Category Archives for Faculty

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

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

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!

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

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.

Should the Nanny State Intervene to Fix Commencement?

Remember the “African proverb,” “it takes a village to raise a child,” Hillary Clinton borrowed for a book title? One would think this month that the village wise men and women would be out in force to congratulate the children they have nurtured with their tutelage. One would think. But one would be wrong.

My last post, about faculty workload, landed me in deep doo-doo with the academical set, some of whom resorted to ad hominem attacks when my arguments left them sputtering (check out Chandra’s comments). So rather than offering opinion on the matter of faculty failing to attend Commencement, I’ll let the professoriate speak for itself.

First, though, I’ll credit the source, David Galef’s essay “Showing Up” in the May 27 edition of Inside Higher Ed. Galef takes on the growing number of faculty who don’t bother showing up to watch their students graduate; he enumerates and handily dismisses the reasons faculty offer for their behavior. Since he is a seasoned academic Galef I am sure was 100% prepared for deluge of criticism that came his way.
Leading the charge was “erinna,” who self-identifies as an award-winning “highly rated faculty member”:

I don’t go to graduation for several reasons. First and foremost, I just don’t want to. I find it pointless, and I feel like a crowd extra in a biblical epic — there’s masses of people and I’m just one more. So I don’t feel like this is an impactful use of my time.

… the graduation ceremony ….[is] purely symbolic with no real use.

Finally, my school has repeatedly expanded the scope of my duties without expanding my pay. When you do that, people will start to pick things to dump that are not not important to them and for which there will be no reprisal. Ceremony is at the top of that list for me.

I’d love to know what (award-winning) Professor erinna teaches; given her take on symbols I’m guessing (hoping) it’s not mathematics or a humanities or social science subject.

Pop quiz: Is Professor erinna reviewing her awards or her excuses for not attending Commencement?

I’m also wondering what constitutes an “impactful use” of her time, and my guess here is that it’s probably the hours she spends deciding which of her “duties” she can “dump” without “reprisal.” Like the self-respecting and award-winning academic that she is, erinna takes principled action—skipping out on the one ceremony in the academic calendar that has real meaning–only when it won’t get her in trouble. Admirable.

Next, “20-year adjunct” pats herself on the back for attending Commencement:

I did go once because I had a student graduating. It was a miserable experience. We sat in the football field on folding chairs. The wind blew, it was hot, the process took too long, and I felt like wallpaper.

Since my husband and I share a gown, we do not have to pay rental costs. But I got tired of staring at the board of trustees, few of whom even have a graduate degree, handing out diplomas, and the administrators, most of whom are new to their job, overpaid, and have not earned my respect.

Perhaps if the trustees took off their regalia, 20-year wouldn't mind the view.

If I had tenure-level pay, maybe I’d show up more, but so long as I am seen as a temp, I am not really motivated to spend an afternoon sitting like a lump when there is still grading to be done.

Usually I have tremendous sympathy for adjunct faculty. They do the heavy lifting of intro courses for laughable pay and no respect whilst their tenured and tenure-track colleagues fret about missing the last episode of The Jersey Shore. But in “20 years”’s case I’ll curb my feelings. She attended one graduation exercise and was so fatigued by it that she vowed never to set foot on an athletic field again. I understand her point of view, though, after all the newly minted baccalaureates she so recently taught didn’t “even have a graduate degree” yet, so why get all hot and bothered? Admirable.

At least Steve Thulin, professor of history at Northwest College, doesn’t cite lack of eye candy on the podium as his reason for ditching Commencement. “I have worked at a small college here in Wyoming for over 20 years and until recently would not have missed a graduation,” he boasts, then delivers his zinger, “But I did this year and last because my administration crammed our finals ‘week’ into a ‘Wednesday-Thursday-Friday’ format (it was convenient to their needs?) and insisted that graduation would be on a Saturday morning — and grades are due on Tuesday. Some of us did not even get most of our finals until the day before graduation — and for myself, I was still under a pile of term papers when they arrived anyway.”
It’s hard to untangle Professor Thulin’s stream-of-consciousness rant, but I think it boils down to he’s mad because Commencement takes place on Saturday morning. God forbid a faculty member be asked to show up on the weekend. Thulin also takes a gratuitous shot at those vile 9-to-5 Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday administrators. They had the temerity to schedule a six-day work-week for themselves so that families members of the working class kids whose ranks make up Northwest’s enrollment could watch their sons and daughters graduate without the fear of lost wages.

