Drexel under fire or business as usual in academia
The University's involvement in a student loan kickback scheme is only one effect of a much deeper symptom.
By: Robert Zaller
Issue date: 4/27/07 Section: Ed-Op
Originally published: 4/27/07 at 3:21 AM EST
Last update: 4/27/07 at 3:20 AM EST
Originally published: 4/27/07 at 3:21 AM EST
Last update: 4/27/07 at 3:20 AM EST
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We owe Drexel the benefit of the doubt, of course, partly because we owe everyone the presumption of innocence when wrongdoing is alleged, and partly because it would be stupid to the point of suicidal to challenge a conviction-hungry prosecutor who's already got every scalp but yours unless you have, in fact, done nothing to merit rebuke.
As Drexel is not alone in the wash of what The Triangle has called "Loangate," so it appears not to be immune to academia's other scandals. The Triangle has reported that the University used a lobbying firm employing the spouse of one of Senator Arlen Specter's aids. Senator Specter helpfully inserted some earmarks into the state education budget on Drexel's behalf. The University has paid nearly $1 million to a federal lobbyist, American Defense International, to help it get its share of the Pentagon's guns for empire programs. Reading last week of how State Senator Wayne Bryant of New Jersey, currently under indictment, allegedly wangled a no-show job at a state school, I was put in mind of disgraced Congressman Curt Weldon's long-running teaching gig at Drexel, and of Richard Neal's appointment some years ago as Director of Campus Security. Neal had been Philadelphia's police commissioner until being run out of office. He was "hired" by Drexel at a salary of $103,000, but appears never to have performed any work. Nor, as I was assured at the time, was Drexel actually paying his salary. Presumably, however, it was receiving benefit from someone for this game of musical chairs.
Let's not even get started on why Drexel decided to pick up a medical school that neither Penn nor Temple would touch.
Corruption in the palace of learning is hardly confined to Drexel. Penn is now embroiled in controversy over a $2 billion redevelopment deal involving the 24-acre site of the 30th Street Post Office, a part, as Penn Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli puts it, "of our march eastward to the Schuylkill River." The unabashedly imperial tone of that remark (the Kaiser, too, spoke of a Drang nach Osten) perfectly fits Penn's good neighbor policy in general. The difference between Penn and Drexel isn't one of ambition, though, but only of scale and resources. The modern university positively revels in its role as the military-industrial-real estate complex. We should hardly be surprised when our own president sits on the Philadelphia Board of Exchange like any other captain of industry, or when his predecessor, eschewing the mere title of president, called himself simply Drexel's CEO.
Higher education's real scandal is not a kickback here or there-petty stuff, unless you're a student na've enough to vest some belief in the good faith of your institution-but the betrayal of its fundamental role as a bastion of disinterested learning, a training-ground for citizenship, and a watchdog of the democratic process. That stuff is for suckers, and the dead-end Marxist professoriate in the dreary corridors of ever-dwindling humanities departments. But that breed of nay-sayers is almost extinct, good riddance to it. Where the deals, and careers, are made these days in academe, Mammon rules.
Dr. Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached through ed-op@thetriangle.org.
As Drexel is not alone in the wash of what The Triangle has called "Loangate," so it appears not to be immune to academia's other scandals. The Triangle has reported that the University used a lobbying firm employing the spouse of one of Senator Arlen Specter's aids. Senator Specter helpfully inserted some earmarks into the state education budget on Drexel's behalf. The University has paid nearly $1 million to a federal lobbyist, American Defense International, to help it get its share of the Pentagon's guns for empire programs. Reading last week of how State Senator Wayne Bryant of New Jersey, currently under indictment, allegedly wangled a no-show job at a state school, I was put in mind of disgraced Congressman Curt Weldon's long-running teaching gig at Drexel, and of Richard Neal's appointment some years ago as Director of Campus Security. Neal had been Philadelphia's police commissioner until being run out of office. He was "hired" by Drexel at a salary of $103,000, but appears never to have performed any work. Nor, as I was assured at the time, was Drexel actually paying his salary. Presumably, however, it was receiving benefit from someone for this game of musical chairs.
Let's not even get started on why Drexel decided to pick up a medical school that neither Penn nor Temple would touch.
Corruption in the palace of learning is hardly confined to Drexel. Penn is now embroiled in controversy over a $2 billion redevelopment deal involving the 24-acre site of the 30th Street Post Office, a part, as Penn Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli puts it, "of our march eastward to the Schuylkill River." The unabashedly imperial tone of that remark (the Kaiser, too, spoke of a Drang nach Osten) perfectly fits Penn's good neighbor policy in general. The difference between Penn and Drexel isn't one of ambition, though, but only of scale and resources. The modern university positively revels in its role as the military-industrial-real estate complex. We should hardly be surprised when our own president sits on the Philadelphia Board of Exchange like any other captain of industry, or when his predecessor, eschewing the mere title of president, called himself simply Drexel's CEO.
Higher education's real scandal is not a kickback here or there-petty stuff, unless you're a student na've enough to vest some belief in the good faith of your institution-but the betrayal of its fundamental role as a bastion of disinterested learning, a training-ground for citizenship, and a watchdog of the democratic process. That stuff is for suckers, and the dead-end Marxist professoriate in the dreary corridors of ever-dwindling humanities departments. But that breed of nay-sayers is almost extinct, good riddance to it. Where the deals, and careers, are made these days in academe, Mammon rules.
Dr. Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached through ed-op@thetriangle.org.
