Thread:Una74/@comment-71.58.210.121-20171010133156/@comment-71.58.210.121-20171103163024

^Once again with feeling, the above comment is eighteen kinds of bonkers. To take the Paterno bit first: I was in fact the first Penn State faculty member to speak out about the scandal. Here are the first two paragraphs of my NYT op-ed from November 2011:

"The worst scandal in the history of college athletics, involving charges of serial child rape and systemic cover-up, is almost too much to comprehend. The breaches of trust — on the part of a former assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, toward vulnerable children, and on the part of Penn State administrators who responded to a credible report of child rape in 2002 merely by barring him from bringing young boys onto campus — reach far beyond the world of ordinary big-time college sports corruption.

"The public image of Penn State is now that of students rioting on behalf of a disgraced football coach. But there are also 6,000 full-time teachers and researchers working here — and none of us had anything to do with this mess. Like the vast majority of our 45,000 students, we did not riot. We are every bit as disgusted and horrified as you are. This is our place that has been trashed, and we care deeply about cleaning it up."

As for the charges about Schuman: again, these are lies, plain and simple. I made precisely one snarky remark about her on Facebook, in response to some mildly questionable internet behavior on her part. That is all. Everything after that consists of some of her more rabid fans slandering me and pretending that I have hounded her and other adjuncts. (BTW, I don't understand the constant infantilization of Schuman here. She was the national higher ed correspondent for Slate magazine at the time, with a readership of millions. And good for her.) I have "stopped trolling her" in the sense that I have stopped skydiving-- i.e., another thing I have never done.

And that is what the accusations of sockpuppetry are, as well-- lies. See "perfervid fantasies," above. I post under my own name, here and everywhere. I have stayed away from the Venting page for years, ever since I realized that my trolls have migrated here. I have asked admin to intervene only because an IHE thread posted a link to it about two months ago.

Speaking of admin: Una, I hope you are now getting some sense of how obsessive and how dishonest these people are. They will always be with me, to be sure-- dealing with them, for me, is like fighting the waves. But they really don't belong on an academic jobs wiki. Let them create their very own "I hate Michael Berube 4ever" page. It will keep them occupied for many years.

Michael Berube