal?

Or how about we do some huckster bluster about the just about to be filled to bursting sales funnel?

Life of the mind, don’t you know.

So many, they had to load two cases into one article:

[Korean Education Center in New Zealand] Director Bae Dong-in, a ministry official, has been accused of saying, “Women with large breasts are dumb” in front of the staff, and of frequently using abusive language toward them. A KECNZ staffer said Bae also “sexually humiliated” female staffers with unwanted comments about the size of men’s penises…

… [The last] director of the KECNZ was forced to return to Korea over accusations of misappropriating school funds.

… Separately, a Handong Global University professor was arrested for allegedly groping a sleeping woman on an airplane, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Lee Eun-jong, 47, who is also a Cornell University visiting scholar, was nabbed by FBI agents after the plane from Tokyo landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday night.

You can sort of see the KECNZ staff wondering what’s going to be behind Door Number Three.

UD has noted it a thousand times: Some special American universities are willing to go the extra mile to recruit people who, sure, might kill their fellow students, but who definitely will win football games. Ordinary universities will typically pass on people like this, but Cal Poly is part of that small elite who will say What the hell.

… as a judge refuses to stop a big insider trading case against him.

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Trouble? Given Cohen’s utterly shocking market behavior, and the resulting extensive litigation against him which will last for the rest of his life, and given his apparently unassailable position of trust at the top of one of America’s best-known universities, UD begins to think she’s gotten it all wrong. UD begins to think that trustee-selection-wise, a long record of SEC investigation and outraged investor lawsuits is an advertisement for the position of university trustee.

UD‘s not sure why this is. She is a babe in the woods – most of us are – when we’re talking about the kind of money Brown is targeting in targeting Steven Cohen (personal fortune: close to ten billion dollars). Are they thinking in terms of a delicate, sophisticated trade-off involving delicate sophisticated timing? As in – We’ll be able to peel off a couple billion before he has to go to jail. Our PR people will be able to control the PR fallout of our association with him. Or is it far more straightforward? “Insider trading” is a bogus designation essentially describing nothing less than the working reality of all capital market players. Eventually the world will catch up to this truth, and all penalties and investigations of people like Cohen will vanish. Indeed these people will become martyrs, and we’ll be praised for having stayed the course with them.