See there? Nothing to worry about.

UD thanks an anonymous reader for noticing that the University of Westminster has more than Rev. Female Genital Mutilation to be proud of! The biggest boldest beheadingest believer out there graduated from none other than Westminster University.

Mr. Emwazi, I’m calling from the Westminster University development office…

Sorry? Let me just put this knife down…

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“The timing [of the Rev. FGM] could not be worse for Westminster University, after it was [revealed] that infamous … terrorist killer Jihadi John is a computer studies graduate.” The reverend will share some of his favorite clit-slitting techniques at the university tomorrow. Be there or be sexually intact!

Necks, clitorises – When it comes to the slicing of the body, Westminster University is the go-to place. Maybe it should open a medical school.

The source of the poem is here.

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What Will Survive of Us Is Love

A team of excavators find
Bony lovers intertwined.

The crania of their burial bones
Have been pelted by occultic stones.

… the prodronal stage.

She’ll keep looking out the window.

She’ll let you know if this develops into something.

… is a bit of a mouthful (though it rather nicely echoes AmeriCorps). It refers to American academia’s enormous, and always growing, corps of adjunct instructors. These non-tenured, often massively underpaid, professors do the heavy lifting at many of our schools, teaching lots of classes with little institutional support.

UD‘s friend Joe Fruscione has, with some colleagues, started PrecariCorps, a foundation that offers temporary financial support to adjuncts.

It reminds UD of her town’s Betsy White Fund, whose quiet good works UD has admired for decades.

… antidepressants.

Everest (cough) College, long perceived by observers as a towering fraud on all Americans, has now collapsed, hurling hundreds of suckers down to Base-Camp Debt.

In Canada, the government has forced the for-profit’s closure (UD thanks a reader, Jack, for this news); here in the States, Shit-Mountain Everest has shut itself down

as part of a deal with the Department of Education, which last summer froze the institution’s financial-aid payments after it failed to provide the DOE with a series of required records, including job-placement and attendance statistics.

Why was this stupid scheme allowed to go on for so long? And why are the many other Everests out there still allowed to strand American and Canadian debt-mountaineers? Is anyone really surprised that the latest thing to happen is a debt strike?

On Monday, [fifteen] people who took out loans to attend … announced that they are going on a “debt strike,” and will stop repaying their loans. They believe that they have both ethical and legal grounds for what appears to be an unprecedented collective action…

Wow, unprecedented. Who could have foreseen that if your country has no laws against criminal for-profit antics, suckers will fall for their ploy and eventually – with perfectly plausible moral justification – refuse to pay up?

Hold onto your happy button! Guest speaker Haitham al-Haddad, an expert in the best ways to chop off clitorises, will address Westminster students and faculty tomorrow.

AKA Yeshiva University.

Reynold Levy, in an article about the failure of some significant New York City non-profits, singles out Yeshiva:

Teetering on the brink is Yeshiva University, together with its Einstein School of Medicine and its Cardozo Law School… Where were the board members, whom we assume were holding [Yeshiva and other] precious agencies accountable for prudent and responsible service to others? How is it possible that they utterly failed to exercise basic fiduciary responsibilities? What explains the apparent absence at these institutions of due diligence and the checks and balances normally afforded by well-functioning finance, audit, investment and executive committees? And what about government oversight for [institutions like] Yeshiva …on the receiving end of major public grants and contracts?

Yeshiva’s massively overpaid president, who oversaw the destruction of this school, remains in charge.

Paid shills are always wedging themselves onto university faculties. These people are essentially lobbyists, spokespersons, promotional writers, and any other form of cheerleader you can think of for corporate and government uglies desperate to look less ugly. Think pharma and big oil. Think rich dictatorial post-communist and middle eastern states. These guys want to look legit, and there’s nothing like a life-sized professor doll who, when you pull its string, says A liberal application of antipsychotics will make America’s children all better or Gaddafi represents the middle east’s great democratic hope or the fossil-fuel industry and climate change have nothing to do with one another or Azerbaijan is one hell of a country and a crucially important security partner for America.

