… has now been sued for, like Ezra, funneling money to Bernard Madoff.

Like Ezra, too, he enjoys the cover that universities give his criminality.

… [Stanley] Chais sat on the boards of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem…

He has an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University.

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His son was executive producer on the television series Dirty Sexy Money.

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Update: In Haaretz, Merkin and Chais are victims.

As I’d hoped, the weird song of the wood thrushes is all around me now, after their nesting.  I thought I’d only hear it in the morning and the evening, but they sing from the high trees in the copses around our house all the time.   According to this guy, they must be at the height of their “territorial breeding activity.”

I keep drawing everyone’s attention to it — my husband’s, my daughter’s, my sister’s; and, today, while he was visiting, my friend Jon’s — but no one cares.  No one tries to distinguish the thrush’s ee-o-lay from the enormous ambient birdnoise of Garrett Park. 

I know they don’t care, and I don’t mind, and I turn the whole thing into a joke.  Let’s humor Miss Marple…

I was just as indifferent years ago when my mother, sitting with me in her beautiful Japanese garden, hushed our conversation and told me to listen to this or that impossible-to-distinguish piping.  She held her 1980 Field Guide to the Birds by Roger Tory Peterson in her lap, and I smiled as she now and then, with a little pencil, placed an X on his Systematic Checklist next to pileated woodpecker or purple martin.  I couldn’t name the plants in her garden, and I couldn’t distinguish the birds who pulled at her feeders.

Now I take that book from the books I inherited, and I study very closely the thrushes, the plovers.  I even discover a line of poetry in a heading on page 121:  HEADS OF BELTED PLOVERS.

Boots of spanish leather, heads of belted plovers.

Heads of belted plovers is the beginning of a poem.

I’ll try to think of one.

Second from left.
Not sure where this was taken.

“Do I think that salaries are too high nationwide? Yes, I certainly do, but we can’t control the marketplace,” Boren said.

Boren is David Boren, current president of the University of Oklahoma. And what he’s doing is called passing the buck.

Actually Boren can, to a remarkable extent, control the marketplace. Rich brainless schools like his (see also the University of Alabama), who care only about sports and therefore offer millions of dollars to coaches are the leading edge of the salaries problem. They’re setting the pace, see.

Boren should check to see whether he still has balls. If he does, he should take a stand on the issue.

The problem is not that abstraction, the marketplace. It is that very real entity, the greedy coach and the greedy coach’s agent.

Now y’all sit down with those people, see. You tell them you’re a university, not a football field, and you tell them what you think a reasonable salary for a coach – as opposed to your university’s president, or, say, the president of the United States – would be.

‘Course, here comes another non-abstraction: Your paralyzing fear of your student body and your alumni. You’ve let their moronic passions overrule your sense of what the university should represent. You say to them I’m gonna stop the madness right here right now.

They say to you You’re out on your ass.

So what? So what, Boren? So you take yourself out of the president’s office and you write a book about how you were sent packing from an institution of higher learning because you wouldn’t pay a football coach five million dollars. You give interviews. You make a little documentary. Whatever. You piss off a lot of stupid people who, because they’re both stupid and pissed off, unwittingly reveal all sorts of other scandals at the university, sports related and non sports related. A big ol’ mess, like the one going on at the University of Illinois right now.

See now, that’s a good thing. That’s changing the world for the better, Boren, and I seem to recall you used to be a politician with a modicum of self-respect and a desire to make the world better.

… always appreciates fine writing. Here’s some. Let’s see how John Kass of the Chicago Tribune does his thing.

If there were any doubts that Illinois is the diseased poster child of political corruption, those doubts are long gone. [Such a fresh, strong opening sentence, in the context of such an absurdly over the top story of statewide corruption, that SOS laughed out loud. Great start.]

Friday’s story in the Tribune exposes a widening pattern of corruption at the University of Illinois. This time, with the trading of law school admission for patronage-style jobs. [Sentence fragment! Yes, the second sentence isn’t a sentence. But that’s okay, right? The guy’s pissed, and his clipped approach fits his anger.]

So any doubts about where this state stands should be erased. What remains is the smell. [Maybe he’s heading into a bit too much figurative language — poster child, disease, smell. We might ask him to polish this by finding one metaphor — stench would certainly do it — and sticking with it.]