Thulin goes on to say he’s watching Commencement on TV from home, where he’s correcting papers so his grades can be turned in on Tuesday. Admirable.

But leave it to a greybeard to sum things up. “OldCommProf” takes aim with the most predictable arrow in the faculty quiver—he blames somebody else for his behavior:

I’m considering skipping graduation, even though we’re encouraged to go and know all the arguments about honoring the grads. And I’ve been to 28 of the 32 that have been held since I’ve been here.

The reason I’ve come to this point is that it has lost all sense of decorum and dignity. The kids do handstands on the stage, hoist the chancellor in their arms instead of shaking his hand, hold up the line as they take multiple pictures with their pocket digital cameras (the let’s-get-our-faces-really-close kind that that they usually take in bars and at parties) and sometimes even kiss him.

It’s a mess and I’m embarrassed to be part of it.

With seconds to go before they never have to deal with the likes of erinna, 20-year adjunct, Thulin, or OldCommProf again, is it any wonder graduates are turning handsprings?

Before we put the Pomp and Circumstance CD away for another year, let’s let JE, Prof at Private U, have the last word, for his is a call to civility:

I think what is lacking in this discussion is a mutual respect for people’s individual decisions- faculty and student alike. I admit I don’t attend ceremonies. I didn’t as a student and I don’t as a faculty member. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this decision regardless of my reasons, just as I do not think there is anything wrong with choosing to participate in or even enjoy ceremonial events on the part of others.

In JE’s private universe “mutual respect” is defined as: “I do as I please. The rest of you can sod off.”
Sometimes I think Thomas Hobbes wasn’t writing about all of mankind. Just the professoriate.

When faculty speak for themselves: two outta three ain't bad.

Afshan Jafar: Gen Xer, Professor, Cry Baby

You know the sound that a piece of errant chalk makes on a blackboard? Ever wonder what that sound, translated into words on a page, would read like? I can help you out with that.

If you cruise on over to Inside Higher Ed and read “The Life and Work of a Professor,” by one Afshan Jafar, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Connecticut College, you’ll have your hands covering your ears in no time flat, just like you do when the chalk meets the blackboard.

Professor Jafar’s topic is one near and dear to the hearts of academics: how hard they work and how misunderstood they are. Here’s a sample from Jafar’s essay:

[W]hile my non-academic friends can take a break to watch Jersey Shore, or The Apprentice, or Dancing with the Stars, should they feel like it, I find myself spending most of my time between 8 pm (when the kids go to bed) and midnight (when I go to bed) staring at stacks of students’ papers, keeping up with the readings, or preparing for class for the next day. There are many nights when my husband finds me asleep at the laptop or with a student’s paper in my hands: my body finally giving in to the exhaustion of a long work-day as well as a long commute (we are an academic couple and commute in opposite directions).

Now try squeezing in research and service commitments to this model. Most of my summer and winter break is spent catching up on my research and even some on-going committee work. But research and service are such intangible concepts, especially to those outside of academia. People don’t understand how time-consuming conducting research, applying for funding, or pursuing publication can be. When I explain to my friends, that my husband and I go for several weeks sometimes without turning on the TV, except for the kids to watch their PBS shows in the morning, they gasp in disbelief. But clearly, my situation is not unique, since some of my fellow writers at University of Venus [Inside Higher Ed’s column for and by “GenX Women in Higher Ed, Writing from Across the Globe”] find themselves leading a similar lifestyle.

So I find myself quite frustrated when people casually imply that we have an easy job. Not only do they not realize what our day to day lives as academics entail, but they also don’t understand the sacrifices involved in being graduate students for the 6+ years after college: living on meager stipends, having minimum healthcare (if we’re lucky!), not having any savings…

Professor J has this on the wall in her office, right next to her diploma from UMass.


