… but UD‘s hometown abundantly – maybe even uniquely – caters to your every political whim. So UD has for awhile been taken up with the issue of global female genital mutilation (half a million women in the United States have been cut, or are at risk of cutting, 50,000 of them in the Washington region; Maryland, where UD lives, is one of eight states with the highest rates), and a couple of nights ago she had merely to walk a few hundred yards from her university office in order to take part in a spectacular global forum about it.

She was able to ask one of the lead DOJ attorneys on the Jumana Nagarwala case in Detroit if we’re actually going to be able to put this Johns Hopkins University med school graduate in prison for a long time.

“We do not,” she replied, “take cases we are not confident we can win.” (Applause broke out at this.)

UD looks forward to Johns Hopkins University publicly rescinding Nagarwala’s degree, on the grounds that medical schools in the United States are not butcheries.

Linda Weil-Curiel, a heroic French attorney with a heroic family history, described her years of successful prosecution against cutters. “My most rewarding moment? I was sitting in a courthouse, looking over some notes, when three large and menacing men surrounded me. ‘You’re the reason our women no longer obey us,’ they said.”

Here she talks about the central, overwhelming importance of a secular state with a commitment to universal human rights. Lately she’s been trying to get all of this across to hapless England, which has a scandalously huge FGM problem, about which it seems unable to do anything. But of course French laïcité gives them an advantage, in this as in so many other matters.

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Speaking of visually compelling, Pierre Foldès, the surgeon who pioneered reconstructive surgery for those who’ve been cut, was also there, and he treated us to many large graphic images of the whole shebang: mutilation, rehabilitation. Ol’ UD wasn’t expecting this, and she doesn’t mind telling you she underwent a certain interval of heebie-jeebies until she settled in to the whole clinical observation thing.

… when it’s all about screens, it’s only a matter of time before the classroom and the stadium disappear. Why go to class if it’s about playing on your computer while some fool at the front of the room plays with PowerPoint? Why go to a football game if it’s about forced, game-long watching of football-field-length mega-screens (the famed Adzillatrons) screaming ads for used cars at you, while you wait for the people who control the home viewer’s television screen to decide those ads are over and play can resume? Why would any rational, self-respecting person continue either of these degrading and pointless activities?

Let’s be more precise. Let’s look at fabled sports school University of Michigan.

This spring, the Michigan athletic department admitted what many had long suspected: Student football ticket sales are down, way down, from about 21,000 in 2012 to a projected 13,000-14,000 this season.

The department has blamed cell phones, high-definition TV and student apathy sweeping the nation. All real problems, to be sure, but they don’t explain how Michigan alienated 40 percent of its students in just two years — and their parents, too.

Forty percent in two years. Wow. Let’s see how they did it!

1. Since the game-day experience is so wonderful, you raise “the price from $195 for six games in 2013 to $295 for seven games.”

2. “Because just about every major college game is televised, ticket holders have to endure about twenty commercial breaks per game, plus halftime. That adds up to more than 30 minutes of TV timeouts — about three times more than the 11 minutes the ball is actually in play.”

3.

While TV is running ads for fans at home, college football stadiums too often give their loyal season-ticket holders not the marching band or — heaven forbid — time to talk to their family and friends, but rock music and, yes, ads! To its credit, Michigan doesn’t show paid advertisements [most other universities do], but the ads it does show — to get fans to host their weddings at the 50-yard line, starting at $6,000, and their corporate receptions in the skyboxes, starting at $9,000 — Michigan fans find just as annoying.

Yes, advertising in the Big House does matter. Americans are bombarded by ads, about 5,000 a day. Michigan Stadium used to be a sanctuary from modern marketing, an urban version of a National Park. Now it’s just another stop on the sales train… Fans are fed up paying steakhouse prices for junk food opponents, while enduring endless promotions. The more college football indulges the TV audience, the more fans paying to sit in those seats feel like suckers.

(By the way, all of this will be okay when the University of Las Vegas builds its new football stadium with the world’s largest Adzillatron. Las Vegas is Suckers Central.)

