In the case of Rodrigo Carraminana, a math professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose directorship of a Latino center on campus has been criticized in the student newspaper, UD ran with an intemperate post on the subject.

Recognizing that she had done this, and that this wasn’t fair to Professor Carraminana, she removed the post.

A [New Zealand] gardening guru has uncovered another case of alleged plagiarism involving a book released by publishing house Penguin Books.

The accusations against The Tui NZ Fruit Garden, written by Sally Cameron, have caused Penguin to recall the book, which was released on Monday.

The book contains many sentences and passages which seem to have been taken, in some cases word for word, from various websites including Wikipedia.

Penguin came in for scrutiny just last year, after the book The Trowenna Sea by Witi Ihimaera was found to contain unacknowledged copy which appeared to come from other authors’ work.

This afternoon Penguin general manager publicity and promotions Sandra Lees said bookshops were being asked to return all copies of the book…

The Lawrence Journal-World notes the deterioration of a once-fine university.

… [T]he Kansas Board of Regents has become politicized and no longer has, or deserves, the respect of legislators — or the public. It now serves as a convenient and easy place for a governor to take care of political IOU’s rather than appointing individuals who are respected and can make a powerful and convincing case for higher education.

… The ongoing embarrassing expenditures for the university’s athletics programs have caused serious concern among faculty and alumni. The salaries of some within KU Athletics are almost obscene…

… [Eminent professors] are far more important to the university than a fancy coach’s office or a $3.2 million super-duper scoreboard, but their salaries, as well as the salaries of most other KU faculty members, are a shame when compared to what KU and other universities are paying those in their athletics programs…

… the Tom Buchanan passages.

The latest on Yeardley Love’s killer (UD thanks David for the link):

University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely attacked a sleeping teammate last year, leaving his face bruised in an altercation that took place after a night of partying, according to four sources with knowledge of the incident.

… [One] former player, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the grieving families, said Huguely attacked the other player after hearing that his teammate had kissed women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love, who was dating Huguely at the time…

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

From The Great Gatsby:

… Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven — a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy — even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach — but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it — I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

… He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body — he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage — a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

… Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name.

“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——”

Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

It’s a review of UD‘s blogpal Daniel Carlat’s new book, Unhinged.

Title: WE LOVE OUR STIMULANTS IN THIS COUNTRY.

This was the acceptance speech that this year’s winner of the University of New Mexico teaching award gave yesterday.

Non-acceptance speech, I guess. Must have been pretty embarrassing for the president, Dave Schmidly, to present the award, and then sit down and hear what the recipient had to say about him.

President Schmidly presented the “Presidential Teaching Fellow” award to Dr. Howard Waitzkin, a distinguished professor in family and community medicine, sociology, and internal medicine at UNM. Upon accepting the award, Waitzkin unexpectedly gave a speech about the UNM administration’s poor performance supporting faculty and students.

“The values that most of us on the faculty and most of the student body think need to be preserved are those that focus on the advancement of education and the advancement of knowledge,” he said. “The priorities here have been on buildings, athletics and other areas that are not core to the University’s mission.”

… In his speech, Waitzkin talked about the resignation of Faculty President Doug Fields on Monday due to the unwillingness of administration to listen to faculty’s ideas on governance and budget planning. He also cited the faculty’s no-confidence vote in President David Schmidly last spring.

“Because of the deterioration of UNM’s educational mission, last year the faculty gave President Schmidly a strong vote of no confidence,” Waitzkin said. “Rather than resigning, the president has continued much of the same practices, which have provoked several scandals and reduced morale for many faculty members and students.”

Waitzkin cited financial changes, cutbacks in key programs and utter lack of support for faculty as the reasons why he decided to speak out at the awards ceremony. He said lack of support for teachers from the administration has led many faculty to teach in a “sad, alienated way,” and others to leave the University…

Tenure is controversial, and I guess it should be. But you have to admit that this is a story not only about courage, but about tenure.

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

And — Schmidly? He’s going the way of Ceausescu. It’s going to become increasingly difficult for him to be seen in public.

From yesterday’s Daily News:

… A friend of Huguely’s who played lacrosse with him in summer leagues told the Daily News that Huguely “partied really hard and when he was drunk or f—– up, he could be violent. He would get out of control.”

