“…[F]or 25 years, I lived and breathed business, and the economy, and jobs. I had successes, and failures. But each step of the way, I learned a little bit more about what makes our American system so powerful. You can’t learn that teaching constitutional law [at] the University of Chicago, all right?”

We’ll see if the perennially popular professor-as-pussy strategy works for Mitt Romney.

Back in 2007, on the advice of [T. Boone] Pickens, the [Oklahoma State University] Cowboys athletic department purchased policies for 27 of their very biggest fans. Most were donors and season ticket holders, and all were over the age of 65. Upon an insured donor’s death, Lincoln Financial would pay out $10 million to the sole beneficiary, the OSU athletic department. It was called the “Gift of a Lifetime” program, and it was a wager, like all life insurance, but presumably the actuarial tables were in the university’s favor.

Then, no one died.

… OSU sued Lincoln Financial, trying to recover their premiums… Last week, a federal judge in Dallas dismissed [that, and Lincoln’s countersuit], leaving Oklahoma State on the hook for that $33 mil, and forcing them to pay court costs…

OSU, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor OSU, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Their livingness doth make you desperate men,
Who with death-lust and lawsuits dwell;
No charm sends donors down to hell
Nor gives them heart attack or stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One litigation past, you pay out millions,
And still death hies! OSU, thou shalt die.

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

UD thanks Dave.

This story combines drug smuggling with academic point scoring – a new combination, I think.

A professor of physics at the University of North Carolina is in an Argentine jail because Buenos Aires airport police discovered an elaborate compartment in his luggage into which a lot of cocaine had been placed.

[Paul] Frampton says the cocaine had been cleverly built into a piece of his luggage without his knowledge, but he declined to say how it might have gotten there, saying that revealing details might harm his defense.

Frampton says the UNC provost has done little to help him, and has in fact stopped his pay. Why?

[Bruce] Carney had long been jealous, he said, because Frampton had earned tenure much more quickly and because Carney’s academic accomplishments were paltry compared to his own.

“I am one of the most published physicists, and really he hasn’t done much that is of interest,” Frampton said.

The provost is sorry he’s in jail … and is also sorry “to hear that Frampton had been missing the meetings of the general relativity class he was supposed to be teaching.”

Frampton responds that only one student signed up for it. Possible reason here.

Riding a wave of public disgust at graft, a new Czech travel agency has started tours highlighting sites linked to corruption, a social ill that has plagued the ex-communist country for decades.

The aptly-named CorruptTour agency touts the “best of the worst” trips to posh villas, a nonsensical funicular, an empty meadow hosting a non-existent Olympic stadium, even a big, boxy concrete mausoleum.

[The tour guide] points out a non-existent house which 589 companies have registered as their headquarters, and a university at which students obtain a degree in under a year — for the right price.

They don’t seem to embezzle any more than employees in other settings, but it’s our job here at University Diaries to cover acts of embezzlement at universities egregious enough to make the evening news.

There are some countries – Greece comes shriekingly to mind – where being a university president seems to mean little more than taking the money the government gave you to run the place.

UD‘s not sure how corrupt Hong Kong is along these lines, but the University of Hong Kong certainly let its chief of surgery steal a lot of money before someone decided to try to make him stop. Before being found guilty of misconduct and false accounting, John Wong Kin-ling had quite a run.

Uh, let’s see… He was close to the university’s dean of medicine, from whom he apparently learned his trade:

… Lam Shiu-kum … fell heavily from grace in September 2009 when he was jailed for 25 months for pocketing HK$3.8 million in donations meant for medical research ….

Probably got a few pointers from that guy… Then…

Problems about accounting have dogged Wong for a while, and certainly since 2007. That was when he was accused of using donations – believed to be from James Tien Pei-Chun’s family and meant for research – to purchase a Lexus car, though he returned the vehicle to the school.

One insider told The Standard’s sister publication East Week: “Doctors would open different accounts to manage income, but there was no monitoring.”

Another source claims Wong once admitted that he had traveled first class to meetings overseas.

… [T]he four charges he faces – and has denied – in District Court are a tangle that involve a former assistant jailed for embezzlement, a private surgical training center, his driver-cum- helper, taxation authorities and others.

