Month: November 2022

You gotta give U.S. News & World Report credit.  When a number of the country’s most prestigious law schools recently decided to stop providing data for the Report’s annual rankings, the publication didn’t miss a beat.  

On Monday the company’s CEO, Eric Gertler, announced that in 2023 its law-school rankings would begin with the institution ranked #11.  Rankings 1 through 10 will no longer be used.   

According to Gertler, “we’ve come to realize that schools like Yale, Stanford, and Chicago will always be the top law schools in the nation, regardless of whether we rank them or not.  They don’t need us.  ‘The elite will forever be the elite’, so sayeth The Lord, who graduated from the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, by the way. 

“So, here’s the deal: we’re going to kick things off in 2023 with the law school ranked #11, and work our way down from there.   Our annual law-school report will be officially titled “THE BEST OF THE REST.”

The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm at Cornell Law School, which finished #12 in the 2022 rankings.  As Jens David Olin, the school’s dean, observed: “Let’s face it, we just don’t have the brainpower in upstate New York to compete with places like Yale.  The faculty we attract are primarily committed to skiing, not scholarship — we’re very similar to Dartmouth and SUNY Potsdam in that regard.  But now we have a fighting chance to be #11 in the Best of the Rest.  I am SO pumped!  Who cares that we’ll be going up against law schools that operate out of food trucks on the interstate?  We’re going to crush those mofos!”

Leave it to U.S. News and World Report to come up with a strategy that King Solomon — and Yale Law School — would approve of. 

Chairs, deans, and provosts all know that 5% of the faculty consume 95% of their time.  Now, at long last, there is an early warning system for identifying this annoying subgroup, enabling busy administrators to take measures to avoid interacting with them. 

Behold the Dipwad Dowser, a divining rod developed by the manufacturer of John Deere agricultural machinery (Deere & Company) in collaboration with the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

Just as a traditional dowser can pinpoint underground sources of water, the Dipwad Dowser can indicate whether a person you’ve just met is likely to be a dipwad.  It is 96% effective in identifying the 5 types of dipwad most frequently encountered in higher education:

— Pestilents:  The core competency of Pestilents is recognizing, and incessantly complaining about, the negative aspects (real and imagined) of everything on campus (“The new furniture they put in my office smells funny.”).  After declaring that the glass is half-empty, they stomp on the glass with both feet and use the shards to inflict despair on everyone in the vicinity.  In their opinion, happy faculty are deluded faculty.  Pestilents consider Debbie Downers to be Pollyannas.    

Ingratiators:  Leeches envy the ability of these individuals to suck up to superiors.  (“Your comments yesterday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the unisex water fountain in the cafeteria changed my life!”)  Interacting with them is like drinking maple syrup from a fire hose.  After a few minutes you’re drenched in sweet slime and on the verge of barfing.  

—  Pistachios:  Remove the shell and find the nut inside.  Pistachios specialize in offering detailed, wildly unrealistic proposals that they want you to fund. (“Here’s the prospectus I’ve been working on for a Luncheon Meat Research Center to be housed in the English Department.”)

— Termites:  These folks wanted somebody else to be hired for the job you have, and they will work diligently, often behind your back, to undermine the foundations of your leadership.  Termites have an uncanny knack for spreading rumors that grossly misrepresent what you’ve said.  (“She told the Search Committee that she would never approve the hiring of a Puerto Rican!”)

— Litigators:  For them, there is no campus grievance that is too small to be the subject of legal action: classrooms that are excessively hot or cold; faculty parking lots that are too far away from faculty offices; paper cuts; smelly dry-erase markers; scratchy toilet paper; required office hours; and, of course, vaccine (and even hygiene) mandates.  (“How I smell is my business!”) Their lawyers typically operate out of vans parked at turnpike service plazas.  

The Dipwad Dowser is remarkably easy to use.  Just point the device at a faculty member you’re meeting for the first time, and let the magic happen.  The dowser will sharply angle downward if the person is a dipwad, and identify on its digital display the type of dipwad that has been discovered. 

Available in a variety of colors from the Hammacher Schlemmer website, the Dipwad Dowser (standard model) retails for $499.95. 

Can you afford not to have one? 