Huguely was described by the summer league teammate as “obsessive,” constantly texting and calling Love, to the point that people close to her worried about the relationship.

[N]o protective order had been filed in the local magistrate’s office.

A former Virginia student who was friends with both Love and Huguely described a disturbing incident in which Huguely recently reportedly attacked Love, then had no recollection of it the next day, which precipitated their final breakup. “He was really messed up and punched a window of a car on the way over to her apartment that night,” the friend said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of consideration for Love’s family. The friend said Huguely had been seen breaking bottles at another party before Love’s death and had told people he was going to her apartment to get Love back…

A Princeton student reckons with the absence of intellectual exchange on campus.

… [O]ur biggest barrier to having these conversations is an unnecessarily compelling desire to be politically correct. We place a great deal of emphasis on being open to other cultural experiences, religious practices, ideals, opinions and principles. This is, of course, a good thing — but in moderation.

Let me explain what I mean by an intellectual conversation. It is not simply the transfer of interesting or unusual pieces of information between two or more people. It is the exchanging of ideas; then, the exchanging of opinions on those ideas; then, suggestions for how those ideas could be edited and improved upon; and finally, either a resultant conclusion, or a respectful decision to disagree that comes after having considered the other’s side thoroughly.

I recently participated in an event called “Speed Faithing” organized by the Religious Life Council, designed to provide a five-minute introduction to different faiths. Zoroastrian funeral rites are one of the more contentious aspects of my faith. Our bodies are disposed of in what we call “Towers of Silence” to either be eaten by carrion or to decay naturally. A friend later approached me and asked, quite succinctly, “I mean, aren’t you scared? Don’t you find it a little — weird?” It doesn’t matter that this could have been interpreted as offensive. If he hadn’t asked, I would not have been able to explain that it comes from a desire to perform “a last act of charity” and to avoid polluting the elements. He would have continued to regard me as mildly eccentric at best (and, dare I say it, barbaric at worst). There would have been no intellectual exchange.

If we are too politically correct in our interactions with each other, we will not push each other hard enough, and we will not ask the right questions, for fear of offending. Listening to a Muslim friend tell you that she wears a burqa at home is not an intellectual conversation, even if the narration itself is interesting. Asking her what she thinks of France’s ban on the garment; asking her whether she wears it because of a personal preference or because of pressure from her family; asking her what her take is on the sexist connotation that some attach to the wearing of it — these would be…

Five female students, including one who’d recently completed a self-defense class, jumped to the aid of a fellow student, grabbing her knife-wielding attacker and holding him until police officers arrived at Husson University, officials said Wednesday.

Jesse Hladik put her new skills to work when she lunged for the hand holding a knife, while fellow students grabbed the man’s other limbs and wrestled him to the ground. Hladik, 21, of Buckfield, said she knew the pressure points to make him drop the knife, thanks to the class.

… Officers responding to the report of a domestic fight at 7:40 a.m. arrived to find 45-year-old Horst Wolk of Bangor subdued on the pavement. A campus officer cuffed him, and city police hauled him away.

John Michaud, professor of legal studies, heard the commotion and saw a pile of people on the pavement, while more women stood by, ready to jump in, if necessary.

… Wolk has been charged with attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, aggravated assault and violating a protection order, said Bangor Police Sgt. Paul Edwards.

… The incident unfolded in a parking lot next to Husson’s O’Donnell Commons. Wolk, who isn’t a student, rammed the victim’s vehicle after she pulled into a parking space at 7:40 a.m., then jumped out of his vehicle with a knife in his hand, said Julie Green, Husson spokeswoman…

Horst looks pretty beat up in his mug shot.

If the linear increase in grades continues, it is estimated that in 30 years, every student at Elon University will receive a 4.0 grade point average, according to associate professor of physics Tony Crider.

Jean-Francois Copé, “majority leader in the French National Assembly and the mayor of Meaux” attempts, in the pages of the New York Times, to explain.

… The visibility of the face in the public sphere has always been a public safety requirement. It was so obvious that until now it did not need to be enshrined in law. But the increase in women wearing the niqab, like that of the ski mask favored by criminals, changes that. We must therefore adjust our law, without waiting for the phenomenon to spread.

The permanent concealment of the face also raises the question of social interactions in our democracies. In the United States, there are very few limits on individual freedom, as exemplified by the guarantees of the First Amendment. In France, too, we are passionately attached to liberty.

