[Joseph] Biederman, along with Charles Nemeroff, who was then at Emory University, and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford (the 116th President of the American Psychiatric Association) are in many ways poster boys for [pharma corruption]. Ironically, it was Schatzberg, during his presidency in 2009, who responded vehemently to Allen Frances’s criticisms of the DSM 5 task force by pointing to the $10,000 in royalties Frances was still receiving from DSM IV. Apparently, the $4.8 million in stock options Schatzberg had in a drug development company, or the fat fees he received from such companies as Pfizer, had no similar distorting effect on his judgment — just as the $960,000 Charles Nemeroff received from GlaxoSmithKline (while reporting only $35,000 to his university) had no influence on him. And just as the millions of dollars that Biederman and his associates at Harvard received for creating a new diagnosis and a massive new market for antidepressants and second-generation antipsychotics among young children (drugs associated with massive weight gain, metabolic disorders, diabetes, and premature death) had nothing to do with their behavior!

Nemeroff is now at the University of Miami, but that’s not a scandal because Miami isn’t a respectable university. The scandal lies at respectable places like Stanford and Harvard, which will “turn a blind eye to ethical failings if the money on offer is sufficiently tempting.”

… takes you, in miniature, through the moral and financial history of this country. Let us follow it.

The place was founded in 1863 by the Poor Sisters of Saint Francis. This charitable lot opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression that fed hundreds of people a day. Over the years it’s been sold and sold again, and it’s had lots of financial trouble along the way and presumably compromised somewhat on care … But the story has a happy ending!

Hoboken University Hospital (UD can’t figure out what the “university” is doing in the name, but as long as the word is there, University Diaries will write about it) has recently been sold to investors – featured on the front page of today’s New York Times – who do things like this:

“Their model is to charge exorbitant rates, particularly for emergency room services, and if the insurance companies don’t pay them, they threaten to go after the member for the balance of billing,” said Carl King, head of national networks for Aetna, whose in-network contract was also ended by Bayonne in 2008.

And now their hospitals are doing great! They’re taking struggling non-profits once affiliated with shabby little charitable outfits like those poor sisters and turned them into HUGE profit centers! Look at what’s going on in another of their hospitals – the most expensive hospital in the United States!

Aetna’s internal data showed that Bayonne Medical’s emergency room charges jumped again in 2012 and are running 6 to 12 times as high as those of surrounding hospitals. Last fall, [the chief investor in Bayonne Medical] bought the designer Tory Burch’s oceanside home in Southampton for $11 million, according to public records.

Yes, the story of this hospital’s transformation from a modest charitable endeavor devoted to healing to a cutting-edge collections agency is America’s Story.

Major excitement on Rokeby Avenue today. UD is in her office at Foggy Bottom right now, where she just received this email from Mr. UD:

The groups we saw walking around with maps [this morning] are members of the American Volksport Association, or others tagging along on walks this group is organizing (in particular their local club Annapolis Amblers). Today’s 10k walk is Kensington-Garrett Park. They are directed from Penn Place on Rokeby and then up on Argyle, but before that they are directed to take a little sidetrip a bit further on Rokeby to see the garden sculptures of Ferdinand the Bull. So today hundreds of people will walk on Rokeby to our house, look at the bulls, and then turn around go back, and take Argyle uphill, a special trip just to see our house.

… of that very curious trustee, Steven Cohen, the man whose investment firm keeps turning up in the news. The government seems to think it’s an illegal enterprise, and indeed some of its traders seem headed for prison.

And as investors take their money out of the firm (unlike Brown, which stands stalwart behind Cohen, the investors recognize a sinking ship when they see one), SAC has said in a letter that it’s not going to cooperate with the SEC investigators “unconditionally” anymore.

So… things are fraying at SAC… but Brown University, which has had trouble with trustees, not to mention presidents, before, is apparently going to play the game out, thus solidifying its reputation as the academic institutional embodiment of American greed and illegality.

… a dead ringer for Leonard Bernstein, is the subject of a forthcoming film about his campaign against the DSM.

… (the big three here are Hawaii, Alaska, and Nevada) has a farcical public university system.

HEADLINE #1:

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT DEBT
EXPECTED TO REACH $13M

HEADLINE #2:

BUILDING ENROLLMENT, FOOTBALL TEAM,
PART OF PLAN FOR NEW UNIVERSITY OF
HAWAII WEST OAHU CHANCELLOR

And what a chancellor!

[With Rockne] Freitas’ background as a [football] star at Oregon State University and his many years in the NFL, as well as being instrumental in bumping up UH football to the Mountain West Conference, anything is possible.

