The fish rots from the top.

Enter the University of Nevada Las Vegas board of regents warily.

It is as Freud wrote of entering the darkness of the soul:

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

It is as Joyce wrote of the obstetrical theater:

Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds…

The psychoanalyst conjures what is darkest in us; the obstetrician conjures the violence of the birth trauma. Yet both are shepherds, custodians, healers …

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art…

You see the paradox…

And, in some similar sense, to enter that antechamber wherein reside the darkest, most primitive forces of the American university, and then to enter into what Blake called Mental Fight with them, is to emerge scathed. To read – to try to understand – the words and acts of the most primal energies at work in that bastion of enlightenment, the university, is to sense what Marlow must have felt in the forest of shrunken heads.

Let us then in studious quietude listen to them, the trustees of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, as they give a football coach with a 12-37 record a vast raise; as they build for a university community that does not attend football games a vast new football stadium; as they generate a $2.7 million athletics program deficit and make students and taxpayers deal with it… Let us hear their words.

“Maybe we’re being a little generous, but I thought about some of the other factors that were occurring,” Regent Robert Blakely said. “We’re in the process of trying to build a stadium. Having a successful football team is the biggest linchpin. Giving the football coach more of an incentive probably isn’t a bad plan.”

“I’m not enamored with the contract either,” Regent Michael Wixom said. “But I don’t want to jeopardize the momentum (Hauck) has created. [The coach’s most recent season was 7-6!] If we reject the contract, I’m afraid it will do immense harm.”

Regents directed Chancellor Dan Klaich to form a committee to look at best practices in contract negotiations with athletic coaches. However, Regent Allison Stephens said she wanted to see fair-market value and adequate compensation for coaches.

“I just fundamentally disagree that our role in fiscal management means that we have to nickle and dime and negotiate down people working in our institutions,” she said.

Some in the public, who came to support [the coach’s] contract renewal, agreed.

A $200,000 annual salary increase “is peanuts in the long run,” Rich Abajian, general manager for Findlay Toyota’s board of governors, told regents. “Football is the program that can pull you out of budget problems. … You’ve got to pay money to make money.”

It’s official.

Other blogs recommend YouTubes; here, for what it’s worth, is UD‘s idea of an entertaining YouTube.

… of the Boston Globe.

Wallack has way-doggedly gone after greed in academia and environs. When greedy academia and environs snarls back at Wallack with lawyers and public relations, Wallack just keeps going, publishing story after story until the truth is accepted by everyone except those whose livelihood depends on continuing to lie for greedy a&e.

And speaking of greed: Understanding postmodern American levels of greed is key to understanding Wallack’s latest story, about the ex-president of Brandeis University.

People are trying to explain the downfall of Virginia’s governor in terms of the insane disparity between the wealth of his fundraisers (with whom he and his wife hobnobbed) and the wealth of the guv and the missus. These two had to destroy their lives and make Virginia a laughingstock because of their need to keep up not with the Joneses but with people at the level of Jamie Dimon.

And speaking of Dimon, you cannot understand his just-announced 74% raise unless you understand that he operates within the same painful income-inequality-in-America reality. The gap between Bob McDonnell and other millionaires was as unconscionable as the gap between Jamie Dimon and other billionaires. One of these two was able to find justice legally; the other seems to have been driven to a life of crime.

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Ainsi, once you grasp the levels of greed-jockeying we are now, Year 2014, talking about, little in the story of sadly undercompensated Jehuda Reinharz will surprise you.

… Reinharz earned more than $600,000 in 2011 to serve as president emeritus, a part-time advisory role, in addition to receiving $800,000 that year in his new job for a Cleveland philanthropy.

But when you throw everything else in

… Reinharz is expected to collect roughly $8 million from Brandeis after stepping down as president…

Pretty much everyone at the school except the trustees is outraged. Because

… the school has long claimed social justice as one of its core values. Reinharz’s pay also came at a time of rising tuition and as the university was facing steep budget cuts that forced it to slash employee benefits, lay off staff members, and even explore the idea of shutting down a beloved campus museum.

In response to the outrage, Brandeis has graciously decided to

… include a faculty representative on the committee that sets executive pay …

which means that right now they’re racing desperately around the business school looking for the richest b-school professor on the faculty. Only a professor also running a hedge fund can understand executive compensation at these levels.

Ex-Yeshiva University trustee Bernie Madoff knew it, and current Yeshiva University trustee Zygi Wilf knows it. Universities are sunny places for shady people. They shed moral legitimacy. When we hear a person’s an officer and a benefactor of universities we get all warm and runny inside. Good man! Hip hip!

