Archive for the 'Faculty' Category

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

Published February 7, 2012 Faculty , Higher Education , Life and Culture 6 Comments
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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

Published December 5, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Life and Culture 5 Comments
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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?)

Published November 6, 2011 College Presidents , Faculty , Higher Education 4 Comments
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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 rally 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.

Published September 25, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 11 Comments
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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

Published September 20, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education 10 Comments
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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

Published September 4, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education 3 Comments
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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.

The Leader of the Pack: Professor Kinzey Hops on His Hog, Flees Drug Charges

Published September 2, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education 6 Comments
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I don’t know about you, but for me summer’s over not just because Labor Day rolls around and the fat cats exit the Vineyard.  No, I know the end has come when the distant howl of police sirens and the gentle clink of handcuffs locking signal the cops’ first bust of a faculty member caught trafficking in drugs.

Fall is arriving late at Cal State San Bernardino this year, though, because CHP has yet to catch up with fugitive from justice Professor of Kinesiology Stephen Kinzey, AKA leader of the Devils Diciples (sic) motorcycle gang, Southern California division.

On the Lam

As a professor of kinesiology, Kinzey puts his knowledge to practical use, what with being on the run and whatnot. His hasty departure leaves his live-in girlfriend (coincidentally a 2005 alumna of CSUSB) literally holding the bag of the methamphetamines Kinzey’s suspected of manufacturing and selling.  With the finely tuned ethical sensibility so characteristic of academics (c.f. Middlebury Professor Kateri “I didn’t know stealing was wrong” Carmola), Kinzey is letting his woman take the rap.  On the other hand, the erstwhile coed has been named by police as Kinzey’s “business partner,” assisting in the distribution of “meth to mid-level dealers in the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands and the community of Mentone.”  Hands-on learning at its finest.

Meanwhile, back on campus, Kinzey’s name has been scrubbed from the faculty list in his department.  You can still find references to his committee work and so forth if you do a more elaborate search, but the buried treasure of his cv has been excised.

Cut Kinzey some slack--his field is kinesiology, not linguistics.

And University President Albert T. Karnig is issuing stern warnings–to the police, that is, not the fugitive. Karnig’s marshalled his own troops to fact-check the authority’s case against Kinzey:

To our knowledge, this is the first notice that anyone on our campus has had regarding this situation. Our university police department and the entire campus community, as relevant, will work as closely as possible with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to assist with the investigation to help assure that all the facts are accurate. If the allegations are indeed true, this is beyond disappointing.

I agree.  It’s “beyond disappointing” when a joint drug task force raids a faculty member’s home and takes custody of “a pound of methamphetamine as well as a number of rifles, handguns and biker paraphernalia.”  Such a find can ruin a university president’s whole day.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this drama, when Kinzey is hauled off his motorcycle and starts bleating for his union rep to ensure CSUSB accords him his due process.

Happy New Academic Year!

Source for all quotations: Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2011

Only an ergonomically correct hog is good enough for a meth-peddling kinesiologist.

Professor Larkin’s Parking Lot Adventure

Published July 1, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education 8 Comments
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The greatest joy of teaching is being present at the moment of creation, when a student for the first time breaks through the barrier from “being taught” to “learning.” A transcendent collision of facts acquired, experience absorbed, opinions analyzed ignites a student’s ability to think for herself. If you are fortunate enough to find yourself in the classroom when this happens and perhaps can take for yourself some small measure of credit for the intellectual fusion you have just witnessed, it’s no wonder you love your job as a member of the faculty. The rush you get is addictive and provides abundant incentive to keep you hard at work continuously improving the classes you teach and the counsel you offer your students.

There is no experience more rewarding than exposing students’ tender minds to new concepts and ideas.

Sometimes, however, the thrill is such that in order to get their fix professors push the limits of what and what not to expose their students to. Consider the great length University of New Hampshire German Professor Edward Larkin went to in order to prep for his classes. Apparently conducting field research, Larkin was convicted in 2009 of indecent exposure after showing his genitals to a woman and her 17-year-old daughter.

I wonder why Professor Larkin wanted to meet me here.


The State of New Hampshire considered Larkin’s act, which took place in the parking lot of the aptly named Market Basket grocery store, a misdemeanor, fined the professor $600 and ordered him to complete some 10 hours of counseling. The University of New Hampshire took a somewhat harder line, and understandably sought to get the professor out of the classroom. Larkin complained to his union, and, guess what? After a two-year paid vacation (“leave of absence with pay”) Larkin will be back in class come spring 2012 having won his case in front of an arbitrator.

The arbitrator’s decision is based on an interpretation of what constitutes “moral delinquency of a grave order,” a fire-able offense in the UNH faculty contract. Arbitrator Michael Ryan found Larkin’s action merely one of “moral delinquency”—not of a “grave order,” though—and therefore the “university did not have just cause to terminate him.”