Even I can be sympathetic to somebody who defines a job as not “easy” because it precludes her from watching the “Jersey Shore, or The Apprentice, or Dancing with the Stars,” and I am sure that you probably can, too, but I draw the line at feeling sorry for somebody who is so hopelessly inept at time management as Professor J. “What most people fail to realize,” she opines

is that our jobs as full-time faculty have at least two other components to them besides teaching: research and service. But putting that aside for a second, even if we look only at teaching, the time and energy we put into it goes far beyond the “contact-time” we have with our students in the classroom. Even when I am teaching only three courses in one semester, the reading, preparation, grading (oh, the grading!), the emailing back and forth with students, take up many, many, more hours.

Okay. She’s teaching three courses. Let’s do the math. A typical course meets for 150 minutes per week, or two and one-half hours. Multiple 2.5 hours for each course by 3, the number of courses she’s teaching. That comes out to 7.5 hours per week. Now, subtract 7.5 hours from 40 hours, the length of a standard work-week, and you see that the professor has 32.5 hours remaining in her work week to attend committee meetings, advise students, correct their papers, keep up on her research and reading, and perform her “service.” I have yet to meet a sociology professor who assigns a paper a week to her students, let alone one due after every class, so the idea that night after night Professor Jafar is missing Dancing with the Stars or her other favorite programs because she is correcting papers just doesn’t fly. And even if she did assign a weekly paper, presumably she could arrange to have it due on a day other than when DWTS is on. Problem solved.

Then there are office hours, which faculty members are expected to hold so that students in their classes can visit them with questions about the subject matter. Again, the rule of thumb is one hour per course taught. So we are now up to 10.5 hours accounted for in the work week, with 29.5 left to fill. I’ll even give the good professor a pass on whether students actually show for the office hours. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. A wise professor would TiVo the Jersey Shore to watch while she sits in solitary splendor in her faculty office, waiting for students who may never arrive. Or maybe even use that time to correct papers from students in her courses, which according to Connecticut College’s fact sheet, average no more than 18 per class.

Snooki was inconsolable when she learned Professor J missed an epsiode of Jersey Shore.


Research can be as grueling and time-consuming as it is exhilarating, and to do it well demands an uninterrupted block of time, which is why sabbaticals were invented. Even so, most faculty do not teach five days per week, so let’s be generous and give Professor J eight hours, one full work day, for her research during a given semester. She has a remaining 21.5 hours to fill in her full-time work-week. Most colleges have a two-hour block of time built into the week for “governance,” the time when committee meetings are scheduled. Let’s for the sake of argument double that, and assume that Professor Jafar spends four hours per-week in committee meetings (which is what the typical academic defines as “service”). This arduous schedule leaves her 17.5 hours per week, two full days and then some, to prep for class, correct papers, email students, and do all those other always unspecified things that busy, busy professors do. Keep in mind that “prep for class” means reviewing material you have already prepared or should have prepared if you care enough about your students to have given them a detailed syllabus, reading literature related to your research and professional interests, and thinking about inventive tactics to keep your students engaged.

In the end what irritates me about Professor Jafar’s rant is not simply its lack of originality–if she thinks Gen X faculty are the first to think they are misunderstood, she is grievously uninformed or self-absorbed or both–but rather her willful misunderstanding of what non-academics mean when they make envious comments about her job. She is clueless about two realities: 1) most people work forty-plus work-weeks with little or any variety let alone flexibility in their schedules, whereas the life of an academic–even one who works that same forty-hour-plus schedule–is blessed with flexibility unheard of in the rest of the working world. Of her “full-time job” Jafar has to be at a specified place at a specified time exactly 12.5 hours per week. How she uses gainfully or fritters away the remaining hours is left completely to her. If she chooses to correct papers at night so she can work out in the afternoon is her decision–and a choice many working stiffs can only but dream of having.