4. While waiting for the ads to finish so those precious eleven minutes can begin to tick, fans can contemplate the AD’s “$1 million salary, almost three times what [the previous AD] paid himself — and yes, the AD does pay himself — plus [the current AD’s] $300,000 annual bonus, which contributes to a 72-percent increase in administrator compensation; not to mention an 80-percent increase in “marketing, promotions and ticketing”; and a 340-percent increase in “Hosting, Food and Special Events.”

… (or anyway that’s the famous phrase we all like) characterizes quite a few American universities.

Some of these village idiots aren’t in rural settings at all – echt-provincial Suffolk University (Boston), St. John’s University (New York), Yeshiva University (New York), and St. Louis University (St. Louis) are four urban cow towns whose brainless money grubbing (self-righteous money grubbing at that, if, like Yeshiva, St. John’s, and St. Louis, they align themselves with synagogues and churches) this blog has chronicled.

All American universities have closed, small-town aspects to them; here, we’re talking about truly tribal fortresses with certifiable martinets.

To turn a university (think of the word itself) into a banana republic, you need — call it structural cronyism. The president, the board of trustees, the coaches, the big-time donors — in order to make an intellectual institution deadhead central, all must be in synch.

You see the model at work at Oakland University in Michigan, whose women’s basketball coach was married to the school’s president. (Yes, yes, UD believes people should marry whoever they want.) Power seems to have gone to the coach’s head to the point where she did a sort of Mike Rice on her players, who report – among other cult rituals – bizarre physical and religious tests. Things got so weird that the Ceausescus of Oakland have now been toppled; but you’d think schools would learn, from one story after another of this sort, the difference between cherishing their particular identities and becoming rural idiots.

Once again a commenter on an article captures the essence of a situation. Central Michigan’s lousy football team drives people away.

Students stay away, and they don’t even pay for tickets. So the problem is the desolation of the empty stadium.

Like a lot of other universities with this problem, CMU is now trying to solve it by dousing the students with drink. There used to be a limit on how much you could put away, but now —

For the upcoming fall tailgating season, the university released a new policy that changed some of those former guidelines, including the limit on alcoholic beverages per person and mandating students stay in a specific lot.

Students can now reel from tailgate to tailgate, and they can drink all they want.

CMU is spinning this desperate strategem as a great advance in safety … or something… UD‘s having a little trouble understanding the athletic director’s statement about it.

“If you look at this policy compared to the previous policy, there are no significant changes, but there are a series of very very important changes,” Deputy Director of Athletics Derek van der Merwe told Central Michigan Life. “Every aspect is stressing responsible behavior and defining acceptable behavior. We want responsibility, and that’s left to the individuals.”

Daktronics Inc., in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, are pleased to announce the addition of an integrated, high definition football video and sound system for Commonwealth Stadium, home of the Wildcats. The debut for the multi-million dollar system is scheduled for the Wildcats’ 2011 home opener September 10 vs. Central Michigan. … The most visible components of the system will undoubtedly be the two high definition Daktronics HD-X video displays to be installed behind each end zone. Measuring approximately 37 feet high by 80 feet wide, each display will provide live and recorded video in high definition, with picture in picture capability with multiple zones to show scores, statistics, and sponsor information. …

Yes, your Adzillatron can never get enough upgrades. There’s a lot of sponsor information to pound into your head, and students love to pay for the privilege.

Boyce Watkins on the latest Michigan scandal.

… One can hardly blame Michigan Coach Rodriguez for pushing the players too hard, since universities make it clear that winning percentages matter far more than graduation rates. The University of Kentucky’s decision to pay nearly $30 million dollars to John Calipari, a coach known for both corruption and a lack of academic integrity, sends a message about the importance of winning games over educating athletes.

We know that corruption rolls down hills and at the bottom of this pile are the players, their families and the entire African-American community. NCAA athletes in revenue- generating sports are typically kept in special dormitories, forced to live on rigorous athletic schedules, and pushed to place football ahead of everything else. All the while, the administrators on central campus, as educated as they are, turn themselves into unenlightened blind mice when confronted with the reality of athletic exploitation.

… Massive reform is needed not only within the Michigan football program, but also within all of college sports. Congress must step in and challenge the NCAA for anti-trust violations, as well as its tax-exempt status. NCAA revenues during March madness rival that of the NFL and NBA, so it’s time to note the NCAA for what it truly is: a professional sports league that artificially restricts the wages of its employees…