Said Larkin in his victory statement: “The university is certainly correct to want to look after the safety of its students … The question is whether my return to UNH as a fulltime member of the faculty, which is my desire, would endanger the students or the university community,” Larkin said. “I do not believe that it does.” Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Some of us disagree, Professor Larkin.


The Union Leader.com, the source for this post and New Hampshire’s paper of record, picks up the story from here:

Faculty union president Deanna Wood said the arbitrator’s decision was fair.

“I think it was a just ruling,” Wood said. “What we were concerned about was not whether this was a moral lapse, or even a behavioral lapse, but that the conditions of the contract were being followed and this statement about moral delinquency of a grave order had never been tested before.”

One is compelled to wonder if Professor Wood would be concerned about a “moral lapse” if it were her daughter that Larkin confronted with his genitalia at full mast. I suppose she would need to consult the contract.

David Flory: Physicist, Professor, PIMP!

Published June 21, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education 16 Comments
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A couple of posts back I caught a lot of flak from Chandra and Wendy because of my critique of the poor time management skills of one Professor Afshan Jafar and faculty in general.

To the above named, I offer my deepest apologies. I should’ve known that as soon as I opined on this controversial subject, some academic somewhere would prove me wrong.

Professor David Flory, at your service!


And that’s exactly what has happened. Professor of Physics and former Department Chair David Flory of Fairleigh Dickinson University (NJ) has forced me to reconsider my views. Oh hell, he’s demonstrated the error of my thinking in a manner more spectacular than I could have imagined, for not only does Professor find enough hours in his own day to run his own business, so adept is he at time management that he schedules his workers’ hours as well. And talk about successful! Professor Flory owns homes in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Not too shabby on the pittance any self-respecting faculty members will tell you they make.

Alas, there is a fly in the ointment. Professor Flory will not be enjoying his Land of Enchantment vacation getaway too much longer. He’s run into some business reverses, you see. The Albuquerque PD just arrested him for running a prostitution ring:

Flory was charged with 40 counts of promoting prostitution and other charges. He was being held in Albuquerque on $100,000 bail late Monday….Flory’s website, Southwest Companions, had operated for months before several prostitutes in Albuquerque mentioned the site to police and they began investigating late last year.

Professor Flory puts the kicks back on Route 66!


I guess Flory had some shortcomings as a boss; he must have, since his own employees ratted him out to the cops.

Of course, the story doesn’t end here:

FDU spokeswoman Dina Schipper said that the university was “saddened” by the news.
“Our hearts go out to all of those impacted by the situation,” Schipper said. “Since becoming aware of the arrest, the university has cooperated with law enforcement authorities as they seek to gain the most accurate information as part of their ongoing investigation in New Mexico.”
Schipper declined to comment on Flory’s current job status at the university.
“We should know more as the days unfold,” she said.

“More” will turn out to be Flory’s retirement, a timely coincidence given the professor’s 42-year tenure at FDU. Talk about going out with a bang!

Of course, the university could always opt for the uglier route of breaking Flory’s tenure, but I doubt it. “Southwest Companions” will be hotly defended as falling under the protections of academic freedom. It’s only when Flory fails to meet his classes because he’s pulling laundry duty in the pen that first he’ll be suspended (with pay), then suspended (without pay), then finally, maybe, after his and the university’s lawyers finish wrangling over scheduling a time when Flory can appeal his suspension, will Flory be…fired? Nope. Given “early” retirement with an incentive bonus. Gotta love that “due process.”

I know what you’re thinking: whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?! Well, aside from the sex workers’ statements about how Southwest Companions offered 200 call girls to some 1200 johns, and the descriptions of how to gain access to the panoply of SC’s services:

Users were split into three categories, and first-time visitors had to first gain the trust of Flory before gaining any access. Ordinarily this was done, [Police Spokesman] Roseman said, by “sleeping with a prostitute.” The prostitute would then report to Flory what sexual acts the two had engaged in, as well as how much money was exchanged.
After that process, users were designated as “Verified,” gaining access to a wider circle of women to choose from, Roseman said. If users became more frequent customers, their status was increased to “Trusted,” which gave them access to more women and more portions of the website, including message boards explaining how to avoid the police, Roseman said.

there was Flory’s own admission that he was merely providing “a safe place for guys to find female prostitutes.” A public service, really, especially if you believe the good professor’s claim to the police that he “did not make money off of the website.” In fact, Professor Flory expressed dismay that his “hobby” had caused such a ruckus.

Ah, the life well-rounded. A day job that occupies your time nine months a year, a secluded vacation hideaway snugged up to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where you can pursue your hobby. And hookers, hookers, hookers! Just doesn’t get any better than that.

New Mexico's native flory.