… at Inside Higher Education, on the upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

A curious conference at Bard
Has left its professors quite scarred.
When asked about Summa
They say Man what a bumma.
Disregard! Disregard! Disregard!

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

UD thanks Josh.

… is unsurprising. She made a mess. But FAU’s fatal problem remains: It’s not a university. It holds some classes, yes. But it doesn’t much care about its faculty (all sorts of knaves and fools lurk there and create embarrassment for the school); and it has poured huge money into a football stadium that everyone knows will sit empty and bankrupt the place. Recall that FAU was so desperate to get a naming sponsor’s money that they agreed to have the name of a shady for-profit prison company be emblazoned on the stadium — until ridicule and outrage forced the university to withdraw from the deal. The president blames “fiercely negative media coverage” for her downfall, but when you make a mess that’s what you get.

Parsing moral responsibility at Arizona State University is a subtle thing.

Yes, fraternity members encouraged a classmate to drink himself to death…

On the other hand, when he started to die they dropped him at the local hospital…

Even more nobly, before they abandoned him in the lobby one student taped a piece of paper onto his body with information about how much he’d had to drink. The world will little note, nor long remember, exactly what the student wrote, but it can never forget what he did …

Similarly, after an exploding beer bottle someone threw into a bonfire badly burned two women, ASU students “helped extinguish the girls’ flaming skin.” Then they “kicked them out of the party to avoid getting into trouble.”

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

These are the sorts of moral scenarios philosophy professors like to use in their classrooms. They’re stories with a rich ambiguity that can provoke valuable discussion.

After cheering while a friend drinks himself to the point of death, should you

1. put him away in a room to die or sleep it off?
2. take him to the hospital?
3. put clothes on him? (he only had on a bathing suit)
4. stay long enough to talk to a doctor or nurse?
5. abandon him?
6. stick a note on him and then abandon him?

After setting off an explosion that grievously injures two people, should you

1. douse their flames?
2. throw them out into the night?

Hail, Chairman Cheney!

Our football team has not achieved the success we would have liked to have seen over the years, but we have had pockets of success that inspire. How about our three Aggie players drafted into the NFL for three consecutive years! For those who watched, NMSU beat Minnesota two years ago — there was a state of elation that had people talking the whole season. Who can deny that a win against our major rivals — UTEP or UNM — creates electricity and enthusiasm for a unified Aggie Nation! My challenge to all of us is to get behind and support our teams that represent us with such pride. Anyone can criticize. It takes fortitude to be a supporter on our way to achieving the success we desire.

I am proud of New Mexico State University. If we aspire to be known as one of America’s great universities, we are going to need to act like we are one of those universities today! That is what is called vision! When we believe in our vision; when we support our faculty; when we support our staff; when we support our administration; when we support our coaches and athletic director; and yes, when we support our board of regents; success will be ours! It takes courage to stand tall in the face of criticism. It takes heart to support our student-athletes who are giving it their all, each time that enter a competition. It takes special people to take NMSU to a new place, and I believe we are in a place in our history, with people of passion, who can help us get there!

Stand tall! Anyone can criticize!!

… the University of Colorado. They’ve had years of absolutely fascinating violence, rape, alcohol, and spending scandals, and it just keeps coming! One of their players went out the other night and drank, by his estimation, “six glasses of wine, 10 beers and six shots of various other alcohols,” and got into a big ol’ fight with some random guy on the street and practically killed him. Haha! More great shit for the team; plus for the … … … university? I think there’s a university somewhere in these stories…!

UD thinks all the people who want to end the alcohol ban at CU’s Folsom Field should use this guy in their ads. LOL.

… Mike Rice.

… This is what comes of not knowing the difference between principle and principal. The mistake follows you around, finally ending up on your US Foreign Policy syllabus:

The aim of this course is to examine the formation of U.S. foreign policy. The principle questions include…

Your uncertainty about this and other conundrums gnaws at you until late one night you turn on all the lights, get out one of your many guns, and shoot at the ceiling of your university-owned house forty times.

Lesson: Learn your homophone pairs.

If you want to be among the top twenty most highly compensated public university presidents in the United States, it helps to preside over spectacular crimes. Penn State’s Graham Spanier, “awaiting trial on criminal charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected child abuse and conspiracy,” took the number one spot for 2011-2012; coming in at #11 was Florida A&M’s James Ammons, who had the beating to death of one of his marching band members at the hands of other members of the band on his watch. Even if your sports factory doesn’t manage to produce child rape or manslaughter, the simple expedience of being an eager slave of your coaches may do the trick: Auburn’s president made the list, as did Gordon Gee of Ohio State.