 

The Stanford Graduate School of Business briefly brushed its exposed derrière against the hot stove of controversy recently when it announced plans to hold a conference on academic freedom that would be closed to the media.  After a predictable flurry of criticism, organizers decided to livestream the event via Zoom/Youtube “so that everyone can access the conference” (Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24th online).  

Sorry, Stanford, but your attempt to shield a conference from public scrutiny pales in comparison to what transpired at Columbia University in 1956.  On the evening of March 20th of that year, nearly 100 faculty members attended a secret comedy revue in the basement of Low Memorial Library.  The revue consisted of satirical skits in which professors portrayed specific Columbia undergraduates whom they intensely disliked. 

The depictions were merciless and cruel.  Hayden Krusp, a first-year assistant professor of Romance Languages, was in the audience, and he was appalled.  He informed the school’s Human Resources Department of his concerns, and the ensuing investigation resulted in 14 tenured Columbia professors being summarily fired on April 24th for “moral turpitude.”

On April 27th Hayden Krusp disappeared, shortly after he finished teaching his weekly honors seminar.  No one has seen him since.  

The case finally broke on February 18th, 1984 during an interview with a Mob hitman imprisoned at a maximum-security correctional facility near Florence, Colorado.  

Sonny “The Snake” DeMitro, serving consecutive life sentences for the murder of three members of the Zamboni crime family in Bayonne, New Jersey, revealed to his biographer that he had carried out a contract on a professor at an Ivy League school in New York City in the mid-1950s.  

According to DeMitro, “this guy had spilled the beans on some secret faculty ritual, and we were contacted by the Chairman of Columbia’s Faculty Senate.  They wanted to send a message to everyone at the institution that snitching was frowned upon.

“We had done a lot of work for Ivy League schools in the past; they pay really well.  But I gotta admit, when we snatched up Krusp as he headed back to his office that day, I was surprised.  Such a sweet kid!  There was no whining or begging when we told him what was going to happen.  Absolutely none.  I hate it when they whine; deans and provosts are the worst.  For the love of God, just take it like a man!

“Hell, I can still recall him smiling at us as we were tying him to a cinder block, getting ready to toss him in the Hudson.  It was a Friday night, and he says to me, ‘hope you have a nice weekend’.  Can you believe that?  I came close to shedding a few tears.  I’ve dumped dozens of guys — and a few dames — in that river over the years, but he’s the only one I ever had second thoughts about.”

Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet will portray Hayden Krusp in Scorsese’s film version of this saga, which is due to be released in late 2023.  

 

  

“How to Cope with Presentation Anxiety,” an essay chock-full of helpful advice from James Lang, recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 28th online).  

Unfortunately, it omits the most crucial piece of information that professors suffering from academic stage fright need to know:  NO ONE IS LISTENING TO YOU.

Consider the typical panel session at an annual conference.  Researchers have found that approximately 87% of all audience members are preoccupied with one or more of the following concerns throughout the entire session:

“Where should I go to dinner tonight?”

“Whom should I invite to go with me to dinner tonight?”

“Why hasn’t anyone invited me to go to dinner with them tonight?”

“Where’s the location of the session I’m attending after this one?”

“Holy crap!  Did I leave my cell phone in the restroom?”

“Why isn’t my book being prominently displayed by the publisher in the exhibition hall?  Those bastards!”

“Dammit, I forgot to get a receipt at lunch.  There goes the reimbursement for my cheeseburger.”

“Why do they keep the meeting rooms so cold?”

“Why do they keep the meeting rooms so hot?”

“Could that really be a pimple I feel coming up on my chin?  For the love of God, I’m 52 years old!”

“The tote bags they give us at registration keep getting cheaper every year.”

“OK, who’s the dipwad wearing Axe Banana/Turkey Body Spray?”

“Is there going to be anything worth bidding on at tonight’s Silent Auction?  No way I’m paying $75 for another necklace made of shellacked guano pebbles.”

“Why did Edelson ignore me when I waved to him in the hallway after the plenary address?  We were in grad school together.  I’ll bet it’s because he’s at Cornell now and I’m at a community college.  I knew from the beginning that he was a status-seeking son of a bitch.”

“I can’t believe they charge $8.75 for a package of four undersized Oreos from my room’s mini-bar.  Marx was right; he’s always been right.” 

“Let me just close my eyes for a minute.  I won’t fall…”

Moral of the Story:  

When it comes to making public presentations, you can relax. 

It’s not about you.

It never has been.