Laurie Essig: I’m a Professor and a Prevaricator

Published June 18, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 7 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Call the EPA! There’s something polluting the water of Otter Creek, and it’s affecting the behavior of Middlebury College’s faculty. The evidence is indisputable: first ethics expert Kateri Carmola is busted for embezzlement; next professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies Laurie Essig boldly ventures into the realm of political commentary, a field she amply demonstrates is well outside her area of scholarly expertise.

Or maybe merely demonstrates lack of scholarly expertise in general. The author of American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Quest for Perfection lards her June 14 Chronicle of Higher Education “Brainstorm” essay, “I’m a Husband and a Mother,” with inaccuracies and distortions so profound one can only conclude she’s imbibed of a substance that has destroyed her ability to adhere to the most basic principles of scholarly practice.

Take, for example, how Professor Essig characterizes Michelle Bachman’s autobiographical statement at the beginning of the June 13 Republican candidate’s NH debate: the congresswoman, Essig writes, “introduced herself as a mother and a foster parent,” and compare it to what Bachman actually said:

Hi, my name is Michelle Bachmann. I’m a former federal tax litigation attorney. I’m a businesswoman. We started our own successful company. I’m also a member of the United States Congress. I’m a wife of 33 years. I’ve had five children, and we are the proud foster parents of 23 great children.

What Essig has written, some may argue, is perfectly true; Bachman, after all, did mention her kids in the final sentence of her seven-sentence statement. But it is scarily reminiscent of the bad old days before the second wave of feminism:

Essig's dismissive description of Michelle Bachmann is a reminder that women still have a long way to go.

Some may also argue that what Essig has written is defensible, since she is extracting from Bachman’s entire statement the information that supports the thesis of “I’m a Husband and a Mother”:

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the past few decades of American Presidential politics, being a “good” husband qualifies you to be the Executive in Chief.

If what Essig contends is true, then she must be hard-pressed to explain the presidencies of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton. These former chief executives were men of many parts, but one role they emphatically did not excel at was that of “‘good’ husband.” But, like the first few sentences of Bachman’s introduction, the fact of the lack of marital fidelity by one-third of the “past few decade[s]” of American presidents does not support Essig’s thesis, so the good professor simply ignores it. Instead, she lambasts the public, the media and President Obama:

whether it is the Dems or Republicans, the mainstream media or the blogs, all that really matters is whether you are a good husband or a mother, not whether you’re wrong, stupid, and even downright dangerous. That’s why Obama has asked Representative Weiner to resign, despite the fact that Weiner’s leadership on progressive issues is untainted.

It is interesting to note that Essig apparently does not consider former congressman Weiner’s behavior neither wrong, stupid, nor dangerous. Actually, Laurie, according to your own thesis, it was all three. It cost Weiner his job and deprived him of the base from which to pursue progressive issues. Whether sending fulsome pictures of one’s sexual apparatus is inherently wrong, stupid or dangerous, however, I leave my readers to decide for themselves.

Her hagiography of Weiner knows no bounds:

As the Weiner case reminded us, the personal is political when it comes to sexual practices (and somehow only sex—we never ask about a candidate’s food politics, how he or she treats their aging parents or yapping dog, or even whether they are kind to their spouses).

Hey, Laurie: Call the ASPCA! Millions of American did back in the '60's. Or didn't you know that?

We never ask about a candidate’s “food politics”? Two words, Laurie: farm subsidies. We never criticize a politician’s treatment of animals? Too bad LBJ can’t testify from the grave about the pummeling he suffered from press and public when he lifted his beagle up by its ears in front of the cameras. We never notice whether politicians are “kind to their spouses”? Edwards and Clinton might beg to differ. Gary Hart and Richard Nixon, too.

Yo, Laurie: Read up on the issues before you open your yap.


Professor Essig concludes her lightly reasoned, historically inaccurate essay with a hat trick of egregious scholarly transgressions:

Muslim and homo-hating GOP candidates get taken seriously by the media because of their normative sex and gender roles, as huband [sic], as mother, and possibly as the next president of the United States.

Ad hominem? Check. Hyperbole? Check. Spelling error? Check.

I implore the good administrators at Middlebury College to test the water in Otter Creek. If not for the faculty, then at least for the students.

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Latest entry in “Where Are They Now?”

Justice has been served to both partners in the mom-pop crime wave that embezzled a cool $2.5 million from bastion of transparency and accountability Vassar College.

Amy Bishop: Countdown to Court

A judge in Huntsville, Alabama set a trial date of March 19, 2012 for former biology professor Amy Bishop, whose colleagues in the biology department watched in terror as she gunned down three faculty members and severely wounded others in 2009. The motive, apparently, was Bishop's denial of tenure at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Trial Begins:March 19th, 2012
25 days to go.
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