Straws in the Wind - Part 363

From Centre Daily Times: As Penn State prepares for seven of its commonwealth campuses to close, the university’s technical service union is demanding protections for employees. After the university announced it would close seven campuses by the end of the spring 2027 semester, the Teamsters Local 8 union that represents more than 2,000 technical workers across the commonwealth began negotiating with the university in July 2025 over job placement protections. A proposal was presented to the union in November, according to local union President Jon Light, but the 59 members at the affected campuses overwhelmingly voted to reject it. The proposal, Light said, would allow the university to lay off union members at any time, replace them with part-time or contract labor and keep the affected campuses open without union workers.

After months of negotiations, Light said the university is backtracking on promises they made at the beginning of their discussions with the union. “I sat in on one of the meetings and heard executives say they wanted to find placements for workers — whether they wanted to continue working or retire,” he said. “They said they planned to keep these campuses open through May 2027, and even longer if they couldn’t sell them. Now, they essentially want the ability to lay workers off at any time, remove job placement protections and offer severance packages that require employees to immediately separate from Penn State with little to no opportunity for rehiring.” ...

Full story at https://amp.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article315845132.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 136

From The Athletic/NY Times: Penn State fired head coach James Franklin... despite being on the hook for $45 million remaining on his contract, according to a school source. It is the second-largest buyout in college football history, behind what Texas A&M owed Jimbo Fisher when it fired him on Nov. 12, 2023. The Aggies owed Fisher roughly $77 million on a contract that runs through 2031. Franklin’s buyout is only the third in college football history to surpass the $20 million threshold for a fired coach, joining that of Fisher and Gus Malzahten, who was owed $21.4 million when he was fired by Auburn in December 2020.

In 2021, Franklin signed a 10-year contract that paid him $7 million per year in annual compensation plus a $1 million annual loan for life insurance. There were also incentives and retention bonuses in Franklin’s contract, but only his annual compensation and loan are part of the buyout. The massive buyout figure comes as coaching salaries have skyrocketed in recent years. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the industry saw an increase in fully guaranteed contracts awarded to top coaches with buyouts that crept up into the upper eight figures...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6711634/2025/10/12/penn-state-james-franklin-buyout-explained/.

From the NY Times: The University of Virginia became the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of White House demands. The White House offered the proposal to nine universities last week, asking them to sign on to a list of requirements laid out in a 10-page document in exchange for funds. In declining to sign on to the agreement, Paul G. Mahoney, Virginia’s interim president, said that while the university agreed with many principles outlined in the proposal, it wanted “no special treatment” in funding.

“A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of the vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education,” Mr. Mahoney wrote in a note to Linda McMahon, the education secretary, and two other administration officials. Mr. Mahoney’s announcement, which also went out to the campus community late Friday afternoon, followed similar decisions in the past week by other schools that received the government’s offer, including M.I.T., Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/us/university-of-virginia-white-house-compact.html.

The Money - Part 2

From CBS News: Six months ago, Gerry Cardinale stood outside a conference room at the swank Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas having already blown away of roomful of attendees during the annual Sports Business Journal Collegiate Athletic Forum.

During his remarks, the RedBird Capital founder and CEO expanded on his private equity firm partnering with LeBron James to bring an NBA expansion team to Las Vegas. As if that wasn't eyebrow-raising enough, he added that private equity was ready to jump into the college sports landscape cleats first. He specifically pointed to college football being tremendously undervalued. 

In terms of total revenue compared to the NFL, college football was earning five times less. In terms of media rights revenue, 10 times less. "We should close that gap," Cardinale insisted.  

That was a bit shocking to hear from a financial wizard. Or, perhaps it shouldn't have been. Last August, RedBird Capital led an acquisition of soccer giant AC Milan for $1.3 billion. It already has a stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Red Sox. There were reasons the college gap existed. Schools and athletes were constricted by NCAA rules. Athletic departments were business capitalistic enterprises overseen by a non-profit NCAA. Oil and water get along better. 