The former executive officer is June Chan Sau-hung, jailed for 22 months in 2010 for embezzling HK$3 million from the training center. She has been testifying for the prosecution against Wong.

… [Charges] include not notifying the police of Chan’s embezzlement. Wong said he had felt sorry for Chan as she was struggling with family responsibilities and wanted to help her repay the money she had taken.

It’s also alleged Wong directed HK$730,000 from the account of the training center – Unisurgical, in which he’s a director and shareholder – to pay his own helper-cum-driver for five years.

Wong said that although his driver was hired as a domestic helper he also picked up guests the university had invited to forums from the airport and their hotels. So he had the [training center] pay half of the salary.

And travel expenses incurred by Wong, it’s alleged, were handled in a way to deprive the Inland Revenue Department of some HK$120,000. But Wong said secretaries and other staff had handled such matters.

Funny money stuff at universities is usually some sad assistant to some sad assistant grabbing ten thou from the kitty and blowing it at Walmart’s. You’ve got to get to the higher managerial levels (see American University president Benjamin Ladner) for the good stories.

Yes, Howard University, here in Washington, has had its problems, and all are expected, as the president of the university says up there in my headline, to sacrifice in various ways. Possible faculty furloughs. Cutbacks in course offerings and a twelve percent tuition increase this year.

Everyone, that is, but already highly paid administrators: They get enormous bonuses.

The amount of the payments was reported in Howard’s 2010 tax filing, which is a public record: Senior vice president Artis G. Hampshire-Cowan, who was the interim president, received $302,820 on top of her salary of $213,552. Senior vice president for strategy and government affairs Hassan Minor received $522,184 on top of his salary of $264,255. Chief legal officer Norma Leftwich received $224,050 on top of her salary of $252,930.

The faculty is very angry indeed.

Police have reportedly arrested at least 16 judges in an operation centered on the Italian city of Naples, the BBC reports.

Those arrested are thought to be linked to the Fabroccino Camorra clan, one of Italy’s most notorious criminal organizations.

Corriere.it describes those arrested as “at least sixteen tax magistrates, eight tax tribunal officers, a prominent lawyer who also teaches at university, and an accountant”.

Imagine his Rate My Professor page:

Brings an immediate, real-world understanding of the workings of the Italian tax system. Insider’s knowledge. Dresses extremely well, drives an amazing car. Avoid arguing with him about your grade.

… all gone!

In the age of Big Pharma, we have, of course come to medicalize [anxious] thoughts — not to mention just about every other whim and pang. When I once confided with a physician friend that one of my children seemed to overheat with anxiety around tests, he smiled kindly and literally assured, “No need to worry about that, we have a cure for anxiety today.” On current reckoning, anxiety is a symptom, a problem, but Kierkegaard insists, “Only a prosaic stupidity maintains that this (anxiety) is a disorganization.” And again, if a “speaker maintains that the great thing about him is that he has never been in anxiety, I will gladly provide him with my explanation: that is because he is very spiritless. ”

“It is not a disease and it has no place in a book dedicated to listing mental disorders,” write two observers in Slate, as they anticipate (dread, really… dread is probably a billable disorder too… or will soon be…) the phenomenon of our grief at the loss of people we love entering the Diagnostic and Statistical pantheon. “The new diagnosis, spearheaded by two professors of psychiatry, Katherine Shear and Holly Prigerson, at Columbia and Harvard University,” will go after melancholic malingerers, sickos who stay sad beyond happiness’s due date.

So what are the downsides of treating grief as a disease? For one thing, more people will be prescribed antidepressants that can have adverse physical and psychological side effects, including increased risk of suicide and addiction and withdrawal problems. (To date, the research has consistently shown that grief counseling and medications do not alleviate grief; they seem most helpful in the cases of people who had pre-existing mental health issues.) It also means that more people will feel shame and embarrassment about not grieving “properly” or getting over their loss fast enough. And the very language of “symptoms” and “duration” seems only to further diminish the significant event that precipitated these feelings in the first place — the death of a beloved person who can’t be replaced.

