Coburn, like some socially awkward but self-aggrandizing engineering major, just seems to be upset that political science calls itself "science."

According to Coburn, the NSF gave out $91.3 million in grant money to political science projects over the last ten years. Yes, million and over the last ten years. The NSF budget for the 2008 fiscal year was $6.43 billion. They can toss a couple bucks to the social sciences without hurting the "real" science that Coburn loves so much as of yesterday.

And why does Coburn hate political science? He doesn't really explain. But he is pretty sure that the free market should be in charge of figuring out why voters and politicians do the things they do.

The University of Michigan may have some interesting theories about recent elections, but Americans who have an interest in electoral politics can turn to CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the print media, and a seemingly endless number of political commentators on the internet who pour over this data and provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions.

Yes, and why fund nanotechnology when we have the screenwriters of Transformers 2?

His list of terrible wasteful money spent on poli sci also includes "research conducted by Paul Krugman," and we all know Krugman is a shrill communist liberal. Except he got the NSF grant in 1991 and it was on the subject of economic geography," because Krugman is an economist.

If Tom Coburn—the fiscal conservative OB/GYN who speaks in violent, tortured metaphors and advises paying off his friend's mistresses and who once warned of lesbianism so rampant in Oklahoma that only one school girl at a time is allowed to use the bathroom—isn't a complete idiot, he should probably fire his barber. But this is an odd one.

Well, a couple people noticed. Anyone who actually read the review should've noticed, because if you're reading Modernism/Modernity you really ought to recognize the visiting lecturer on Living Icons from White Noise. Especially once the review stopped addressing the Wallace book and detoured into DeLillo pastiche.

It is at this point that I must confess to missing something in Wallace, namely the presence of women nearer the center of the narration (setting aside Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, Jr., the protagonist in Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System). I admit that I've always been partial to them, i.e. women. I fall apart at the sight of long legs, striding, briskly, as a breeze carries up from the river, on a weekday, in the play of morning light. And what fun it is to talk to an intelligent woman wearing nylon stockings as she crosses her legs. Wallace, I suspect, shares these predilections and could write wonderfully complicated women.

And, you know, there are footnotes citing Jack Gladney. But still, you don't expect a puckish little pomo joke like that from the staid folks at Modernism/Modernity. Which is why, maybe, actual real-life graduate students are citing the review as a serious piece of scholarly work. Which, guys, White Noise is only a cornerstone of postmodern American literature that you should be intimately familiar with by the time you're registering for classes for the second semester of your freshman year! We're just saying!

But, yes, Modernism/Modernity has acknowledged that this was just a little gag and not an Alan Sokal-style hoax intended to deceive. And But it took five years! (We were maybe all too preoccupied with death?)

It's true! If, after years spent at a good university, you reach the top rung in your academic field, you can expect to pull in crazy six-figure incomes! The crack reporters at Politico dug through the financial disclosures of some professors Obama appointed to his administration and found, shockingly, that they were not broke-ass schoolteachers at all, and they even had benefits!

They found that "the nine Obamademics whose finances are on file with the Office of Government Ethics earned an average of $321,325 a year from elite universities," and then they had to explain why this is news: because millions of people don't make $321,325, and so for a liberal to make that much is hypocrisy.

It's also the perks that really stand out at a time many Americans are struggling to afford the basics. From mortgage deals to car allowances to club memberships and international travel, academia afforded these new public officials access to lifestyles out of reach for the majority of Americans – and likely the majority of professors toiling away at lower-profile schools.

All they had to do was devote countless years of their lives to their chosen field until they were eventually recognized as experts, and then those lazy freeloaders made almost as much as a white-shoe lawyer a few years out of school. Aren't you outraged to learn that Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Chu got a reduced mortgage rate and university club membership through Berkeley? Just for directing some laboratory and winning some prize!