But with the House v. NCAA settlement on Thursday, the infiltration of private financing into college sports became all but official as the NCAA and the Power Five conferences came to the landmark agreement. The $2.8 billion settlement has opened the door to that influence. The proof was being laid out that day following Cardinale's presentation. He was asked by a New York Times reporter, hypothetically, how much would Michigan football be worth as an investment by his company? "I'd say it's worth at least a billion dollars," Cardinale said...

Full story at https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/house-v-ncaa-settlement-paves-way-for-private-equity-to-infiltrate-college-football-as-landscape-evolves/.

Also from CBS News: Athletic directors at Penn State and UCLA have denied their schools are involved in private equity funding, even as last week's landmark House v. NCAA settlement opened the door for private equity to enter the college sports universe. Pat Kraft (Penn State) and Martin Jarmond (UCLA) told Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger that partnerships with sports consulting firm Elevate do not include private capital. This, in response a report from Sportico that the Big Ten members became debut partners in Elevate's new $500 million program to fund college athletic departments. 

"Elevate is a current ticketing partner of UCLA Athletics, and we are exploring the opportunity to expand the partnership, but private equity funding is not involved," Jarmond told Dellenger. On Monday, Elevate revealed its College Investment Initiative, which is fully funded by Velocity Capital Management and the Texas Permanent School Fund. Velocity, which is owned by David Abrams and Indonesian billionaire Robert Budi Hartono, opened three years ago and had $257 million in assets as of December 2024, per Sportico. The Texas Permanent School Fund holds more than $57 billion in assets and benefits grade and high schools in Texas.

"Elevate serves as our partner in ticketing strategy and operations," Kraft told Dellenger. "To clarify, our relationship is strictly limited to these services. We have no affiliation or involvement with any private equity firm or fund." ...

Full story at https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/penn-state-ucla-athletic-directors-deny-involvement-with-private-equity-funding-amid-house-v-ncaa-settlement/.

Toxic Econ - Part 2

We have in the past posted stories about the website EJMR https://www.econjobrumors.com/ (now XJMR) which caters to academic economists, originally to help job candidates, but has limited moderation. Bloomberg is the latest source of information about the website in a very lengthy article. Some excerpts: 

...Started in 2008 as a website to help Ph.D. students and professors navigate academia’s opaque job market, it soon became a forum for everything from ivory tower gossip to chatter about food or personal technology. (Recent, less inflammatory topics: “Canadian school flyouts,” “Headline CPI increases to 3.2%” and “Pokemon is morally evil.”)

Over the years, the site has also developed a reputation as a swamp of misogyny and racism, with a strict moderation policy but lax enforcement that’s earned it comparisons to 4Chan, the ugly online forum. (Recent, more inflammatory topics on EJMR: “Would you ever hire a hot grad student as a postdoc?,” “Why do feminists, critical theorists, postcolonial writers, etc know so little” and “Does tenure allow me to refuse teaching black people?” Those are just the printable ones.)

By the mid-2010s, the site had hundreds of thousands of visitors a month...

The culture war over EJMR has had implications for the profession, too. For decades, advocates for equality in economics have argued that the lack of women and minorities results in blinkered, narrow-minded policy (for example, not prioritizing research on child care or on the effects of incarceration). Economics as a field can’t address real-world problems, they say, unless it first looks like the real world. Over the years, EJMR had become a symbol of that imbalance as well as a bastion of resistance to change. Its targets have included Melissa Kearney, a University of Maryland economics professor who’s won recognition for her research on families and inequality, and Claudia Sahm, a former senior economist at the Federal Reserve who in a 2020 blogpost titled “Economics Is a Disgrace” denounced the profession as sexist, racist and elitist.

