How to kill a university

Pay attention, Republicans. I know this is what you want.

Florida’s New College has had a rocky time since DeSantis was elected governor. He hates the liberal arts university, and placed a lot of anti-education administrators in charge — first and foremost, that execrable hack Chris Rufo, straight from the anti-science propaganda outlet, the Discovery Institute.

But first, some good news! Enrollments are up.

The incoming freshman class, which is the largest in New College’s history, will include at least 341 students; 155, or just under half, are student athletes, according to university spokesperson Nathan March.

That is very good news. I know my university has suffered with low enrollments for the past few years, thanks to the pandemic. My upper-level course enrollments are still looking worryingly low this year, but my freshman class is having a surge, which is promising for the future. I’d say this also promises excellent prospects for New College, except…

They seem to be using athletics to lure in new students. Student athletes are great, well-rounded students for the most part, so that’s not intrinsically bad, but the question is whether the new class is appropriately focused. We have lots of student athletes at UMM too, but they know their primary goal is to get an education. Is that true for new students attracted to New College?

I also wonder, given the notoriety of the changes Florida Republicans have been imposing, how many of these new students are right wing goons seeing an opportunity to undermine a liberal arts university.

Another problem: they don’t seem to have planned ahead. They’ve got more first year students, but no place to put them, so they’ve booked an off-campus hotel to house the surplus.

Students first heard in June that there was a chance their housing contracts, which were finalized in April, could change, according to a Tampa Bay Times article from July. Apartments typically reserved for juniors and seniors would now house the more than 100 new student athletes New College had admitted for the fall.

The remaining students are being squeezed into the other dorms on campus—except for a number of rooms that are offline due to mold and other structural problems—or being asked to live in a nearby hotel, the Home2 Suites by Hilton Sarasota Bradenton Airport, if they cannot secure their own off-campus housing. The college has rented out the entire Home2 Suites for the semester, totaling 133 beds, according to the contract between the institution and the hotel.

Oops, there’s the student athletes getting priority again. The hotel is a mile off campus, requiring students to walk along a busy highway to get to class.

Students placed in the Home2 Suites hotel worry about how they will commute to and from New College, about a mile away. For those without vehicles, the journey consists of a 15-minute walk largely along a stretch of busy highway. Parents and faculty have also complained that high levels of crime make the area unsafe, especially at night. While a shuttle is available, it is infrequent—running hourly until 11 p.m.—and can only carry a handful of passengers.

“They don’t seem to be able to plan ahead very well at all,” said Hannah Galantino-Homer, whose son was assigned to live in the Home2 Suites, although he had already decided to transfer out of New College by the time he got the news a few weeks ago. “Like, you don’t think people need to be on campus after [11]?”

This is a huge coordination and planning problem. If your enrollments are over your capacity, the responsible thing to do is tighten up your admission requirements and get the numbers down to what you can handle. Recruiting lots of students mainly on their athletic ability is not a great long-term solution.

I haven’t even gotten to their big problem yet: they’re hemorrhaging faculty.

When a committee of the New College of Florida Board of Trustees met in July, a whopping 36 faculty members had already left since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis initiated a conservative restructuring of the institution in January. That number has subsequently grown to more than 40, Amy Reid, the sole faculty member on the board, told Inside Higher Ed.

Now, as students prepare for the fall semester, the impact of the faculty exodus is becoming apparent: many classes won’t be offered at New College this term.

The course catalogue was already sparse when students first began looking at classes last spring. Dani Delaney, the mother of one former New College student who is transferring to Hampshire College in Massachusetts—which guaranteed admission to all New College students in good standing—said her son could only find two classes that counted towards his “area of concentration” (which is what New College calls majors). When he contacted the institution about the lack of relevant courses, she said, he was told the course catalogue was “in flux” and to “choose something else.”

This is a disaster for a small university, where we’re often operating on the knife’s edge of staffing.You need a critical mass of diverse skills to properly teach a discipline. For instance, our physics department lost two faculty to retirement, leaving one person to teach everything (we didn’t plan far enough ahead), which is not viable. We were frantically scrambling to hire short term faculty while trying to get approval to hire tenure-track replacements. I can’t imagine what the New College departments are doing, adding the abrupt losses to the fact that New College is not an attractive venue for the best new faculty. On top of that, they’re disorganized and using political ideology to wreck programs.

“For neuroscience, there’s only one elective beyond the introductory level right now, which is not healthy,” Leininger said, noting that the number of faculty in NCF’s neuroscience program has declined from three to one. “The number of choices students have this year is drastically reduced … if one of those classes conflicts with another class they have to take that is completely required, they’re going to have trouble staying on track for their major.”