Oh, but it's the outrageous speaking fees that really get this reporter's goat. Some dean of some Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs got $36,000 for nothing, where "nothing" means speeches in Tokyo and New Delhi. And that's not even counting this joker's $25,000 book advance, which is only a couple numbers away from the $350k the Stuff White People Like guy got.

And the perks don't end there!

But, perhaps the most colorful income reported by an incoming Obamademic appeared on the report of John Holdren, Obama's choice to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Holdren – who earned $93,000 as an environmental policy professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and $174,000 as director of the environmental group the Woods Hole Research Center – picked up another $250 from an April appearance on CBS's "The Late Show with David Letterman," on which he advocated fast action to address climate change.

Seriously, there is no journalistic justification for this article.

We get it: contrary to their liberal ways (because liberals must be working-class stiffs if they want to pretend to care about working-class stiffs), academics are coddled rich elitists who make more than you. That is, an elite few of them are rich elitists. Now we look forward to the Politico piece on what the top editors and star reporters and columnists and TV commentators and pundits of Washington DC make, from their papers, magazines, TV stations, consulting gigs, book deals, and speaking engagements. We need specifics! Come on, guys, what do Mike Allen and John Harris pull in? That'll win the afternoon.

This is what college-aged kids are lacking: internet fame. Luckily Parsons New School has a real live class that will guide them down the path to becoming the next Julia Allison. Whee! This is what all those New School protesters were fighting for. The right to get commented upon. Current made this little newsy video about the class, gleaning some insights from esteemed professor Jamiedubs.com, who, btw, urges you: "Mad props if you register a Current account and vote us up on their site. Further props for retweets, reblogs, re-edits, remixes, reposts, crossposts, sideposts, you name it. That's what we're all about baby."

May this post offer them spiritual fulfillment. Mmm, smell it. Spiritual fulfillment!

Growing up in the Toronto suburbs, Mr. Brown learned piano, but gave it up at age 12 for guitar, after hearing the Beatles' "Red Album," and becoming obsessed with the group. Like many Beatles fans, Mr. Brown was fascinated with the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night." The chord has at least four sheet music variants, but nobody has ever quite replicated it, and the Beatles haven't revealed how they produced the complex sound. Mr. Brown said he spent hours experimenting before it occurred to him: "Music is basically just math."

Once he deduced that, it was only a matter of weeks of insanely technical calculations before he figured out the chord was made with a piano, and a guitar. Now he's moved onto rendering Beatles songs on graphs, another insanely technical and time-consuming process.

Brown has thus far not become a rock star as the result of his work. [WSJ]

"For safety and security reasons, I have decided to cancel The New
School's University Student Senate Forum scheduled for tonight, December
18 at 8:00 p.m.

Bob Kerrey
President"

You're a war hero, Kerrey! Man up! Ominously, the student occupiers of the faculty building report:

Real Time: 4:57
Things are heating up again! But we will continue to hold our position! We will NOT give in now.

I smell tear gas!

Well apparently this is the second day of the OCCUPATION of the New School by students who are mad about the school's president, Bob Kerrey, who everybody (except Bob Kerrey!) wants to step down. But just this morning the cops came in and now it's madness! Let's track some of the BREAKING NEWS ALERTS from this blog, ON THE INSIDE:

8:02 a.m.

We are still standing strong, but Security has started to take some extreme action.

In front of NY Times and Democracy Now reporters a large security guard has assaulted one of our memebers. She is shaken up with no major injuries and the ruckus is continuing!!!!!

8:04 a.m.

Tension is high!!!!
Security has begun to reach beyond their mandate of protecting and have harmed one of our comrades!

And the Photojournalist from the New York Times who has stayed with us all night and all day had her camera grabbed ad thrown to the ground!

8:56 a.m.

We Must Hold
Mr. Kerrey has retreated into the Swayduck and now the NYPD has begun to indiscriminately grab people and drag them out of the university. They have been using unnecessary force!

