July 2nd, 2013
Insta-Gore Vidal Grave Pilgrimage Blogging!

Well… not instaUD is right now off to Rock Creek Cemetery with her friend and neighbor Bette, where they will of course visit the famous Adams Memorial. Steps from this statue lies Vidal, and although he was a kook in his latter years… and although quite a bit of his writing was hackwork, many of his essays were beautiful and brilliant. UD will write about her little homage journey as soon as she gets back.

July 1st, 2013
Whacked-out Yeshiva University never ceases to amaze.

This bizarre institution is one of the main locations keeping this blog in business. It specializes in trustees like Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin, infantilizing and sexist rules for its students, conflict of interest among its post-Madoff/Merkin leaders, and decades worth of hushed-up sex scandals. And it’s all presided over by a very highly paid president who responds to most things with denial or silence.

Yeshiva is the very model of a corrupt university, and it should surprise no one that today its chancellor has had to resign in disgrace, having ordered the hushing up of extensive sexual abuse of students.

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

The larger context:

In recent years traditional law prohibiting cooperation with oppressive governments was invoked by ultra Orthodox groups to forbid reporting sexual abusers to the civil authorities (as required by American law). Modern Orthodoxy followed the haredim in denying the legitimacy of non-Orthodox movements. Even at Yeshiva University, a highly respected rosh yeshiva and decisor, Rav Hershel Schachter (seen as continuing Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik’s halachic teaching in the rabbinical seminary), said publicly that the prime minister of Israel should be assassinated if he dared to give up some section of Jerusalem for the sake of a peace treaty. (He later apologized for the comment.) Recently, Rabbi Schachter was recorded warning against reporting sexual abusers to the authorities (lest they be imprisoned and exposed to harm from anti-Semites).

June 30th, 2013
“The British Medical Journal, which printed the team’s conclusions, also published its own investigation, showing that Roche had hired ghost writers to author some of the articles involving Tamiflu, and that those writers had said they were under pressure to highlight positive messages about the drug. Roche responded that hiring such writers was common industry practice at the time of the articles, and it rejected the idea that they had been pressured to write positively about the drug.”

On and on it goes; and if it weren’t for tenacious people like Peter Doshi, academic ghostwriting would be even more pernicious than it is.

This blog has long covered the scandal of ghosted professors. It will continue to do so.

June 30th, 2013
With the Vanderbilt football scandal in mind…

UD reflects on the concept “reputation” at her branch campus at Inside Higher Education.

June 30th, 2013
A New Vintage:

Vanderbilt très SEC.

June 29th, 2013
Misty water-colored memories…

… of the way we were…

June 29th, 2013
Just home from the beach…

UD will unpack, pull herself together, and do some blogging later.

Most important thing to relate right now, though: She won one of these, because her horse came in first at one of these.

June 28th, 2013
The American University: Current Trends

In the age of technology and mass media, HD televisions are closer to the “real thing” than ever, and more games are available on television than ever before. Some universities, such as Michigan State, Georgia and even Alabama have noticed a disturbing trend of fans leaving games early to renew their “buzz” and watch from the comfort of their own home. The sale of alcohol could be a preventative course of action for this problem.

June 28th, 2013
IL GROTTESCO

“[Franco Moretti] attended the University of Rome as an undergraduate. Of the Italian university sector’s current fortunes and discussions about the need for reform, he observes: “Reform has already come to Italian universities, combining the worst of the national culture (a morbid passion for bureaucratic absurdity), and the worst of the rest (the British idea of weighing scholarship as if it were cast iron). The result is grotesque.”

June 28th, 2013
Sad goings-on back home…

… while we’ve been away at the beach. Late Wednesday night, two men walking on the tracks near our house were killed by a freight train.

[T]he train conductor saw the two men and applied the train brakes. They say the conductor also sounded the horn several times before the train hit the men.

June 28th, 2013
“19-year-old Carlton Teague Phillips told police he fired two rounds of an AK-47 into a sand pit at the frat house.”

It’s so cute to see the weapons our kids choose for their early college years. As Carlton’s social confidence at Arkansas State University grows, UD looks forward to following his progress from the AK-47 to the M16 and then maybe the Vz58.

June 27th, 2013
What is a university?

Read here, reader, of its ivied walls and hallowed halls.

June 27th, 2013
Intro Gun Brandishing to Frighten Children

[A William and Mary adjunct professor] reportedly flaunted a gun in front of his [twelve year old] son and 10 of his son’s friends. [He apparently] got annoyed with the noise the boys were making, went in the room where the boys were and pulled out a gun.

June 27th, 2013
No surprise here.

Plagiarism and diploma milling, while popular in the west, are endemic in the east. Now that attention is being paid to him, Iran’s new president is dealing with the predictable charges.

Although “Dr Rouhani’s election campaign videos featured pictures of Glasgow Caledonian University and the former GCU student spoke warmly of his time in the city,” there is “some doubt over whether Mr Rouhani, who was a high-ranking official in the Islamic Republic during the 1990s, actually attended the British university in person or undertook his studies there by remote study.”

There’s also doubt about whether he wrote his dissertation.

June 27th, 2013
University of North Carolina = Franz Kafka …

Airport.

University spokeswoman Karen Moon said in an email that a number of offices on campus are already involved in handling the new supplementary courses, and an email address and phone number have been established specifically for organizing the courses.

But calls and emails made by The Daily Tar Heel to both inquiry lines went unanswered.

Dee Reid, director of communications for the College of Arts and Sciences, and Chris Derickson, assistant provost and University registrar, both said the best information available at this point is that on the University’s website — the same proposals that were submitted to the accrediting agency.

The Department of African and Afro-American Studies did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

According to University documents, 304 alumni who received academic credit for “Type 1” courses — those which either did not exist or the instructor denied teaching and signing the grade roll for — will be given the option of returning to UNC for one supplementary course at any time over the next five years.

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