A top partner at the firm is also representing one of the suspected leakers, James V. Mazzo, who was the chief executive officer of Advanced Medical at the time of the takeover.

What could be duller than insider trading? It’s so de rigueur even Martha Stewart does it. But universities don’t yet regard it as mainstream enough to want insider traders on their boards of trustees.

UD has said for years that with the takeover of BOTs by way high-flying business people (see the recent Unpleasantness at the Board of Visitors Club) we’re going to see more and more trustees dumped because of suspicions of or accusations of or convictions on insider trading charges.

Now three universities – UC Irvine, University of San Diego, and Chapman – need to start a Google News search on Mazzo, a trustee.

… has stepped down. That was quick.

According to my calculations, the University of Virginia is effectively without a president. Conditions are ripe for a real coup – maybe Jock McKernan, who not only has an absolutely fabulous first name which will erase all memories of someone having appointed a matronly woman president (details here), but who combines the two qualities – dynamic business sense and enthusiasm for online education – so important to the board of visitors. McKernan is chair of the board at the notorious Education Management Corporation. And EMC is largely owned by Goldman Sachs.

He’s a twofer.

… Grushenko (start at 1:50), a creative writing professor at the Open University repurposes the stories of writers like Dylan Thomas.

… to reconsider their having fired President Teresa Sullivan (UD predicts that they will reappoint her), UD asks you to consider this angle of the scandal:

It’s also hard to ignore the role of gender in these events. I have briefly met, or at least been in the same room with, both Sullivan and her predecessor, John Casteen… Casteen is the picture of a classic university president in appearance and affect, a tall white man of distinguished age who spoke with total confidence and authority, verging on arrogance. Sullivan was more of a listener, offering constructive commentary while letting others have their say. She is also a matronly woman of 62 who doesn’t evoke simple-minded visions of “bold leadership” in the management-consulting, advertisement vein.

All true, and indeed throughout these events UD has thought about the likelihood that the absence of lean mean chiseling at the top has been driving the hedgies bonkers. The interim replacement these people chose, the head of the biz school, looks just like Robert Rubin.

What they forgot, for all their expensive public relations advice, was that this sort of move can backfire very very badly.

Two words: Susan Boyle.

A University of Maryland economist applauds the overthrow of U Va’s fearful, incrementalist president and looks forward to the initiation of the school’s faculty into the rigors of market life.

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

After all, consider what hideous shape the place is in, market-wise:

A $5 billion endowment makes it the wealthiest public university, per capita, in the United States. Over 28,000 students applied for admission last year, a record high.

You only get results like these when faculty retreat behind ivy walls and trembletrembletremble at the rigors of the marketplace…

Not only that, but its impeccably kept campus has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site!

If no one steps in to stop this process, the University of Virginia will begin to look like a smelly pirate hooker before the week is out. With new market rigors and massive onlining, however, U Va will finally be able to compete with Everest College.

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

Here’s a slightly different take on the marketplace at U Va:

A university governed entirely by wealthy businesspeople steeped in a culture of corporate strategy memos will reflect the peculiar perspectives of the modern rich. The financialized American economy has made vast fortunes for gamblers with poor impulse control who mistake a lucky roll of the dice for intelligence and virtue. It’s not surprising that the same kind of fast-twitch thinking would lead a group of homogenous financial patrons talking among themselves to lose patience with a career higher education administrator who was insufficiently galvanized by the latest columns from Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.

U Va’s trustees were afraid “That the university would be forced to get by with $5 billion in the bank.” And indeed that is a sickeningly paltry sum. Harvard is on its way to forty billion. What the hell is U Va thinking? If Harvard needs an endowment larger than the GNP of most countries, so does U Va.

[T]he multiplication of bipolar diagnoses [based on mood swings]… [turns] regular variations in human moods into pathology.

… In children, the diagnosis has increased by over 400%.

… Yet doctors often feel safer encouraging patients who report mood swings to go on long-term and even lifelong medication. The same drugs that were once sold to temper the manic episode are now rebranded as prophylactics, necessary not to treat the episode but to stop it happening again.

The Guardian

A commenter at the Lexington Herald-Leader explains why it’s pointless for a local columnist to criticize the University of Kentucky basketball program.

… an island, why can’t he buy a university?

Again, nicely put. University of Virginia professors are giving it their all, stylistically, as they skip town. This is Ian Macara, distinguished microbiologist. He’s outta here.

A writer at Above the Law notes the difficulties UD‘s George Washington University is having administering a program designed to tide our unemployed law graduates over for awhile.

The writer points out that rather than dealing with significant numbers of heavily indebted, unemployed students, the law school might – among other things – reduce the size of its classes (GW seems to be doing this, but rather slowly) and take a hard look at its faculty salaries.

Readers will be reminded of the case of Johan Hari, a young hot British journalist who got much farther than Jonah Lehrer has along these lines.

Finally, a clear statement from the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. Heady stuff.

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

UD thanks Daniel.

… this blog claims that Teresa Sullivan, expunged president, has filed suit. I have no idea whether it’s true, but if it is, lots of new documents will come to light.

But you’re a Kentucky fan, which means you’re much too far gone to give a shit.

Barnhart acknowledged that the [basketball ticket] increases could be considered ill-timed considering how Kentucky Coach John Calipari refused earlier this year to extend the series with Indiana on a home-and-home basis. That removed a potential game between top-five opponents from UK’s home schedule in 2012-13.

“I understand,” Barnhart said of any potential fan dissatisfaction. “There are some of those pieces that are difficult to reconcile.”

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

Oh yeah. UK football sucks. The program is bleeding money.

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

But at least Forbes ranks UK 427th best university in the nation!

They’re both clinically dead.