More on enforced gender segregation at Israel’s Hebrew University. Haaretz notes the Catch-22 – if you want to educate and make employable this enormous, growing, anti-democratic minority, you need to assimilate them into twenty-first century universities. But their regressive ways, especially their bigotry toward women, make them refuse norms of equality. The editorial in Haaretz concludes:

Hebrew University, like other academic institutions, is a public space in which students from different groups study and, while doing so, meet one another. This crucial interaction is one of the hallmarks of a liberal society in which women and men are to be treated equally. The university’s leaders would do well not to sponsor – academically or otherwise – an institution whose principles contravene these basic tenets.

So you keep the bigots out; but then you sustain a system of separate schools where the anti-democratic norms of the minority continue to thrive, and the minority continues to be what many Israeli commentators describe as a major existential threat to the nation of Israel.

The only possible solution I can see involves places like Hebrew University going ahead and assimilating these groups but making it clear the university will not budge on its democratic principles. No sex segregation. Probably a few haredim will attend despite the democratic nature of the institution; and perhaps eventually, as more and more of them find ways to tolerate the presence and equal status of women in university settings, the problem will be to a significant extent solved.

The farcical University of Southern Mississippi is being helmed by a bunch of big strong men who know exactly what they’re doing. The school’s very president turns out to be a major jocksman who – now that he’s prez – is gonna jigger things so that that pesky ol’ million plus athletics deficit is gonna be gone with the wind just you wait and see. He’s hired a really expensive search firm (for the fourth athletic director) and he’s paying coach Vince Dooley to advise and … well, all this extra expenditure and personnel turnover is gonna make the deficit disappear!

… as Stevie Smith might have said. Our bog, University Diaries, has been dood, and is still somewhat moribund (takes rather a long time to open, for instance). The reasons are complex (we weren’t hacked; the problem has to do with success, as in this blog generates too much traffic for the old server it’s on) but they are (slowly) on their way to being resolved, and I have as always to thank my webmistress, Carolyn, and my readers, several of whom wrote to tell me that things weren’t working. I apologize for the difficulties UD readers have been having with the site; things should be much better very soon. Feel free to write to me or Carolyn (see bottom of this page) with any updates.

Meanwhile, I’ll try to post a bunch of new stuff I’ve been accumulating. We’ll see how things go.

UD grew up being told that Israel was the only democracy in the middle east. With gender segregated buses and city streets and clinics, Israel looks less and less like a democracy to UD, equal rights of men and women being pretty basic to democracies. And now one of its major universities seems on the verge of mandating segregated courses of study:

[Hebrew University plans] to offer special B.A. programs to ultra-Orthodox students who want to study in gender segregated classrooms.

The plan hasn’t gone up for a vote onaccounta the faculty is a mite upset.

“When I hear of gender segregation on a bus or in the street, I am outraged as a citizen. I don’t want this kind of thing to take place in my academic home,” says Prof. Rehav Rubin of Hebrew University.

“It’s a shocking idea,” one lecturer wrote. “Neither gender segregation or sectorial instruction should be allowed within university walls.”

“Gender segregation at Hebrew University would lead to disaster,” a female lecturer wrote.

“The norms of gender segregation and female exclusion are expanding,” said deputy rector Prof. Orna Kupferman, who was in charge of integrating Haredim. “They are contrary to every principle the university stands for. We’re dealing with a separation that constitutes hierarchy and discrimination…Women are [seen as] inferior and that’s that.”

Yes, the norms of exclusion are expanding in Israel despite very strong efforts to contract them. When a great university begins to move toward this form of bigotry, you know Israel is losing the battle.

… and the pounding of the boardwalk by runners – these are the elements, so far, of morning at the beach. Dolphins, photographers, runners.

It’s overcast enough to allow me to sit here, on the balcony, and see my screen in order to type this.

The sun emerged about an hour ago but almost immediately looked red-faced and hid in the clouds. The clouds were thin and let out some rays, but that didn’t last long.

In other words, today’s mariner’s tale hasn’t gained much traction. One dolphin pod; one photographer trying to capture the pod and the pallid rays; the boardwalk runners.

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Flat ocean, sandflats. And the water and horizon gray. There’s none of last night’s antics under the supermoon, the cartwheeling and kiting that seemed a dance to the moon. Two beach weddings, set off by lines of streamers, went on during the revels. The guitarist sitting by one of the canopies played Pachelbel. You could hear the ground bass.

White streamers and wedding parties on moon-blanch’d sand on the longest day of the year. Now it’s Sunday and solitary and pensive with no sun and no moon.

I woke up with Schubert’s Litanei in my head. All souls rest in peace.

… runs, rather close to our shore,
big red container ships.

With my small binoculars, this afternoon, I read Hamburg Süd, in white letters, along the side of a vessel. I could see its massive containers, on their way to the port of Philadelphia I guess, lined up on board. This is a thing I do from my Rehoboth Beach balcony; I follow the movements of container ships as they balance on the edge of the horizon.

Mr UD joined me on the balcony, looked through the binoculars, and said Brian Barry wrote his long review of A Theory of Justice from a Greek freighter bound for Africa.