And from there, communication dramatically CUTS OFF. What is your status, over? Is Mr. Kerry still IN THE SWAYDUCK? Student activists, please send messages here, including, please, some video of this "unnecessary force." We're interested in what that term means to New School kids.

Solidaridad!

He met a woman named Cody-Ann Palmer, who expressed an interest in appearing on a show like The Real World or sadness-fest Big Brother. She seemed like the ideal reality star—assured, ambitious, dumb—until her time came to do a practice pitch of herself:

Moments later, Ms. Palmer, who had been a mostly passive presence throughout the class, volunteers to give a mock audition for a show called "Who Do You Look Like?" She enters the circle of students and begins to stammer. "OK, people always tell me I look like, umm, that girl from that one movie ..." She snaps her fingers and puts her hands on her head to jog her memory. Phil shouts back, "Come on! Why did you volunteer if you can't even think of the name? Come prepared!" "Stop yelling at me!" Ms. Palmer retorts, getting visibly emotional. "I didn't come here to get humiliated!" She then shields her face with her hand, in true reality diva fashion, to block the camera crews from Ad Age, Fuji Television in Japan, BBC International Radio and the U.K.'s "Good Morning Television" that have been documenting the class in its entirety.

Oohh, real-life drama playing out at real-life drama school, and on camera! Except, sigh, it was all a fake. Cody was nothing but a mole, planted by the instructor to demonstrate what a reality show freak-out might look like. (Because, I guess, he figured we'd never seen one of those before.) So, heh, that's pretty meta and strange that there was a filmed faux scene at the filmed faux scene academy. I don't know whether to weep or applaud at that.

Another fellow who spoke with the reporter was just a regular old guy who works in the tech world who just signed up to learn some good, not-so-old-fashioned public speaking skills: "This is the form of PR for the 21st century CEO — to be media savvy." That's sort of depressing, though not really any more depressing than PR has always been. By far the most promising graduate from that day's class was a 19-year-old bisexual named Juliette who was immediately singled out by the esteemed faculty as having some sort of special reality show quality. Maybe it's that she introduces herself "I'm Juliette, I'm 19... and I'm bisexual." A perfect fit for the fake-bisexual Hindenburg A Shot at Love With Tila Tequlia, the Dean of Falling Out of the Hot Tub surmised.

About fifty people have gone through the program already, and with all the continued coverage, I'm sure more people will tune in sign up for the potentially life changing classes. The old har-har used to be that reality show contestants graduated into bitter obscurity, but that seems less and less true. That Italian guy from Tila Tequila got a show for Christ sake, and the VH1 legion of heroes keeps popping up on some permutation of the same tired theme. So maybe it is worth the few hours and the couple hundred bucks. It could make you a brief, tarnished star and then provide a wealth of weird stories for the rest of your life.

See you there tomorrow.

“I, as an academic, am accustomed to seeing buildings with names like Newton, Copernicus, Darwin,” said Ponzy Lu, a chemistry professor at the university. “Then to see the name of this person, who is very fresh in our memory, who is not associated with a pursuit of knowledge — a gossip columnist: it strikes me as being totally idiotic.”

Oh, boo hoo. As if secretary to William Penn and university trustee James Logan wouldn't have appeared on Regis and Kelly, given the chance.

Hunter College better hope their alum Ms. Barkin remains healthy, and her relationship to Mr. Perelman remains limited to dueling lawsuits.

(We're going to marry Oprah and force NYU to rename Washington Square Park after us.)

Unfortunately the lame-o editorialist at the Dartmouth Review doesn't except much of it. He's too busy castigating post-modernism and comparative lit and feminists, because he is soooo smart and controversial. (Also: his name is Weston and he uses his middle initial.)

But here's the first line:

"The Renaissance is a period characterized by many scholars as a critique of medieval and religious scholaticism [sic] that concerned itself with the study and revision of certain aspects of ancient civilization in the realm of art, literature, law, historiography, and political theory."

