Hilarious article in, of all places, a legal journal, by bad boy Brian Tamanaha, who has broken the decorous silence we’re supposed to maintain about the greed and hypocrisy of American law professors. Tamanaha rightly targets progressives – like the Critical Legal Studies (Crits for short) people – who pat themselves on the back for their advocacy on behalf of the world’s oppressed, but who jealously guard their own wealth and status — all the while ignoring the oppressed in their own classrooms.

Tamanaha isn’t the first law professor to go there – that would be Kristin Luker – but he’s way farther out than Luker.

As the cost of legal education rose to astronomical heights, loading more and more debt on the backs of students, erecting an enormous economic barrier to access to the legal profession with major class implications, the Crits said nothing. Like other law professors, they have been playing in the academic sandbox, enjoying the increased income and release from teaching that followed from and was funded by the immense rise in tuition.

“How,” asks Tamanaha, “could developments so contrary to progressive causes occur at a time when most law professors are progressives?”

His answer:

Why we did not resist is straightforward: we benefited personally. Tuition increases meant yearly salary raises, research budgets to buy books and laptops, additional time off from teaching to write (or to do whatever we like), traveling to conferences domestically and abroad, rooms in fine hotels, and dining out with old friends. A sweet ride it has been. After becoming accustomed to such treatment, it seems normal to desire even more pay, and not think twice about traveling to Hawaii or taking the family to the annual Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference, held every summer at a luxury resort.

He concludes with a series of questions, among them:

Can we tell our friends in [progressive legal organizations] that it is unseemly to attend a conference about the future of legal education in Hawaii when so many law students and recent graduates are struggling desperately in the here and now, and can we suggest that they should have fought the rise of tuition as hard as they fought to preserve job security for professors?

Can we ask the liberal law professors at California-Irvine how they can preach to their students that they should engage in public service when they charge $50,000 tuition, loading students with debt, while insisting on getting top dollar for their own professorial services?

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At least conservative professors, like Todd Henderson, tend less toward hypocrisy. Henderson likes money, wants huge amounts of it, and seems to resent/consider himself in competition with people who make more than he does.

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The progressive law professors’ quandary recalls, for UD, the immortal statement of one who has solved it — Fulvia Morgana, the sybaritic Italian Marxist in David Lodge’s Small World:

Of course I recognize the contradictions in our way of life, but those are the very contradictions characteristic of the last phase of bourgeois capitalism, which will eventually cause it to collapse. By renouncing our own little bit of privilege we should not accelerate by one minute the consummation of that process, which has its own inexorable rhythm and momentum, and is determined by the pressure of mass movements, not the puny actions of individuals. Since in terms of dialectical materialism it makes no difference to the ‘istorical process whether Ernesto and I, as individuals, are rich or poor, we might as well be rich, because it is a role which we know ‘ow to perform with a certain dignity.

The chair of their trustees thinks big-time sports are “integral” to universities, and ASU, a perennial game loser, spends hugely on them (expenditures have gone up 44% since 2005). Campus culture is what you’d expect – scads of drunken fuckheads. You can watch them on their latest outing here. It’s bound to be a YouTube sensation — timely publicity for ASU as it competes with Chico State for the gun toting asshole applicant pool. This 2012 article describes an alarmed populace as ASU demolishes all frat and sorority houses (why?) and allows colonization of neighboring streets. With rhetoric suited to a war zone, ABC News headlines:

Frat Party Violence Escalating at Arizona State University

Dispatches from the war zone:

At [one] point, gunshots were fired. The ensuing panic sent hundreds of partygoers running for their lives.

We sing to you, dear ASU.

Now why would you do that?

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“[T]wo of the three roomates were already in custody over immigration violations…”

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More details:

Two students from New Bedford, Massachusetts, have been arrested on charges of making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to a federal law enforcement source with firsthand knowledge of the investigation. … The students are originally from Kazakhstan and were already in custody on immigration charges, according to another source with knowledge of the immigration case. The third is a U.S. citizen, the federal law enforcement source said.

More details. They certainly sound idiotic enough to have had some connection.