I said Tony Judt, when he lived on a kibbutz, used to go to Haifa whenever he could, to gaze longingly at freighters bound for “Famagusta, Izmir, Brindisi, and other cosmopolitan destinations.”

This was the longest day of the year; we stood on a balcony that would remain clear and light for hours. We thought of dolphin-torn gong-tormented seas.

But this, right now, was a calm sea. On the almond sand in front of it, huge ridiculous kites tethered into the sand twisted and swelled.

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We love this child’s garden of light. It is one of Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, and we are just as grateful for it as she was.

… West Virginia University, America’s Number One party school, where… ugh. I can’t. I’ll puke. You can read it if you want. You read it. You read it.

… in America, gets its big ol’ stonewalling ass sued.

La vie en football factory.

… just passed the three thousand students mark!

UD thanks her sister, without whose technical assistance, and enthusiasm for the project, she never could have done it.

The University of Pittsburgh is a university, a non-profit institution advantaged in myriad ways because of its tax breaks as a non-profit. It is categorized, in fact, as a charity. Are you with me so far?

The person who runs the university’s hospital makes six million dollars a year.

Does that sounds like an appropriate use of tax-payer money? Like a non-profit salary? Or are you smelling just the slightest whiff of profit motive in this figure? Throw in private jets and chefs and chauffeurs and all and you begin to understand why the city of Pittsburgh is suing the hospital, and why this trend – suing so-called non-profits to make them act like (and share like) the for-profits they are – is becoming national.

But local Pittsburgh politics aside, large non-profit health systems are getting new attention from city and state tax officials across the country facing budget crises. “The fact is hospitals are coming under more scrutiny,” says Gary Young, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research. “The city’s willingness to take on a hospital with the cachet that UPMC has is sending a chill down the spines of many hospitals around the country who are saying, ‘If this is happening in Pittsburgh, what could happen with us?’”

I remind you of all this in connection with the public relations problems NYU is currently facing, as its administrators and some of its faculty help themselves to vacation houses on their students’ – and the taxpayer’s – dime.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I think part of the problem is.

The trend toward packing your board of trustees with Olympians like Steven A. Cohen (personal wealth nine billion dollars) and just down from there is that you as an administrator now hobnob on a regular basis with such people. Study after study tells us that perceptions of one’s financial success are profoundly dependent on the financial profile of the people in your neighborhood, at your workplace. It’s all comparative.

Your attitude toward personal wealth thus shifts as hedge fund managers become the new normal on campus. Your one million dollar a year compensation becomes downright embarrassing. Infuriating. What to do?

You convince yourself you can’t attract the mega-rich and their money to your campus without dressing, talking, and living like them.

You’re not being greedy; on the contrary, you’re doing high-minded work on behalf of the university by styling yourself a financial titan on the same level as your trustees.

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One saw this process very clearly on the Yeshiva board of trustees when Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin – men of unimaginable personal wealth – walked as gods among the administrators there. Fellow trustees and high-ranking administrators at Yeshiva fell over themselves to be cut into Merkin/Madoff deals. These people used to think they were rich. M and M showed up and showed them they were poor. “We thought he was God,” says Yeshiva trustee Elie Wiesel of Bernard Madoff.

So, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. If the water level is one billion dollars in personal assets, everyone’s going to want to rise to that. It won’t seem strange to them – it doesn’t seem strange to NYU – that multi-million dollar vacation homes would be part of a university compensation package. I mean, by prevailing standards, that’s nothing! That’s the bare minimum.

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This is all well and good – this rising tide business – until people who actually know what non-profits are — or people who realize they are giving their tax money to university robber barons — themselves begin to rise up.

So, nu, would it have killed you to cooperate? I mean, since you didn’t cooperate (which would have meant, far as I can tell, a not-outrageous amount of work on your part), you now have two problems: You got the lowest possible ranking on a national, high-profile, ed-school ranking; and you look as though you knew what was coming so you… didn’t cooperate.

George Washington University was among the lowest-ranked programs in the country. It received this warning from the council: “No prospective teacher candidates should entrust their preparation to these programs because candidates are unlikely to obtain much return on their investment.”

Here’s some stuff about the rankings:

Released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group, the rankings are part of a $5 million project funded by major U.S. foundations. Education secretaries in 21 states have endorsed the report… The review was funded by 62 organizations, led by the Carnegie Corporation and the Broad Foundation. The National Council on Teacher Quality analyzed admissions standards and inspected syllabuses, textbooks and course requirements and rated 1,430 programs on a scale of zero to four stars.

What, you said we don’t have to cooperate with that fly-by-night Carnegie Corporation… ?

Isn’t the business of being in denial about how bad they are one of the big reasons many ed schools are so bad?

So now your only option is to dump on the Carnegie and the Broad and all those education secretaries… Only we know what we’re doing… They don’t know what they’re doing…

Here’s what you should have done:

The University of Michigan’s School of Education was one of the few institutions that willingly gave its materials to the National Council on Teacher Quality. “There was no particular reason not to,” said Dean Deborah Loewenberg Ball. “This is one of society’s most important topics.”