Leininger said she received permission from her new institution to teach New College’s neurobiology course over Zoom—a plan the NCF administration at first seemed to embrace. In an email to Leininger that she shared with Inside Higher Ed, Bradley Thiessen, the college’s interim provost said he would “advocate” for her to teach the course if she was willing and able to do so.

But about two months later, she got word from NCF that she would not be allowed to teach the class, for reasons that were not explained. She suspects it may have something to do with her outspoken opposition to the direction DeSantis and the board are taking the institution, which has included speaking to the media about her decision to leave and reposting criticisms of the administration on X.

That’s what happens when you let incompetent hacks take charge. They’re losing the confidence of the students and their parents, too.

Dani Delaney’s son, a rising sophomore, decided he wouldn’t return to New College this semester in large part because he felt uneasy about the university’s decision to walk back the housing assignments students chose last spring.

He replied to multiple emails from the residential life department saying he wouldn’t be attending in the fall. Nevertheless, he received a notice on Aug. 9 telling him he had forfeited his spot in campus housing by failing to respond.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, how many other people might have gotten that same email of, hey, basically, you’re on your own, kid,” Delaney said. “It just shows that they have not committed to what’s in the best interest of the student body. It’s so wrong, the way they’ve gone about it. The disorganization—I can’t wrap my brain around it. This is not how you run a college.”

I wonder how many of those new enrollments will still be there in a year or two? How many will be able to successfully graduate?

There might be a bit of climate shock moving from Florida to Minnesota, but we’d welcome any transfer students who’d like to attend a stable, reliable university, with the capacity to handle them and also the responsibility to provide a good learning environment.

I’m getting outta here!

Classes start in one week (there are also way too many meetings this week), and I’ve been housebound far too long, so this weekend is my last chance to escape for a bit before the crunch hits. And then I discover there’s an Exotic Pet Fair in Eau Claire this weekend. Perfect! It’s a twofer — I get to visit my granddaughter, and take her with us to go spider shopping. I’m in the market for a nice show tarantula for the lab, and maybe a black widow or two.

It’s not all spiders. They also have birds, reptiles, bunnies, guinea pigs, etc., so even a kid who isn’t that much into spiders should be entertained. I’ll also be glad to just get out for a day.

(Don’t worry — I’ll consult with experts, and won’t be getting any endangered species. If we get Latrodectus,I think I can keep them reliably confined. I don’t want to go do down in history as the guy who populated the basement with black widows, like the former professor who let cockroaches loose in the building.)

Reminds me of someone else

Things are not going well for Sam Bankman-Fried, the big-time crypto con man. He’s been out on bail, living the easy life pending his trial, but he just can’t resist blabbing and conspiring to intimidate witnesses to his crimes, so he earned a hard slap from justice.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail has been revoked for witness tampering — specifically, that he shared ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s private diary with a New York Times reporter. This was the last straw for Judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the documents were “something that someone who has been in a relationship would be unlikely to share with anyone except to hurt and frighten the subject.”

Previously, Sam tried to get in touch via Signal with another witness, former FTX US lawyer Ryne Miller, about getting their stories straight — which nearly saw Sam’s bail revoked that time.

Our hero is currently at MDC Brooklyn — notoriously one of the worst jails in the federal system — but the government has asked that he be remanded at Putnam, where he’ll be allowed more computer access to prepare for his upcoming trial on October 2.

That’s going to be a fun trial.

Reading that, though, I was somehow reminded of someone else with a penchant for blustering and threatening witnesses on social media, someone else currently facing an October trial date, someone — I can’t quite put my finger on who — currently living freely in a gilded mansion in Florida. What’s the worst state jail in Georgia? I think he needs to spend some time there.

HeLa wins one

The family of Henrietta Lacks has settled with Thermo Fisher over the use of their relative’s cells, a staple of tissue culture research. It was entirely confidential, which is unfortunate — it feels like it might have been a “here’s a lump of money, now shut up and go away” sort of deal, which will be a short term benefit to the family, who deserve some compensation, but now presumably the ethical discussion will just disappear.

There was an earlier agreement that I think was more significant.

Lacks’ family members have never shared in any of the untold riches unlocked by the material, called HeLa cells, and they won’t make any money under the agreement announced Wednesday by the family and the National Institutes of Health.

But they will have some control over scientists’ access to the cells’ DNA code. And they will receive acknowledgement in the scientific papers that result.

The agreement came after the family raised privacy concerns about making Henrietta Lacks’ genetic makeup public. Since DNA is inherited, information from her DNA could be used to make predictions about the disease risk and other traits of her modern-day descendants.

Under the agreement, two family members will sit on a six-member committee that will regulate access to the genetic code.

“The main issue was the privacy concern and what information in the future might be revealed,” David Lacks Jr., grandson of Henrietta Lacks, said at a news conference.

“Untold riches” is quite an exaggeration. Cell lines are mundane tools that also require ongoing investment to maintain, and while I’m sure the companies profited excessively, it wasn’t quite on the scale of selling Oxycontin. But yes, the Lacks family should get a cut.

More important than money, though, is that the family that shares Henrietta Lacks’ genetic heritage should be acknowledged and share stewardship of that legacy. I’d want that kind of control over my body, and would be resentful of any profit-making venture that stole that from me or my children. That’s the precedent we need.

Thank you, Georgia

The whole carpet began to unravel with a call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, asking him to find 11,780 votes to overturn the presidential election in his state. The carpet was woven well before that, though, with plans made even before the election to cast doubt on any results that went against the desired result of Trump’s victory. These people knew it, they conspired to replace legitimate votes with fraudulent ones, and now they’ve been called to court over it.

  • Donald Trump, former US president
  • Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyer
  • Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff
  • John Eastman, Trump lawyer
  • Kenneth Chesebro, pro-Trump lawyer
  • Jeffrey Clark, top Justice Department official
  • Jenna Ellis, Trump campaign lawyer
  • Robert Cheeley, lawyer who promoted fraud claims
  • Mike Roman, Trump campaign official
  • David Shafer, Georgia GOP chair and fake elector
  • Shawn Still, fake GOP elector
  • Stephen Lee, pastor tied to intimidation of election workers
  • Harrison Floyd, leader of Black Voices for Trump
  • Trevian Kutti, publicist tied to intimidation of election workers
  • Sidney Powell, Trump campaign lawyer
  • Cathy Latham, fake GOP elector tied to Coffee County breach
  • Scott Hall, tied to Coffee County election system breach
  • Misty Hampton, Coffee County elections supervisor
  • Ray Smith, Trump campaign attorney

They’ve been indicted on racketeering charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (quick — has Trump been medically tested for syphilis? That’s how they got Al Capone, you know.)

These charges represent many serious felonies, and it’s not just a pattern of criminal behavior — it’s an overt attempt by the chief executive to undermine the rule of law and commit treason against the Constitution. Invoke the 14th Amendment and kill this guy’s campaign to run for re-election again.

Although, to be sure so far these are just more charges against these awful people, and we’ll have to see if he actually gets convicted. I grew up seeing Nixon getting off scot-free so my confidence isn’t high.

Brace yourself for the flurry of disingenuous defenses to come.

I’m probably going to regret this

One result of my latest doctor’s visit is that I was told to stay off my cursed foot, at least until Wednesday, and to avoid much physical activity until everything heals up. This is not good! I’ve been imprisoned in my home for the last two and a half weeks — and I also got some new brain-fog medication (not that it treats the fog, it causes it.) I am going to go stir-crazy.

My daughter recommended that I pick up some new game, Baldur’s Gate 3, which is getting rave reviews, but of course it’s Skatje’s opinion that matters, so I did. It’s downloading now. Is my life over?

The horrible ghouls of 20th century anthropology

This is a photo of Mary Sara, an 18 year old Sami woman who traveled to Seattle in 1933, accompanying her mother, who was getting cataract surgery. While there, Mary died of tuberculosis, which is tragedy enough…but then the ghouls arrived.

The Smithsonian wanted her brain.

The young woman — whose family was Sami, or indigenous to areas that include northern Scandinavia — had traveled with her mother by ship from her Alaska hometown at the invitation of physician Charles Firestone, who had offered to treat the older woman for cataracts. Now, Firestone sought to take advantage of Sara’s death for a “racial brain collection” at the Smithsonian Institution. He contacted a museum official in May 1933 by telegram.

Ales Hrdlicka, the 64-year-old curator of the division of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum, was interested in Sara’s brain for his collection. But only if she was “full-blood,” he noted, using a racist term to question whether her parents were both Sami.

The Smithsonian houses over 30,000 body parts, including hundreds of brains.

Nearly 100 years later, Sara’s brain is still housed by the institution, wrapped in muslin and immersed in preservatives in a large metal container. It is stored in a museum facility in Maryland with 254 other brains, amassed mostly in the first half of the 20th century. Almost all of them were gathered at the behest of Hrdlicka, a prominent anthropologist who believed that White people were superior and collected body parts to further now-debunked theories about anatomical differences between races.

