Category Archives for Faculty

When Faculty Speak for Themselves: Words that Will Live in Ignominy


Presenting a new feature on Call Me “Miss”!

“When Faculty Speak for Themselves: Words that Will Live in Ignominy” will be an occasional feature, soon with its own page, that will let academics speak for themselves. To be fair, Miss will provide proper context for all quotations, as well as links to the source. Let’s get started!

Today’s ignominiologue is our old friend Laurie Essig. Professor Essig is a faculty member at Middlebury College and blogs regularly for The Chronicle of Higher Education, from which this gem was mined:

There is a constant struggle between the fact that full citizenship in the U.S. is granted to those who are married (with over 2,000 federal rights and privileges) even as the majority of Americans are unmarried (and yet still, no doubt, mostly living in familial relationships and in need of those rights and privileges for their own loved ones).

As a single woman I feel an urgent need to know what I am lacking, citizenship-wise. True, I do not have a boyfriend, girlfriend, or transfriend, but I always thought that was a social/emotional deficit, not a reason to question the 14th Amendment.

Do as I Say, While I Do What I Want: Hypocrisy in the Land of Caps, Gowns, and Headdresses, Part I

This charming portrait of Elizabeth Warren has a place of honor in her Cambridge wigwam.


Faithful readers of CMM know one topic that gives Miss endless delight—and blog fodder—is the double standards college and university faculty use, usually to benchmark their worth against the drones who do staff work on their campuses, but sometimes simply when the Great Spirit moves them. The news brings such a bumper crop of stories that I must share them with you in “Do As I Say, While I Do What I Want,” Parts I and II.

Part I starts with the reigning queen of the academic double standard, Massachusetts’ own Professor-Politician Elizabeth Herring Warren Mann. Professor Warren/Mrs. Mann/Princess Ticklefeather has been much in the public eye lately as the most recent victim of recovered oppression syndrome (ROS) when it was revealed that she is (or maybe not) .03% Cherokee.* Like her noble ancestors the blond, blue-eyed redskin has endured the bows and arrows of prejudice simply because of her complexion. So it is not surprising to learn that she gratefully took a puff from the Affirmative Action peace pipe offered by the Great White Fathers at Harvard Law School, where, surprisingly, she was hired to teach rather than make rain.
Click here for a look at Professor Warren's students responding to her claims of minority status.
We all know that Elizabeth Warren is Heap Big Hypocrite. But what of the GWF’s at the Law School, whose contributions to the defense of affirmative action policies, not to mention the substance of such policies, at colleges and universities across this great albeit stolen land of ours have been instrumental in shaping the landscape of higher education for decades? The magnitude of hypocrisy achieved by these academics is beyond astonishing. While the rest of the academy struggles mightily first to qualify minority students to join the professoriate, then to hire faculty of color, who understandably come at a premium many institutions can ill afford, the good folks at Harvard decide that Princess Paleface qualifies as an “affirmative action” hire. Voila! I can hear them now, “Faculty of color? Elizabeth is kind of pinkish, when she remembers her blusher.” No muss. No fuss. No minorities.

I wonder what the Great White Fathers will think when they get wind of Professor Warren’s plans for casino gambling on Brattle Street. Who knows? Maybe they’ll do the right thing and vote for Scott Brown.

No longer able to live the white man’s lie at Harvard, Princess Paleface makes tracks for the Charles River, where her blood brothers will aid in her escape.


*Professor Warren’s ROS took a turn for the worse when she discovered that she is simultaneously suffering from ROS Type II, Recovered Oppressors Syndrome.

Double-Dipping Duo: The Denouement

Late under indictment for felony, Professors Julie Jacko and Francois Sainfort have concluded their four-year flirtation with possible hard time by waving the victory flag.

The assistant attorney general for Georgia accepted a guilty plea from Professor Sainfort on a single count, in exchange for dropping charges against his wife Julie and the third member of their little crime family, Julie’s brother Robert.  The Professor “pleaded guilty on Monday to making false statements related to his simultaneous, full-time employment,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Professor Jacko faints in relief as hubby Francois fills her in on the plea deal.