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What are friends for?

In a really spectacular instance of state corruption, a Salt Lake City justice court judge – a woman who used to chair the board of the Utah Law Related Education Project — a woman who “handles repeat DUI offenders” — has been arrested as part of a large tri-state drug distribution network.

The case of Virginia Bauskett Ward is truly remarkable, truly a piece of remarkable evidence — from one of our most self-righteous states — that the profoundly destructive opioid trade is beginning to embed itself in the country’s institutions.

… hits the big time.

He also claims that Wardle prevented him from enrolling in some science classes because a biology major would interfere with his athletic career in the years ahead.

… with their much-sought-after song, are back in UD‘s trees.

What they don’t tell you is that wood thrush never shut up.

You spend the first week after they’ve appeared in ecstasy.

You spend the rest of the summer wanting to throttle them.

Whatever happened to the American university? Once a quiet setting for serious thought, it’s become a shrieking sado-masochistic bedlam, captured most recently by this now-notorious SNL sketch, but really – as our latest perverted campus demonstrates – beyond parody. How do you parody a coach who reportedly made a player who felt unwell keep running in the team “boot camp” until the player lost control of his bowels? Who routinely called the same player a faggot and a pussy? Who “encouraged him to violate his religious beliefs by having sex with a girl in order to improve his play”?

Rest assured that Coach Brian Wardle makes pretty much the highest salary on campus, so the university is doing all it can to encourage his technique. If he’s made to leave, it will likely cost the university tons in buyout money.

How did things get so unspeakably sordid?

Big-time sports.

More statement of the obvious. One can only hope Melbourne University’s clueless vice-chancellor has been keeping up with the gender segregation controversy enough to have read this essay by Fiona Hill. Look sharp, man! Listen up.

[Hosting the sex-segregating group that Melbourne hosted] is analogous to permitting a right-wing Christian group to promote a Crusade to Syria to “rescue” it from non-Christians. Or permitting a radical Christian group to promote ethnic cleansing of Israel to make way for the Messiah.

Maybe before the vice-chancellor starts lecturing us about religious freedom he could check out some of the organizations his university hosts.

See this post for background.

Press release.

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UD thanks her sister.

Very thoughtful essay on the big new Diagnostic and Statistical sampler, bursting with psychiatric diagnoses for everyone in the family. Like Adam Phillips (“[H]appiness is the most conformist of moral aims. For me, there’s a simple test here. Read a really good book on positive psychology, and read a great European novel. And the difference is evident in one thing — the complexity and subtlety of the moral and emotional life of the characters in the European novel are incomparable. Read a positive-psychology book, and what would a happy person look like? He’d look like a Moonie. He’d be empty of idiosyncrasy and the difficult passions.”), Patricia Pearson perceives the philosophical destitution of a culture that’s handed the task of self-consciousness over to clueless family physicians — nice people desperately paging through the DSM for tranquilizers. To be sure, the difficult passions are difficult. That doesn’t mean you should pill them away.

… you’ll enjoy the fact that the thing gets funnier and funnier. Watch the Colbert interview with Thomas Herndon.

More update here.

Even as she writes, UD is watching multiple Priuses, BMWs, and pickups gather across the street from her Garrett Park house. An important civic ceremony is about to be held there. If UD knew how to take pictures, she’d take pictures of it.

But, you know. Use your imagination. Glamorously redone farmish house in one of the richest counties in the richest state in the country. Pleasantly cool wet weather. Modest news media presence. Spectacular spring blossoms everywhere. Insane colorful lushness.

UD knew about this event because her sister, Morrissey fanatic and MOOC-producer, works for the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, and told her about it.

Twenty people in trench coats are smiling and shaking each others’ hands while standing atop a semi-permeable driveway. County Executive Ike Leggett, elegant in a really good suit, stands in the middle of this semi-circle getting ready to say a few words.

About what? What’s the deal?

Well, the county is announcing a new program that financially compensates citizens who put in water gardens, semi-permeable driveways and God know what else along the lines of eco-mindedness. They’ve chosen UD‘s neighbor’s place for the announcement, which makes sense because she’s definitely put in all of that plus one of those absolutely no lawn (contrast to this UD‘s dandelion-rich expanse) cottage gardens.