So why is Professor J falling asleep over her laptop? Because she has a long commute she makes two to three days a week? Because she expends incredible energy worrying about being laid off? On this count too I’ll give her a (temporary) pass, because she probably doesn’t have tenure, but once she does, then her worries are over. I don’t know why she’s falling asleep. But one thing I am very sure of—when she’s dozing she’s not in Never-Never Land, because that is the landscape she inhabits in her waking hours.

Artist's rendering of Professor J's awful working conditions. Where's OSHA when you need them?

Professor Ellen Lewin’s Civil Discourse SNAFU

Memo to the University of Iowa Class of 2015: don’t get Professor Ellen Lewin angry.  You wouldn’t like Professor Lewin when she’s angry.  Members of the current classes at Iowa recently learned this the hard way, when Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, let her opinion of them be known in a recent email.

As professorial emails go, Lewin’s was refreshing in its brevity.  No fancy academic jargon from Professor L.  She got straight to her point: “FUCK YOU REPUBLICANS” she wrote.  Needless to say, her use of such surprisingly gendered language raised more than a few eyebrows, and in the case of the student organization to whom she directed her suggestion, no little ire.

Professor Lewin keepin' it classy.

What prompted the professor’s outrage was a campus-wide email from the College Republican Club, exhorting

Conservatives in Iowa City it is now time to come out of the closet!

I know at times it feels like you are the only person that disagrees with this liberal town, but you are not alone! We are asking all Republicans, Independents leaning right, or just anyone slightly frustrated with the current one party controlling every level of Johnson County, and some levels of Iowa and U.S. government to STAND UP!

The club’s email was approved by the office of student affairs at the university, as required by school policy. It goes on to list a number of activities the club had planned for the coming week, and closes with an invitation to an “Animal Rights BBQ.” Undergraduate humor at its best–turning the cliches of campus life on their head, and using parody to make a deadly serious point.

Professor Lewin, however, didn’t see the humor. She saw red. When the president of the Republican Club complained to Lewin’s chair, the chair knew a losing battle when he saw one, and pretty much ordered the outraged professor to apologize for her lack of civility. So she did. Sort of:

This is a time when political passions are inflamed, and when I received your unsolicited email, I had just finished reading some newspaper accounts of fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government. I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities. I would really appreciate your not sending blanket emails to everyone on campus, especially in these difficult times.”

Uh-oh! Take cover! It's Professor Lewin's "difficult time" of the month.

Pay attention, class! Note the sarcasm in the Lewin’s apology. We will return to it shortly. Note that her emotions eroded her capacity to grasp the most basic of rhetorical no-no’s when she warps into overdrive to hector the students who were “sending blanket emails to everyone.” Care for a tautology, anyone? Note her willingness to curtail the rights of a student group that had followed university policy in order to get its message out, to use the campus’s email system. And, finally, note her reference to “these difficult times.” I might apprehend this an allusion to A Tale of Two Cities. I suppose Lewin would accuse me of sexism if I did.

One of the characteristics of deep-thinking faculty such as Professor Lewin is the fanaticism with which they defend their work. This is generally a good thing for scholarship and research, but in rare instances it leads to unintended consequences. Such is the case with Lewin. Incapable of letting anyone else have the last word, profane or otherwise, and unable to keep her own yap shut, Lewin took to her computer once again, firing off a second email, to “clarify” her apology. Not being much of a deep thinker myself, I, on the other hand, always thought the words “I’m sorry” pretty much covered all the bases. But deep-thinking Lewin had to footnote her apology, just like the good scholar of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies that she is:

I should note that several things in the original message were extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity. Despite the Republicans’ general disdain for LGBT rights you called your upcoming event “conservative coming out day,” appropriating the language of the LGBT right movement. Your reference to the Wisconsin protests suggested that they were frivolous attempts to avoid work. And the “Animal Rights BBQ” is extremely insensitive to those who consider animal rights an important cause. Then, in the email that Ms. Ginty sent complaining about my language, she referred to me as Ellen, not Professor Lewin, which is the correct way for a student to address a faculty member, or indeed, for anyone to refer to an adult with whom they are not acquainted. I do apologize for my intemperate language, but the message you all sent out was extremely disturbing and offensive.