You may be asking yourself how, if Professor Sainfort pleaded guilty, this outcome could be viewed as a victory.  Well, because the blot on the reputations of the two professors is pretty hard to see: they appear to be keeping their jobs-for-life at the University of Minnesota (you know, the full-time positions they started collecting paychecks for while still picking up same for same at Georgia Tech); Julie’s dodged the bullet entirely, and, courtesy of  “Georgia’s First Offender Act[,] Sainfort’s guilty plea [will] be dismissed if he successfully completes five years of probation,” according to the Twin Cities Star Tribune.  Soiled reputation notwithstanding, Sainfort’s real victory comes where it counts most to him and his greedy wife: the pocketbook.

Let Greg Lohmeier, Georgia’s assistant attorney general, tell the rest of the story, again courtesy of the Star Tribune:

“This was, always, a policy violation,” Lohmeier said. “The question became, OK, how is this a criminal case? That was one of the things we struggled with.”

Georgia Tech has agreed to accept the amount being ordered in restitution [$43,578] as settlement of any remaining claims, said a university spokesman.

Sainfort also had “a viable claim” against Georgia Tech for about $40,000 in unpaid vacation leave — close to the amount ordered in restitution, which was based on what he owed for improperly billing travel expenses, Lohmeier said. “Given the amounts involved,” he said, “we just called it a wash.”

Gotta love those hard-working professors and their enablers.  Sainfort gets to apply his contested “vacation pay” towards his “restitution” to Georgia Tech.

The Sainfort-Jacko family is celebrating their victory by building a charming new folly on their lawn.

I do not believe there is any truth to the rumor that Sainfort and Jacko are contemplating suing the University of Minnesota for vacation pay earned while they were pulling down two (make that four) paychecks.  But perhaps they should do just that.  Afterall, when you are working full time on two campuses  approximately 1200 miles apart, you don’t have time to take vacation.  So you should be compensated, n’est-ce pas?

Academic Bombast: A Little Bit of Cis and That

Academics can be full of surprises. Just when you are about to write off the lot of them as pompous and often criminally inclined boors whose bloated prose only a Judith Butler could love, they redeem themselves with a bit of self-aware mockery.

Wags at the University of Chicago have come up with nifty computer program that will write an entire scholarly essay for you.

University of Chicago Professor Lewis explains the sentence generator.

All you need do is populate a few fields with words of your choosing from prepared lists, string together the resulting sentences (order optional) and–voila!–there’s your essay, guaranteed to please the most discerning gender theorist. Drop what you are doing and give it a try right now.

Fun, isn’t it? Until you remember the tens of thousands of tenured faculty whose jobs-for-life are predicated on that argot. Try not to lose your lunch.

For those of you yet to get the hang of the University of Chicago’s sentence-generator, read the passage below:

The trans policy committee is sorry to announce that Kate Bornstein is sick and is not able to make her performance of Men Women and the Rest of Us tonight at 7pm in the [gym]. We are working to reschedule Kate’s performance, and meanwhile are arranging for a Gender Speak Out in the faculty lounge…from 7-9. In this space, we hope to center lived experience of gender oppression at [Liberal Arts College USA]. Cisgender people (those who are comfortable with the gender societally aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth), are welcome and encouraged to attend. It may be beneficial to have a passing familiarity with transphobia and cissexism.

The most famous cisters of all.


Is it genuine? By that I mean did I search the announcements on the Liberal Arts College USA calendar until I hit pay dirt, or did I take a little help from the sentence generator?

Hands-On Professor Handed His Sentence: Drago’s on Probation

If only Drago had kept that finger to himself, his feminist credentials would still be intact.

Breaking news from The Chronicle of Higher Education for “Where Are They Now?”:

Scholar Known for His Studies of Women in the Work Force Is Convicted of Sexual Abuse

By Robin Wilson

Robert W. Drago—a prominent scholar of issues affecting women in the work force­, including academe—was convicted of misdemeanor sexual abuse of a minor last week in Superior Court of Washington, D.C.

We last read about Randy Robert back in September, 2011; his once live-in love the lithe Laurie Bonjo had blown a gasket when her daughter reported that Drago, then Director of the prestigious and proudly feminist Institute for Women’s Policy Research, had attempted to cop a feel or two. Or maybe three. Who knows? The seventeen-year-old did not talk to the press. Her mother did.

For the fleeting pleasure of feeling up a teenager, Drago’s been sentenced to eighteen months’ probation. According to the Chronicle, he’s also been given the life sentence of being listed in the National Sex Offender Registry. I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

Professor Kinzey’s Dream Date: Irina “Grandma Meth” Kristy

Fate is funny. You just never know when or where you will find your soul mate. Or your cell mate.