EJMR’s influence has grown despite attempts to shut it down or create sanitized alternatives. In some cases, anonymous attacks that started on the site eventually broke through into mainstream discourse. In December 2023, conservative activists published what they said was evidence that Harvard University’s president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized her dissertation, which added to an already-raging firestorm over the school’s response to the war in Gaza and led to her resignation. An anonymous post on EJMR had made a similar claim months before. (Gay has said she’s never misrepresented her findings or took credit for others’ research.)...

[The article then goes on to describe how a subset of supposedly anonymous posts were traced to specific institutions.]

-----------

Posts on Economics Job Market Rumors

Share of all posts from US universities or research institutions on the site

Sources: Ederer, Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jensen; U.S. News & World Report

Share is the percentage of posts accounted for by the school or institution among all posts originating from IP addresses associated with US universities or research institutions. U.S. News economics graduate school rankings are for 2023-24.

-----------

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-03-15/ejmr-economics-forum-posts-unmask-field-s-racism-and-sexism.

-----------

Our earlier post on EJMR-XMJR:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/toxic-econ.html. It features a chart based on the percent of posts from various universities were classified as "toxic." The website has expanded to math, poli sci, and sociology, but seems less comprehensive and active in those fields. A still earlier post from 2017: https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2017/08/bias-in-econ.html.

New University Librarian

From the Bruin: Former UCLA director of library special collections Athena Jackson will be the next Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian, UCLA announced Thursday. Jackson will start in the role March 1, succeeding Virginia Steel – who had occupied the position since 2013, according to an announcement from Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt. Jackson previously served as director of library special collections at UCLA beginning in 2019 before becoming the dean of libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair at the University of Houston in 2021. 

Jackson was also previously the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and head of the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State University, a special collections librarian at the University of Miami, the coordinator of the North Carolina Newspaper Digitization Project and an archivist at the North Carolina State Archives.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Houston and received a Master of Science in library and information science from the University of North Texas. Jackson is also involved in scholarship dialogues through member organizations of the University of Houston such as the Association of Research Libraries, the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Texas Digital Library...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2024/01/25/ucla-appoints-athena-jackson-as-norman-and-armena-powell-university-librarian. 

No Triggers: The Empire Strikes Back

From the NY Times: Last month, a Cornell University sophomore, Claire Ting, was studying with friends when one of them became visibly upset and was unable to continue her work. For a Korean American literature class, the woman was reading “The Surrendered,” a novel by Chang-rae Lee about a Korean girl orphaned by the Korean War that includes a graphic rape scene. Ms. Ting’s friend had recently testified at a campus hearing against a student who she said sexually assaulted her, the woman said in an interview. Reading the passage so soon afterward left her feeling unmoored.

Ms. Ting, a member of Cornell’s undergraduate student assembly, believed her friend deserved a heads-up about the upsetting material. That day, she drafted a resolution urging instructors to provide warnings on the syllabus about “traumatic content” that might be discussed in class, including sexual assault, self-harm and transphobic violence.

The resolution was unanimously approved by the assembly late last month. Less than a week after it was submitted to the administration for approval, Martha E. Pollack, the university president, vetoed it.

“We cannot accept this resolution as the actions it recommends would infringe on our core commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, and are at odds with the goals of a Cornell education,” Ms. Pollack wrote in a letter with the university provost, Michael I. Kotlikoff...

“What was unique about the Cornell situation is they rapidly turned in a response that was a ‘hard no,’” said Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan organization focused on issues of free speech. “There was no level of kowtowing. It was a very firm defense of what it means to get an education.”

Ms. Morey called it the “Stanford Effect,” referring to a 10-page open letter written in March by Jenny Martinez, dean of Stanford University Law School, in which she affirmed her decision to apologize to Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Donald J. Trump-appointed federal appeals judge, after hecklers interrupted his speech.

Earlier this month, Neeli Bendapudi, the president of Pennsylvania State University, released a four-minute video explaining why she believed a public university like Penn State had a legal and moral obligation to host speakers who espouse views that many may find abhorrent. “For centuries, higher education has fought against censorship and for the principle that the best way to combat speech is with more speech,” she said...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/nyregion/cornell-student-assembly-trigger-warnings.html.

