Big purge at ASU

--
Phil Scott
Ideas are bullet proof.
"Straydog" wrote in message

>
> Today's WSJ, front page.
>
> A guy (a head of their cancer center) removed from control
> of his institute and 30 of his scientists let go as the axe
> fell. The guy had something like 25-30 years there, $1.5 mil
> in NIH money, another $1 mil in royalty income, well known,
> etc.
>
> What triggered all this? Guess what? A new administrator
> came on board and "re-engineered" ASU into an even
> biggerer/expanderer institution. Our original hero lost a
> major NIH grant, plus got in a squabble with another faculty
> member who he said filed improper patent applications, and
> with the new regime on board (the new regime was quick to
> set up the new ASU uber alles policy, added buildings,
> programs, departments, brought in new people including
> George Poste [retired from SKF?] to head up another
> institute), and part of the new regime included very very
> aggressive moneyharvesting (as if this, now, is the only
> reason to live) and our original hero did not "play ball"
> with this. Lawsuits filed, our original hero's budget
> accounts all frozen, institute taken away from him (but he
> still has his tenured position and pay and office), and the
> university started the smear machine. They set up a safety
> violation audit and totaled up hundreds of safety violations
> (what a joke, where I was, we had probably 30 violations per
> room/lab, etc, and nothing much happened [not only that, but
> if you did want to do anything about it, it had to come out
> of direct costs of your grant, not the dean's money]). They
> also had an external review of the guys programs (another
> joke) and the guy complained because the guy who was in
> charge of the review was the new institute director who was
> under the thumb of the new big kahuna (Dr. Crow, new
> president of ASU), and the guy in charge of the review
> brought in--guess what--all of HIS old buddies who would
> likely nod-off on anything that the big kahuna wanted them
> to nod-off on (I've seen how these things work several times
> in my career, they can be apple-polish or they can be the
> hatchet men).
>
> And, they had a bar graph to show recent NIH budgets falling
> flat or headed down slightly for the last couple years;
> really bad news for guys at the bottom of the "hot topics"
> (read: funded) pool. And, the article said that applications
> are up yet more, and funding success rates down even more.
>
> And, so here it is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
> the "new world order" (yes, they used that term in the
> article to describe the new ASU pres philosophy) is
> _moneyharvesting_ and also the latest buzzwords, buzzthink,
> and buzzprograms.
>
> And, I can talk about how a lot of this began some ten years
> ago at UMAB. They did the same thing with Bob Gallo: made a
> whole building, gave it to him with a small budget, and told
> him to fill it up with grant-swinging science stars (should
> really be called fundraiser stars, not science stars). And,
> oh yes, the guy that came to ASU was previously at Columbia
> and pulled the same "magic wand" (big growth, increase size,
> increase budgets, increase institutes, make big castles in
> the sky and even alliances between the castles [the
> uberbureaucratization of the multiversity]) and so, its the
> old game: BoR sees something neato,
> then they gotta have the latest fad, too. Ten years ago I
> gave an invited seminar at Mt. Saini SoM, NYC, and they
> showed me a "research tower" being built accross the street.
> 25 stories or something like that, fill them up with MDs and
> PhDs writing grant proposals. And, how many careers are
> going on the rocks in the process? The article mentioned the
> same thing going on at Pitt. Big shift into grant swinging.
> Name of the game!


The plan no doubt driven and supported by the Bush
administration in an effort to drive US industry to regain its
leverage in world markets due to technical advance as in the
good old days.

However now we have trained our competition and they are doing
that and much better now in china, russia, and india....for
10 cents on the dollar, and in the case of china and Korea out
from under the thumb of special interests in pharma, oil and
car makers.

these are already cutting us a new one....and they are just
barely getting started, as we continue to fund them, and hire
ruthless morons to gut what do have in the name of money
harvesting etc.

One does not harvest money...on harvests production...and
gain..and progress. These types only see the money, and the
short term rip offs required to get it...from the tax payer,
clearly on govt grants..hosted by special interests often not
interested in actual progress...so its not real money that
results in the end...just funny money.... and more fraud.

Thank god I got to say my piece on these issues also 15 years
ago before congress. or I would still be stewing in the lack
of expression...I told these people in over 2 hours testimony
and examination after they asked me why I was putting my
career on the line to stay what I did.... after recovering my
breath at such insanity I told them that 'when the govt forces
its young engineers to lie and cover up, it corrupts them,
actual progress and invention cannot proceed while lying at
the same time, and that the result would be loss of national
competitiveness"... most either smirked or laughed in my face.

Some of these idiots are still laughing.... many are no
longer laughing, in a year or two few if any will be.

Having escaped the insanity of the USDOE weapons plants and
their spawn, and noticing what it did to people then, and
seeing them now.....I wouldnt have had it any other way.
These people lead the life of sludge... comfortable, secure,
well fed, nice home and car...but devoid entirely of actual
life, joy and elan... that all went as they justified why it
was necessary to become sludge.... the rest of the world sees
this.

