Category Archives for Life and Culture

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.

A Rogue’s Round-Up: College Presidents Plunge en masse into Hot Water

What a week it has been! So much graft, corruption, and financial chicanery taking place in the hushed halls of academic administration that I hardly know where to begin. One by one piggy presidents have overstayed their welcome at the trough of entitlements that make up their discretionary accounts.

Take, for example, President Allen Sessoms of the University of the District of Columbia, one of those large, diverse public universities Bill Gates finds so troubling. Never mind the UDC is the gateway to a better life for thousands of determined but likely under-prepared survivors of the District’s public schools—Bill Gates thinks it doesn’t do a good enough job. And insofar as the behavior of its CEO goes, on this point I would agree with Gates.

President Sessoms is a travelin’ man, and he likes to travel in style: a $1,443 flight to Boston, a $1,859 flight to California, a $2,229 flight San Antonio, and a $7,952 flight to Cairo. How much do you want to bet he does not donate his frequent flyer miles back to the University?

My university president flew to Cairo first-class and all I got was this commemorative tee-shirt.

And when he travels, he brings along his entourage; according to the Washington, DC Fox affiliate, “A car rental receipt lists an additional charge for a “child seat” for a conference in San Diego. UDC also shelled out thousands for the entire Sessoms family to fly to a conference in Jackson Hole, WY over the Fourth of July weekend.” Tacky, when you consider had the Mrs. stayed home to tend the Sessoms brood she could’ve tooled around the streets of DC in the university-provided Lincoln Navigator or just relaxed in the comfort of her $1.6 million home, also provided by the college.

Says President Sessoms of his high-flying habits: “the receipts used in the story were taken out of context.” Says the university spokesman, in a valiant attempt to explain where Sessoms’ travel funds went: “In instances where there is no receipt or request for reimbursement – or any other explanation – reimbursement was either not requested, or the documentation does not exist for reasons I cannot explain at this time.” This satisfying explanation pretty much speaks for itself.

President Sessoms house, car, and appropriate travel are quite rightly paid for by the university. His excesses are not, and they have occasioned a firestorm of adverse publicity that UDC can ill afford. Way to go, Al!

Sessoms isn’t the first university president to get tripped up by the seeming largesse of his travel budget. Take, for example, the president of Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. Peter F. Burnham was on “administrative leave” when he resigned this week. Meanwhile, Brookdale’s trustees are busily trying to figure out just how much of Burnham’s $680,000 office budget amounted to “significant expenses and reimbursements … [not] directly connected to Brookdale or are contrary to Brookdale’s adopted policies governing travel, mileage and expenses.”

What might those “significant expenses and reimbursements” be, you might well inquire. The Asbury Park Press has the answer: Burnham received

a country club membership, a $1,500 monthly housing allowance and a new vehicle “suitable to his office,” which most recently meant a 2010 Ford Expedition that the college purchased for $42,815.

Country Clubbin' President Burnham takes aim at his discretionary accounts.

Burnham’s contract also allows up to $40,000 annually in college tuition for his two children, for a total of $267,676 to private universities so far.

Not too shabby for the president of a two-year college with a mission to serve the students of Monmouth County. And I think we can all agree that a paid-up country club membership is a great example of “Integrity and Accountability,” the “value” Brookdale espouses on it website:

Brookdale Community College values fairness, openness, and honesty, engaging in continuous self-assessment to sustain excellence and demonstrate accountability.

About that “accountabilty“:

Burnham, a member of the Middle States Commission for Higher Education, attended a conference for the group in Puerto Rico in January. He flew business class at a cost of $1,524.60, but the commission would only pay the cost of coach — $1,229.60. Brookdale was billed for the $295 difference. He also submitted $242 bill for dinner for two at Morton’s Steakhouse….

A quick review of 2009 and 2010 country club expenditures show that the college paid about $25,000 each year for membership and monthly expenses at Navesink Country Club. Records show Burnham spent nearly $7,000 in 2009 and more than $15,000 in 2010 on golf, meals and entertainment for unnamed guests.

I am thinking that Sessoms and Burnham must share a travel agent.

And finally we come to this week’s guilty plea, from former Central Arkansas University President Lu Hardin, also the former–as of this week–president of Palm Beach Atlantic University–on federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering related to a scheme to deceive the school’s board of trustees into giving him nearly $200,000.

President Hardin practices his signature, and many others.

