…I give you UC President Mark Yudof. A sample of his comedic stylings:
Question — U.C. is facing a budget shortfall of at least $753 million, largely because of cuts in state financing. Do you blame Governor Schwarzenegger for your troubles?
Mark Yudof — I do not. This is a long-term secular trend across the entire country. Higher education is being squeezed out. It’s systemic. We have an aging population nationally. We have a lot of concern, as we should, with health care.
Question — And education?
Mark Yudof — The shine is off of it. It’s really a question of being crowded out by other priorities.*
Question — Already professors on all 10 U.C. campuses are taking required “furloughs,” to use a buzzword.
Mark Yudof — Let me tell you why we used it. The faculty said “furlough” sounds more temporary than “salary cut,” and being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. I listen to them.
And here’s some bonus anti-intellectualism:
Question — The word “furlough,” I recently read, comes from the Dutch word “verlof,” which means permission, as in soldiers’ getting permission to take a few days off. How has it come to be a euphemism for salary cuts?
Mark Yudof — Look, I’m from West Philadelphia. My dad was an electrician. We didn’t look up stuff like this. It wasn’t part of what we did. When I was growing up we didn’t debate the finer points of what the word “furlough” meant.
Question — How did you get into education?
Mark Yudof — I don’t know. It’s all an accident. I thought I’d go work for a law firm.
Oh, President Yudof, you’re such a card! Look, I know he’s being glib and that humor’s a coping mechanism. But comedy’s all about timing. And his stinks.
* Emphasis added. For emphasis.
21 comments
September 25, 2009 at 11:26 am
rja
You missed my favorite:
Deborah Solomon, NYT: What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, $400,000?
Mark Yudof: Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House? rja: No, but I will throw in snotty and deflective for free
September 25, 2009 at 11:29 am
ari
It’s a pathetic interview, start to finish. He should be ashamed of himself. I’m certainly ashamed of him, genuinely embarrassed that he’s the public face of the UC.
September 25, 2009 at 11:42 am
politicalfootball
I’m hesitant to criticize public servants (or anyone) dealing with difficult problems that I only understand superficially – but gee whiz, that was an awful performance.
As soon as I saw it, I knew there’d be an appreciative audience here.
September 25, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Not Prince Hamlet
What state budget problems are doing to education at all levels is an ugly thing. The problem is that the public seems to be perfectly happy to see uppity teachers and professors getting their comeuppance, or at least they do here.
September 25, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Neddy Merrill
Ok, fine, I’ll take the bait and defend. I thought the “shine is off” remark is pretty all right, if it’s read, as I read it, as saying, hey, if the population doesn’t care, it’s going to be politically hard to make this a priority. Which is true! We get the budget we deserve. Not sure about the furlough bit, but at least he’s not bullshitting about it not being a pay cut. If I were actually cutting people’s salaries, I’d be pretty annoyed by the semantic hair-splitting Solomon pulls out here.
September 25, 2009 at 12:55 pm
zunguzungu
This guy is awful. He isn’t the real villain, I suppose; he’s just doing the job that the Gubernator’s appointed trustees hired him to do. But I think the glibness (and basic unseriousness) with which he defends the things he’s doing, the day after the big protest, speaks volumes. He’s not a person to be bothered by the fact that 96% of the UC’s faculty and staff voted no confidence in his tenure as president, for example. And they hired him to be that kind of hatchet man.
September 25, 2009 at 12:57 pm
JPool
“This is a long-term secular trend across the entire country.”
Is secular being used here in a way I’m unfamilar with, like as a stand-in for public rather than private, or is he just throwing random words into that response?
September 25, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Vance
He’s using that as a synonym for “long-term” (“lasting from century to century”, as one dictionary puts it) — I would have put a comma in the transcription.
Really a disgusting interview. Like Kealey, he’s striking a nasty pose, and
likeas with Kealey, it’s not clear whether it’s affected, or whether we’re meant to take it as affected.September 25, 2009 at 1:15 pm
politicalfootball
Ok, fine, I’ll take the bait and defend.