The state stinks, from Rich Daley’s City Hall to Springfield, and now all that’s left, for taxpayers, is the smell and the stain. [Smell, stain, stink — I guess we’re basically into liquid doodoo here. And that’s fine. If the shit fits, wear it.] Corruption and patronage, once thought to be [Drop to be.] the exclusive province of greasy politicians, now reach into the law school of the state’s premier public university. [Not sure about greasy, though greasy-palmed is I guess the referent. If you wanted to stay with flowing manure, you might say malodorous or something.]

Friday’s story details how University Chancellor Richard Herman forced the university’s law school to accept an unqualified student. That student had the backing of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The student’s relative dropped wads of campaign money on ex-Gov. Dead Meat. [Laughed again on dead meat. Though again, if you wanted to keep the primary metaphor you might say ex-Gov. Fertilizer.]

In exchange for corrupting his law school’s admissions policy, Herman wanted to get jobs for five of his law school graduates. University officials considered the law grads so far at bottom of their class that they needed political clout to get a decent salary at a good law firm. If that wasn’t possible, the U. of I. was willing to place them in government jobs.

“Yeah, I’m betting the Governorship will be open,” Heidi M. Hurd, then dean of the university’s College of Law, wrote in an e-mail to Herman on April 29, 2006, perhaps joking that Blagojevich’s time in public life was coming to an end.

What followed in her e-mail was worse.

“Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don’t pass the bar and can’t think are close enough for government work,” Hurd wrote. In another e-mail to other U. of I. officials, Hurd wrote:

“FYI: The deal is supposed to be that WE get to pick the students — and they are supposed to be bottom-of-the-class students who face a hell of a time passing the Bar and otherwise getting jobs!”

That’s law school the Chicago Way. If they can’t pass the bar on the first or second try, they’re qualified to become mayor.

The latest e-mails from Herman, Hurd and other U. of I. officials were released Thursday. The Tribune had asked for all such e-mails in April. But these somehow were forgotten, until U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald issued subpoenas. Then, magically, that which was lost was found. A miracle!

Did the U. of I. search by the light of Batman’s beacon, Diogenes’ lantern or some other powerful lamp of truth? [Once again, funny. Remember: Writing is all about control. If you’re angry, don’t spew. Find some other way to convey your rage. Humor is a fantastic way.]

Thomas Hardy, spokesman for the University and a former Tribune colleague whom I know and respect, dismisses my skepticism and deserves his say.

“We’ve made a good-faith effort to respond to the Tribune’s Freedom of Information requests, and others,” Hardy said. “Some documents were not produced that apparently should have been. We don’t know right now the reason for that, but the fact of the matter is that in collecting documents and doing interviews for the Quinn commission, we’ve come across these new e-mails and made them publicly available.”

Within days, perhaps sooner, you’ll hear a few thudding sounds, like lonely bowling balls tossed down a dark alley, and you’ll realize you’re listening to the political heads of Chancellor Herman and his crew rolling into history. [Well, we’ve switched figures bigtime, and I’m not sure how fresh and lovely the bowling ball thing is. I mean, not that shit’s fresh and lovely qua metaphor, but somehow people always like it. And yes — He could rewrite with an eye to maintaining his dominant metaphor by saying That sucking sound you hear is the head of Chancellor Herman being flushed down the toilet of history.]

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that lopping a few heads and burning the stumps will clean things up.

Not in the state where our boss Democrats in the state legislature — guys like state Senate President John Cullerton (D-DeLeo) — are still slapping themselves on the back for stopping the Illinois Reform Commission led by former assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins.

Not in the state where Mayor Daley can pretend not to know that his nephew received $68 million in city pension money to invest, and then, without telling his taxpayers, puts them on the hook for likely cost overruns in his 2016 Olympic dream.

Not in the state where — just before the patronage abuse trial of Daley’s top aides a few years ago — mayoral mouthpiece David Axelrod, now the media wizard for President Barack Obama, defended political patronage by arguing it is the grease that helps government run smoothly. [Yeah, ye olde start every paragraph with the same words — Not in the state… Fine. Works well here.]

Think about your taxes. And all the fine students denied admission to the U. of I., though they have the grades.

Think of the clout that’s been reported by this newspaper. Consider the thousands of excellent, hardworking students at the U. of I. who’ve been dishonored by the corruption of adults who are [Drop who are.] supposed to protect them.