Arkansas Online continues:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Harris said in court that Hardin’s criminal activity began in April 2008 when he forged a letter to the board of trustees suggesting it was legal for a $300,000 deferred compensation package to be paid to Hardin immediately. The letter purported to be signed by UCA officials, including its vice president and chief counsel, but it was actually written by Hardin without their knowledge.

In making his case to the judge, Hardin said he took “full responsibility” for his theft. He hasn’t been sentenced yet, but I for one hope for the best.

Slop talk: Sessoms, Burnham, and Hardin chew the fat while exchanging tips on falsifying receipts.

And, lest you think it’s only male academics who are corrupt, in this week’s bumper crop of miscreants, cast your eye on this excerpt from a March 9 press release from the US Attorney, Southern District of New York:

Marie E. Thornton, the former Vice President of Finance for Iona College, pled guilty today for embezzling more than $850,000 from the college. Thornton pled guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin N. Fox.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “This is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house. Marie Thornton was entrusted with the financial well-being of Iona College, but instead, she abused her access to cook the books and line her own pockets.”

From 1999 up to May 2009, Thornton caused more than $850,000 belonging to Iona College to be diverted to her personal use by, among other things, submitting false vendor invoices for reimbursement to Iona College and submitting credit card bills for personal expenses to be paid by Iona College.

The sad coda to this story is that Ms. Thornton is in fact Sister Marie Thornton.

President Hardin and Sister Marie kick up their heels at the Felon's Ball.

Sickening, isn’t it? Especially when you consider that all of these fine examples of academic integrity, save Sister Marie, who presumably answers to a higher authority, were presidents of public universities and as such held the public trust, not to mention its money.

Do I think these sorry excuses for academics are the rule? No, of course not. But I do think that they are poster boys and girls for the slippery slope that college and universities administrators find themselves on when they begin to believe their own publicity. When they begin to believe that students are shareholders and therefore the college’s CEO needs to be “paid what he’s worth” just like the heads of Fortune 500 companies. Little by little, some–a few–presidents begin to think that what they are worth entitles them to those extra perks that after a while add up to 10-to-20 in the federal pen. Sometime between that extra martini at the 19th hole and the time the president lays his tired bones to rest on those 1000-count Egyptian cotton sheets it all goes to his head. My suggestion is that boards of trustees everywhere study these crooks when they draw up the next outlandish pay package to lure the candidate of their dreams to campus.

You Know Human Dignity Has Reached the Bottom of the Barrel When John Michael Bailey Apologizes

It had to happen, I suppose. Northwestern Professor John Michael Bailey has issued a heartfelt apology via a statement to the Daily Northwestern, the university’s newspaper. As I have come to expect from anything Professor Bailey says or writes, this latest missive is a model of its genre. All you graduate students out there planning a career in the academy might want to take notes.

Professor Bailey apologizes.


Bailey’s text is in italics. My interpretive text is not. Bailey begins:

I regret allowing the controversial after class demonstration on February 21st. I regret the effect that this has had on Northwestern University’s reputation, and I regret upsetting so many people in this particular manner. I apologize. As I have noted elsewhere, the demonstration was unplanned and occurred because I made a quick decision to allow it. I should not have done so. In the 18 years I have taught the course, nothing like the demonstration at issue has occurred, and I will allow nothing like it to happen again. In other words, he’s sorry he’s in trouble. Interesting that he trots out the most juvenile of excuses, “I made a quick decision,” i.e., “I didn’t think.” Well, Professor Bailey, you take home a paycheck because as a teacher-scholar you are paid to think. You are in your position because of your ability to make discerning judgments in your field, judgments informed by years of education and study, not “quick decision(s).”

To admit that I did not anticipate the degree of reaction my decision provoked does not even begin to convey my surprise. During a time of financial crisis, war, and global warming, this story has been a top news story for more than two days. That this is so reveals a stark difference of opinion between people like me, who see absolutely no harm in what happened, and those who believe that it was profoundly wrong. A typical diversionary tactic. Shame on all you prudes for pointing fingers of disapproval at lil ole Professor Bailey! Don’t you know the unemployment rate among polar bears is upwards of 15%? Don’t you know there are polar bears dying in war torn countries around the world?! In this paragraph Bailey also affirms that he’s not sorry at all for his “quick decision”: he plainly states that he sees “absolutely no harm in what happened.” If this is the case, Professor Bailey, then why are you apologizing?

Fluffy is embarassed that Professor Bailey is hiding behind polar bears.