These people are often outed, and when they get outed the university gets a wedgie, which is to say that nothing much happens except that the university gets its knickers in a bit of a twist. The Deniability Office is called into play, and it says This person isn’t on a tenure-track, pays her own salary, is an adjunct temporary visiting part-time what was the name again…? Most of these people don’t even lose their academic affiliation. Instead, petulantly, under orders from their department chair, they, okay, disclose on their stupid publications that, okay, their work is paid for by the people they’re praising in the publications, okay? Are you satisfied? Are you happy now? Sheesh!

When I was a student/athlete at then-SCSC, I witnessed increased donations in the athletic department but we as students got nothing. We went from flying to events and games to riding a bus for 15 to 20 hours while coaches received increased salaries, bought new houses and cars, and continued to travel by air. Large donations presented at halftime during footballs games were not spent on the science department as indicated at the time of presentation.

I must say I love SCSU, but the mismanagement of funds has negatively affected enrollment and has caused a decrease in donations from alumni. SCSU, a historically black college, has in years past been a very respected institution, but the actions of deceitful people in power have caused many who would have chosen SCSU to go elsewhere.

This is what legislators deciding the school’s fate really need: Direct testimony from honest people who’ve been there. Of all the things said in the last couple of weeks about SCSU, UD finds this the most persuasive and the most moving.

A university is a delicate thing; a university means an enormous amount on many levels to many of its graduates. When a regime of greed and deceit sets in on campus (I’m looking at you, Yeshiva University), these graduates, wounded and angry, pull back. Word gets around. Contributions and applications tank.

Schools like these need completely new presidents and boards of trustees. And that’s only a first step.

From a letter to the editor of a South Carolina newspaper. The subject: Events at South Carolina State University.

[SCSU President Thomas] Elzey has made two incredulous declarations to all viewing from near and afar: “SCSU will not close, and I will not resign.” Though he emphatically states these, he has control of neither.

The writer means incredible. Elzey has made statements that we cannot believe. Things are incredible – experiences, statements.

Incredulous refers to the human condition or feeling of not being able to believe something. I am incredulous when I hear Elzey say incredible things.

Had Elzey said I cannot believe what is happening to me! Everyone thinks I should resign! – then he would have been declaring his incredulity.

I feel sorry for Rudy that he can’t love this country the way it is. I love America even with assholes like him living in it. In fact, I’m immensely proud of our assholes; I think America has the best assholes in the world. I defy the Belgians or the Japanese to produce something like a Donald Trump. If that makes me an exceptionalist, I plead guilty.

On Belgium: I can only think of Johnny Hallyday and Paul de Man. Neither begins to measure up.

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Update: UD thanks Alan, a reader, for reminding her that Leopold II trumps Trump.

… will become more and more common a desperation move.

As you know, UD has predicted that in a few years universities will offer High-Achieving Attender scholarships to applicants who can show (via photographic portfolios, etc.) a superior level of game attendance in high school.

When I lived in Washington, I attended Kesher Israel regularly. It was a thrill to sit behind Senator Joseph Lieberman, Leon Wieseltier and other luminaries of the American Jewish scene. They and many others took pride in articulating a literate, intelligent Modern Orthodox Jewish sensibility – and Freundel was an exemplar of it…

All this time, he was a sex offender, a fraud and a pervert.

… [T]he Freundel scandal looks a lot like the Madoff* scandal. There are questions that should have been asked, suspicions that should have been raised. But the self-reinforcing loops of elite power — X likes him, X is powerful, therefore I should like him — blinded those entrusted to keep watch.

And then there are the nonsexual allegations. One of Freundel’s victims, Bethany Mandel, told The Daily Beast that we’ve gotten Freundel wrong. “People keep calling him a pervert and yes, he’s a pervert, but he’s also a power hungry sociopath,” Mandel said. “It wasn’t about porn. It was about power, and this was additional power no one knew he had.”

This, too, should have been visible in plain view to anyone who worked closely with Freundel.

… It can seem, downing a shot of whiskey with someone of influence, that you are in the presence of greatness. Really, you are only in the presence of power.

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* Board Chair, Sy Syms School of Business; Honorary Degree recipient; Treasurer, Board of Trustees — all at Yeshiva University.