A new threaded post on this topic can be found here. For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.
For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.
03/12/20 — I don’t know where J. Bruce Harreld and J. Brooks Jackson are, but even if they are lurking on the University of Iowa campus, they should both just stay out of Theresa Brennan’s way and give her whatever she needs to do her job. From the Daily Iowan’s Alexandra Skores: UI Hospitals and Clinics to open new clinic, conduct video doctor visits amid COVID-19 cases.
* The dissonance between academics and athletics is now deafening. From the Daily Iowan’s Brooklyn Draisey: Hawkeye Service Breaks cancels student trips.
So it’s okay for Iowa’s athletic department to send the men’s and women’s basketball teams off to various tournaments, and for the wrestling team to head up to Minnesota for the NCAA tournament, but domestic travel for academic purposes is being curtailed. Kind’a seems like revenue is the determining factor in which UI students are placed at risk. (Gonna be interesting watching Gary Barta — a great humanitarian and mentor of college athletes — explain himself if one or more students are hospitalized.)
* Sarah Hanson has been named the new UI VP for Student Life, replacing the interim Laura McLeran, who will now go back to black ops in the president’s office. Press release includes another disembodied quote from J. Bruce Harreld.
* Someone at the UI Office of Strategic Communication finally got around to writing up a very short press release about how the university completed the financial close on the UI P3 two days ago. Incredibly, however, despite using the words “financial close” in the headline, there is no mention of the fact that UI just pocketed $1.17B as a result of the deal. Instead, we are given yet another disembodied quote from illegitimate UI president J. Bruce Harreld, which is of course also a lie:
“We’re pleased to have found an innovative way to bridge a meaningful gap in available resources in order to help continue delivering on our mission of education and research excellence,” says UI President J. Bruce Harreld. “We’re looking forward to our partnership with ENGIE and Meridiam and appreciate the involvement of university shared governance members, academic leadership, and the campus community during this whole process.”
As detailed endlessly in these virtual pages, the “meaningful gap in available resources” that Harreld takes pains to mention is itself a fraud perpetrated by Harreld.
* Well this is a relief: Big Ten Cancels Remainder of Basketball Tournament.
Apparently, somewhere in the office of the Big Ten Commissioner — which, in better days, usually focuses on denying any knowledge of decades-long sexual abuses perpetrated against student athletes on its storied campuses (so far Penn St., Ohio St., Michigan St. and now Michigan) — there is at least one person smarter than UI AD Gary Barta and UI Head Men’s Moron Fran McCaffrey, who should both be fired for cause for pushing ahead with plans to attend the Big Ten tournament. If that is the level of intelligence and concern that UI administrators in athletics demonstrate in the middle of a global pandemic, then we know everything we need to know about those individuals and their warped, self-interested and potentially calamitous priorities. (As a direct result of their greed and idiocy, Barta will now be given another raise by J. Bruce Harreld, for his steady leadership in a time of crisis, and Barta will give McCaffrey a raise and contract extension that locks him in for another decade.)
* The committee for the nationwide UI AVP-DEI search has been announced. Following the TaJuan Wilson debacle, Harreld initially tried to put off a new DEI search indefinitely, but that obviously exposed his false claim that he was a big proponent of diversity, equity and inclusion at UI. (In reality Harreld demoted DEI from his cabinet, then kicked DEI out of the president’s office altogether.) Fortunately for Harreld, one of his fixers — Russ Ganim — was somehow miraculously named as a co-chair for the new DEI search committee, which will now take an extraordinarily long time to fine just the right person for that critical job, thus also giving Harreld the extensive administrative delay he originally wanted:
The search will begin in April, with a new associate vice president expected to be named during the Spring 2021 semester.
You can’t make this stuff up.
* Apparently the crony Iowa Board of Regents is suddenly cognizant of the fact that a bunch of bodies may start piling up, and are now eager to pass the buck to the crony toads they installed at the state universities, who were all hired primarily to rubber stamp directives from the crony Iowa Board of Regents. From the Daily Iowan’s Katie Ann McCarver: Iowa regents consider policy change to give president emergency-authorization authority. Next up: J. Bruce Harreld authorizes a $200M public-private partnership for body bags.
* Remember back in October, when the Iowa Center for Advancement brought four of the previous UI presidents together, and they also let Harreld tag along? And when those presidents were asked what their toughest challenge was on the job, Harreld talked about how badly he was treated after it became clear that he lied his way into the job he now holds, which was granted as a result of a rigged search process by the Iopwa Board of Regents? Well this is the man who will now lead the University of Iowa’s response to a global pandemic.
* Looking ahead to the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic — which may yet leave us in a state of cultural limbo and ongoing risk — we can already see the contours of the economic shocks that the University of Iowa will have to endure. Whatever revenue is lost and cash expended in the near-term, in the fall there may also be a sharp decrease in enrollment depending on the aftereffects, and how safe the UI campus seems to students and parents who are considering enrollment. Any downward pressure on revenue will in turn provide yet another opportunity for Harreld and the board to increase tuition, but precisely because they have perpetrated a four-year cash grab by relentlessly hiking tuition there is no more elasticity in the system. Meaning a sharp increase in tuition, even if legitimate, may also prove to be a barrier to enrollment. [ Read more ]