Universities also shed intellectual legitimacy. Let’s say you’re peddling a dietary supplement that probably does jack shit. You however wish to claim it cures all human ills so that you can become a billionaire. You need to give someone at a university – or in a governor’s mansion – enough money to get some legitimate studies of the thing going.

Yes, yes, I know what you’re saying. Catch-22. If it’s a legitimate university, the results won’t go your way.

But you’re only saying that because you lack imagination. The point is to smuggle your guys into the university. Look what Novartis did in Japan! Look what Star Scientific – the diet supplement guys – did at Hopkins!

Earlier this year, Star Scientific disclosed a federal investigation of its securities transactions, and several of the company’s shareholders have subsequently filed lawsuits in federal court — and this month in Richmond Circuit Court — alleging that the company misled its investors about scientific research on Anatabloc.

The lawsuits have focused on the company’s statements about research by two scientists who work at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The research looked at anatabine’s potential for treating certain types of thyroid disease, but Star Scientific’s stock price took a hit after Johns Hopkins University said the researchers were acting as consultants for the company and not on behalf of the university.

Fine, Catch-23. You might get caught. But a few bad outcomes don’t mean that there aren’t universities just sitting there waiting for you to use them to legitimate your crap. Not all universities are like the University of Virginia which despite the free wheewheewheewhee in a private jet some of its scientists got courtesy of Star Scientific still said no:

According to the indictment, researchers from the University flew by private jet with Virginia’s first lady to a Maryland symposium hosted by Star Scientific in July 2011. It also details a meeting between [the head of Star Scientific] and “senior UVA administrators” in November of that year to discuss UVA “taking the lead role” in seeking state grants to research Star Scientific’s top product. Bob McDonnell allegedly supported the proposal, but the University eventually declined, as evidenced by a string of correspondence months later.

One e-mail included in the indictment has Maureen McDonnell complaining to a staffer: “Gov wants to know why nothing has developed w studies after [Williams] gave $200,000.”

I mean put it together, people! You know you’re gonna get the grants because the governor’s gonna make sure you get them. Win-win! But no – some fuckwits at UVA decide to care about wasting their time and whoring themselves instead of doing actual research. Gawd.

… Freud, the sexual thought of adult Republicans is a dark continent for psychology.

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Josh Marshall on the GOP welcoming women back inside its big tent:

Coming off [Mike] Huckabee’s comments this morning about incentivizing horny women with birth control, Rep. Louis Gohmert says government tries to “lure” single moms into “servitude” with welfare…

‘War on Women? Please. We’re the Ones Who Respect You for Not Being Sluts!’ …

The killing of a teaching assistant by another teaching assistant (with whom he worked) sounds like an act of extreme rage. The killer brought not just a handgun but a knife, and he used both on the victim.

Once he got his rage out of his system, the killer seems to have relaxed quietly just outside the building.

Police say when an officer arrived, he spotted Cousins sitting on the ground outside the building with his hands behind his head.

Head resting in hands would have been What the hell did I just do? I just killed someone and ruined my life.

Hands behind head suggest Ahhhh. That’s done.

What can a new chancellor do (the last one was booted out after his university’s self-righteousness about its academic integrity ran hard up against its decades of bogus courses) but mouth comforting cliches about past wrongs and glorious futures?

That very unhealthy atmosphere of mistrust thing is interesting. It refers to the fact that now all professors at Chapel Hill are, like marine recruits, subject to spot checks to make sure that they’re actually meeting their classes. Apparently they’re no longer trusted to be doing that…

Yet the reality of recent history at Chapel Hill is that everyone from the trustees and the chancellor on down trusted that no real classes were being offered across a number of departments; they trusted that in this way their revenue athletes would be kept on the field and undistracted by mere academics.

It’s so totally part of the tradition of big-time athletics that now somehow it’s the legitimate faculty at Chapel Hill who have to be folded in to the shit stew cooked up by the athletics department and the university’s administration. Now, because of the money cynicism of provosts and trustees, actual professors are treated like sneaks and fakes. There’s no better demonstration of the way big-time sports destroys the very heart of universities.

But no worries! The new chancellor assures us that she’s nailed 95 theses to the library door, all about how icky and corrupt academics at the university used to be, but now that they’ve done the 95 thingies it’s all great.