I have already stated my case as clearly as I could (see): The demonstration was relevant to a topic relevant to my course, it occurred after class in a completely voluntary setting with ample information about what would occur. It involved an act that although unusual, had no harmful effect on anyone. Observers were Northwestern students legally capable of voting, enlisting in the military and consuming pornography, as well as making many other serious decisions that legal adults are allowed to make. Again, the Professor throws up a smokescreen of irrelevancy. The setting was “voluntary” only in so far as class was over. The room was the same. The students were the same. The subject matter was the same. But most important of all, Professor Bailey, your role as teacher, expert, guide, and authority was the same. You knew going into the class and after-class session that the subject matter of both relied–as does the subject matter in any class on any topic taught by any faculty member–on your, the professor’s, ability to convey that subject matter with the finely honed decision-making ability and critical capacities your years in academy have supposedly bestowed upon you. In this you failed. You failed those who were your teachers. You failed your students. You failed your discipline. Some might even say you failed the 25-year-old twit duped into appearing on stage.

Those who believe that there was, in fact, a serious problem have had considerable opportunity to explain why: in the numerous media stories on the controversy, or in their various correspondences with me. But they have failed to do so. Saying that the demonstration “crossed the line,” “went too far,” “was inappropriate,” or “was troubling” convey disapproval but do not illuminate reasoning. If I were grading the arguments I have seen against what occurred, most would earn an “F.” Offense and anger are not arguments. But I remain open to hearing and reading good arguments. Of course you’d flunk them. They disagree with you. I imagine that a number of your adversaries are of the naïve assumption that you understand their euphemisms. But since you obtusely maintain that you do not, let me spell out what you did wrong: 1) By your own admission, you made a bad decision in a “controversial” situation. That you knew the situation was “controversial,” means you also knew there would be consequences to your decision affecting not only you, but your institution. You knew that, and you acted anyway. At best, you were selfish. At worst, you were willfully and willingly ready to harm Northwestern’s reputation and waste the time of innumerable staff who are still cleaning up after you—and, no, Professor Bailey, wielding a personal pooper scooper just for your messes is not in their job descriptions. 2) Your act of “daring” just made society a little coarser, a little more vulgar, and a little more desensitized to the difference between what is public and what is private. And in that sense you, to use your own word, “harmed” us all. 3) Spare me your puling excuse that the live sex show was after class: it had your imprimatur. You really think that does not mean anything? Have you lived under a rock for the last 30 years? Are you totally unaware of the power dynamic between a teacher and his students? 4) You say that your class on human sexuality included kinky sex. How does it follow that a demonstration is necessary? I wonder what the after-class session on pedophilia will feature.

OK, I see where the limos park, but what about the school buses?

Although as I have noted, I regret allowing the demonstration, as an educator I do not think we should waste the opportunity the controversy has raised. There are real, important issues here, including optimal limits on academic freedom, the effect of sexual attitudes on education, and sexual rights and responsibilities, among others. A great university, such as Northwestern University, should be a place where people are not only free, but encouraged, to debate our most contentious issues. These include, apparently, the issues raised by the February 21st demonstration. Translation: Colleagues, help me out here! Ya gotta bail me out! Mommy! I want my mommy!!

I am working with undergraduate students to arrange an event that includes high-¬‐level discussion and debate about the February 21st demonstration and the issues it has raised. I invite President Schapiro to work with us to help ensure that this event is as intellectually valuable as it should be. Translation: Please don’t be mad at me President Schapiro.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation and admiration to the many students, colleagues, and parents who have written me in support. They, also, are part of the Northwestern community, along with some of those whom I have offended. God Bless America.

What a craven hypocrite.

Professor Bailey leads his graduate seminar.

Professor John Michael Bailey States His Position

For those of you who have been following the breaking news out of Chicago about the professor who mistook his classroom for a brothel, I commend to you his cri de coeur. Northwestern University Professor John Michael Bailey has issued a “statement” about the optional after-class activities he offers to students in his psychology class on human sexuality. In the self-aggrandizing style unique to the self-absorbed academic, the “statement” begins:

I teach a large (nearly 600 person) human sexuality class at Northwestern University. During the class I lecture about the science of sexuality. Many days after class I organize optional events. These events primarily comprise speakers addressing aspects of sexuality. This year, for example, we have had a panel of gay men speaking about their sex lives, a transsexual performer, two convicted sex offenders, an expert in female sexual health and sexual pleasure, a plastic surgeon, a swinging couple, and the February 21 panel by Ken Melvoin-Berg on “networking for kinky people.” These events are entirely optional, they are not covered on exams, and I arrange them at considerable investment of my time, for which I receive no compensation from Northwestern University.