Well. We can see how that outraged her students so much!

Anyway the rest of the essay is about MacBeth and the patriarchy and also how everyone should stop being mean to Priya Venkatesan.

Venkatesan's Thesis: Sound and Fury [DartReview]

The Crimson, in a staff editorial, sums up the case so far and then wonders about the "troubling implications" for students in the Ivy Leagues who may wish to abuse and harass inexperienced professors in the future. You might get sued!

The litigious threats are among a recent spate of well-publicized incidents in which conflicts that have failed to find mediation in the classroom have spilled into other realms, like the Internet or the courthouse. Like the Horace Mann case, featuring vicious Facebook groups aimed at high school teachers, Venkatesan's move to a lawsuit and book deal represent a failure of reconciliation within the classroom. Student-teacher arguments are nothing new, of course, but these escalated clashes still suggest a lack of mutual respect and an inability to resolve disagreements amicably. Venkatesan would have done well to bring her grievances to a university administrator before searching for an attorney.

Well, considering that she's also suing the University for sending her secret racist codes while spelling Gattaca or something, that might not have worked out so well. But, as in the Horace Mann case, the important lesson here is that if you're a rich little brat you can still get away with being a dick to authority figures and generally come out fine.

1) If she teaches here... don't take this course. Period. She defines a terrible prof, she is offended when people ask questions about her lectures and does not grade/give feedback on papers. Grade based solely on if she likes you/ you writing reflects her "sophisticated" ideas.

2) WORST CLASS EVER horrible professor, doesn't know what the heck she is doing, can't lecture, can't grade, can't give her students feedback on their essays....

I you were interested in this class because it is about global warming( like i was)... think again, we spent maybe two classes on the subject and the prof. didn't even know how to properly explain the green house effect!!!

i think she is gonna get fired

3) interesting topic, boring prof The course material was not as interesting as its ORC description said, and Prof Venkatesan is a boring lecturer, the assigned reading is ridiculously long and dense, but the course is ok in terms of workload,

4) Do NOT take this course Aside from the fact that I learnt nothing of value in this class besides the repeated use of the word "postmodernism" in all contexts (whether appropriate or not) and the fact that Professor Venkatesan is the most confusing/nonsensical lecturer ever, the main problem with this class is the personal attacks launched in class. Almost every member of the class was personally attacked in some form in the class by either intimidation or ignoring your questions/comments/concerns. If you decide to take this class, prepare to NOT be allowed to express your own opinions in class because you have "yet to obtain your Ph.D/masters/bachelors degree". We were forced to write an in-class essay on "respect" (and how we lacked it) because we expressed our views on controversial topics and some did not agree with the views of "established scholars" who have their degrees.

Additionally, your essays will (at most) receive 2 lines worth of feedback, along with a miserable letter grade.

All in all, there are much better ways to understand science, technology, and society than to suffer through ten weeks of emotional battering.

5) HORRIBLE This was the worst class I have ever taken. The professor was rude and a horrible teacher...don't take this class.! hopefully she will get fired

6) insecurity, ego, and more Professor Venkatesan should not be a professor... here or anywhere.

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35
From: Priya Venkatesan
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will "name names" so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day.

Anti-federal discrimination laws? That's serious business. Or whatever the exact opposite of serious business is.

The details of the discrimination and harassment? Students didn't pay attention to her, complained about her to her boss, and accused her of not "accepting opinions contrary to her own" and said she would "lower the grades of students her disagreed with her." In other words, the exact smarmy complaints all entitled college students level against inexperienced teachers.

From the Dartmouth News:

As an example of Venkatesan's rejection of views different from her own, the student highlighted Venkatesan's cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan's opinions about post-modernism.

