I'm waiting for this cuck fetishista to break out his 14 words, because I just realized that my Red Wings, with red laces, have 14 eyelets, and I'd like to plant my size 11's in his ass.

I won't entertain the Richard Spencer of Architecture in a fucking debate. I will however;

Look at you dinoWallace'63 standing in the schoolhouse door, your Imp Wizard must be so proud. Maybe you could burn some crosses while you're Making Princeton Great Again.

all this over an unknown plagiarist? man you are a wanker! get a bit of air from time to time.

I hate to break this silence, unfortunately not with news from the court, but with other news which relate to the cynicism of some of our favorite characters: President Eisgruber and Deborah Prentice. Princeton has just been named as one of the institutions listed in the Paradise papers, investing in Cayman Islands hedge funds, pumping cash into fossil fuels: 

http://www.nj.com/education/2017/11/rutgers_princeton_among_schools_with_cash_in_offsh.html

https://www.theguardian.com/ne...

Here they are, all the way up with people like Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson and Steve Mnuchin. So much so for the recast Princeton motto: “Princeton in the Nation’s Service, and in the Service of All Nations.” Eisgruber forgot to add: “and with the cash in the Cayman Islands.”

Btw, not the first time they are found trying to dodge taxes:

https://planetprinceton.com/2016/02/08/princeton-university-loses-yet-another-round-in-state-tax-court/

And btw, is it even legal to run ethnically targeted faculty searches? Next lawsuit looming?

.

Princeton laws are subject to Federal laws, like those listed in Princeton’s website on equal opportunity. 

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. EEO IS THE LAW.

Again- this is all just a campaign of character assassination...

Happy 2018. With a heavy heart I have to say that I have now received the court documents, which do not include any of the expected redacted documents. The reason is that the case has been apparently closed by the parties, and the court has disposed of all the interim documents! This sounds dodgy to me as I have requested these documents back in the summer and the Stipulation of Dismissal dates from October. What I got from the court confirms that there was a discussion on confidentiality though. I am uploading the documents for whoever wants to look at them, but they only confirm that Princeton’s Motions were dismissed, with no further detail. So, all our expectations for exposure of Ever-soiled, Mucksack, Fried-Brains and Foil’s actions came to nothing. And we may never hear the full story about the intrigues of Boyer, Gandelsonas and Nordenson… Either Princeton settled out of court, or AZP ran out of money or became frustrated with the process. Looks as if everything will remain hidden by Princeton’s confidentiality of process. Most disappointing is that Eisgruber’s reappointment will have one less obstacle now that this mess is out of the way. So, five more years of pompous mediocrity at the helm of the Princeton. Anyhow, the SoA’s downward spiral into utter irrelevance is unstoppable, even with another President: Eisgruber has already finished its job.

Here are the links for what is worth:

https://drive.google.com/open?...

https://drive.google.com/open?...

https://drive.google.com/open?...

https://drive.google.com/open?...

Following up on Marc's pithy questions:

1) How do you define excellence in Architectural education? Is it what happens in the classroom? People come in with a "skull full of mush" and emerge like one of Professor Kingsfield's students?

2) Following up on that is there a difference between practice and academia? If ZP designed some great buildings-Yokohama terminal comes to mind–does that make him a great teacher or dean? 

3) Most candidates for jobs are white so how does considering three African American candidates make it wrong? What are their qualifications? Can we compare qualifications and eliminate race from the discussion?

4) How do you define excellence in architectural high ed? Give us some examples of teachers who demonstrate that.

5) How do you disentangle politics from who gets hired in hire ed? Is this possible? Do the best candidates get hired? Why or why not?

6) Who do you think should be the next dean at the SoA? Why? What skills should they have? What would a "legitimate" search look like?

Why won't this thread die?