Professor Bailey reads his statement. He is speaking into a microphone. I think.


Before parsing Professor Bailey’s statement, let’s review the description of his course, offered in Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies:

PSYCH 337-CN
Human Sexuality
This course treats human sexuality as a subject for scientific inquiry. Major topics include the evolution of human mating psychology (including physical attraction, sexual arousal, evolved sexual strategies, and sexual jealousy), sexual minorities (e.g., homosexuality), sexual coercion, and AIDS. Carries science or social science credit.

Such courses are offered on many campuses; most of them do not include sex offenders as examples of “sexual diversity” equivalent to all women and gay men. At least I hope they don’t.

Back to the first paragraph of the “statement.” Its most revealing sentence is the final one. It tells you all you need to know about Professor Bailey: “I arrange [the after-class presentations] at considerable investment of my time, for which I receive no compensation from Northwestern University.” The good professor wants us all to know that his employer does not compensate him for his extra-curricular modules. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he received hourly wages instead of a salary. But you do know better, so you are instead wondering who does compensate him for arranging “these events,” since his locution strongly suggests somebody is.

Bailey next explains why he “recruited” the couple who performed a sex act in front of his students. It seems in prior years “speakers covering similar topics had not been very interesting.” Imagine. Instead of whipping out their genitalia, these speakers had the bad taste “to merely [give] PowerPoint presentations.” These pedants “were also unwilling to answer questions about their sex lives.” The nerve of them! Thinking that they were addressing students in a classroom instead of talking to clients on 1.900.SEX-TALK!

Oh no! Not the donkey again! B-O-R-I-N-G! Why can't we ever see anything interesting, like a PowerPoint presentation?

Professor Bailey concludes this section of his apologia by delivering his homily: “Sexuality diversity is surely a reasonable thing to address in a human sexuality class.” A little defensive are we, Professor? By the end of the “statement,” defensiveness has given way to the feeblest of excuses in the academic’s very large warehouse of tools for avoiding taking any kind of responsibility for lapses in judgment (or sanity): “Thoughtful discussion of controversial topics is a cornerstone of learning,” he says primly. Yeah. “Thoughtful discussion,” “controversial topic” and most of all “learning” are exactly what come to mind as we gather ‘round to watch a woman masturbated by a “finance” old enough to be her father.

Hey, look Ma! My Professor had something in his pocket and he was REALLY glad to see me!

Now that my working life is in its third act, I am trying diligently to develop distance and perspective on my former lives in the academy. How well I am succeeding I leave others to decide. Every now and then, though, I read a story that involves a cast of characters from my past and a stab of pity for a “there but for the grace of God” situation pierces my heart with such intensity, the shock of recognition is so electric that I find myself itching for a battle that I know has already been lost. As has the war.

I had such a moment this morning when I skimmed The Chronicle of Higher Education, which directed me to a story that must have all of Chicago atwitter. If you, like me, cannot get enough of the pervy-prof-caught-in-the-act tabloid fodder that academics seem to be specializing in of late, then you will want to take a look at the Tribune and the Sun-Times. Better yet, keep reading here because I’ll get straight to the juicy part:

More than 100 Northwestern University students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her fiancée during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class.

To all of you who ever wondered what is under all that academic regalia: aren't you sorry you asked?


It gets better:

Faith Kroll, the woman who stripped, was laying down on a towel when she was penetrated. When she arrived, she thought she just would be answering students’ questions and showing off sex toys they brought, including whips, paddles and a clown wig.

An “absurd, clinical” video and subsequent discussion about various aspects of female orgasm led Faith and her partner Jim Marcus, 45, to prove to the class that female orgasm is real.

Faith said she was not coerced in any way and students were repeatedly warned it was going to get graphic.

“One of the students asked what my specific fetish was and mine is being in front of people, having the attention and being used,” she said. “The students seemed really intrigued.”

Leaving aside any consideration of whether a 25-year-old woman can ever be in a non-coercive relationship with a guy some 20 years her senior, let alone one wielding a “device that looks like a machine-powered saw with a phallic object instead of a blade,” her explanation that this spur-of-the-moment peep show was unplanned and took place only to take advantage of a teachable moment is a little undercut by her going on to say “I’m an exhibitionist. I enjoy the attention, being seen by other people. It was entertaining because there were a lot of curious minds, so that was cool.”

Professor John Michael Bailey “said he hesitated briefly before allowing the public sex act. ‘My hesitation concerned the likelihood that many people would find this inappropriate,’ he wrote. ‘My decision to say “yes” reflected my inability to come up with a legitimate reason why students should not be able to watch such a demonstration.’”