Venkatesan said the incident occurred when she was lecturing about "The Death of Nature," a book by Carolyne Merchant, and the witch trials of the Renaissance. The student went on a "diatribe" about the inappropriate nature of challenging patriarchal authority, Venkatesan said. Vakatesan respected the student's right to express this opinion, she said, but the manner in which he vocalized his views and the applause afterward were disrespectful and offensive.

"I was horrified," Venkatesan said. "My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line ... I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression."

She was horrified! Horrified that an Ivy League undergrad bitched about hearing some academic nonsense about the entrenched power structures that got them where they are today! (No winners in this story, folks.)

The emails apparently started last Friday, when Venkatesan emailed seven or more students to warn of a "possible lawsuit" against them.

From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action Suit

Dear Student:

As a courtesy, you are being notified that you are being named in a potential class action suit that is being brought against Dartmouth College, which is being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws. Please do not respond to this email because it will be potentially used against you in a court of law.

Priya Venkatesan, PhD

From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action Suit

Dear Student:

Please disregard the previous email sent by Priya Venkatesan. This is to officially inform you that you are being accused of violating Title VII pertaining to federal anti-discrimination laws, by the plaintiff, Priya Venkatesan. You are being specifically accused of, but not limited to, harassment. Please do not respond to this email as it will be used against you in a court of law.

Priya Venkatesan, PhD

In a statement to Dartblog, Venkatesan reveals that she's retained an attorney from New Hampshire, and that she has absolutely no clue what a class-action suit is or how it works.

The students I am naming in this suit were mostly from Winter 08 term with a few from Fall. Essentially, I am pursuing litigation to see if I have a legal claim, that is, if the inappropriate and unprofessional behavior I was subjected to as a Research Associate and Lecturer at Dartmouth constitutes discrimination and harrassment [sic] on the basis of ethnicity, race and gender. This includes not just students, but a few faculty members that I worked with.

Possibly on the advice of her lawyer, Venkatesan is now making it more clear that she's suing Dartmouth for harassment by her superior in the writing program, but she won't let go of her brilliant idea to also sue the students who didn't like her very much.

According to her Dartmouth bio, Venkatesan's "current position is as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, which will form the basis of [her] latest manuscript, A Postmodernist in the Laboratory." We can't believe her bio leaves out the fact that this manuscript will "name names" (so to speak).

Putting the "Class" in Class Action. Also, the "Ligitious and Passive-Aggressive Book-Peddler" in Professor. [IvyGate]

Stalkers, plan accordingly: I was at the Whitney Museum administrative offices for an internship interview this afternoon. I'm signing in at the security desk, only to look up and see "JAMES FRANCO" written above my name. I turn around, and, sure enough, a scruffy-looking Harry Osbourne is being introduced to a Whitney employee by a British girl, and his hair is a nice shade of bottle blond (orange, rather). As I'm waiting for security to contact my interviewer, I hear JFranc say that he's enrolled at the Columbia MFA Writing Program for Fall 2008, and he'll be taking classes at Tisch as well.

Adds an anonymous tipster:

Also, the book is published by the press where the author is on the faculty. This is one step up from vanity press self-publishing (because he is familiar with the editors and his colleagues sit on the board of the press). For the record, I don't have a problem with the book's topic...I have a problem with the stupidity of the project. Coming from this person, it is skeevy. Take my word for it. But I never said that. And you didn't hear it from me.

Seventy faculty members have signed a letter protesting the president's tantrum, which "sullied the reputation of the University with its strident tone," according to the letter, which was obtained by the New York Sun.

"You don't invite someone and then take him apart in the introduction," said Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand, who teaches at Columbia and signed the letter. "I don't understand it ethically, and I don't understand what it accomplished—that was my justification for signing the letter."

They're also more than a little pissed that Bollinger hasn't come to their defense against "outside groups" (like, for instance, the New York Sun!) who attempt "to vilify members of the faculty and determine how controversial issues are taught on campus." The irate academics will present their letter to a larger faculty meeting tomorrow. No letters denouncing nooses and swastikas on campus yet though!