Sorry about the mystery Dinosaur. I have the same curiosity about you but let’s keep it this way. There is a lot of people reading this now. I agree with you about keeping it going. Without the lawsuit, the information will be substantially reduced, but we can record the unstoppable degradation of the SoA at the hands of the Princeton leadership, and hopefully affect processes like that infamous search. There are some things we can do. For example, I am not sure why we cannot name Ever-soiled, Mucksack, Fried-Brains and Foil. It may be that Archinect will censor it, but there are other vehicles to expose these rats. After all, we are not violating FERPA because we have not been involved in the process and we do not have access to confidential information from the university process. At the same time, at least my evidence is only testimonial, and to convert it into real evidence will need depositions. That’s where the court process would have become quite handy. I was hoping we would see some of that from the court documents.

what happened did he plagiarize or not

Of course not. How can he plagiarize in a work of public information which contains an opening statement which opens with a denial of its academic status and is authored by Rem Koolhaas? He has posted in his website a detailed account of the instances of paraphrasis of unlisted academic sources contained in the Biennale document. There were around 15 sentences, taken mostly from Wikipedia, describing building materials and other details, and available from several sources. You can check it out. Even by strict academic standards, the accusation is petty beyond belief. Only Princeton’s infinite stupidity would give credit to a few students (listed above under aliases) who were dismissed from the research, and some begrudged geriatric faculty (listed above too, average age 75), and try to impose petty academic rules on work that lies outside academia. And make the very damaging fuss they made. Truly idiotic. I am also miffed about the interruption of the lawsuit.

ok.... anyone other than Alejandro have thoughts about this?

I’ll take a stab at translating that landslide's post.

1) No, he didn’t plagiarize. How dare you sir!

2) Ok, he did plagiarize. But he got his information from the internet. Everybody gets their information from the internet. Rem said it was ok. It’s not fair!

3) Ok, he says he only plagiarized 15 times (20 would be a scandal, but 15 is no biggie) and he said it on his website so it must be true, believe me!

4) Its really not fair!

5) Princeton sucks, infinitely!

6) Students suck. It’s not fair!

7) Faculty are old. They didn’t like him. It’s not fair!  

Best part is the end: “interrupted” lawsuit. If he had won you guys wouldn’t be posting here. So he lost the lawsuit, right?

Correction: best part: a troll lecturing on rigorous academic standards while defending a person who plagiarized Wikipedia .

btw. you know why you don’t plagiarize the internet? cause you can’t trust anything out there to be accurate. 

This is interesting. Not only the lawyers were probably keeping an eye on this, but the lawsuit was stopped “without prejudice” as far as I can tell. This means that the Plaintiff withdrew the damages, but not the accusations. That means that it could restart anytime. It is like a Damocles sword.

"Don’t you think, randomized, that the real racists are those who set out searches which exclude every candidate who is not an African-American? How do you explain the SoA faculty rubberstamping three in a row,"

No, I think you're the real racist here. The fact you even mention "three in a row" so casual makes me sick. It's like all you see is their skin colour and the reason they shouldn't have been hired is because of the colour of their skin.

when everyone tells you that what you said is racially offensive and insensitive and you say the same crap again and again, that kinda confirms you’re a racist. dinosaur and tigers are exactly like trump. is trump a racist deep down? (yes) or is he just pretending to be one to stir up trouble, get press coverage, distract from his incompetence and crimes, and make the racists out there who voted for him happy? (he and his people want you to think it) you guys are doing the same thing. are you really racists deep down? (you’re so good at it!) or are you just stirring up racial controversy to distract from plagiarism? don’t bother replying. the answer doesn’t matter.

I do not know if you guys have tried the link from Dinosaur2.0, but in the AZP website, the statement about his resignation and the alleged instances of plagiarism are under a cover that reads “The Pinnacles of Academic Idiocy. Princeton University 2014-2017.” He is using a Princeton-themed font. What’s that about?

I like the Pinnacles. Very Princetonian neogothic! But I am sure Princeton will not find it very funny.

There is a whole world outside of academia.  Some people ought to check it out sometimes.

I can’t see he would want to spend much time in Princeton… but he remains a Professor there. He seem to be taking academic freedom to an entirely new level. It is rare to see Professors openly criticising their own institution for academic idiocy. That’s progress!

who cares about azp, he is borderline irrelevant ever since he cheated on farshid with his intern and broke up FOA.    farshid was always the talent and azp little more than a marketing entity who knew how to butter up academics and clients.  