And there you have, dear reader, as fine an example as you will ever encounter of the kind of exquisitely honed “critical thinking skills” the professorate claim is the single most important expertise they model for their students.

Rumor has it the new study carrels at Northwestern are something else!

Leave it to the administration to try as best it can to put a happy face on this sordid little episode:

“Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines,” said Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for University Relations. “The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.”

My heart goes out to VP Cubbage. I wonder how much time he was given to rehearse his statement before making his announcement. Are the insides of his cheeks bitten to a bloody pulp from trying to choke back his laughter? Are there four angry red crescent moons on the inside of each of his palms from his clenching his fists in impotent rage at Professor Bailey? Probably not. The vice president was just doing his job, cleaning up after a faculty member.

If you stay in the academy long enough, you get so that nothing a faculty member does surprises or shocks you. And that’s when you know it’s time leave and give your moral compass a chance to refresh and recalibrate. Because the next professor to teach “human sexuality” will up the ante and push the envelope even further. After all, how else will he be able to get his name in the paper?

Call Me Miss weeps at the death of her canary Athena, who tweeted her last upon exposure to Professor Bailey's rationale.

Read about Professor Bailey’s justification for his pedagogy here.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro has posted a statement on the university’s website that is plainspoken and commonsensical in way unusual for most presidents. CMM is pulling for you, President Schapiro!

Professor Records His Class Trip to China: Images Expose the Naked Truth

Here’s a sordid little item that’ll put the “hump” into your Humpday. Colby College in Waterville, Maine has accepted the resignation of popular economics professor Philip H. Brown. In an announcement all-too characteristic of the kind of moral leadership and courage displayed by all-too many college presidents, Colby’s William “Bro” Adams “wrote to students and employees on January 28 that Brown had resigned after college officials had indicated they were prepared to fire him over ‘violations of student privacy.‘”

Just how, you might well ask, did the former professor “violate” the privacy of his students? It’s not like he demanded the registrar share FERPA-protected confidential information about the students’ personal lives. Or like he walked into the women’s locker room to catch a glimpse of a group shower. It’s more like…wait a minute…it’s virtually like he walked into the locker room.

Back in January, on a trip to China—part of his aptly named course “Made in China”—Brown placed a web cam in the bathrooms of the lodgings his female students were assigned. Better yet, he had enlisted an unwitting student to do the installation by insisting the “first aid kit” be stationed in the bathroom wherever the students bedded down.

I knew Michael Caine, Professor Brown, and you are no Michael Caine.


Soon his students’ clothing-optional bottoms became the kind of targets of opportunity budding commies turned capitalists can only butt dream of. The professor, in his defense, was merely engaging in a harmless bit of multiculturalism, celebrating as he apparently was the Chinese Moon Festival, in which lovers spend “a romantic night together….Even for a couple who can’t be together, they can still enjoy the night by watching the moon at the same time so it seems that they are together at that hour.” Or something like that.

The professor had his epidermal study of his students cut short when one of them discovered a picture of her unclad bottom in the trash bin of Brown’s laptop, a computer that all students on the trip shared with their teacher. Lest you think this student was snooping in places on the laptop where she should not have been, she was merely retrieving a copy of a blog entry she’d deleted by mistake. As any computer jockey knows, this happens. A lot. By the time the students were back in the States, many more revealing pix had been rooted from the trash and forwarded to the college, which brings us back to “Bro”’s courageous memorandum to faculty and staff. Appropriately, this tale ends with ex-Professor Brown out on his keister.

But although the story is over, there are still lessons to be learned. First: if you are going to web-cam students in the buff, do not store the resulting images on the same computer you are loaning out to said students. Second, empty your trash and delete your history. These simple steps won’t prevent someone who knows his way around hard drives from figuring out what dirty little secrets you are hiding, but it will avoid the kind of surprise discoveries that send a co-ed into fits of anger and revenge when she realizes the Instamatic of her pert little bottom wasn’t good enough to make it into the permanent archive and was instead callously consigned to the rubbish bin.

Professor Brown is denied a terminal sabbatical.

The lessons do not stop there. If you click over to Rate My Professors and read the students’ reviews of Professor Brown, you will learn that numerous students rate him as “best I ever had,” a teacher capable of making the dry subject of economics come alive. If I still had the scales on my eyes about academia, I would read these reviews—and there are many, many of them—and weep at the tragedy of a deeply flawed man whose gifted teaching will now be wasted because of his dark compulsions. But those scales fell away a long time ago, so now I read those reviews and ask myself, not for the first time, when was it that society determined 18 to 20-year-olds were capable of sitting in judgment on the faculty in whose classrooms they sit.