We are not alone - Part 2

In an earlier posting, we noted that another UC campus - Santa Barbara - was joining UCLA in tightening up its coronavirus rules.* But like the disease, the tightening up has spread: 

From Inside Higher Ed:

The University of California, Los Angeles, restored its indoor mask mandate last week, joining the University of Hawai‘i system, Pennsylvania State University (for both the main campus and 13 others), and other colleges and universities. “The past few weeks have revealed a consistent rise in COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County and on our campus. Last week alone, UCLA had close to 870 new cases, which, per the UCLA COVID-19 Pivot Matrix, would place us at the ‘severe’ level,” said a letter announcing the mandate.

The letter outlined limited cases where masks may be removed: performance arts rehearsals and performances, indoor dining, and when alone in one's room. At commencement, June 10-12, all attendees must wear masks indoors, but speakers may remove their masks for their addresses, and graduates “may momentarily remove their masks while walking across the stage and while being photographed on or adjacent to the stage,” the letter said. (UCLA operates on a quarter system, and the spring quarter classes are not over until June 3.) Other institutions that have announced mask mandates have already had commencement and are in summer sessions, or their renewed mandates were announced just prior to commencement. UCLA also said weekly testing for COVID-19 will continue until June 15.

For colleges, indoor mask mandates were a key part of their response during earlier peaks of the pandemic. The lifting of mask mandates was seen by many as a sign that the pandemic was behind us. But most of the colleges are citing rising COVID-19 cases as a reason for their actions. Here are some of the colleges restoring mask mandates:

• Penn State University. On Friday, the university restored mask mandates for the university’s main campus and the Penn State campuses at Beaver, Greater Allegheny, New Kensington and Schuylkill. The university previously announced that masks were required at the campuses in Abington, Behrend, Brandywine, Great Valley, Hazleton, Lehigh Valley, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. The College of Medicine also continues to require masks indoors. Penn State said it acted on the basis of guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on county COVID-19 rates.
• University of Hawai‘i system. The system restored its mask mandate for the entire university system except when people are working in a room alone or at least six feet from others. “The indoor face mask requirement will remain in place and be re-evaluated when the level of COVID-19 transmission in the state decreases,” the university said.
• University of Pittsburgh. The university on Friday cited the CDC in restoring the requirements for the Pittsburgh, Greensburg and Titusville campuses. Masks remain optional on the Johnstown and Bradford campuses.
• University of Delaware. The university imposed an indoor mask requirement last week, citing “rising numbers of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations around the country, including in Delaware over the past week.” The university permitted people to be outdoors without a mask, but administrators at commencement appeared with masks outdoors...

All of those colleges acted last week. Some of the colleges that acted earlier to restore indoor mask mandates include Gallaudet, Georgetown, Howard, Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities; and the University of Rochester.  California State University, Los Angeles never removed its mask mandate.

Rochester had promised when instituting its mandate on April 15 to update the policy in early May. On May 4, Rochester announced, “Campus health officials believe indoor masking has reduced the number of COVID infections among students in recent days. Based on the effectiveness of the mask requirement in returning COVID cases to more manageable levels, as well as the still relatively high rate of COVID infections in the greater Rochester community and in New York State—the current face mask policy will remain in place for now, including at indoor commencement ceremonies and events.”

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/05/31/ucla-university-hawai%E2%80%98i-penn-state-adopt-mask-mandates.

===

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/05/we-are-not-alone.html.

The Issue Continues

U of Michigan to Close Confucius Institute

By Elizabeth Redden, December 12, 2018, Inside Higher Ed

The University of Michigan will close its Confucius Institute next year when the current agreement governing the institute expires.

“This transition is driven by a desire to more broadly include the work of exploring and studying Chinese visual and performing arts within U-M’s regular academic and cultural units,” James Holloway, Michigan's vice provost for global engagement and interdisciplinary academic affairs, said in an announcement. Michigan said programming at the Confucius Institute will continue through June of next year.