… is Kevin O’Leary, a man who models b-school values so well that only Yeshiva University’s Ezra Merkin and Brown University’s Steven Cohen come close. We in the US can learn a lot from the capitalists up north.

Here’s Kev on the fact that “the 85 richest people in the world hold more wealth than the 3.5 billion poorest people.”

“It’s fantastic and this is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the one percent and say, ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get up to the top,’” he said. “This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this?”

Atta boy, Kev! And bravo UWO. You really know how to pick ’em.

UD is quoted in today’s Bloomberg News on the Yeshiva University disaster.

A Virginia Tech student does the math.

And what’s it add up to?

She’s going to a school that spits on education and worships football.

A student has been found dead in his dorm room on the Mount Vernon campus of George Washington University.

Police “have not classified [it] as a homicide.”

They will possibly be looking into whether the student’s death was alcohol-related. Or whether it was suicide.

Or whether the student had underlying health problems (a weak heart, for instance).

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Sean Keefer, a native of Oregon, and a student in GW’s honors program who was pursuing a degree in Math and Computer Science, died.

… it seems a little odd that Colorado State University is apparently about to impose extreme budget cuts.

A professor at CSU Pueblo sent out an email complaining about the cuts in colorful language (he called the chancellor a “hitman”) and promptly had his university email closed down (it has recently been restored). He probably faces other forms of punishment.

Go here for all the familiar stupid obscene reasons a school in CSU Pueblo’s position is part of a system building a new stadium (scroll down).

And when you’ve finished reading, wonder not at the rage that produced the “hitman” email.

… this one at at Purdue, where a teaching assistant sought out and shot a fellow teaching assistant to death, are unknown. Both worked for an engineering school professor. The killer apparently walked calmly to the classroom where he knew the victim would be, shot him multiple times, and then walked around a bit, waiting to be arrested.

Let us speculate.

The dead man was dating a woman the killer wanted to date.

The dead man was impressing the professor more than the killer was, and this enraged the killer.

The victim had ridiculed or put down the shooter in some way.

The victim and the shooter had had an earlier altercation, and this was payback.

The killer is a psychopath. (Very unlikely. They either kill themselves after they finish killing, or, like Amy Bishop, they drop the gun in a trash bin and proceed to go out to dinner with their husband. Bishop considered herself far too clever ever to be caught.)

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UPDATE: Hints begin to emerge:

[B]oth a Purdue professor who worked with him and a Purdue student say he could be rude and disliked being told he was wrong…

Purdue Professor Thomas Talavage describes Cousins as intense and aggressive about his projects. He says Cousins “didn’t like to be told he was wrong.”

UD is reminded of another university workplace murder: Annie Le’s killing at Yale. Some of the people who knew her murderer, who worked with Le, “described him as a ‘control freak’ who was competitive in sports, compulsive about his work habits and controlling in his romantic relationships.”

Tetched in the head University of Tennessee (follow its mad sports program here) is now, after years of medically unsupervised activity, in unbelievably deep shit.

… [F]our losing seasons in the last five years, and home attendance has steadily declined… Tennessee fired Derek Dooley following this past season and owes him $5 million. That’s after paying Phillip Fulmer a $6 million buyout (over 48 months) when he was forced out following the 2008 season.

… Tennessee’s reserves have been depleted by $21 million in transfers back to the university over the last three years and $11.4 million in buyouts to fired coaches in football, basketball and baseball, as well as administrators. Former Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton walked away in 2011 with a $1.335 million buyout.

That $11.4 million figure doesn’t count the $5 million owed to Dooley, nor an additional $2 million to his assistants.

It’s worse than that. The reeling drunks running the show have much more public cash than that dribbling out of their mouths. Plus we can anticipate plenty of player scandals and all that Chapel Hill stuff…

What to do?

Well, if you’re the University of Tennessee I tell you what. You do one thing and one thing only: RUN AWAY!!!! You’ve made your bed; now you have to …

RUN AWAY!!!!!!!

Don’t nobody get to watch us whiles we chew the fat ’bout our next move: A new stadium, fire the next coach and give him a ten million dollar buyout… We’re runnin’ the joint see and we do it our way and fuck you all.

A board that makes recommendations about the direction of the University of Tennessee’s athletic department reversed a longstanding policy last year, leading to closed-door meetings, little written documentation and questions from the press and transparency advocates… Transparency advocates counter that the university is a public institution, and its doings should be public record. The fact that two athletic board members are also on UT’s Board of Trustees caught the eye of the Tennessee Press Association’s Frank Gibson.