Forget the Super Bowl—This Prof’s Career Is Headed to the Toilet Bowl

Academics are famous for not knowing how to play nice. Perhaps being the hapless tot relentlessly tormented by the other kids in class—chased around the room, cornered, then stuffed in the trash can—renders future college teachers incapable of learning the social graces. Whatever the reason, I always get a big laugh when I read the call of yet another college president or, better still, a “public intellectual” for the hoi polloi to return to civil discourse and polite disagreement.

As usual these myopic hypocrites ought to get their own houses in order before telling the rest of us what to do. For in those hallowed and hushed halls of higher learning lurk society’s least civil members, the entitled professorate. Take my advice: should you ever stumble upon two academics in the heat of argument, hurling citations, references, and peer reviews at each other, turn and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction, lest you become collateral damage. For when the fighting escalates, trust me, you do not want to get caught in the crossfire.

Consider a recent debate between Professor Tihomir Petrov and an unnamed colleague, two mathematicians at California State University—Northridge reported by the LA Times. You’d think a campus devastated by a 6.7 earthquake had withstood the worst damage it could. Not so. When these two brainiacs got into it, what began as difference of opinion soon escalated into a pissing match of seismic proportions. And, ultimately, the arrest of one of the intellectual combatants.

The trouble began in earnest when Professor Petrov took matters into his own hands. In the dead of night, when no one was around, he launched the first of two stealth attacks. Stealing up to his enemy’s door, he grabbed his willy and let fly a steady stream of hot, steamy invective right at Professor Unnamed’s door.

In the days that followed, Professor Unnamed plotted his revenge, positioning hidden cameras to catch and record the next nocturnal assault. It wasn’t long in coming. Flushed with the success of his first foray, Professor Petrov reloaded at the local brew pub and once again deployed his chemical weapon at the doorstep of his foe.

After the second assault, police raided Professor Petrov's armory.

Alas, the cameras caught it all…just as the anger had trickled out of him, Professor Petrov was caught bare handed, arrested and charged with two misdemeanors. “What about my First Amendment right to free expression,” the captured warrior was heard to cry as he was escorted in diapers from the campus.

Like underpaid professors everywhere, Professor Petrov
evidently did not have a pot to pee in.


So while I am in complete agreement with those who call for a measure of politesse in daily discourse, I am inclined to regard any advice in this regard from academics as something less than golden.

Ad from the deportment class offered by the local community center Professor Petrov enrolled in to fulfill his community service.

NOTE to readers: Even though the mommy bloggers would have you believe otherwise, their little darlings are not the first to be teased or tormented by classmates. When I was in kindergarten or the first grade, one sad little boy, Vance Toweler, was routinely dumped in the garbage can by a gang of bullies. I cowered in my chair, afraid to do or say anything lest I be next. This went on forever, with no intervention until one day Vance was gone. The teacher announced he and his family had moved to England. I hope he had nicer classmates there.

Mommy Bloggers Eat Their Young

When I was a little girl, daddies wielding Super 8’s were the official hagiographers of their family life. Artistically ahead of their time, these independent filmmakers invented the shaky cam, the very same camera work that years later would be heralded as a breathtaking innovation in The Blair Witch Project and countless other slice-and-dicers.

Dads and their Kodaks recorded everything: kids going mental over their Christmas swag; mom looking frazzled as she pulled the Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven; kids going mental as they OD’d on their Halloween haul; grandma and grandpa looking uneasy at the undercooked July 4 burgers; kids going mental trying to wrap their pie holes around giant chocolate Easter eggs. Camera shy himself, daddy rarely made into any of these innocent family tableaux, a cinematic foreshadowing of the upstaging that was to come.

Smile!

Flash forward to today, more years later than I’ll admit. Instead of a few hapless close friends stoically nursing their scotch-rocks while enduring cinema verite en famille, in the here-and-now you, me—all of us—are subject, 24/7, to a barrage of family secrets, none of which is too private or too intimate or too uninteresting to share with, well, everybody. Dads and their cameras are history. Welcome to the world of the “mommy blogger.”

Mommy bloggers are relentlessly, conspicuously, self-consciously and self-righteously dedicated to their muse, the hapless babies over whom they have dominion. While mommy may have suckled them, the children who call mommy bloggers “mommy” are their maters’ meal tickets to fame and possible fortune. Think of the mommy blogger as the internet equivalent to the woman who pimps out her three-year-old for the Little Miss Citrus, Little Miss Perfect, Little Miss Glitz, Little Miss Princess, or Little Miss Sunburst crown.