At least as edited, the quote is presented in the context of why he doesn’t blame Schwarzenegger. “It’s really a question of being crowded out by other priorities.”
I don’t think it’s unfair to summarize this: I don’t blame the governor; there are just other priorities.
September 25, 2009 at 1:15 pm
ari
The more times I read it, the more I think he should be forced to resign immediately. Sure, sure, I can’t take a joke. Fine. But the man’s job is to make the case that the UC is an important institution for the state. Instead, he’s commiserating with the people who think higher education isn’t really all that big a deal. It’s infuriating. I say again: he should be ashamed of himself.
September 25, 2009 at 1:32 pm
AaLD
I’m not an academic, don’t work in academia and graduated from a CSU campus. But I seem to care a lot more about the University of California than this guy does – and he’s being paid a lot of (our) money to care about the system.
September 25, 2009 at 1:34 pm
PorJ
Ari,
Nobody takes Deborah Solomon’s interviews seriously. Hopefully, the UC Press Relations team was smart enough to record the interview with Solomon in full, so that they can embarrass her – just as Ira Glass did when she completely misrepresented and took out of context (actually reversed the meaning completely) things he had said. That lead to this New York Times Public Editor’s column. Here’s an example of Solomon at work:
So: hold your horses until the accuracy of the interview can be verified or not. She should have been fired long ago; her work is a testament to the New York Times‘s hypocrisy when it comes to ethics.
Some journalist in Cali needs to do a follow-up on this.
September 25, 2009 at 1:35 pm
JPool
Thanks, Vance. That is indeed a usage with which I was previously unfamiliar. Seems redundant here, and indeed inaccurate, since any decline in state funding of higher ed would be over the last couple decades, rather than centuries (though I suppose that we did change centuries a few years ago, so there’s that), but shouldn’t distract from my ignorance. Or from the hating.
September 25, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Neddy Merrill
I’m amazed that the Public Editor column on Solomon appeared in 2007, and she still has a job.
September 25, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Evan
“The stories of my compensation are greatly exaggerated.”
…
“So my salary is $540,000, but it gets amplified because people say, ‘You have a pension plan.'”
Agree with PorJ on Solomon’s editing ethics, but all of this seems consistent with Yudof’s prior statements.
September 25, 2009 at 1:53 pm
ari
PorJ, I know about Solomon’s history. Which makes Yudof’s timing even more suspect. Seriously, why grant the interview? Given all that’s happening in the UC these days, you think that Yudof couldn’t have sat for an interview with Fallows, or Lemann, or pretty much anyone else he chose?
September 25, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Dr J
Q: What’s the secret to good c–
A: Timing!
Q: –omedy?
September 25, 2009 at 6:30 pm
artemis
If he’s not going to advocate for UC interests with the Gov, and he doesn’t help raise money from private sources, what does he do exactly?
Do we actually need a President of UC?
September 25, 2009 at 6:45 pm
UC-guy
The tragic part of this interview is that it’s a synopsis of multiple things he’s said in public and private over the last year. Testifying before the CA legislature about UC’s budget: First thing the dude says is, “I’m a Philadelphia lawyer.” (1) No one cares; (2) There’s nothing Californians hate more than a carpetbagger. Way to ingratiate yourself with the legislature!
He’s used the Air Force One line before, but not in public (to my knowledge). And I won’t even comment on the well-flogged “cemetery” line. He desperately, desperately needs new (and competent) material, and it’s a reflection of his own arrogance that he doesn’t have any. Regardless of the interviewer’s history, they really captured the guy. What a pathetic doofus, and a complete embarrassment to the UC system.
September 25, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Michael
Now I miss Clark Kerr.
September 27, 2009 at 12:35 pm
TF Smith
What an utter and complete incompetent – what a surprise from the buffoon-a-nator’s administration.
Can we start nominating appointees in the Newsom/Brown administration?
I’ll offer up this individual, an Angeleno and a graduate of a California-based institution:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=11