There they sit to this day, gathered by Ales Hrdlicka, who somehow became a curator at the Smithsonian and a prominent defender of racist pseudoscience.

Hrdlicka, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic, received medical training from the Eclectic Medical College of New York City and the New York Homeopathic Medical College in Manhattan before moving into the field of anthropology. He was seen as one of the country’s foremost authorities on race, sought by the government and members of the public to prove that people’s race determined physical characteristics and intelligence.

He was also a longtime member of the American Eugenics Society, an organization dedicated to racist practices designed to control human populations and “improve” the genetic pool, baseless theories that would be widely condemned after the Nazis used them to justify genocide and forced sterilization during the Holocaust. In speeches and personal correspondence, he spoke openly about his belief in the superiority of White people, once lamenting that Black people were “the real problem before the American people.”

“There are differences of importance between the brains of the negro and European, to the general disadvantage of the former,” he wrote in a 1926 letter to a University of Vermont professor. “Brains of individual negroes may come up to or near the standard of some individual whites; but such primitive brains as found in some negroes … would be hard to duplicate in normal whites.”

That is truly remarkable. The article focuses on the abuse of autonomy of so many people who had their brains scooped out and sent off to Washington DC, and that is definitely an important issue. But I was reading it and asking myself, “What science was done? What did we learn? What did he discover to justify calling the brains of black people ‘primitive’?” It turns out to have been nothing.

The extent of Hrdlicka’s own research on the brains is unclear. When a professor wrote to him and asked about the differences he found between the brains of people of different races, he replied that research studies showed the superiority of White brains, without citing any studies of his own. He published a 1906 study on brain preservatives, recording the weight of human and animal brains and comparing how they fared in a chemical solution. But The Post found no other research on the brains by Hrdlicka.

I know a bit about neuroscience, and I find the whole approach unproductive and baffling. Sure, you could do crude measurements, weighing brains and slicing them open to measure the gross morphology of regions and nuclei…but we know that all of that is so variable and often so irrelevant to the functioning of those brains that you can’t learn anything from it. We simply don’t know enough about the details of how brains work that, aside from major abnormalities, you can’t conclude anything about the minds housed in those lumps of meat by hacking them up, and you especially couldn’t do anything with the information in the early 20th century.

Basically, Hrdlicka was nothing but an obsessive and rather morbid collector. His ‘credibility’, what there was of it, rested entirely on accumulating the largest collection of brains, like bloody tragic Pokemon. He didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to study. He was just gathering gory fragments of human beings and parading them before other bad scientists who thought this was an accomplishment. The Smithsonian should be ashamed, we should all be ashamed that this charade of race ‘science’ was perpetrated for so long, and that people continue to think this was a useful approach to justify their bigotry to this day.

Hrdlicka really was a ghoul. When an exhibit of Filipino culture, represented by a large number of people from that country, was held at the World’s Fair, he had one thing on his mind: “That summer, Hrdlicka headed to St. Louis, hoping to take brains from Filipinos who died.” He collected four brains from the unfortunate people who died incidentally there (tuberculosis and pneumonia were Hrdlicka’s friends).

Ugh. The Smithsonian, and other museums around the country, need to address this ugly stain on their history, and make amends to the people they exploited for such stupid ends.

Aw, shucks, I missed it

The Iowa state fair happened this past weekend, and it was a disgusting spectacle. Iowa has an oversized political reputation, solely because it has the first primary in the presidential election, so every Republican candidate shows up to shake hands and kiss babies and pretend they care about a small farm state, rather than because they enjoy fried-cheese-onna-stick or want to weigh in on the qualities of prize pigs.

There were two spectacles worth noting. One was the way the press fawned over this event, comparing the size of the crowds for various candidates and acting as if this was meaningful. A good healthy journalism wouldn’t care about the opinions of a self-selected mob of yokels and how many corn dogs they ate, they’d be talking about policies and records and, in one case, criminal history. But no, this was a celebrity spectacle with no weight at all.

The second was…Trump is back to lying again and hyping the imaginary size of his crowds.

I don’t think I can take another year of this bullshit. Narcissistic serial liars are so 2020.

By the way, the Stevens County Fair took place here last week — I couldn’t go, I’m trapped in a small room in our house cultivating chronic pain, but Mary went, and she said there was less knee-jerk MAGA nonsense and fewer Trump flags waving than last year, so that’s a slightly positive development. Also, Trump didn’t show up.