Let UD give you some advice, not that you’ll take it: Apologize for not cooperating (or at least give some reason for not having done so that doesn’t make you look dumb) and say that while you think the rating unfair, it’s one of many useful sources of criticism available to the school, and will be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, you’re going to have a bumpy pr ride for awhile, and you should be thinking in broader terms about how to manage it. One thing to do would be to publish and defend elements of your curriculum. The head of GW’s teaching program should right now (or in a few hours; it’s 4:13 AM) be preparing an opinion piece to be sent to the Washington Post which in measured terms explains and defends the school’s curriculum, admissions philosophy, etc.

UD will now check out GW’s teacher training curriculum. She’s happy to speculate about what might have set off the Council.

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UPDATE: The Washington Post is scathing:

The council’s methodology was developed over eight years, relying on a review of course descriptions, syllabuses, student-teacher observation instruments and other materials. It came under immediate attack as incomplete and inaccurate from institutions of higher education. Such criticism is rich considering that many of these same institutions fought tooth and nail to keep materials from researchers. “Tremendously uncooperative” is how Kate Walsh, president of the council, described many institutions, which refused to share textbooks or course descriptions. The council had to file open-records requests; many private institutions that are not subject to Freedom of Information requirements opted out. What were they trying to hide?

…by offering them amazing loans not only for fantastic Manhattan apartments and vacation houses (as described in this article) but also for third homes in European capitals?

To be sure, NYU hasn’t yet extended its two-subsidized-luxury-residences policy to a third subsidized overseas residence; but UD is confident this will be its next move. You can’t expect to draw the best, most committed professors to your unattractive school in Greenwich Village without offering to subsidize a primary residence, a vacation residence, and a place in a foreign capital of the professor’s choosing.

I mean, let’s do what the real estate people call comps; let’s look at how important people in Manhattan tend to live. Take the Murdochs. They own six residences, one on the Upper East Side, and the others in “Beverly Hills, London, Beijing, Cavan in South Australia and Carmel in California.” So say you’re recruiting a new NYU law professor. The legal job market has collapsed, so few of the professor’s students will get good legal jobs, but put that aside. She must be given what the very best professors demand if they are to be successfully recruited: One course per year. Armies of teaching assistants. A huge salary. Time off like crazy. Summer travel and research money. Plenty of freedom (and, once again, time) to pursue all conceivable forms of outside compensation.

You simply cannot expect such a person to buy a house with her own salary. You will need to give her spectacular deals on Murdoch-worthy residences in New York City, in surrounding states, and in a foreign capital.

Charles Grassley, that sour old scold who seems to see his job as superintending the American tax dollar, gets all high and mighty about what NYU is doing:

“Universities are tax-exempt to educate students, not help their executives purchase vacation homes,” he said in a statement on Monday. “It’s hard to see how the student with a lifetime of debt benefits from his university leaders’ weekend homes in the Hamptons.”

Ha! Loser! As Greg Mankiw and Eric Cantor have noted, Grassley’s just envious because he has a shitty little Senator salary, and these people are so much richer.

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UD thanks David.

How degrading is it to be a professor at West Virginia University?

Well two of the school’s, er, troubled coaches (the predecessor of one of them was Rick Rodriguez of sainted memory) are getting enormous raises on top of their enormous salaries, while because of “a $13 million cut in state funding to the school … tuition [will] be raised and no pay raises [will] be forthcoming for university employees.”

This writer suggests that these wildly overcompensated coaches (neither has won many games lately) “could donate [their raises] for pay raises to university employees,” but you know how that goes. Greed has no limit in the lovely world of big-time university athletics. Reread the Wikipedia page on Rodriguez if you’re in any doubt.

The writer concludes:

The point is, that we have reached a point in time where some independent outside panel should look into the finances of the school and the athletic department, a thorough and comprehensive study that includes all financial areas, including [AD Oliver] Luck’s travel and the dealings over the athletic department’s Tier 3 negotiations, the reseating within the Coliseum and the raise in the required donations for football seats, all of which has stirred up what had been a loyal public.

This entire mess has grown to such proportions and entangles both the university’s finances and the athletic department’s finances, creating a situation where a soccer coach finds a way to get a new locker room built, where a football coach gets a new weight room to go with a raise and a $300,000 retention bonus next year but a math professor can’t get a three percent raise that someone has to come in and work it out.

Well, but you have to keep in mind the nature of the institution. You’re talking about America’s number one party school. Number one! So who’s that someone gonna come in and work it out? A public university doesn’t get to the top of that list without a concerted, statewide effort.

No, as that ridiculous thing, a professor at West Virginia University, you’re in a hopeless situation. UD‘s advice: Seek respectable employment.

… which seems to be (background here) working its way toward becoming America’s first faculty-free sports factory. A couple of faculty members – astonished by the university’s sudden “sweeping” of all departmental accounts – asked to see the school’s budgets for some recent years.

They were told that collecting, preparing and copying their requested documents — estimated by the university to total some 300,000 pages — would cost them more than $54,000 each.

Well, that’s one way to try to increase your revenue – extort money from people trying to determine how inept your budgeting is.