On the other hand – America’s already crawling with millions of people who shouldn’t be on antidepressants – what’s a few more? C’mon in! Water’s fine!

And there’s so much money in it. Think of it! Convincing non-mourning people they’re depressed is tricky – you need wall-to-wall advertisements. Convincing mourning people? Piece of cake.

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

Once pill distribution begins, mentally disordered poems like this one will be a thing of the past:

The Eden of the Author of Sleep
By Brian Teare

for Jean

And sleep to grief as air is to the rain,
upon waking, no explanation, just blue

spoons of the eucalyptus measuring
and pouring torrents. A kind of winter.

As if what is real had been buried
and all sure surfaces blurred. Is it me

or the world, risen from beneath?
Mind refining ruin, or an outside

unseen hand, working—as if with
a small brush, for clarity—the details?

To open my eyes is the shape of a city
rising slowly through sand. Cloudy

quartz, my throat, cut unadorned
from the quarry, stone of city cemetery

and roads, to breathe is a mausoleum
breached. To think of Eden is speech

to fill a grave, tree in which knowledge
augurs only its limits, the word snake

a thought crawling in the shadow
of its body. Was it, Adam, like this

always, intellect in the mind’s small sty
miming confinement for meaning, sleep

to grief as air is to the rain, upon waking,
the world’s own weapons turned against it—

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

I mean, just look at this guy, luxuriating in it (how long has it been since his dedicatee died, I wonder?), wallowing in his misery instead of getting over it!

The Eden of the Author of Sleep

By Brian Teare

for Jean

And sleep to grief as air is to the rain,

[Lost in vaporous air. Disturbing symptom right off the bat. Sleep disturbance.]

upon waking, no explanation, just blue

spoons of the eucalyptus measuring
and pouring torrents. [Describes himself as permanently under a rainstorm. Classic sign of depression. Nice assonance on the u‘s of blue, spoons, eucalyptus, by the way.] A kind of winter.

As if what is real had been buried
and all sure surfaces blurred. [Diminished sense of reality. Pre-psychotic.] Is it me

or the world, risen from beneath? [It’s you. Consult your doctor.]
Mind refining ruin, or an outside

unseen hand, working — is if with
a small brush, for clarity — the details? [Mentally going over and over the details of the lost loved person, life before, whatever. ]

To open my eyes is the shape of a city
rising slowly through sand. [Slowed thoughts – Depression 101.] Cloudy

quartz, my throat, cut unadorned
from the quarry, stone of city cemetery [Strikingly morbid poem.]

and roads, to breathe is a mausoleum
breached. [Reports feeling that every breath he takes is an approach to the loved one’s grave. Abnormal.] To think of Eden is speech

to fill a grave, tree in which knowledge
augurs only its limits, the word snake

a thought crawling in the shadow
of its body. [Hopelessness. Words seem meaningless, understanding impossible.] Was it, Adam, like this

always, intellect in the mind’s small sty
miming confinement for meaning, [Seems to feel he can only function by becoming a mental midget.] sleep

to grief as air is to the rain, [Note the recurrence of this phrase. Circular thinking.] upon waking,
the world’s own weapons turned against it— [Clear cry for help here.]

With these mealy-mouthed words, the chancellor of UC Irvine rejects a petition from the student government calling for the removal of a trustee who acts as honorary consul to the civilian-massacring government of Syria.

But no – I mean, we’ve seen with our own eyes that even though the guy is a regime official who hasn’t said a word about the blood on the streets back home, he’s a good guy! And after all, he’s not a paid agent of the regime! He’s a volunteer agent.

See the reasoning, kiddies? All better… all better…

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

The local NPR station has a vastly reassuring statement from the guy.

“Although Dr. Chehabi agreed to meet with NPR, he refused to be recorded. He won’t discuss the Assad regime, but says personally, he opposes the shooting of unarmed civilians.”

Cool! Me too.

… her second Udemy Faculty Project lecture, Poetry and Difficulty, this morning. She’s now waiting for it to upload. Should be published shortly.

♦♦♦♦♦♦

Update:  The lecture is now available, though for the moment it’s Lecture 10.  So you need to scroll down.

Or you can go there directly via this link.

LOL.