The Confucius Institutes -- Chinese-government funded centers of language and cultural education housed on about 100 U.S. university campuses -- have come under increased scrutiny over the last few years as a number of political figures have called for their closure. Chief among the critics is U.S. senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who has characterized the institutes as part of a broader effort by the Chinese government to influence American academia and stifle critical analysis of China's history and politics.

Criticism has also come from within academe. The American Association of University Professors has recommended that universities should renegotiate their agreements to ensure academic control of the institutes and academic freedom for all instructors or otherwise cease their involvement. The National Association of Scholars published a report last year recommending closure of the institutes and finding that in hosting them "universities have made improper concessions that jeopardize academic freedom and institutional autonomy."

Supporters of the institutes say they provide valuable resources to offer Chinese language and cultural programming, and that the concerns about academic freedom and institutional autonomy are unfounded or overstated.

Other American and Canadian universities that have moved to close their Confucius Institutes for various reasons include the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, McMaster University and the Universities of North Florida and West Florida. In April the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system announced the closure of two Confucius Institutes -- one on A&M's main campus in College Station and the other at the Prairie View campus -- after two congressmen wrote an open letter describing the institutes as "a threat to our nation’s security by serving as a platform for China’s intelligence collection and political agenda." The letter from the two congressmen, Representatives Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, and Michael McCaul, a Republican, referenced comments from the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, Christopher Wray, who said in February that the FBI is concerned about the Confucius Institutes and has "developed appropriate investigative steps" in relation to them.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/12/12/michigan-close-confucius-institute

Food for Thought

From People magazine: The time has come to put your avocado obsession to work.

Several universities, including Loma Linda University School of Public Health, Pennsylvania State University, Tufts University, the University of California Los Angeles and Wake Forest University, are partnering to research the weight loss effects of avocados, according to the Daily Mail. The study is funded by the Hass Avocado Board.

Together they are looking for 1,000 participants to take part in the six-month trial, which will focus on whether or not eating one avocado per day reduces visceral adipose fat in the abdomen.

To qualify as a participant, you must be at least 25 years old, willing to eat one avocado per day for six months as part of the test group or two avocados per month for six months as part of the control group. Men must measure at least 40 inches around their waist, while women must measure at least 35 inches.

Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article217522790.html

That's all yours truly knows. But you can get in touch with the study's sponsor at:
http://www.hassavocadoboard.com/

What Did He Know and When Did He Know It? - Part 2

Watergate question repeats in Penn State scandal

Claire Fahy |Sports Editor | Daily Bruin

I covered football for six months at the beginning of last school year. Before that, I worked the men’s volleyball beat for two years, with some men’s water polo and soccer in the mix. If I had to take all the experiences I had and boil them down to one lesson it would be this: Winning is important.

I get it.

At large institutions such as UCLA, winning means a lot of things. It means more national exposure, better recruiting of highly-touted high school athletes and more money. Winning keeps people employed, helps feed employee’s families and even helps academic enrollment in some cases. Winning is also, of course, the point of sports.

But is it? And if it is, at what cost?

Unsealed testimony from a Philadelphia court revealed Tuesday that UCLA defensive coordinator Tom Bradley reportedly knew of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s repeated child abuse. He knew. But he did nothing.

Why?

Bradley was a player for Joe Paterno’s record-setting Penn State football team from 1975 to 1978. Before UCLA, almost his entire life was Nittany Lions football. He joined the coaching staff as a graduate assistant in 1979 before moving up the ranks, eventually taking over as interim head coach when Paterno was suspended for his role in covering up Sandusky’s crimes in 2011.

Bradley was born and raised in Paterno’s system. He knew better than anyone how to win at all costs.