Hi! I'm Typhanee!

The mommy bloggers I know would recoil in horror at the comparison. After they stopped sputtering, they would condescending explain that, unlike Little Miss Typhanee’s mom, they do not exploit their children. They would ask how I could be so insensitive as to not see the difference between the art of the blogger and the artifice of the stage-mother. How could I possibly not understand the courage it takes to share a searingly honest, gut-wrenching, soul-searching, illustrated discussion of suckling one’s five-year-old at Starbucks? To which I would reply, “nope”: the only difference I see is that the stage mom keeps her clothes on in public and the audience for her misguided views about child-rearing and her tarted-up tot blessedly small.

Not so the mommy bloggers. Like Mama Rose, they are ruthless in stripping their daughters and sons bare of any lingering shred of dignity or self-determination they may have once possessed. Take, for example, “Sarah,” aka “Cop’s Wife,” who earned her fifteen minutes back in October when she told the world the sorry story of her five-year-old son’s Halloween costume. It seems the kid is a big Scooby Doo fan, and wanted to dress up like one of the gang—Daphne, the androgynous “brainy” member of the quintet. Mom sees no problem with this and sends the little boy to school in drag. What happens next is as sad as it is predictable:

Then as we got closer to the actual day, he stared (sic) to hem and haw about [his choice of the Daphne costume.] After some discussion it comes out that he is afraid people will laugh at him. I pointed out that some people will because it is a cute and clever costume. He insists their laughter would be of the ‘making fun’ kind. I blow it off. Seriously, who would make fun of a child in costume?

And then the big day arrives. [He] doesn’t want to get out of the car. He’s afraid of what people will say and do to him. I convince him to go inside….We walk down the hall to where his classroom is.

And that’s where things went wrong. Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp. And I realize that my son is seeing the same thing I am. So I say, “Doesn’t he look great?” And Mom A says in disgust, “Did he ask to be that?!” I say that he sure did as Halloween is the time of year that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. They continue with their nosy, probing questions as to how that was an option and didn’t I try to talk him out of it. Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay.

I suppose it could have been worse.

“Sarah” interprets this moment as one of her possibly gay son’s introduction to the scourge of homophobia. She forgets what she wrote but a few paragraphs before: “I was hesitant to [buy the costume], not because it was a cross gendered situation, but because 5 year olds have a tendency to change their minds.” It evidently does not occur to her that the kid might have indeed changed his mind. She forgets that as a mother and an adult her job is to draw on her experience of the world in order to protect her child from people who would do him harm, intentionally or otherwise. Instead, she “convinces” her son to subject himself to the ridicule he has figured out will come his way so that she’ll have something to write in the vanity press that is her blog. For of course mommy is the star of this story:

It is obvious that I neither abuse nor neglect my children. They are not perfect, but they are learning how to navigate this big, and sometimes cruel, world. I hate that my son had to learn this lesson while standing in front of allegedly Christian women. I hate that those women thought those thoughts, and worse felt comfortable saying them out loud. I hate that ‘pink’ is still called a girl color and that my baby has to be so brave if he wants to be Daphne for Halloween.

Leaving aside that it’s not at all “obvious” that this woman is not abusing her children mentally if not emotionally, let’s take a closer look Sarah’s hypocrisy. She says that she hates that her son had to learn that people can be cruel “while standing in front of allegedly Christian women”; she says she hates that “that those women thought those thoughts, and worse felt comfortable saying them out loud.” In her venomous attack on moms whose child rearing practices differ from her own, she seems not to realize that the mothers were not criticizing her son—they were talking about her and her questionable judgment.

But that’s the mommy blogger for you: the kid is just the conceit that permits her to address her real subject: me, Me, ME!

He didn't grow up to be Scooby Doo. He grew up to be Underdog.

But if “Sarah” is blindly self-centered, Katie Granju—beloved by her legion of fans as “mamapundit”—is downright disturbed in her narcissism. Katie, or Mama P, writes about the joys of motherhood in a very popular blog. When a terrible tragedy befell her, she spared her readers no detail. Day after day her teenage son suffered in a hospital bed, struggling to recover from a beating he received in a drug deal gone bad, while Mama P sat at his bedside, tapping away on her laptop.

Too bad Madam DeFarge didn't know about blogging.