In other words, Professor Lewin is free to question the “delicate sensibilities” of anyone who might have been offended by her language, but herself has an attack of the vapors when a student has the temerity to refer to the Professor by her first name. Oh, the incivility! Oh, the obscenity! And if that alone was insufficient to justify Professor Lewin’s retracting her apology, then surely the “appropriation” of “coming out” a term to which, according Ellen Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered students have exclusive rights (let’s pass over lightly the appropriation of the word “gay,” lest the top of Lewin’s head blow off) is enough for Lewin to affirm that her apology is indeed the joke she intended it to be. So afraid was she that the Republican students would be too stupid to figure out her apology was just another FU, Lewin felt compelled to spell it out for them.

Do you really wonder why Republican students at the University of Iowa are in the closet?

What are the Odds? In Jack Rappaport’s Class, It’s Even Money You’ll See More than You Bargained For

Phew! Let’s take a break from the embezzlement sweepstakes and revisit last month’s school for scandal, Northwestern University, where Professor John Michael Bailey procured the services of an exhibitionist and her “boyfriend” to demonstrate the finer points of female ejaculation, creative vaginal stimulation, and good old, down ‘n dirty public masturbation.

The thorough investigation into the propriety of the post-class impromptu sex show is ongoing at Northwestern; however, it appears that what Professor Bailey started has caught on, if not in classrooms across America, at least in those of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love—and lap dances.

One Jack Rappaport, Assistant Professor in the School of Business at LaSalle University since 1979, recently invited ecdysiasts to perform for a continuing studies class, according to a report in Phillydotcom, the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer. There are conflicting reports on what the dancers were wearing and when they were wearing it (or not), just as there are conflicting stories about just how many, if any, laps were danced upon. But a couple of facts are clear: whatever happened in Professor Rappaport’s class on the application of Platonic and Hegelian ethics (I refrain from stating the obvious)

They werent real strippers; they were just the idea of strippers.

to business has led to Lasalle’s opening a “full-scale investigation into what took place and who was responsible,” according to university spokesman Joseph Donovan, who, while declining to say

whether the stripper reports prompted the university’s probe into Rappaport…confirmed the date of the class in question. He also said Paul Brazina, dean of the business school, broke up the session after walking into it.

The Inquirer also reports that Spokesman Donovan said in an email that

Until the investigation has been completed, it would be unfair to those involved to disclose any further information, let alone suspicions or allegations. While the university is proceeding as quickly as possible, we recognize the importance of guarding against a rush to judgment in this situation.

This must have been a deer-in-the-headlights moment for Donovan, who as any good member of an academic community, puts due process above all else. Including logic. For although he cautions against a “rush to judgment,” he also confirms that whatever was happening in that classroom was abruptly terminated by Dean Brazina. Whatever the facts of the case, the dean at least appears to have been in a rush.

While the student—Rappaport—in this case seems but a pale copy of the original—Bailey—once again one is forced to ask “where are the faculty member’s critical thinking skills?” Perhaps, in Professor Rappaport’s case, they’d already decamped to the VIP classroom for the one-on-one independent study module.

The professor does ask that students purchase their textbooks at a specific store.

While this classroom sexcapade raises disturbing but by now familiar issues, there is a kind of poignancy to Professor Rappaport. A permanent habitue of the lowest rung of the academic ladder, he says of his life’s work:

Being a professor at LaSalle gives me a great deal of joy. I live right at the campus and I am usually in my office most of the day. This allows me to be accessible to all of my students most of the time. I try to enrich my teaching by using interesting real life applications such as the use of the horse race betting market in the teaching of statistics.

In his spare time, he adds, he enjoys giving violin concerts and teaching the violin. Over at RateMyProfessors, more than one student makes mention of Rappaport’s b.o., a few describe him as “weird,” and several talk about his “obsession” with horse racing and strippers. There is virtual unanimity that a course with Rappaport pretty much guarantees an “easy A.” But. The students are divided in what they think they learned in Rappaport’s class, and what they think of him as a person–body odor aside. What emerges is a sketchy portrait of a soul if not lost then at sea. Having read these ratings I confess I am left wondering if there is less rather than more to this story, in spite of the dean’s rush to judgment.

