Wildcat-Watch

NU President Henry S. Bienen is retiring… effective August 31, 2009. Thanks for the 75 weeks notice, guy. Full statement below:

March 3, 2008

To members of the Northwestern community:

I have recently notified the Board of Trustees of my decision to retire, effective August 31, 2009, and I wanted to share that news with you today. I continue to enjoy my job immensely, but I truly believe that it is important for institutions to be refreshed regularly with new leadership. Northwestern has come to occupy a large portion of my heart and mind, and it has been an honor to serve as Northwestern’s president – and a great experience.

The successes we have had over the years are due to more people here at Northwestern than I can name. I have been privileged to work with many, many outstanding faculty, students, staff, alumni and trustees. Pat Ryan, who has been an extraordinary chairman of the board of trustees during my tenure, and Howard Trienens, who was chairman as I came, have led this institution in an exemplary fashion, and I have benefited immensely from their counsel and guidance. My colleagues on the president’s staff and among the deans have provided outstanding leadership, and I thank them for their dedicated efforts, as I do all the members of our staff. I am also extremely proud of the accomplishments of our stellar faculty and remarkable students, whose achievements have advanced significantly the reputation of Northwestern.

I also would like to thank my wife, Leigh. She has been a crucial partner with me and has made her own terrific contributions to the University and to Chicago through her involvement in a variety of activities. Through her work at the Law School and in the Chicago community, she too has been a leader at Northwestern and in the greater Chicago area.

There is still a great deal to accomplish, and I intend to be quite busy in the next 15 months. We will finalize plans for the new School of Music building, we will implement our enhanced financial aid program for students and we will continue our efforts in several curricular initiatives, including intensifying the internationalization of the University. I will be working with many of you to move these programs forward.

In conclusion, my tenure here has been a wonderful experience that I will cherish. The scripture from which Northwestern’s motto is taken urges us to “think on these things” that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report. I know in my heart that in regard to my Northwestern experience, I will think on these things forever.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your president and lead this great university.

Sincerely,
Henry S. Bienen
President

(For additional information, go to www.northwestern.edu/Bienenpresidency.)

So now I guess the hunt is on for our future president. As long as it’s not Hillary Clinton, I think we will be fine. Right now I am endorsing John Lavine for the job. I mean, look at all the publicity he has gotten for Medill lately.

Provost Daniel Linzer and a team of three prestigious Medill grads have concluded that Medill dean John Lavine didn’t violate Medill’s precious code:

…

The committee unanimously concluded that although a record of the student statements that were quoted cannot be found, sufficient material does exist about the relevant storefront reporting experience and marketing course to demonstrate that sentiments similar to the quotes had been expressed by students. Thus, the committee found that there is ample evidence that the quotes were consistent with sentiment students expressed about the course in course evaluations and no evidence to point to any likelihood that the quotes were fabricated.  The committee further stated that the author of a piece like the “Letter from the Dean” could not reasonably be expected to have retained for a year the notes or e-mails documenting the sources of quotations used in the letter; nonetheless, the committee advised that in the future such meticulous archiving might be desirable given the heightened awareness of the problems that can result.

I accept the committee’s conclusions.  While I join Dean Lavine in wishing that material demonstrating the sources of the quotations was readily available, I have determined that no violation of University policy has occurred in connection with the Spring 2007 “Letter from the Dean.”  I have confidence in Dean Lavine to continue to lead the Medill School of Journalism.

That so many people - including students, faculty, and alumni - expressed views on this matter testifies to their deep commitment to Medill.   I hope you will join me in supporting the Medill School and its leadership as it works to ensure that the School’s storied role and distinguished reputation as a leader in journalism education continue as it and the profession face the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Daniel Linzer
Provost

Hooray. Now we can all go back to complaining about how Medill blows because the classes are either a joke or prison sentence, not because our dean is a liar.

Think John Lavine is little baby Satan for using unattributed quotes? Columbia University has an even bigger plagiarism scandal on their hands:

A professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who was propelled into the national spotlight when a noose was found on her office door last fall has been found to have plagiarized the work of a former colleague and two former students, the college has announced.