Man – ANOTHER Prius. Wow.

Is the thousand dollar check or whatever my neighbor’s about to get a nice thing?

I guess so…. I mean… How to say this… We Rokeby Avenue folk are not exactly hurting financially; and my neighbor’s garden easily represents tens of thousands of dollars of expense… “Maybe they should target the program a little differently,” suggests Mr UD…

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Ike is about to climb them well-worn stairs (that’s George, to Martha, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and say a few words of thanks to my neighbor for allowing the event to take place at her place (as if the rest of us wouldn’t jump at the chance for this sort of attention… Over here over here! Look what I’ve done with my pachysandra! Sure she’s done this English rural thingie and it’s all environmentally correct blah blah but I’ve got a well-established Japanese garden over here without all those garish colors… A study in greens and textures over here! Maybe you can’t appreciate it because it’s quiet, subtle, tranquil, Japanese tea room kind of thing… Contemplative stroll garden over here!!… No one’s listening…).

We’ve already noted on this blog that since Australian universities stand for nothing, they have no trouble allowing gender segregated events on their campuses. MEN IN FRONT; WOMEN IN THE BACK. AND KEEP YOUR MOUTHS SHUT.

Fine, fine. Different strokes for different folks, says the University of Melbourne vice-chancellor, quite on the defensive after everyone, including the opposition leader and the Minister for the Status of Women, expressed shock at his university’s nonchalant collusion with what are arguably the most reactionary forces in the world today. After all, the university explained, this was an “external organisation.” Not my business, man!

So the v-c’s backtracking a bit, now that everyone’s squawking, and he’s pointing out some niceties in the discrimination law — without noting that the discrimination in this case is coming from that external organization about which his university cares not a whit. Without noting that universities not only have a right – they have a duty – to stand for the principles of democracy, and to bar (which, the v-c hastens to add, Melbourne will in fact start doing from now on) organizations founded on discrimination.

But tut-tut, says the v-c. All religious organizations deserve respect and consideration.

It’s anti-democratic, that is, to be intolerant of any group that calls itself religious, no matter what that group believes and does. And certainly no university has the right to “impose” what the v-c calls its “preferences” on anybody.

That’s why UD said in her last post about this that if you’re fed up with British universities and their intolerant respect for democratic principles, go to Australia.

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Jennifer Oriel gets it said.

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A professor at Melbourne who specializes in Islam sets the vice-chancellor straight.

[I]n the most sacred place on earth, the sacred mosque in Mecca, there is no separate section for men or women. Millions of Muslims visit the mosque and pray each year without the need to separate men from women.

…

Gender equality and associated values are fundamental to Australian society and those values must be respected by all, including those few Muslims who may not necessarily agree with them.

I find it very troubling that there are some who feel that they have a right to send women, whether Muslims or not, to the back of a lecture theatre as though this was the most natural place for women in such a setting.

For the men who organise public events to require women participants to go to the back of the facility is a breach of trust and a misuse of the facilities of the university.

It is also demeaning to women. I’m sure most Australian Muslims would also be deeply offended by such practices and would indeed question the connection between the practice and their understanding of Islam.

Yes, it’s grotesque that this man must clarify basic human rights and the proper use of his university to the vice-chancellor. But I’m afraid that’s where we are now. At least in Australia.

… of János Starker’s cello.

Starker has died, at age 88.

Starker was known for being tough on his students. Former IU basketball coach Bobby Knight, himself known for the demands he placed on his players, asked Starker to come speak to his team.

Afterward one of the players came up to Starker and asked if he could tell Starker a joke.

“Mr Starker there was a car accident and three cellists died and they all tried to get to Heaven,” the student said. He then goes on to explain the joke. St. Peter asks the first two with whom they studied. They answer they studied with Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonard Rosen. St. Peter tells both of them they have to go to Hell.

The third one tells St. Peter he studied with Starker. Then comes the punch line.

“St. Peter says ‘You may come in. You already went through Hell.’”