UPDATE:  On April 15, LaSalle relented and let its student newspaper The Collegian publish a story about the class the administration had embargoed.  It’s well-written, and I suspect very accurate.  You should read it.

Presenting the Double-Dipping Duo, Professors Julie Jacko and Francois Sainfort

UPDATE: Mug shots of Professor Jacko and Professor Sainfort show them with his-and-her come-hither tilts of their chins.  I wonder what reactions those sultry looks will garner in the Big House.

For those of you who still believe in the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and the idea that college faculty work a 35-hour week and then some, allow me to introduce you to Professors Francois Sainfort and Julie Jacko, who were recently indicted in Georgia for having accomplished the seemingly impossible: being in two places at once, Georgia Tech, where they were full-time members of the faculty, and the University of Minnesota, where they were full-time members of the faculty. Until they were indicted by the state of Georgia back in March, these mom-and-pop grifters (sound familiar?) were collecting paychecks for two full-time faculty positions at once. Well, make that four paychecks, since each half of this partnership in crime was pulling down a double payday.

Computers have made a faculty member's timesheets easier than ever to fill out.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, doesn’t it? Starting with how, if a professor’s time is consumed by, as many of them claim, laboriously reworking lectures and classroom materials; long hours of scholarly research and writing; advising students and holding office hours for them; and committee meetings, meetings, meetings, how could even the most talented and energetic–as I am certain the Professors Sainfort and Jacko are–of them do all of this twice in one week? There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done! One also might be tempted to ask how stringent are the controls on faculty performance. I’m not talking about measuring the quality of their work, you understand, but simply its quantity. If you think the answer is obvious–not stringent enough–you’d be correct.

But what you need to understand about accountability is that the front line (department chairs) and sometimes the second line (school or college deans) of defense have too much of a vested interest in looking the other way. You see, department heads tend to rotate in and out of the chair’s office, so there is no incentive to ask your colleagues to be accountable and lots of incentive to turn a blind eye, because, in a couple of years, you’ll be out of the hot seat and someone else will be warming the chair’s chair. Although it doesn’t happen regularly, this kind of assured mutual forgiveness can remain intact when a faculty member is elevated to dean.

I doubt that these scenarios applied in the case of the Professors Saintfort-Jacko; you, however, should make up your own mind as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution picks up the story:

Sainfort and Jacko are experts in the field of health informatics, a speciality that focuses on analyzing huge amounts of computer-generated medical data. Sainfort served as director of Tech’s Health Systems Institute, which brings in millions of dollars in research grants.

According to documents, HSI routinely paid thousands of dollars to Robert Jacko, Julie Jacko’s brother, for helping collect data for the institute.

Robert Jacko, who holds a master of business administration degree, according to invoice documents, was paid $86,000 between June 2006 and January 2007. Checks were made out to Jacko listing the address of a UPS store off West Paces Ferry, down the street from where Sainfort and Julie Jacko lived. Their Buckhead house is now on the market for $1.6 million.

Phyllis Brooks, who was Sainfort’s executive assistant, signed off on the payments to Robert Jacko, according to check-request forms provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the state’s Open Records Act.

Notice how the accountable Professor Saintfort leaves his assistant holding the bag. How much would you care to wager she does not live in a $1.6 million home?

As always, there is more to the story. On the day of their indictment back in March, the Professors had their attorneys issue a press release. I’m not going to reproduce it in its hilarious entirety, because it is a tad long-winded, but its central theses are worth parsing, and, besides, it gives a far more detailed account of the indictment than any of the newspaper accounts; my interpretive comments are in italics:

“The facts show that the professors worked tirelessly during that time [i.e., the time they were claiming to be full-time at Georgia Tech and Minnesota] for Georgia Tech, thereby earning this money [in other words, since Georgia issued the indictment and not Minnesota, we'll claim the Peach State's money is what they actually "earned."], and made no secret that they were leaving the University,” said Martin B. Goldberg, an attorney at Lash & Goldberg, who has represented the professors during the investigation. “Indeed, despite Georgia Tech’s allegations of fraud and secrecy, the University actually held a ‘going away party’ for the professors [Red herring. Nobody said they weren't leaving. While still at Georgia Tech they were collecting from Minnesota.].”