Such is this case of the romance I imagine between University of California San Bernardino Professor Stephen “Skinz” Kinzey and adjunct faculty member at Boston and Suffolk universities Irina Kristy. Both academics, he’s into kinesiology; she’s a mathematician. He’s 40ish; she’s reached the three-quarters of a century mark. He’s West Coast; she’s East. But although separated by disciplines, generations, and oh-so-many miles, the two share an irrevocable bond: each has been arrested, accused of running an in-home meth lab. You can read about Skinz here and here.

Grandma Meth, says the Boston Globe,

will be arraigned later this month on the same drug charges her 29-year-old son recently faced for running a methamphetamine lab out of their Somerville home, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.

Grandma’s mother-and-son business suffered, when, as the Globe story continues, the Somerville (Massachusetts) cops conducted

a daylong search of the second-floor residence at 19 Oxford St. that [son Gregory] Genkin and Kristy share, investigators from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies recovered evidence that the site was being used to make methamphetamine, Somerville police said in a statement last month.

Grandma Meth prepares for class.


“A large amount of materials believed to be hazardous’’ were removed from the property by hazardous materials specialists, and other items believed to be dangerous were detonated by the State Police bomb squad, the statement said.

In the academic ghetto that is the greater Boston area, nothing rings in the holiday season like the sound of detonating explosives confiscated from a faculty member’s pied a terre.

Grandma didn't have too much time for housekeeping, what with running her own business and teaching on two different campuses:


I can hear the howls of protest all the way on the Vineyard. “But, but, but…” faculty are squawking, holding their noses in contempt as they point out, “Kristy is but an adjunct. She’s not really one of us.”

And indeed she is not. “Adjuncts” are one of the many dirty little secrets higher education likes to keep to itself. The difference between “adjunct” faculty members and “regular faculty members” is tens–hundreds in some instances–of thousands of dollars in compensation; health insurance; other benefits; and class size. While the salaries and benefits of regular faculty are many multiples higher than those of adjuncts, this discrepancy is offset by the fact that the the number of students in an adjunct’s class is significantly higher than the regular faculty member’s. Adjuncts, moreover, are typically assigned introductory and remedial courses; if they are very lucky, occasionally their department will throw them a bone of a survey course.

For English and math adjuncts in particular, this usually means that they are the gatekeepers of their respective disciplines: many a decision to major in one subject or another is based on the impression students glean from that introductory course they are obliged to take.

Adjuncts are typically not vetted in the same careful way that regular faculty are, so the chances of an adjunct’s running a meth lab on the side (they certainly need the extra income!) is probably greater than a regular faculty member’s, Skinz being the exception, one hopes.

But consider this. Suffolk University’s mouthpiece Greg Gatlin cuts the campus’s ties with Grandma Meth faster than you can say “Clery Report”:

“after the university learned of the charges,’’ she was “placed on administrative leave through the end of the semester,’’ school spokesman said Friday.

“Adjunct faculty are appointed semester by semester,’’ he said. “She has not been appointed for next semester.’’

What Gatlin neglects to add is that Grandma M has been teaching at Suffolk for over 26 years! That would be 52 semesters. BU had the good sense to muzzle its mouthpiece, thus avoiding the need to explain how the alleged criminal activity of a faculty member of 24 years’ standing could have gone unnoticed for so long.

Adjuncts represent the best and worst of the academy–they do provide cheap labor that keep tuition costs down. Many of them are as qualified–if not more qualified–than the tenured faculty whose hard work in the classroom they are doing. On the other hand, they can expect no institutional loyalty–even after 25+ years (compare Gatlin’s statement to what UCSB said about Kinzey)–and any sense of appreciation or respect for their work they might feel somewhat entitled to gets ground out of their spirit early on in their “temporary” appointments on campus, for they exist in an unseen netherworld, welcome only in the classroom, never in a faculty meeting and usually not in the faculty club.

As for the institutions that perpetuate such appointments decade after decade, well, let’s just leave it at this: next time you hear faculty yapping self-righteously about the 99%, ask them about their adjunct colleagues–and if they’d be willing to share some of their goodies with this sad underclass. Don’t hold your breath.