If you’ve read carefully here and elsewhere, you know about corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, corrupt businesses. But the last line of defense for the corrupt are kinky judges.

How do you get such judges? You begin in law school, with university officials establishing corrupt practices, leveraging unqualified lawyers into jobs.

Lawyers become judges, don’t they? [Terrific conclusion, in which he clarifies the food chain by which judges become just as corrupt as everyone else in Illinois government.]

Faithful readers know that UD doesn’t do child porn profs. Too many. And what’s it tell you about universities? Nothing.

I mean, if a university, like Cambridge University, which has a convicted, way twisted child porn prof on its faculty, does nothing, then UD will cover it. That’s what you call a scandal.

But generally, for libertarianesque UD, a sex on campus story has to be really something for her to provide coverage.

A faculty member and high-ranking administrator accused of selling his five year old son  [UD thanks Jason for the fresh link] into sexual slavery makes the cut. A university which still hasn’t taken down this person’s webpage makes the cut. The irony of a man who teaches a course in the American health system and who may also have been involved in the total destruction of the health of his child makes the cut.

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UD thanks The Professor for the link.

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What? You’re looking for words of wisdom? I ain’t got no stinkin’ words of wisdom.

No way can a university know it’s harboring evil. If the man were overtly psycho, Duke would’ve been on it. But he’s obviously functional. So you can’t go after Duke, unless they fail to respond quickly and intelligently to the debacle.

This will be a big story. The child was adopted, and this is the ultimate nightmare of adoption agencies, so expect some discussion about parent selection standards. Otherwise, assuming that no one warned Duke about this person, and that there were no clues about him available to the university, I wouldn’t expect this to become a Duke story.

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Update: Lombard’s Duke page has now been taken down.

This wonderful example of straight-faced style is by Bob Geary, at IndyWeek.Com. UD and her sidekick SOS are absolutely unable to improve upon it. Bravo.

Timothy Johnson, the newly elected vice chairman of the state Republican party, is listed as “Dr. Johnson” on his and the state GOP’s Web sites. But he’s not a medical doctor or dentist. And he won’t disclose where he earned his Ph.D., leaving the impression that he got it from a now-defunct school once notorious as a diploma mill.

The Indy contacted Johnson to ask whether his claimed “Ph.D., Concentration in Total Quality Management, LaSalle University (2000)” was issued by the defunct LaSalle in Louisiana, the accredited La Salle University in Pennsylvania or another LaSalle.

Johnson responded in an e-mail, “I hope you understand when I say I am not going to answer any more questions about my military experience, education background or personal history.”

He added: “It just doesn’t matter at this point. I am sorry, but enough is enough. Have a great weekend.”

His e-mail signature read: “Timothy F. Johnson, Ph.D.”

The accredited La Salle University, a Catholic institution with three campuses in Pennsylvania, confers a doctoral degree only in clinical psychology, according to its Web site.

The LaSalle in Louisiana, however, as the authoritative Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2001, operated as a diploma mill from 1986 to mid-1997, essentially selling degrees (it advertised heavily on matchbook covers) until the FBI raided and shut it down. Its owner, Thomas J. Kirk, was imprisoned for mail and tax fraud, among other charges. That “university” employed no faculty, only secretaries to handle the paperwork and the money.

In late ’97, according to the Chronicle, the Louisiana LaSalle was purchased by seemingly “serious” owners including the then-chairwoman of the Louisiana Republican party. They later folded LaSalle’s assets into their newly formed company, the Orion Education Corp., after failing to win accreditation for LaSalle from the Distance Education and Training Council in 1999.

Johnson’s résumé is included on the Web site of Leadership 101, a company that offers him as its CEO and “lead consultant.” Leadership 101 lists its business is “training leaders for success in the 21st century.”

Johnson, the Web site promises, is “entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring.”

Johnson is also employed as an adjunct faculty member at Shaw University’s Asheville campus. He was in the U.S. Army from 1984 to 2007 in active and reserve roles, starting as an enlisted soldier and retiring with the rank of major, according to a document he released prior to the state GOP convention when his military service was questioned.

The 1,600 delegates to the GOP convention in Raleigh this month chose Johnson as their No. 2 official, despite the news—widely circulated by his opponents and broken publicly by the Asheville media the week before the convention—that he’d pleaded guilty in 1996 to a felonious assault on his first wife. A resident of Cleveland, Ohio at the time, Johnson received an 18-month suspended sentence contingent on his relocating to Toledo, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. (Johnson was then seeking an Ohio legislative seat as a Democrat.)