Americans dont. the view from deep in the sludge is occluded,
one is looking only for his next worm.



Phil Scott







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--
Phil Scott
Ideas are bullet proof.
"Straydog" wrote in message

>
>
> On Sat, 6 May 2006, Old Pif wrote:
>
>>
>> DGJ wrote:
>>> Straydog wrote:
>>>> Today's WSJ, front page.
>>>>
>>>> A guy (a head of their cancer center) removed from
>>>> control of his
>>>> institute and 30 of his scientists let go as the axe
>>>> fell. The guy had
>>>> something like 25-30 years there, $1.5 mil in NIH money,
>>>> another $1 mil in
>>>> royalty income, well known, etc.
>>>
>>>> (SNIP)
>>>
>>>> And, so here it is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
>>>> the "new world
>>>> order" (yes, they used that term in the article to
>>>> describe the new ASU
>>>> pres philosophy) is _moneyharvesting_ and also the latest
>>>> buzzwords,
>>>> buzzthink, and buzzprograms.
>>>
>>> Art, pres's phiilosophy there is called the "New American
>>> University,"
>>> which is what Crow is building in Phoenix. Nothing similar
>>> to the New
>>> World Order. (Just an on-the-ground comment from
>>> Arizona!).
>>>
>>
>> Could you expand this a bit more? For people who are out of
>> academia
>> for some time it might be interesting.
>>
>
> It began about 10 years ago. There are at least two books
> out there on the commercialization or corporatization of the
> university. I just read part of an article on something
> related to this in the most recent BW, but it deals with
> endowments. Evidently there is so much pressure to gain
> wealth by academic institutions that a lot of them are
> plunging their endowment assets into hedge funds in the
> hopes of growing their booty. OK, nice idea or are they
> putting their rainy day money into too much risk?
>
> The "new world order" in academia also began in a small way
> maybe two or more decades back when many departments began
> incentivizing new asst prof faculty to encourage fundraising
> over research over teaching (not all that new since I
> remember complaints in the journal Science back in the '60s
> about non-grant holding faculty complaining about how grant
> swinging faculty got kisses and hugs from chairs and deans
> for swinging grants and to hell with research and teaching).
> Garfield and daSilva Price (I think) wrote a book on this,
> generally, with the title "Little Science, Big Science" and
> then a second edition "Little Science, Big Science and
> Beyond", generally about how inexpensive science was being
> replaced by grant-funded science, and forget about quality
> of science or discoveries, and concentrate on qualities such
> as: i) how many people on the team, ii) only teams can get
> anything done, and iii) how much money was in the budget,
> iv) that the money came from NIH or NSF. We never got any
> assesment of the outcome of this model except for Project
> Sunshine and Project Lookback, which had conflicting
> conclusions (i.e. there was a lot of spinoff from govt
> spending, or, conversely, a lot of govt waste with little to
> show). There were more studies like this and I remember only
> a few (also conflicting).
>
> Zip to ~1990s, and at a faculty meeting (UMAB) where a new
> president was coming, and the "new world order" came down
> from above: departments would henceforth not play a major
> role in the activities of the university, but, instead,
> "centers of excellence" would be formed (and supported
> mainly by grants and contracts, and not hard money) and
> exist for a cycle of 10-15 years, and then be disbanded and
> new "centers of excellence" come into existence.
> MicroEmpires if you will. All controlled by the
> "administrator" gods, and thus, one can be a director but no
> longer a "god" because they have to be under the thumb of a
> real "god", the ubergod administrator....you get my drift?
> And, so we are back to the old model of "the underlings do
> all the work" and the "overlings go in after the work is
> done, and appropriate the credit and trappings for that
> work." This is, essentially, the "new world order."
>
> It even applies to that model where the new kids come to the
> institution and pay four times the market price for a laptop
> computer because the institution requires it, and so they
> get the "take" for tuition, the "take" for dorm fees, the
> "cut" on the computer, and whatever else they can "stick it
> to" the student. And, another article I read about how
> commercial interests build nice "student unions" on campuses
> now that
> are essentially not much different from shopping malls out
> in real
> life, complete with highly commerciallized shops, vendors,
> service-for-fee botiques, etc.
>
> Its all about _moneyharvesting_ and forget anything else
> going on, including morals, ethics, and actual learning and
> critical thinking and expanding on one's wits.

I knew there was something behind the creation of these
idiots.... I am so glad to be side stepping that range of
loops and cluster fornications.

I talk to some of the profs on issues Ive come to understand
at beyond leading edge levels, these are not bright people as
a rule...those you see brilliance in hedge their positions and
words in order to stay employed apparently.

One needs to be entirely out of all of those loops imho.

Phil Scott