All well-provisioned universities need access to an Emergency Title Reserve, a list of names they can immediately slap on a professor with a named chair when the original name on the professor’s chair suddenly becomes… well…

Take Mary Waters, the socially conscious Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard until it turned out Zukerman had stolen around fifty million dollars from the United States government. When it looked likely Zukerman would go to prison (that is in fact his current primary residence), Harvard was able to scrounge around in its ETR and come up with the name of some schmuck willing to sit there until he or she was needed (Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do or die).

Zukerman stole from the poor to give to the rich, as did the fascinating Esformes family, long one of the filthiest nursing home operators in Chicago, but now, in the person of Philip Esformes, “charged … in what has been touted as the nation’s biggest Medicare fraud case.” These named chair donors don’t think small – if you’re going to steal from America’s struggling taxpayer, steal tens – hundreds? – of millions! Then spread it around among the deserving rich so you can get your name emblazoned in some hoitsy-toitsy joint like Harvard, the University of Chicago…

Nothing says whitewashing like a university chair. If Bernie hadn’t suffered a reversal, hands down there’d have been a Madoff chair at Yeshiva University.

So Nir Uriel, once touted as the Esformes Chair in Medicine at Chicago, has been re-named the Block Professor.

UD of course has nothing against universities scrambling to dump crooks and replace them with saints. She has only two comments to make about this.

1. Better make sure the second-in-command is pure as the driven snow. It would be positively Rube Goldberg to have to keep giving their professors new names.

2. Instead of just quietly doing it, UD thinks universities should announce the change. Disclosure matters, and there’s a way of writing this sort of news release that makes it honest and unembarrassing.

For many years the University of Chicago has been pleased to be the recipient of financial generosity from the Esformes family, which endowed a professorship in our medical school. We have, however, now removed the Esformes name from that chair, because members of the family have been accused of Medicare fraud.

… as George says in Edward Albee’s immortal Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and UD is telling you that if you follow the swine in this story… follow him all the way to the end of the story… you will find your truffle.

Bigtime Harvard donor Morris Zukerman’s going to jail because of uber-swinish tax evasion over decades. He has stolen at least $45 million from this country.

The truffle appears in this article’s very last paragraph:

In his defense, Zukerman submitted more than 100 letters from supporters vouching for his character, including one from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the U.S. national security adviser during the Carter administration, who presided over the marriage of Zukerman’s daughter and cited his “genuine patriotism.” He also submitted a 2007 letter from the then-president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Emily Rafferty, thanking him for a $100,000 pledge.

Ah, the genuine patriotism of the man who spent much of his working life stealing forty five million dollars from his beloved country… And thanks for the $100,000 pledge you also stole from the United States!

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

As for Zukerman’s beloved Harvard, that struggling school upon which he lavished huge amounts of stolen money… It even named a professorship after him! All about social justice, natch. The M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology.

And yet when you go to that page now, it’s The Professor Formerly Known as the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology.

Fast work, that.

… What, if anything, do you do when you’re a socially conscious sociologist whose professorship turns out to have been endowed by a man who “cheated on virtually all of his various tax obligations,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. “To top it off, when the IRS auditors examined his returns, Zukerman allegedly schemed to defraud and obstruct the IRS auditors who were examining his false tax returns.”

Morris Zukerman faces 28 years in prison. If guilty, he stole almost fifty million dollars from the United States. (Probably stole more than that. There’s a limit to what governments can do by way of identifying stolen goods and getting them back.) A veteran, contemptible, big-time criminal.

You are Harvard’s M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology, your professional name ever-emblazoned with, your children fed and your articles underwritten by, a man alleged to be one of America’s most socially destructive liar/thieves. This man’s wife is a “Trustee of Earthwatch Institute, an international environmental volunteer organization, which engages people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment,” and you better believe her family knows how to sustain environments. For itself.

Among the false deductions claimed by Zukerman on his Forms 1040 were those based on the fraudulent claim that Zukerman had contributed a total of $1 million in 2009 and 2011 to a conservation charity whereas, in truth and fact, Zukerman made no charitable gift and instead used the $1 million to purchase for himself and his family over 240 acres on an island off the coast of Maine.

See how the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment goes? Lie on your tax form and say you made a charitable land gift and then just take the land for the wife and kiddies! Sustain that sucker in the family!

So okay that’s just one teeny example of the beneficence of Mary Waters’ benefactor.

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

So what’s a person with that, er, ironic name on her professorship to do?

Let’s see.

1. Nothing. Who gives a shit. If Harvard really cared about the provenance of gifts, it would never get anywhere. So a larcenous piece of shit endowed my professorship. So what. How do you think these people made all their money, anyway? As Fran Leibowitz says, “You don’t earn a billion dollars. You steal it.”

2. Tell sardonic jokes. Assuming Waters has a sense of humor, she can respond to the raised eyebrows her title provokes by saying “Best I could do. It was a choice between that and the Enron Professor of Economics.”

3. Wait til he’s in jail (he’ll be found guilty but won’t go to jail – but anyway…) and mutter that he’s paying his debt to society.

4. Ask Harvard if it can strip his name from your professorship. Can the school keep the stolen goods and lose the Zukerman? Or will Waters be in the embarrassing position of having the federal government seeking to claw back her salary?

A Song of Praise to Harvard
Overseer Morris Zukerman
And the Ghost of Finn Caspersen
And Countless Other Harvard
Benefactors Like Them —
From the American Taxpayer

Dodge fiercely, Harvard,
Dodge, dodge, dodge!
Demonstrate to us your skill.
Albeit you possess the cash,
Nonetheless we foot the bill!

Endowment’s almost up to forty bill
Tax breaks plus tax evasion filled the till –
How jolly!
Caspersen and Zukerman
Dodge, dodge, dodge!

Caspersen stole one hundred mill
Zukerman forty five
How many of those gains got-ill
Helped Harvard U to thrive?

We payers love to play our part
To keep you tax exempt
The thought of helping donor-thieves
Makes all of us verklempt.