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UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

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Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#23
post #13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Can you possibly throw in more stereotypes? Not everyone in the South is a white, good ol' boy racist. Not anymore than everyone who thinks it's a true is a complete idiot. You're merely ignorant.

http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Issues05/10-03/Haskins.php

"The university has a troubling history when it comes to matter race..."

"UVa's racial problem is larger than simply a few isolated incidents of bigotry. ... There is still a discernable "Good Ol' Boy" network that heavily influences the Commonwealth's social, economic and political life and holds UVA up as a crown jewel."

What I posted was not just my opinions, and it was not uninformed. Nevertheless I deleted it because the contents or way it was expressed clearly offended a lot of people here.

Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#24
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I don't get your point - the people who are pissed off are the students and faculty of UVA. There are also many Virginians who have no association with UVA who are pissed off (including myself; I attended Virginia Tech and lived in Virginia for the vast majority of my life). The fundamental problem, I think, is the Board of Visitors model for running public universities. We had serious problems with this back in 2003…

So what's different between the Board of Visitors, and for example, the California Board of Regents? CA BoR is pretty despised by faculty and students alike.

Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#25
post #5

Brief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's. Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this wa…

A fundamental problem is that university boards have an increasing disconnect from anything to do with merit, and a close enough connect to donating money (in two ways) that it's pretty close to just buying a seat. They're mostly made up some mixture of: 1) large donors to the university, who're appointed to maintain good relations, encourage future donations, etc.; and 2) for public universities, large political donors, who're appointed by governors, sort of in the way that ambassadorships often go to big political donors.

It's admittedly long been common for particularly large donors to be flattered a bit with some role, but over the past 10-20 years this seems to have gone from being a few members of the board, to being almost all of them, with very few members appointed primarily because of non-donation-related merit, like someone thinking they're actually good candidates for overseeing an academic/research institution. Note the lack of accomplished scientists on the board, for example. In addition, the political appointees seem to have decreased in quality: it was once more common to appoint someone who, while they were from your own party, was a late-career "elder statesman" type figure, e.g. a former governor or Congressman.

It's sadly not a partisan issue, either: if you look at, say, the University of California Board of Regents, you have a nice bipartisan mixture of big Democratic donors (appointed by Democratic governors) and big Republican donors (appointed by Republican governors). Their expertise is... not too relevant seeming, including such credentials as "former CEO of Paramount Pictures" and "husband of Dianne Feinstein".

Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#27
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you possibly throw in more stereotypes? Not everyone in the South is a white, good ol' boy racist. Not anymore than everyone who thinks it's a true is a complete idiot. You're merely ignorant.

http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Issues05/10-03/Haskins.php "The university has a troubling history when it comes to matter race..." "UVa's racial problem is larger than simply a few isolated incidents of bigotry. ... There is still a discernable "Good Ol' Boy" network that heavily influences the Commonwealth's social, economic and political life and holds UVA up as a crown jewel." What I posted was not just my opinion…

Forget offense, it didn't make sense - it was a non-sequitur. I have not heard race or gender to be a factor in the current problem at UVA. (Yes, the fired president is a woman, but I have not heard anyone mention her gender as part of the firing.)

Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#29
post #5

Brief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's. Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this wa…

   It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a
   bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change
   to the future plans of the University, not incremental
   change.
Which, as I recall, was revealed in some seriously mustache-twirling e-mails that the main orchestrator had used the Reply All feature for or something to that extent. I can't remember which article I read this in, but this has all the elements of the most interesting and scandalous affair in academia this year.

Re: UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

#30
post #5

Brief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's. Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this wa…

Sounds like an american version of the novel Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porterhouse_Blue
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