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Monday, June 21, 2004
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TEACHING TODAY
Another in a University Diaries Occasional Series One hesitates to use the term conspiracy, but things are really beginning to smell in the University of South Florida English department. First there was Professor Phillip Siporia (see UD, 5/17), whose house hums with all of the departmental electronic equipment he has transferred from the state campus to his primary residence. Now there's his colleague, Professor Joseph M. Moxley, who seems, among other things, to have repaired to "a remote French village" on the department's dime, in order to "clear his head," according to the St. Petersburg Times. Yet how could Moxley have cleared his head when he was at the same time receiving (also at university expense) thousands of dollars worth of cell phone calls from friends? "I wanted to make myself available to my students," Moxley explained. From his home in a remote French village. The department's investigation, notes the newspaper, says Moxley asked for $185 in reimbursement for airfare already paid by another organization. He also submitted as expenses meals with his wife, saying he wanted to compensate her for marketing expertise she offered to USF. Compensating a spouse, in any form, is inappropriate, auditors said. Auditors questioned three TVs worth $1,202 that were found in Moxley's homes. Moxley said he used the TVs to edit more than 70 videos about writing and composition. The auditors said their purpose could not be substantiated. Yes, these sums are paltry -- it's an English department, after all -- and certainly USF has much much bigger stuff to worry about -- like the case of the (now former) USF professor and accused terrorist Sami Al-Arian, which, USF writes in a report to the AAUP, is unique in academic history. We know of no other tenured university professor investigated and charged by a federal grand jury with aiding and abetting terrorism, knowingly assisting an organization committed to murdering innocent men, women, and children and doing so by using his university affiliation. Academic freedom and aiding and abetting terrorism are mutually inconsistent. The University of South Florida has carefully and cautiously sought to protect its faculty, staff, student body, and administration while respecting Professor Al-Arian's presumption of innocence and right to speak. Compared to the Al-Arian thing, a couple of English professors don't amount to a hill of beans. And compared to the constant business of corporate consultant faculty using university facilities for personal profit, it's very little. [Latest case of that - one of so many cases it's hardly worth mentioning - and deemed worth mentioning by the Associated Press only because it involves a Nobel Prize winner - is as follows: TUCSON, Ariz. -- Nobel economics prize winner Vernon Smith and three other former researchers at the University of Arizona have agreed to reimburse the school $75,000 after an internal investigation over a for-profit consulting firm. The state Board of Regents was expected to approve the mediation settlement next week. The researchers did not admit wrongdoing. A university audit found that Smith, Stephen Rassenti, David Porter and Mark Olson may have personally benefited from use of University of Arizona facilities and other resources on behalf of Cybernomics Inc., in violation of university and regent policies. The researchers now work at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The four agreed to reimburse the university $18,750 each in salary they earned at UA. Smith, who spent 26 years at the University of Arizona, won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences at age 75 in 2002 - a year after he was lured to George Mason by more money and research support. He pioneered the field of experimental economics and was long considered a Nobel contender. Cybernomics, an independent economic consulting corporation that developed computer software for economic and market analysis, was dissolved in June 2003.] Still, the USF incident represents, the newspaper notes, "the fourth time in three months a USF English professor has been cited for financial irregularities." The sorts of misbehaviors the reports reveal are probably endemic in many American university departments. If the USF cases become national news, expect a bigger scandal. |