Ever the careful planners, Professors Jacko and Sainfort were packed up and ready to go before enjoying their farewell party at Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech also claims the professors took money via double travel reimbursements, all arising from a flawed process at Georgia Tech susceptible to mistakes by all involved; a process that was revised after this matter arose. [In other words, the claim is correct.]

Georgia Tech also claims a relative, Robert Jacko, received monies for work he did not perform on a privately funded project. The evidence shows that Mr. Jacko’s work, performed over the period of nearly a year, was needed, was performed, and did in fact assist in the completion of a successful research endeavor. [Apparently homeless while performing this work, Mr. Jacko picked up his share of the loot at a drop-site.]

In responding to the indictment on the professors’ behalf, Goldberg said, “Drs. Sainfort and Jacko are devastated by this attempt to criminalize their decision to leave Georgia Tech, yet they remain steadfast and committed to addressing their innocence through the judicial process.” He also added, “The way this matter was handled over the past three years by Georgia Tech sends a scary and chilling message to other successful professors and employees at that institution.”

“Dr. Sainfort regrets that Georgia Tech has sought to prosecute this matter [No kidding.] and looks forward to having all the facts presented,” said Buddy Parker, an attorney with Maloy Jenkins Parker who represents Sainfort.

Added Robert Rubin, an attorney with Peters Rubin & Sheffield, representing Jacko, “Dr. Jacko has always been forthright and honest in her dealings with Georgia Tech and fully expects to be exonerated at trial.” [It was all the executive assistant's fault.]

Please bear with me as I reproduce additional lawyerly prose. University of Minnesota General Counsel Mark Rotenberg’s statement, however, regarding the criminal indictments of Professors Sainfort and Jacko is bracingly and refreshingly direct:

This morning the University of Minnesota was informed that professors Francois Sainfort and Julie Jacko were each indicted on multiple felony counts by a grand jury in the state of Georgia. According to the Georgia Attorney General, the indictment alleges that Sainfort and Jacko “conspired to be employed full time and receive salary from Georgia Tech while simultaneously being employed full time and collecting salary from the University of Minnesota. The indictment also charges that the two fraudulently billed Georgia Tech for travel expenses, inappropriately directed payments to a relative, and lied about their dual employment and the purpose of the Georgia Tech-funded travel.”

On December 14, 2010 Professors Sainfort and Jacko were disciplined by the university [of Minnesota] after a review of the facts surrounding their transition from the Georgia Institute of Technology to the University of Minnesota in 2007-2008. Both professors received letters of reprimand and were required to pay the university [of Minnesota] approximately $59,000. As part of their reprimands, the university advised them that there may be grounds for further university review and action in the event material new facts come to light.

Professors Sainfort and Jacko’s employment activities at the university will be managed in accordance with relevant University Human Resources policies, and the university will adhere to all regulatory notification requirements governing any affected sponsored research in which the professors are involved.

It’s probably no accident that the disciplined duo wound up at the University of Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers. They have proven they can go fer the gold, and, just like the rodents they are, they have no compunction about taking what’s theirs and what’s there.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT.

Professor Jacko stands guard at the West Paces Ferry UPS.

It Takes One to Know One: Professor Carmola’s Ethical Lapses

UPDATE:
Addison Criminal Division
==============
05/09/11 State vs. Carmola, Kateri
51-1-11 Ancr/Criminal
Nancy S. Corsones
Plea Conference

As I believe I have mentioned a time or two, one of the most endearing characteristics typical of college faculty members is their utter lack of a sense of irony. When you put that together with their finely honed sense of aggrieved entitlement, you wind up with a winning package such as Middlebury College’s very own Associate Professor of Political Science

Kateri Carmola.

