The KKK took my judgment away

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FALSE ACCUSATIONS BY TRUSTEE:

The SOCCCD is the kind of place in which trustees go on TV to assert, falsely, that faculty work 36-hour weeks and that they each make $100K. It’s the kind of place in which a college president can falsely accuse faculty of “hate crimes.” (Trustees responded to that one by providing the fellow, now Chancellor, with a “security” stipend!)

Well, as this morning's Inside Higher Ed reports, things are getting similarly wacky at MiraCosta College, just down the road:

The president of the board of MiraCosta College, in California, has apologized for accusing faculty and staff leaders of vandalizing his home, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. In an apology sent to all employees, Charles Adams, the board chair, said he didn’t believe that recent vandalism was really committed by faculty or staff leaders and said that “I sincerely regret” having made the accusation. The board and employees have been involved in a series of disputes and Adams went on to say that “I do believe that the climate created by the Academic Senate leadership has contributed to and cultivated a campus climate that nurtures malicious gossip and unfounded allegations and attacks.”

PALM TREES, SLUSH FUNDS

According to the Union-Tribune,

MiraCosta College board President Charles Adams has apologized to faculty and staff leaders for accusing them of vandalizing his home a week ago…Adams' wife, Lillian, found the letters “KKK” scrawled on an exterior wall at their Oceanside home June 1…During Tuesday's board meeting, Adams left the dais, stood behind the public lectern and pointed his finger at the presidents of both the Academic and Classified senates, saying they were responsible.

…The North County college has experienced continuous turmoil since the announcement a year ago that it was investigating illegal sales of palm trees for private profit, leading to the unwilling departures of three administrators.

In November, the full-time faculty voted no confidence in [College President Victoria Muñoz] Richart…In May, one of those administrators, Alleen Texeira, former head of the horticulture department, pleaded guilty to one count of grand theft involving a $306 overpayment to her then-fiance for the sale of campus palms.

The other two dismissed administrators, Eileen Kraskouskas and Julie Hatoff, have sued the college.

Richart received a death threat in April, and then came the vandalism to Adams' home.

Neither Tom Fuentes (the TV trustee) nor Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur ever apologized for their outrageous accusations. Trustee Adams, however, seems to have offered an equivocal apology:

“I am writing you to ask you for your forgiveness and to let you know that I sincerely regret what happened at yesterday's board meeting,” Adams said in his message to MiraCosta employees Wednesday.

“I sincerely apologize to Abdy Afzali and to Jonathan Cole (Academic Senate president) for making those accusations,” Adams wrote. “I do not believe that they are responsible for what happened to my family and me.”

But, he said, “I do believe that the climate created by the Academic Senate leadership has contributed to and cultivated a campus climate that nurtures malicious gossip and unfounded allegations and attacks.”

This sort of finger-pointing can get mighty rich. These days, Mathur is in the habit of accusing faculty (again wrongly) of circumventing process and going directly to trustees with their troubles. As a chemistry instructor at IVC, Mathur continually did exactly that (one such episode led to his formal censure by Irvine Valley College’s Instructional Council).

Mathur, too, has claimed to have received “hate mail”—numerous times, in fact. When, several years ago, during deposition, he was asked for copies of any of the alleged “hate” communications, he said that he could produce none of them.

PHILOSOPHER RICHARD RORTY DIES:

Inside Higher Ed reports that Richard Rorty has died:

Richard Rorty, one of the leading philosophers in the United States, best known for his studies of pragmatism, died Friday. A detailed biography of Rorty appears online in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a bibliography is on Rorty’s home page at Stanford University, where he was an emeritus professor….

If contemporary right-wing critics of academia were more honest, they’d attempt to understand Rorty’s kind of “relativism” instead of the usual straw man variety.

ILLINOIS FOLLOWS CALIFORNIA’S LEAD re STUDENT JOURNALISM:

Inside Higher Ed reports that

The Illinois House and Senate have passed legislation, now under review by the governor, to protect student journalists at public colleges from administrative censorship, the Chicago Tribune reported. The legislation — similar to a measure enacted in California — is designed to reverse the impact of a 2005 federal appeals court ruling involving the paper at Governors State University, in Illinois.

We reported on the California measure back in August (The good news...).

Some "fake" student journalism from years past: