… for Baltimore. I’m visiting the 2010 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Decorators’ Show House.

I knew this house, most of my life, as the house in which my Aunt Delores lived. (Longtime readers know that UD was born in Johns Hopkins Hospital and raised in Baltimore.) It’s an odd place, and I always enjoyed visiting her there. She died a year ago, and as soon as the BSO is through with it (this is their big fundraiser), it’ll be on the market.

The house had been remade, room by room and field by field (Delores had sheep!), by scores of designers. UD, accompanied by various ‘thesdan family members, will now go there. I’ll write about it when I get back.

A former professor takes issue with a local paper’s argument

that virtual classrooms with unlimited enrollment and little maintenance would assist state universities live within a restricted budget …

Designing interactive online learning modules increases costs for the time of faculty and technological experts. Add in server usage fees and the 24/7 tech support for daily student access and downloading problems. Research has shown that online enrollment should be maximized at 20 students for best student-faculty interaction, far less than the usual concrete classroom.

The time-intensive nature of online interactions add[s] to student and faculty workload and cause[s] problems for students who cannot balance work, family, friends, faith and school. To be successful in online courses requires good reading comprehension and writing skills. Students who do not have these skills drop out and need to re-enroll at a later date, creating more problems for student progression and class enrollments…

This writer overlooks, however, the boots-on-the-ground reality of many online courses: Hundreds of students handled by one professor; the professor so overwhelmed, and so incentivized to pass students, that she doesn’t much care (notice?) whether they’re learning anything; an insultingly low level of intellectual interaction; the system’s inability to determine whether the person who says she’s taking the online class is who she says she is… In short, if you want to make your university one big correspondence course which hands out degrees to the largest possible number of students without making them learn anything or even verify their identity, online’s the way to go.

… will be announcing, later today, his run for Vermont State Senate.

From the candidate’s statement (not yet published):

Vermont’s unique natural beauty, so special to all of us who live here, is our most important economic asset. Environmental protections must be strengthened and, in particular, the highest priority must be placed on state-private partnerships to preserve large tracks [SOS thinks he means tracts] of undeveloped land. Farming in Vermont must be made far more economically viable.

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

Update: Peter writes to thank UD: “The problems of autocorrect.”

“It’s quite easy to pick on us because everyone he wants to pander to already thinks we’re overpaid Marxists,” said David Burdige, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University and member of the school’s Faculty Senate. “If you’re trying to appeal to a particular group of people, then picking on the university as being bastions of leftwing thinking and depravity, it’s sort of like shooting bears at a garbage dump. You’re guaranteed to score points.”

A professor in Virginia’s public university system responds to the attorney general, who has “[challenged] university policies that bar discrimination against gays and lesbians and [used] a civil subpoena to demand documents from a former University of Virginia professor known his scientific work on global warming.”

In this recent post, UD described a
17-year-old neighbor of hers, Gabe
Mandel, foraging through UD‘s acre
in search of edible wild plants for
his ambitious and creative cooking.

Gabe has now hit the big time.
The Washington Post

has a long article about him.

With plenty of pictures and
plenty of wonderful details.

Excerpts:

… [L]ast year, the Walter Johnson High School junior scored an internship at Murray’s Cheese in New York, then spent a month working at Cafe 2 in the Museum of Modern Art. Mom keeps a scrapbook of it all. Its most recent entry was Gabe’s two-page spread in the March-April issue of Bethesda magazine as one of 10 “Extraordinary Teen” honorees.

“I just like cooking. A lot,” he says. “Whatever I make.”

What Gabe is making these days is inspired by what grows close to home. After devouring the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants and a similar Smithsonian guide the way he does cookbooks of progressive chefs such as Thomas Keller and David Chang, he was soon picking sweet woodruff, gill-over-the-ground, jack in the pulpit, fiddlehead ferns, wild ginger, sourgrass, Japanese knotweed and bamboo shoots.

“I think ‘wild’ is going to become the Next Big Thing,” he said on a muggy spring morning as he tromped through neighbors’ yards, reciting fun facts about each treasure. “I started foraging because there are so many flavor profiles we never use. Did you know that some plants develop flavors as defense mechanisms?” No trespassing was involved; Gabe has bartered samples of his cooking for access.

“We are happy to have him come and take bamboo,” said Joan May while she sipped her morning coffee on the porch and watched the young hunter crunch through tall, leafy stalks to reach the tender shoots.

“You want the ones that grow in the shade,” he said. “But they need to be boiled, because they contain cyanide.”

The ‘hood is also where Gabe gets to work on his knife skills. A year and a half ago he walked into Black Market Bistro with a résumé, newspaper clippings and lots of ideas. Chef Donald Dennis hired him to do prep two days a week. “He came in with a head full of knowledge,” Dennis says. “He’s fun to have in the kitchen. Certainly a lot of energy. His skills are developing, and his parents are very supportive. A lot of parents push their kids away from this industry.”

… As their son nears resolution of the looming College Question, the Mandels have huddled especially close. Visits to the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y., the New England Culinary Institute, Johnson and Wales, the French Culinary Institute and New York University’s food studies program have been checked off the list. Traditional culinary schools don’t seem like a good fit, but neither does a regular liberal-arts institution, where Gabe would have to work at a restaurant to keep his hand in food.

“I’m leaning toward a gap-year option,” Gabe said last week. “I want to see the world.”

For now, he is looking forward to a second summer stint at MoMA’s Cafe 2 and to a seat at the StarChefs.com 2010 International Chefs Congress, to be held in New York this fall.

His folks got him tickets for his birthday.

… Texas.

Bernard Madoff and Elie Wiesel were fellow trustees at Yeshiva University.

Like some other trustees at YU, Wiesel invested with Madoff. He lost millions.

Did the two men know one another? Yes. They dined together a couple of times, after which Wiesel invested with Madoff.

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

Would it make sense for a playwright to be intrigued by the historical intersection of two such different, high-profile, Jews?

Sure. And Deb Margolin, a writer from Yale, wrote a play, Imagining Madoff, in which she imagined the imprisoned Madoff recalling a long conversation he once had with Elie Wiesel. As Margolin describes it, the conversation as written was about morality, with Wiesel the embodiment of goodness, and Madoff evil, or something like that. Certainly Margolin has said that she intended her fictionalized Wiesel to convey integrity in contrast to Madoff’s sleaziness…

Yet Wiesel calls the play “obscene” and has threatened a defamation lawsuit, as a result of which the play’s Washington performance has been canceled.

Elie Wiesel, champion of liberty, has bullied a production of an artwork out of existence.

He refuses to speak to the press about this.

(He hasn’t got much of a defamation case, as this lawyer interviewed by NPR points out, but you never know.)

(By the way, the lawyer NPR interviews says something wrong:

And I guess the [legal] argument [Wiesel] would make is, look, I was a victim of Bernie Madoff. I invested – my foundation invested money in the foundation. It was an arm’s length transaction. I didn’t know the man. This play makes it look like I’m his friend. I’m having late-night conversations with him. We’re discussing things, which never happened.

While it doesn’t sound as though they were exactly friends, from what UD can tell they not only dined together twice but knew tons of people in common, sat together on a university board, and … well, Wiesel deeply trusted this man. He gave him all his money. “We thought he was God,” said Wiesel, after the fact, of Madoff… )

The play will appear, with the Wiesel character under a different name, later this summer in Hudson, NY.

… Hey! I might be able to attend that! I’ll be at our Upstate house in August…

While writing this post, I’ve been discussing with Mr UD whether we could go to Hudson to see the play. He seems to think so. A matinee maybe, since it’s around a two-hour drive…

I told him about the Washington cancellation. “If Wiesel is eager to dissociate himself from Madoff,” said Mr UD, “what he’s done will have exactly the opposite effect.”

… Barcelona.

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

… We know there is no Koranic injunction to cover the face, and we watch helplessly as organised brainwashing is leading to the blanking out of female Muslim presence and individuality from the public space.

… For me, the overwhelming argument against the burka (and various coverings for children, another growing abomination) is that there is such a thing as society. Community fetishes cannot override social communication, connection, obligations, equality, duties and understanding. Security and safety-measures too require facial identification. Politicians need to get assertive and argue that they believe in non-racist, universal human development. Effective policies to halt the spreading habit (in both senses) will then naturally follow.

And reformist Muslims too should speak up more frankly without fear or favour. A traditional Pakistani friend of mine – who always wears the shalwar kameez – recently refused service from a burka-ed librarian in one of our big libraries. The next time she went in, the face was no longer hidden. Maybe our new government should consult her. She could teach them how resistance, not acquiescence, gave us our past freedoms and will preserve our present ones.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

… from the Museum of Modern Art

in Paris.

Inside Higher Education provides a plot summary of the time-honored tale of a giant sports program swaggering a campus and sucking all the money out of it.

“O giant,” say the professors. “Don’t kill us.”

“Ho, ho,” says the giant. “I won’t. By the hair on my chinny chin chin I’ll balance my budget. Sit down in my chair and watch my self-sustainability increase.”

The professors don’t want to sit in the giant’ s chair, but they do not want to make him angry.

Ten years pass.

“O giant,” say the professors. “Your subsidy has increased to 35 million dollars.”

“ROAR,” says the giant, showing his teeth.  “The coach was getting picked off by SMU.  We had to increase his salary to ten million dollars a year.   We haven’t resolved the lawsuit the last coach brought against us, and that costs five million dollars a year.  The teams aren’t doing well this year and no one’s buying tickets …  You do the math.”

Police arrested Tiffany Lynn Gaubert, a 22-year-old unaffiliated with the University of 170 Constant Drive in Thibodaux, for disturbing the peace by intoxication after receiving complaints of someone overturning a motorcycle at East Campus Apartments.

The owner told police Gaubert tipped the motorcycle. Gaubert denied toppling the motorcycle and blamed it on a squirrel.

Gaubert, who police later learned was drinking vodka and Dr Pepper, said she was trying to feed barbecue to the squirrel when it ran off and knocked the bike over, said Sgt. Blake Tabor, LSU Police Department spokesperson.

She then became hostile toward the officers and was arrested and issued a misdemeanor summons for disturbing the peace.

Desert me…

We’re just like that. We deceive each other. This Wheeler whippersnapper, this latest Great Deceiver … So in love with him was Harvard…

Harvard’s just like everybody else. It has its idealizations, and if you can simulate them…

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

I’m going to remind you, in this post, of some of Harvard’s Great Deceivers — students, professors, overseers. Just some of the people University Diaries has covered over the few years of this blog’s life.

Nothing special about Harvard, mind you. All universities, all over the world, are taunted, hurt, and deceived. I’m using Harvard as an example.

A particularly strong example, actually, because Harvard has immensities of money and power, and therefore as an institution it should be better equipped than others to protect itself against deception.

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

But look at the Wheeler thing. He was about to graduate. He almost made it all the way through. He got this close to totally lying his way to a Harvard University degree.

Blair Hornstine was another matter. She was admitted to Harvard, and then, before she arrived, Harvard revoked the offer. She had cheated her way to valedictorian of her high school, plagiarized articles she claimed to have written in her local newspaper…

Hornstine was solidly on the Wheeler track to success, in other words, but a lawsuit she filed against a competing candidate for valedictorian was so disgusting that it hit all the papers, and Harvard began looking more closely at her.

Harvard kept Kaavya Viswanathan, even though by the time she was a sophomore she was a world-famous plagiarist.

Faculty deceivers? Charles Ogletree, Laurence Tribe. Alan Dershowitz (he has denied it). Most of the faculty plagiarists come from the law school. Lee Simon came from the medical school.

Overseers? Doris Kearns Goodwin.

So many. And others, you have to figure, who won’t get caught.

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

Words of wisdom, UD?

Only a few.

First, since we’re always hurting and deceiving each other, and since, given the potential rewards, you can expect idealization simulators to be particularly active at places like Harvard (as Jayson Blair was active at the New York Times), those places in particular have to be vigilant. Where were the people entrusted with Harvard’s integrity while Wheeler was doing his thing?

Second, since Harvard doesn’t punish faculty and overseer deceivers (in a couple of cases it announced it was going to do something or other to them, but it didn’t tell us what, so that doesn’t count), it shouldn’t be surprised to find deceivers among its students. The Crimson rightly points out that if you’re known to be an oligarchy that protects its own, you can expect to attract the malsain, or at the very least to predispose your students toward cynicism.

For the public face of Harvard and for internal relations as well, it is crucial that the university maintain more consistent disciplinary rules for instances of academic dishonesty. Until then, the glaring double standard set by Harvard stands as an inadequate precedent for future disappointments.

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

He isn’t true, he beats me too, what can I do?

You can examine your idealizations. You can stop using double standards.

———————–

UPDATE: Another list. And what about that guy… that Iranian-American…? Hold on.

Name’s Nemazee. (Scroll down.)

————————

UPDATE AGAIN: The Harvard Crimson interviews a guy who knows a lot about admissions procedures. How did Wheeler slip through?

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said that Harvard could not be wholly blamed for Wheeler’s ability to slip through the admission process.

“There is not any institution in this country that can afford to or does verify everything people submit. It’s just not a practical possibility,” Nassirian said. “You can’t really fault Harvard for not calling every high school and obtaining a duplicate copy of every transcript and every recommendation people submit.”

True. But here’s something you can blame Harvard for. In order to get their cherished, lowest-in-the-world admit number each year (6.9% is the 2010 figure), Harvard sends out tens of thousands of You-oughta-apply-to-Harvard letters every year. Harvard knows perfectly well that almost none of the people it sends these letters to will get in; it also knows how astonished and flattered these same people will be to get such a letter… How likely they will be, in their youthful naivete, their cluelessness as to how Ivy League schools select students, to indeed apply…

These pawns, these soon to be heartbroken pawns, are crucial to Harvard’s ever-escalating number of applicants. Rejecting this enormous crowd makes for a hell of an admit number.

If these useful rejects were smart, they’d agree to apply only if Harvard guaranteed them, say, a one hundred dollar payment for doing so. They are a crucial part of Harvard’s maintenance of its market position, and should be rewarded as such.

Anyway… My point, in connection with the Wheeler fiasco, involves the impossibility of Harvard maintaining much control over the application process, given how many people they’ve told to apply.

UD‘s Aunt Delores, who died recently, lived in a strange house. It was enormous. It stood on a hill overlooking a big highway in Pikesville, Maryland, near Baltimore. She had sheep. She had a shepherd.

It’s been years since UD was there, but she remembers the complicated, rambling interior and exterior of the place pretty well…

Or does she? UD will have a chance to do a little memory experiment this weekend, when she and various other ‘thesdan family members will drive to the house and have a look around.

She can certainly expect lots of changes. It’s this year’s Baltimore Symphony Associates’ Directors’ Show House. It’s been “re-imagined by 20 interior designers and 4 landscape designers.” Ten thousand people are expected to visit.

UD will chronicle her visit here, at University Diaries.

This blog has chronicled the reduction of higher education to indoctrination in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. The latest development: State seizure of private universities.

Chavez sent a message via his Twitter account to students of privately funded Santa Ines University, letting them know their school was being taken over by the government and tuition will be free.

“Students of Santa Ines University, I just approved a nationalization plan for the good of everyone. Now: FREE!” beamed Chavez last week on the microblogging website, which he uses frequently after having set up an account last month.

University officials weren’t available to comment on the charges, but students said the government’s reasons for taking it over were just an excuse to tighten its grip on the country’s education system.

“This is the worst of many bad moves by Chavez,” Carlos Chavez, a leader of the university’s 3,000-strong student body and who is not related to his president, told Dow Jones Newswires. “He’s going to impose his revolutionary, Marxist, socialist agenda on us students, and he’ll kick out good professors who allow us to study capitalism.”

The nationalization of the school was made official Monday, when the government’s newspaper of record, the Official Gazette, announced the “forced acquisition” of Santa Ines, and said it has been renamed Jose Felix Ribas University, in honor of a Venezuelan independence hero.

[Joe] Biden received a first-edition copy of “Anna Livia Plurabelle” signed by the author, James Joyce, and valued at $3,500. The story is a chapter from the Irish writer’s famously complex novel, “Finnegan’s Wake.”

The giver was Margaret Spanel of Hightstown, N.J., a donor to Democratic candidates. The information was included in Biden’s annual financial disclosure report, released Monday.

Spanel, 97, sent the book to Biden after hearing him say Joyce was his favorite poet, the vice president’s office said…