OWS, Higher Education and Faculty Rights (Hey, Brother, Can You Spare a Parking Space?)

Breaking news from Columbus, Ohio, where a new “occupy” movement is afoot.

Faculty at Ohio State University (OSU) are steaming because the university’s chief financial officer Geoffrey Chatas, formerly managing director of the Infrastructure Investments Fund at JP Morgan Asset Management, is threatening to bring the money-grubbing tactics of Wall Street to 12th Avenue.

Listen as faculty churn waves of dissent, engulfing the OSU campus in a tsunami of righteous protest, as the 99 percent rise up against The Man. As always, the first wave speaks to time-honored principles of the academy:

One of the more vocal opponents of the plan is Gordon Aubrecht, a professor of physics and president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at Ohio State.

“I think it has to do with the idea of a university as a community,” he said.

Professor Aubrecht’s communitarian rallying cry is echoed by fuming emeritus Professor of Physics Bernie Mulligan:

“What we are really doing is selling a part of the university where we will have less ability to control our own environment,” Mulligan said. “We should have had public meetings months ago, not now as catch up.”

Even OSU President Gordon (“I Quit! I Got a Better Job!”) Gee is getting into the act, attempting to calm the waters with rhetoric straight from the script of the OWS playbook:

we must seek fundamentally new ways to fund our core purposes.

But wait a minute. The faculty and the president united in common cause against the CFO? Can it possibly be true? Of course not, silly. Let’s hear more of President Gee’s address to his faculty:

We are currently discussing whether to lease the management of parking on campus for two reasons. One, parking does not, has not, and will never define greatness in a University. And, two, removing parking from the list of our daily tasks could provide a significant, immediate source of revenue that could be used in pursuit of greatness.

What do we want? Parking! When do we want it? NOW!

Parking can be turned into new academic facilities and new academics. Parking can be transformed into a foundation of funding that furthers our mission – today, and into the future.

You got it. Parking. The storm of protest roiling Columbus is all about parking. And wouldn’t you know? Just like OWS, the origins of OOSU lie in North America’s very own heart of darkness—Canada.

Police arrive at the scene of Occupy Aisle 7.

President Gee sheepishly admits delivering a major speech about parking places is not “enobling,” but I think he is selling himself and his speech writers short. Compare the president’s stirring defense of the university’s right to outsource to its rhetorical model:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground….we here highly resolve that…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

You will never, ever lose a bet by underestimating academics’ ability to magnify the trivial and trivialize the magnificent. And the next time you are tempted to ascribe idealistic goals and motivations to an “occupy” movement, think about the faculty at Ohio State putting it all on the line for parking.

An OOSU protester maintains academic standards–pipe in one hand, weighty tome in the other–as the people’s action for convenient parking enters its fifth week.

Professor Melissa Harris-Perry Explains How Going from Bad to Worse Equals Racism. Sort of.

There is nothing like a good double-take to get the weekend off to a great start. And so it was on Saturday morning as I clicked from Real Clear Politics to “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama,” an essay appearing in the October 10, 2011 edition of The Nation. The essay is written by Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Have a look at her impressive credentials on the Tulane website.

In the classroom of Professor Harris-Perry, it is anything but brief.


Professor Harris-Perry’s essay begins, “Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party.” Professor Harris-Perry goes on to explain that such cancerous racism appears to have gone into remission in the body politic. But, she hastens to point out, all is still not well.

Because President Obama’s re-election in 2012 is looking less and less like a shoo-in, Professor Harris-Perry has diagnosed a new and equally terrifying form of racism to explain the president’s dimming prospects:

the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.

Let’s, shall we, examine the symptoms that have led Dr. Harris-Perry to her diagnosis. “The relevant comparison here,” she says, “is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.” Fair enough. According to Harris-Perry, “liberal electoral racism,” as practiced by progressive white voters, gives Clinton a pass while holding Obama “to a higher standard”:

  • “Today many progressives complain that Obama’s healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever.”
  •   “Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy Obama helped repeal.”
  •   “Still others are angry about appalling unemployment rates for black Americans; but while overall unemployment was lower under Clinton, black unemployment was double that of whites during his term, as it is now.”

Please remind yourself, as I have had to do repeatedly while attempting to fathom Harris-Perry’s arguments, that the author of them holds a) a PhD; b) a tenured faculty position at a top-tier university; and c) a directorship of a university institute. So busy was Harris-Perry collecting her academic credentials that somewhere along the way she forgot how to make a lucid argument.