Professor Carmola’s areas of scholarly interests include the ethical ramifications of warfare and Plato and the noble lie. So sought after is she for her expertise that she has “participated in numerous forums and events on the private security industry” and “provided expert testimony for the UN Working Group on Mercenaries.” Her publications range from addressing the “legal, ethical, and sociological issues surrounding the use of private military contractors worldwide….[to] the problems of assigning blame for the crimes at Abu Ghraib [and] the concept of proportionality in the laws of war.” If you were to find yourself ensnared in an ethical dilemma, clearly Professor C is the gal you’d turn to for the way out.

Were it not for that little matter, reported by the Burlington Free Press, of “a felony charge alleging she embezzled $4,800 from the Salisbury Historical Society.” At the time of the theft, Professor Carmola was a member of the Society’s board of trustees–its treasurer, in fact.

Professor Carmola has mentored countless students.

Professor Carmola has pleaded not guilty to the embezzlement charge and is currently free on her own recognizance, her trial pending. Says the Burlington paper, “If convicted, Carmola could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $500 fine.” Rumor has it she’s burning the midnight oil boning up on the best way to assign blame for the affronts her dignity will suffer when she’s pulling laundry duty in the state pen. I also have heard that she’s been practicing a new pronunciation of the word “trustee.”

I was framed!

Bust-out scene from the docudrama, "Professor Carmola's Jailhouse Gang"

But perhaps her sentence will be mitigated if her jury considers the reason she suffered an ethical lapse. You see, she did it for the children. Her reason for emptying the coffers of a tiny, struggling non-profit? Besides, I mean, the obvious one that it is easier to steal from a volunteer organization of which you are a fiduciary than it is to seek funding through proper channels from your employer, who sits on an endowed nest egg of some $860 million. No, she stuck her hand in the cookie jar “to fund a series of class trips with college students in 2010”:

This will fund the snacks for our class trip!

According to a police affidavit, Carmola withdrew the $4,800 from the historical society’s bank account in 11 transactions between July 6 and Sept. 8 of last year. Carmola was on the society’s board of directors at the time but was not authorized to spend the group’s money without the board’s consent.

Society president Barry Whitney alerted police after he discovered that the funds were missing. According to the police affidavit, the society’s board confronted Carmola, who admitted she had taken the $4,800 out of the bank account and vowed to pay the money back.

“Carmola advised that she was taking money out of the savings account to fund her class trips with the Middlebury College students because she was a Middlebury College professor,” the affidavit said. The board subsequently voted to have Carmola removed from the board.

Middlebury, of course, is not acting as rashly. While it is true that Professor Carmola has copped to the crime, the chairman of her department thinks it would be “premature” to make a judgment. As does the Executive Vice President and Provost, who also evokes the p-word, saying:

The college would be very concerned if any of its employees were found to have engaged in unlawful behavior but it would be premature to comment on this legal case or to speculate about what, if anything, the college’s response will be.

In other words, Professor Carmola will be back teaching ethics at a liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont. Ironic, isn’t it?

For an excellent on-the-ground account of Professor Carmola’s teensy mistake, read this post from the MiddBlog, Middlebury’s “alternative source” for news you can use.  Were it not for MiddBlog, I’d've missed the account in the Addison County Independent, which transcribes the conversation the professor-embezzler had with Vermont State Trooper Joseph Szarejko:

“I … spoke with Carmola and she advised that she did in fact take the money out of the historical society’s bank account because she did not have enough money to fund her expenses,” Szarejko wrote in his affidavit. “Carmola advised that she transferred the money out of the historical society’s account and into hers so that she could pay for her airfare and other expenses for the trips.”

Carmola told police she had returned the money and was “now aware that she made a mistake; she did not think anything was wrong with borrowing the money at first until she was confronted about this issue,” Szarejko wrote.

Here we have a faculty member who cannot afford airfare because “she did not have enough money,” so, like Willie Sutton, off she went to the bank, because that’s where the money is. So brazen is her sense of her entitlement, so highly degraded are her personal ethics that she told the state trooper, presumably with a straight face, that she “did not think anything was wrong with borrowing the money.” And, yeah, after she got caught she paid it back. I guess that makes her ethical after all.

In preparation for her plea deal, Professor Carmola uses ethics-for-dummies flash cards.