Readers learn of her child’s increasingly poor prognosis as she bravely types through her tears. As her firstborn lay dying, Katie keeps us all posted. She denies her son the last gifts she can give him, her undivided attention and a death with dignity. Instead, she satisfies her readers’ lust for snuff porn with every last detail of her troubled boy’s final moments.

All of that happened back in May; incredibly, the mommy blogger “community” turned out in droves to “support” Mama P’s “courage.”

And now, as Yuletide approaches, we come full circle. Today’s post on mamapundit is a photographic trip down memory lane that would make dear old dad and his Super 8 proud: age-sequenced pictures of the dead boy, Katie’s gift to the ghoulish readers who cannot get enough of the senseless death of a young person. Once more we get to revisit a very private tragedy made all the more horrific by the very public travesty of its living on as fodder for a blog.

Merry Christmas.

Where's the Super 8 shaky cam when you need it?

Dig In!

“Miss” is back, ready to serve up a juicy tart of academic hijinks, scandals, and misadventures…with a whipped topping of political intrigue, hackery and hypocrisy.

Get out your knives and forks and dig in!

Oh, For God’s Sake Nicholas Kristof, Shut Up!

The other day New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about a recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report concerning the level of knowledge Americans possess about the world’s great religions. As you might guess, we’re not, as a people, terribly well-schooled in the Talmud, or well-versed in the Bible, or able to recite the Koran.

Pew's thank-you gift to volunteers who completed the questionnaire.

That this should come as a surprise to anyone is, well, surprising. We are not a nation of readers and our schools are not big on acknowledging the central role religion has played in world, national and local histories. The Pew study, moreover, tested for possession of facts, not profession of faith, a distinction strangely at odds with the academy’s on-going love affair with “critical thinking.”

Get one more answer wrong and I'll smite you!

Unshakable though, is Kristof’s own hypocrisy. The writer excerpts portions of the Pew questionnaire to give his readers an opportunity to test not only their knowledge but also their biases. Kristof kindly provides a handicap to his faithful by introducing his version of the quiz with “given the uproar about Islam, I’ll focus on extremism and fundamentalism,” so straight off we know by not choosing “a,” we’ll have a fifty-fifty shot at the right answer to question three:

3. The terrorists who pioneered the suicide vest in modern times, and the use of women in terror attacks, were affiliated with which major religion?
a. Islam
b. Christianity
c. Hinduism

Kristof answers: “3. c. Most early suicide bombings were by Tamil Hindus (some secular) in Sri Lanka and India.” The answer to question 3 is actually d. None.

Mr. Kristof and his interns ready the facts to make Americans look bad and feel guilty. Click me!

True, in the late 1980′s the Tamil Tigers were the first to sport suicide vests; also true is the FBI (Kristof’s own link above) description of the Tigers as

among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world. For more than three decades, the group has launched a campaign of violence and bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the island republic off the southern coast of India. Its ultimate goal: to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority and create an independent Tamil state.

Although Kristof grudging concedes that the Tamil movement has “some secular” elements, he fails to note that it is a political movement animated by geographic and ethnic concerns—not by religion: At the nub of the war is the question of political rights of the Tamil minority.

And is true that although the Tamil Tigers originally weaponized patsies, Islamists perfected them as killing machines:

Suicide terrorism is rising around the world. From the onset of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 through August 2005, 151 Palestinian suicide bombing attacks have been launched against Israeli targets, killing 515 people and injuring almost 3,500 more. From 1987 to 2001, the Tamil Tigers launched 76 suicide bombing attacks in Sri Lanka and India, killing a total of 901 people, including two prominent national leaders: India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lanka’s President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 (Pape, 2005). In Iraq, suicide bombers have killed thousands of people, mostly Iraqi civilians, since 2003. [Efraim Benmelech and Claude Berrebi, "Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers," Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 21, Number 3—Summer 2007—Pages 223–238.]

So what point is Kristof trying to make here? That Americans don’t follow late-breaking developments in Sri Lanka closely enough? I guess he’s forgotten the $400+ million Americans donated to private charities for 2004 tsunami relief. That Americans worry more about the victims of suicide bombers whose pyrotechnics are more likely to take out friends, family and soldiers in Israel and Iraq than they do about casualties however tragic they may be in a Sri Lankan civil war? I didn’t need to flunk a quiz to figure this out.

Nor do I need a report from Pew to tell me that Kristof’s smug, fatuous conclusion to his essay

the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts

speaks volumes about Kristof’s inability to recognize the cherry-picking taking place in columns that bear his name.

A young Nicholas wonders where his next fact will come from.

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