“Progressives” are “complaining” about Obama care. So what? Does that mean they’ll pull the lever come November 2012 for somebody else? Does Harris-Perry really believe that complaining equals racism? Can this possibly be true? Has it possibly not occurred to Professor Harris-Perry that those same whining progressives might’ve griped about Clinton’s healthcare debacle? And what does the fact that Clinton’s scheme for healthcare reform never became law twenty years ago have to do with a flawed plan in the here-and-now, anyway?

“Others” (unnamed, unsourced, uncounted) take the president to task for his supposed failure to advance gay rights, even though Clinton “established the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy Obama helped repeal.” While I understand that political scientists such as Harris-Perry are not historians and therefore not necessarily familiar with the record, I do feel inclined to point out that both Clinton’s and Obama’s polls on the public’s attitude toward gays in the military coincide with their respective decisions—in 1993, 55% of the public, according to a Time-CNN poll, disapproved of gays serving in the military; by 2010, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 72% of adult Americans were favor of gays serving in the military.

As for her observation that people are rightfully disturbed at the appallingly high unemployment rates among blacks during Obama’s administration, she neglects to mention that unemployment—for blacks, Hispanics and whites—fell steadily during the Clinton administration, but has grown steadily under Obama’s. And what about her suspect implication that it’s OK to be critical of black unemployment numbers under a white president, but not under a black’s? Hmmm…methinks the pot…oh, never mind.

America's first and second black presidents, side by side.

Can YOU tell which one's the pot and which one's the kettle?


Harris-Perry concludes her essay with one last distortion of the truth:

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

Rodney's PhD is from the School Of Hard Knocks. Literally

Rodney King speaks to Perry-Harris and racist white progressives everywhere.

Obama’s record—as indeed any president’s sitting or otherwise—is indeed “comparable” to Clinton’s, and, in Obama’s case, suffers from the comparison. Badly. And were I a student in one of Professor Harris-Perry’s classes, I would ask her how it is possible that a president elected with less than a majority, as President Clinton was for his second term, can be said to have retained his office courtesy of an “enthusiastic” electorate.

There is a saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics. There are also good faculty, incompetent faculty, and faculty ideologues for whom the truth is an inconvenience easily set to one side. Do you wonder what kind of faculty member Professor Harris-Perry is?

Note to readers: In addition to Harris-Perry’s essay for The Nation, sources for this essay include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy-Making by Jeffrey E. Cohen.

Keep Your Stinking Feminist Paws OFF MY DAUGHTER! Robert Drago’s Hands-on Lesson

First there was the voyeur; then there was the exhibitionist. Now comes the esteemed academic who’s been arrested for “misdemeanor sexual abuse and misdemeanor sexual abuse of a minor.” The perp is Robert Drago, late of Pennsylvania State University at University Park, now also the late research director at a Washington think-tank. In the good old days, we used to define “diversity” within the faculty ranks by such things as race, gender, ethnicity, veteran’s status. Today, however, diversity of sexual misconduct has been added to the laundry list of differences a robust faculty exposes to the freshman class.

The first thing you need to know about Raunchy Robert is that he says he is a feminist. Indeed, he was featured last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education for giving new meaning to the Peter Principle: he put his feminist creds to the test and passed with flying colors when he resigned he position of at Penn State to follow his lady love Laurie Bonjo aka Laurie Equality Damiana aka suratalulumax to our nation’s capitol, where she was pursuing a doctorate at Old Dominion University and he signed on as research director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Raunchy Rob and Laurie Equality Damiani were a cute couple!


RR characterized his move with the kind of self-deprecating terminology professors often use to heap praise upon themselves. Drago demurely demurs that his new job “wouldn’t be a story if I were a woman, because thousands of women do this every year…. They either don’t get on the tenure track so their husband can, or they move with their husband and end up doing contingent work and teaching ad hoc because their husband’s job comes first.” We’ll pass over that Drago allowed himself not only to be interviewed by the Chronicle, but also photographed—a sweet picture that features the good professor and the tattoo-strewn Ms. Damiana packing up books and other office flotsam—essentially ensuring there would “be a story.”