The college, in statements to the faculty and the news media, said an 18-month investigation into charges against the professor, Madonna G. Constantine, had determined there were “numerous instances in which she used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years.”

…

Dr. Constantine, in an e-mail message to faculty and students on Wednesday, called the investigation “biased and flawed,” and said it was part of a “conspiracy and witch hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community.”

“I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote.

Playing the race card appears to be a sure way to ward off a plagiarism scandal. Maybe Lavine should take a few notes from Dr. Constantine. Oh, wait. He doesn’t take notes.

Last week, everyone was up in arms about Medill head honcho John Lavine fabricating some quotes that no student in their right mind would ever say. And by everyone, I mean The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Chicago Reader, UPI, U.S. News & World Report, Editor & Publisher, and a bunch of other places I don’t care about. According to Lavine, gullible students did actually speak as quoted and the confusion was over “context.” Every journalist has been burned by at one time or another by context… right?

It is beyond me how anyone could think that journalists aren’t full of shit to begin with, so it was doubly surprising to hear the national outcry over Lavine making some pro-Medill shit up and disparaging Medill in the process. Keep in mind, it is this guy’s job to promote the Medill name and repopularize the school as the top j-school around. I don’t think it is in his job description to, you know, have journalistic ethics.

So far today, a week after scandal day zero, there has been no mention of Lavine’s hijinks in the press. Has the world given up on trying to out Lavine as the corrupt evil journalist he is? Or have people gotten over a stupid mistake by a misguided and desperate dean?

Update- Here is the letter that a bunch of Medill professors signed in order to take a dump on Lavine’s chest and try to salvage the Medill name in the process:

Statement from the Medill Faculty
February 19, 2008

We, the undersigned members of the faculty of the Medill School of Journalism, are deeply troubled by Dean John Lavine’s use of unidentified sources in his columns for Medill, the school’s alumni magazine. We also are concerned about the public questions that have arisen regarding the ethics of attribution and sourcing, and commend the Daily Northwestern and columnist David Spett for raising these issues.

Public discussion about this matter has moved beyond the issue of a quote attributed to an unidentified student to a question of the dean’s veracity, specifically whether the quote at issue was fabricated. Regrettably, much of this discussion has itself been anonymous, posted on the Internet by unidentified sources, an act that if predictable is nonetheless unprofessional. We speak publicly, and on the record.

The dean could, if he wished, put an end to what has become an embarrassment to Northwestern and to Medill. We call on him to do so immediately. As the Chicago Sun-Times said in a Feb. 15 editorial, “With his and the school’s integrity on the line, the easiest thing for Lavine to do now is produce his notes or have the IT department retrieve that deleted e-mail to allay concerns over whether the unattributed quote is real.”

This matter has become a crisis for the school. The principles of truthfulness and transparency in reporting are at the core of Medill’s professional and academic mission. The dean’s Feb. 14 memorandum in which he offered his explanation of events to Medill faculty is at best inadequate. It says that the quote at issue is essentially the same as that used by a student in an online video, and that the quote at issue is therefore a “fact.” But of course the language used in the video is not the same as that in the contested quote, nor is the speaker in the video the unidentified source of the contested quote. Finally, the student in the video is talking about a different Medill class than the one that is the subject of the contested quote.

It is wrong to argue that the forum in which the questionable quote was used, the school’s alumni magazine, is not subject to the same standards as other publication venues. Accuracy and truthfulness are non-negotiable requirements for any material prepared for publication in any forum, including in marketing and public relations. Indeed, the defense that Medill magazine is a public relations vehicle and therefore held to a lesser standard than other forms of publication is an insult to Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications faculty and staff, who are bound by the same Integrity Code, in all its particulars, as are the school’s journalism students and faculty. As important, Medill magazine speaks directly to the many audiences to whom Medill owes its greatest fealty: students and alumni of the school’s journalism and integrated marketing communications programs; our students’ parents; the dozens of media firms around the United States and the world where our students take internships; donors to the school’s academic and professional programs; employers and practitioners in both journalism and marketing communications. All of these audiences deserve a more complete accounting than the dean has thus far provided. We call on him to do so immediately.