UD has noticed that people tend to feel very strongly about cruelty. Wanton cruelty tends to rub people the wrong way.

How else can you explain the guilty-all-the-way verdict that just came down against the Rutgers University student whose secret filming of his gay roommate having sex so devastated the roommate that when he realized what had been done to him he killed himself?

Dharun Ravi’s lawyers argued his tender age (twenty), the clueless immaturity of the guy, etc. And Ravi must have thought it would work, because he refused a no-jail plea bargain. But the sheer vicious degeneracy of it all – especially given the vulnerable personality of the suicide, a person just beginning to discover who he was – seems to have riled the jurors.

After he serves his time, Dharun faces deportation.

… in the dictionary of obsolete phrases. What Goldman Sachs has done to client-based, America’s sports factories have done to student-athlete. A philosopher thinks it’s time to dump the latter.

[A]ccording to another N.C.A.A. report, the graduation rate (given six years to complete the degree) for football players is 16 percent below the college average, and the rate for men’s basketball players is 25 percent below. Even these numbers understate the situation, since colleges provide underqualified athletes with advisers who point them toward easier courses and majors and offer extraordinary amounts of academic coaching and tutoring, primarily designed to keep athletes eligible to play.

Extraordinary amounts is something of a euphemism. If University Diaries were really serious about chronicling all of the university-sponsored cheating for athletes, she’d write about nothing else.

[The phrase ‘student-athlete”] is a falsehood institutionalized for the benefit of a profit-making system, and educational institutions should have no part in it.

The deeper harm, however, lies in the fact that, in the United States, there is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism that undervalues intellectual culture and overvalues athletics. As a result, intellectual culture receives far less support than it should, and is generally regarded as at best the idiosyncratic interest of an eccentric minority. Athletics, by contrast, is more than generously funded and embraced as an essential part of our national life.

When colleges, our main centers of intellectual culture, lower standards of academic excellence in order to increase standards of athletic excellence, they implicitly support the popular marginalization of the intellectual enterprise. It is often said that the money brought in by athletics supports educational programs. But the large majority of schools lose money on athletics, and the fact that some depend on sports income confirms, in monetary terms, the perceived superiority of athletics.

Even at schools that (sometimes) make a sports profit, most of the money goes right back into sports. Another school has a bigger Adzillatron (go here and scroll down for UD’s Adzillatron posts) and you’ve got keep up. The coach to whom you’ve been paying six million dollars has been beating up his players and has to be fired, which will cost you tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, ’cause he’s gonna sue. That sort of thing.

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

UD thanks dmf.

Where the Simulacrum Ends is a University Diaries Category. It appears at the bottom of this post.

But the simulacrum never ends. The constant, ubiquitous appearance of artifacts that present themselves as the intellectual or creative work of one person, but are in fact the work of a hired ghost (like the ghost complaining in this post’s title), helps create the white-noisy, bogus, unreal feel of the postmodern world.

Our most thoughtful writers – unspectral ones, like Don DeLillo – evoke this very contemporary sense that everything is engineered, even nature. In Don DeLillo’s novel, The Names, a young man enters an airplane:

The crew is Japanese, the security Japanese… He hears Tamil, Hindi, and begins curiously to feel a sense of apartness, something in the smell of the place, the amplified voice in the distance. It doesn’t feel like earth. And then aboard, even softer seats. He will feel the systems running power through the aircraft, running light, running air. To the edge of the stratosphere, world hum, the sudden night. Even the night seems engineered, Japanese…

When even your evenings are engineered, the fact of ghostwritten cookbooks, scientific articles written by ghosts in the employ of the pharmaceutical companies promoting the drugs under discussion in the article, or, most recently, grades and comments on university students’ papers written by ghostwriters in India paid by American professors, ceases to excite comment… The occasional ghost-confessional will appear in the New York Times, telling us how demoralizing, disembodying, strange, it feels to be a career ghost (Yet who wrote/edited/exaggerated the ghost’s confession?)…

Alas, poor ghost! But pity as well the strange disembodiment of the ghosted, for they too must feel the erosion of their reality as their pantomimed self pops out at them everywhere.

And pity their dupes.