In a statement released Tuesday, Bradley maintained that he knew nothing. But Paterno knew. Penn State officials knew. Bradley replaced Sandusky as defensive coordinator. He was as deeply ingrained as anyone in that program. And now one of the chief witnesses in the case, Mike McQueary, has said Bradley was aware of the abuse. But we’re supposed to believe he didn’t know?

I know Tom Bradley. He always made a big show out of taking his hat off if I was in the scrum, “for the lady.” I’ve shaken his hand, asked him questions and listened to him take the blame for certain losses.

I never knew about his hand in the biggest loss of all, until today.

That loss is one of innocence, one of safety, one of trust. The loss of 10 childhoods. The loss of a certain sanctity of sports in which I used to naively believe.

Sandusky’s crimes are sickening, but Bradley’s actions are revolting.

Silence has the potential to be deafening and Bradley’s refusal to speak was exactly that. He watched as renowned coaches and university officials lost their jobs and their reputations – rightfully so – and pretended to know nothing of it, when he was just as guilty. He continued coaching, continued his silence, continued his compliance.

I covered him. I praised him. I lauded UCLA’s hiring of him. And now I feel complicit too. Complicit in this seemingly morally corrupt college football winning machine.

Bradley has a pretty impressive coaching career. He led a Penn State defense that ranked in the nation’s top-20, spent 32 years at Penn State and signed a $1 million contract with UCLA last year. I say that not to compliment him, but to point out the only number that actually matters: 10. Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 52 counts of molestation, abusing 10 boys over 15 years.

Bradley could have stopped it. He could have spoken out. He could have been a hero instead of a villain. He could have been. But he chose not to be.

I used to think sports were about heroes – athletes and individuals who rose above themselves to inspire others. I was wrong.

It’s about winning. Winning at all costs.

Source: http://dailybruin.com/2016/07/12/claire-ification-testimony-on-bradley-shows-the-human-cost-of-placing-success-first/

What did he know and when did he know it?

Watergate question repeats in Penn State scandal

From the Bruin: UCLA defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, a former Penn State assistant coach, was one of many members of the Penn State coaching staff who knew of Jerry Sandusky’s repeated child abuse, according to testimony in documents unsealed by a Philadelphia court Tuesday. That testimony came in a 2015 deposition from former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary, who witnessed Sandusky, also a former coach, sexually assaulting a boy in 2001 and went to then-head coach Joe Paterno. McQueary testified that he had also “briefly” discussed Sandusky’s criminal activities with Bradley. Bradley then confirmed to McQueary that he knew of other incidents dating as far back as the early ’90s and possibly into the ’80s, identifying fellow assistant coach Greg Schiano as another individual who had come to him with similar information.

During the deposition, McQueary said that Bradley did not provide any details about what Schiano, currently the Ohio State defensive coordinator, told him.

“Only that he had – I can’t remember if it was one night or one morning, but that Greg had come into his office white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower,” he said. “And that’s it. That’s all he ever told me.”

The conversation between McQueary and Bradley was reportedly in the mid-2000s. Bradley is entering his second year as defensive coordinator for the Bruins, following one year as the associate head coach at West Virginia, where he primarily coached the defensive line.

Prior to that, he spent his entire football career with Penn State, including four years playing defensive back. He began as a graduate assistant on Paterno’s staff in 1979.

Bradley acted as the team’s interim head coach when Paterno was fired for his role in the initial Sandusky scandal before resigning in 2012.

In a statement released later Tuesday afternoon, Bradley’s representative stated that “at no time did Tom Bradley ever witness any inappropriate behavior. Nor did he have any knowledge of alleged incidents in the 80′s and 90′s.”

He also said that Bradley’s testimonies had been consistent throughout the duration of the investigation and claims that the defensive coordinator knew about the sexual assaults beforehand were false.

The former Penn State coach was only aware of the 2001 incident after it had been reported to the University administration, his representative said.

Source: http://dailybruin.com/2016/07/12/unsealed-testimony-claims-tom-bradley-knew-of-penn-state-abuse/