But we also reaffirm our citizens’ equality and fraternity. These values are the three inseparable components of our national motto. We are therefore constantly striving to achieve a delicate balance. Individual liberty is vital, but individuals, like communities, must accept compromises that are indispensable to living together, in the name of certain principles that are essential to the common good.

… [I]n both France and the United States, we recognize that individual liberties cannot exist without individual responsibilities. This acknowledgment is the basis of all our political rights. We are free as long as we are responsible individuals who can be held accountable for our actions before our peers. But the niqab and burqa represent a refusal to exist as a person in the eyes of others. The person who wears one is no longer identifiable; she is a shadow among others, lacking individuality, avoiding responsibility…

… the University of Virginia lacrosse player who killed his ex-girlfriend already had a pretty long police record.

… A 2008 Palm Beach County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office report describes an incident in which an angry George Huguely V had to be rescued from the Atlantic Ocean after he jumped from a 40-foot yacht during a heated confrontation with his father.

Huguely, 22, had two previous booze-related arrests, one in Palm Beach County and one that involved a violent attack on a female police officer outside a Washington & Lee University fraternity in Lexington, Va…

Even an urban campus like mine
has leafy paths and flowering trees.
It’s not like Kenyon College, of
course, with its remarkable
Middle Path.

But in all seasons here, as at
Kenyon, there’s a sense of a
separate world, a beautiful world.

Yet the beauty of these college
worlds isn’t really about nature.
Take the two students with back-
packs out of this picture, the
students walking together along
those trees and into a mist, and
it’s any autumnal woods.

These particular worlds are beautiful
because youth is beautiful, and
thought is beautiful, and friendship
is beautiful, and potential is beautiful.

And those things – youth, thought,
friendship, potential – exist with
greater intensity in this setting than,
I think, anywhere else.

Students take the middle path and
then move into the mist at its end.

Professors watch them move off
into their futures; year after year
professors watch students step
off into their futures, and there’s
no knowing. But what professors
keep of their students – some of
their students – is a permanent
image of their perfection as they
walk along the middle path.

They walk at ease, in love, in lust,
curious, amused, charitable, fervent.
The college takes their intensity and
cools it a bit; it asks them to consider
how human beings have shaped their
energy into ideas and structures and
states. The discipline of a curriculum
cools and shapes their intensity.

Somewhat. Essentially they remain
high-spirited and unreachable and
enviably vivacious.

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

To follow the strange and beautiful
world of the university is to feel the
same shock and sorrow others do
when youthful intensity turns into
violence against the self or against
other people, when fervency becomes
the sort of inner turmoil that destroys.

It doesn’t just destroy a life. It
destroys a life at a kind of pinnacle
of inquiry into life. This
sky-high exuberance makes anything
possible. When it is shot down, or
when, inexplicably, it shoots itself
down, the fall is terrible.

Jack Ford, CBS News:

… “You’re not surprised,” Ford observed, “that his attorney is saying, given these facts, ‘It was an accident.’ You can have a situation where somebody dies, because of somebody else’s conduct, and it might not be criminal. Classic illustration, on the job site and two guys are working and one has a piece of lumber in his hand and he turns around and hits the other accidentally, knocks him off the roof, he hits his head and dies. Might be some civil responsibility, it’s not a criminal case.

“But here, quite candidly, it’s going to be a tougher sell, because you have a whole series of intentional conduct: intentionally kicking in the door to her bedroom. Grabbing her. This isn’t a situation where he said, ‘I went to talk to her and I just sort of grabbed her to turn her around and she tripped on something, fell and hit her head.’ What he says, according to police is, he’s shaking her and repeatedly her head is banging against the wall. That gives you intentional conduct. He might not have intended to kill her, but enough intentional conduct that I think accident, pure accident, would be a tough sell here.”

Ford added that, “In most jurisdictions, they say if you intended to harm somebody seriously and they die, even though you didn’t intend to kill them, you could be guilty of murder.” …

In 2005, the year of its founding, UD took their Trump Success Test (all links have expired) and did very poorly, especially on Money Motivation. Still, when she read this article by Alex Beam, she felt nostalgic for her brief time as a student there… And now you’re telling me the whole thing was some sort of real estate scam?