Johnson asked convention delegates to forgive his past mistake and, in accordance with his slogan (“It’s Time”), make him the first African-American officer in the state GOP since the 19th century.

On the floor of the convention, Johnson campaigned wearing his “Dr. Timothy F. Johnson” name tag despite the rumors already circulating that his doctorate was bogus. At the time, the rumors took a backseat to his criminal record, though, and most delegates seemed to be unaware of questions about his educational background when they voted.

Their attention, moreover, was on the hotly contested race for party chairman, won by former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer. (See “The very, very, very small tent,” June 17.)

When he was elected chair of the Buncombe County Republican party in 2008, Johnson did not disclose his criminal record because, he told the Indy in an interview at the convention, it was “nobody’s business” except his second wife’s, and he did tell her.

Chris McClure, executive director of the state GOP, did not return a phone call or answer an e-mail asking the basis for the party’s listing of Johnson, its new vice-chair, as “Dr. Timothy Johnson.”

… they’re engineering raises for their many diploma mill graduates.

Hey, even the superintendent graduated from one!

She tried to keep the guys off.

The woman shows a healthy sense of irony. (“Any more phone calls to make to influential people just to make sure they feel the love?”)  She’s even clever at making up words (Provostian!).

But the dean of the law school at outed, clouted University of Illinois wasn’t able to fight off the governor (Blago at the time) and his cloutslaves at UI. Heidi Hurd was forced to admit a whole raft of the well-connected.

At one point in March 2007, Hurd asked staffers to collect data about how the clouted students performed at law school to provide a weapon against their admittance.

Admissions dean Paul Pless reported that the school admitted at least 24 “SI,” or special interest, students during a four-year span. He said they had lower grades and standardized test scores than the general applicant pool and they lagged behind their classmates once admitted. On average, they maintained a 2.86 grade point average during their first year compared with the 3.2 grade point average for the overall class, he said. One faced “formal disciplinary charges” and left the school.

But their dislike of the program didn’t stop administrators from accepting the students.

“I’ll do my best to keep the number of Provostian admits to a minimum, and extract payment for them,” Hurd wrote to her admissions staff in 2003.

Payment here meant guaranteed jobs in Blago’s government. A perfect fit! And after all, as the immortal Roman Hruska reminded us, the mediocre too are entitled to representation.

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UD is very grateful to Wendy and James for the link.

… about the continued hagiography coming out of Kansas State University as its revered leader Jon Wefald finally retires. The saint of KSU is a panting jocksniffer who has handed much of KSU’s money to a dirtily run football program. He has also engaged in nepotism and conflict of interest.

Wefald is your basic long-running banana republic leader. Power went to his head. The Topeka Capital-Journal provides details of his conflict of interest. [Note: I got the newspaper wrong originally; I’ve corrected that, and I thank my readers for the correction. I can’t get the link to work at the moment, however. I’m working on it.]

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Here’s the link.

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And here’s the renaissance.

… reminds us of the two biggest Larry Summers scandals at Harvard.  The blogger reminds us of this because he doesn’t think Summers should be considered for head of the Federal Reserve.  He doubts Summers could even make it through a Senate confirmation.

…He … was criticized for shielding his protégé Andrei Shleifer from accusations of conflict of interest when Shleifer sought lucrative commercial deals for himself as he headed a government-sponsored Harvard team to advise Russia on privatization. The university paid $26.5 million to the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit that Shleifer’s activities violated its contract.

This controversy, too, would resurface in any hearings on Summers’ fitness for the Fed job. Coupled with his own dubious fees from various Wall Street firms who wildly overpaid him for “advice” while he was aiding candidate Obama, the Shleifer affair would raise questions about Summers’ judgment in these matters. …

Both of these sleazy tales have been extensively covered on University Diaries.

… for a couple of days. (Is this a tweet?) Blogging continues apace.

… Neda Soltan are beginning to show up on my referral log.

I’m proud to share the same last name.

.. and here’s my kid sister on a Concordia University professor’s blog today.

Told you she was a Morrissey fanatic.

Circa 1960. Somewhere on the west coast.

With my little sister, the Morrissey fanatic.