Mary Coffman, Associate Professor
Douglas Foster, Associate Professor
Eric Ferkenhoff, Lecturer
Loren Ghiglione, Professor
George Harmon, Associate Professor
Sharon Kornely, Senior Lecturer
Craig L. LaMay, Associate Professor
Donna Leff, Professor
Arsenio Oloroso, Lecturer
Marcel Pacatte, Lecturer
David Protess, Professor
Larry Stuelpnagel, Assistant Professor
Mindy Trossman, Assistant Professor
Mary Ann Weston, Associate Professor Emerita
Charles Whitaker, Assistant Professor
Jon Ziomek, Assistant Professor Emeritus

And I thought our IT department had issues. Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences got hacked recently, prompting the sneaky hackers to upload Harvard’s secret ivory tower database onto BitTorrent:

A compressed 125 M-byte file claiming to be the database for the Web site of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is available via the BitTorrent P-to-P (peer to peer) network. The file is listed on The Pirate Bay, a Web site that indexes torrents, or small information files that coordinate the download of content from other users on BitTorrent.

The Web site for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was offline on Monday.

A note attached to the torrent claimed the file contained a backup of the site — including some contacts files and other files associated with Joomla, an open-source content management system — along with other various bits. It appears to be legitimate.

The note’s writer claims the stunt is intended to demonstrate the insecurity of Harvard’s server. The writer also exposed what purport to be usernames and passwords belonging to two of the site’s system administrators.

“Stupid people, you don’t use a secure password,” read a note preceding the sensitive information.

I’m sure Harvard is scared to shit by these hackers. With their $26 billion dollar endowment and the power of the free world behind them.

NbN gives an insightful look into the Northwestern blog scene, specifically addressing how we here at Wildcat-Watch only copy-paste the finest material for you to read:

MOST PROFICIENT USE OF COPY/PASTE KEYBOARD FUNCTION: Wildcat-Watch

The writers of Wildcat-Watch often poke fun at campus happenings, share Hillary-hating YouTube videos, and criticize the writing of student publications like NBN and The Daily. Call me biased (one of my stories was personally trashed), but one thing every post on the blog shares is a complete lack of new ideas — it feeds on easy, one-line criticism of outside content and a few jokes the authors probably enjoy much more than anyone else. The outline of a typical Wildcat-Watch post goes something like this: “Clever” Title, usually with sarcastic parenthetical jabs. One sentence introduction. Several paragraphs quoting another publication. “Clever” kicker. Sarcastic tags. Repeat ad nauseum.

I don’t know. I find it kind of dubious that NbN gave their “most likely to incite a revolution” award to a blog that has a total of six posts ranging back to last November. Revolutionary, man.

NB: They also neglected to even mention Civic Alert, probably the most well-done blog run by NU students.

There is a movie in which Martin Lawrence’s daughter doesn’t like Northwestern (go figure) and so there is a G-rated roadtrip to Georgetown instead. Haha.

The New York Times today, for the second day in a row, has a lengthy feature on the cavalcade of top American universities opening up shop in Education City, Qatar:

Education City, the largest enclave of American universities overseas, has fast become the elite of Qatari education, a sort of local Ivy League. But the five American schools have started small, with only about 300 slots among them for next year’s entering classes. So there is a slight buzz of anxiety at the fair, which starts with a nonalcoholic cocktail hour, with fruit juices passed on silver trays as families circulate among the booths.

“I just came to get my mind together,” said Rowea al-Shrem, a junior in a head-to-toe black abaya who came to the fair on her own. “I wanted to know what to expect, so I don’t go crazy next year.”

At a time when almost every major American university is concerned with expanding its global reach, Education City provides a glimpse of the range of American expertise in demand overseas. Five universities have brought programs here, and more are on their way.

Education City, Qatar: Come for the education, stay for the non-alcoholic cocktails. I prefer the Midwest to the Middle East, to be honest.