Drago is a frequent contributor to the MomsRising.org blog (“Where moms and people who love them go to change our world”), where he opines on such women-friendly topics as breastfeeding, daughters (his) graduating from high school, and the gender of nuclear disaster. A feminist with a feminine side. What a catch for yoga instructor Laurie Equality Damiana!

Or so she thought until Drago tried to cop a feel from her seventeen-year-old daughter. From the Chronicle:

Mr. Drago’s then-girlfriend, Laurie A. Bonjo, and her 17-year-old daughter filed in late July with the Washington police following an alleged encounter that month between Mr. Drago and the girl. According to Ms. Bonjo—who said her daughter did not want to be named in an article—her daughter stayed overnight alone with Mr. Drago at his apartment in Washington during some travel between family members’ homes. While her daughter was at Mr. Drago’s apartment, said Ms. Bonjo, Mr. Drago put his arms around her daughter, kissed her on the lips, and attempted to fondle her breasts and buttocks.

He later acknowledged making the advances in text messages he sent to Ms. Bonjo’s cell phone, she said.

Text message confession notwithstanding, Drago’s lawyer Barry Coburn offered this stirring defense: “Dr. Drago is innocent unless and until he is proven guilty.” In my view, Drago isn’t guilty of anything. The age of consent in the District of Columbia is sixteen. How then can a little grope between feminists of age be construed as “sexual abuse of a minor”?

In fact, not only do I not think he is a criminal, I think he is a victim. A victim of his own hubris—a fate that befalls so many academics it should be declared an occupational hazard.

Laurie is flexible, except when it comes to her daughter.


Or maybe somebody slipped him a mickey—you know, gave him a drink or a drug that unhinged him. If I were Barry Coburn, I’d look at the ex-girlfriend-PhD student-yoga instructor-concerned mom Laurie Equality Damiana. After all, damiana, says Wikipedia

has long been claimed to have a stimulating effect on libido, and its use as an aphrodisiac has continued into modern times. More recently, some corroborating scientific evidence in support of its long history of use has also emerged. Several studies utilizing animal testing have shown evidence of increased sexual activity in sexually exhausted or impotent male rats when exposed to damiana, as well as generally increased sexual activity in rats of both sexes.

Rats of both sexes. Do you suppose they are both feminists?

UPDATE: Guilty!

These days Professor Drago has a new meme.

Professor Dan Middlemiss Backs Out of Teaching, Parking Space at Dalhousie Now Available

Freshman orientation has barely started, but that doesn’t mean it’s too soon for an academic to start bellyaching about the deplorable conditions under which he is expected to show up for his 2:30 p.m. class.

I should point out first that many universities are known for the appalling state of their facilities, perhaps none so much as Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. And indeed it is right here, on the mean streets of Halifax, where Professor Dan Middlemiss declared he’s fed up and he’s not going to take it anymore.

A thirty-year veteran of the political science department, Professor Middlemiss has made the ultimate sacrifice by “resigning” his position. Why on earth would a dedicated faculty member resort to such a drastic solution to protest substandard working conditions? Things must be pretty bad up in Canada.

My friend, you have no idea.

Middlemiss quit because he had to wait in line to purchase his annual parking sticker.

Dalhousie faculty denied a seat at the table of parking entitlements.


The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) picks up the story of one man’s bold stand against the establishment:

Dan Middlemiss and hundreds of other Dalhousie staff and students lined up Monday to buy the first available parking passes.

After waiting for more than an hour, he decided instead to leave his profession of 31 years….”I went straight upstairs, I said, ‘I’m not kidding this time, I don’t have to put up with this. I’m resigning.’”

Take that you brutes in the parking office at Dalhousie.

Imagine the suffering on this, the Dalhousie campus.


It remains unclear as to whether Middlemiss has made good on his threat, given that he remains on Dalhousie’s fall/winter schedule as instructor of record for several courses. So it may boil down to nothing more than an attack of the vapours, the pre-season jitters of a faculty member eager to smell the chalk dust and get back into the fray. Perhaps the good professor will be in the classroom bright ‘n early (2:30 p.m.) for his class come Monday morning.

At Dalhousie, the students are even worse off than the faculty!


Or maybe not. Some indignities a full professor simply cannot tolerate. Apparently Professor Middlemiss reached his limit at the end of a long line to buy a parking sticker. If Professor Middlemiss’s behavior does not tell you something deeply disturbing about the privileged lives academics live, then I guess you can just go eat cake.