At buttering up academics he is does not appear to be very good. Did Farshid tell you that story?

Okay dinoracist, here's the evidence:

"You still do not get that I have nothing against black professors. I am sure these guys are wonderful. I am against hiring three of them, maybe four, one after another in a department of twelve (that is, if the rumors are correct, can anybody else confirm?)."

You are saying "I have nothing against black professors" but you don't want Princeton to hire 3 black professors, that is simply racist! You don't see them as professors but as black professors, and you don't want black professors, you want them gone because of the colour of their skin.

It's like saying you have nothing against black people, but you don't want your daughter to date a black person. You're a classic racist! The fact you can't even see or acknowledge that makes you an even bigger racist. 

Points to consider from this thread- 

1- This thread started on the premise that Dean of the School of Architecture would possibly face review formally accused of plagiarism.

2- This thread was about the development of this situation until 18 July 17 at 7.53pm. Until this point in time, the comments were disciplined with links (citations) to document development. 

3- On 18 July 17, thirty minutes later the tone of the thread takes a drastic turn and relies on undocumented information to describe what some would like to see as a crisis. This marks a threshold given that the amount of recorded information regarding the events that the thread was originally (see the 1st post) about decreased significantly in favor of complaints about faculty and staff (w/o demonstrable documentation/citation). 

So no, the core issue was not, Eisgruber-bashing, the whole title VII affair, the taxes and in general all the sick PC business in Princeton. Those are tangential, and non-productive.

But these tangents reveal something else. For some this thread has devolved into a panic about loosing control of pedagogy and what they see as the academy. 

I mentioned earlier that this is about  character assassination. But it's also about trolling members of the Archinect community by stoking the fire with dog whistles. 

I, for one, call for this to get back to the original purpose to the thread- to document the developments around the original claims of plagiarism and the lawsuit. The rest of this mudslinging and name calling is irrelevant and counter-productive. 

1st post in reply-

I'm not clear why sanctions against a Dean for what may or may not have been improper citations in a significant publication leads to the hire of an underrepresented minority. Quick narrative summary as I understand the space between the first and second paragraph.

ADMIN- Was the text lifted from Wikipedia?

ASST- It appears so.

ADMIN- Is it egregious enough that if it were a student they would be failed for the work they produced?

ASST- If it were my class in the humanities, it would have been thrown out. 

ADMIN- (Looking out the window and into the distance) it looks like we can finally replace him with and underrepresented minority at the assistant professor level, make the call... 

And so you do agree, that the original intention was not about character assassinations of Eisgruber, and you co-opted it for that purpose. Again, I found the documentation far more effective than "I've seen it with my eyes, but I wasn't given a copy."

2nd reply-

"Do you doubt that the racially targeted search did take place?" 

If you sincerely see this as a problem, why not post a thread to discuss it? It's not a new practice- it hasn't been a new practice for ages. 

In addition, you made a comment to the effect that searches are never "fair." 

Truth, making this no exception to that rule.

3rd reply- 

You haven't justified your need to try to erode the abilities of the hires based on politics out of their control. "Would you apply for a job in this situation," isn't a valid reason. 

So yes, you are trolling members of the Archinect community at the same time.

I also like Mark’s little scenification, but it would be factually wrong.  Eisgruber -who had exclusive authority to stand down AZP- would not have been talking to Ever-soiled. It is Mario Gandelsonas and Guy Nordenson who should appear in that scene (or actually in two separate scenes) rending their clothes about plagiarism by the dean and students being forced by him to plagiarize. Eisgruber fumes in his typical pompous, righteous mood and swears to make justice. (that scene can be repeated in different places in NY: Peter Eisenman’s and Harry Cobb’s offices, Cooper Union…) They go around separately on different locations in NY. There is another scene of Gandelsonas repeating the show to Prentice on campus. Stan Allen appears on two scenes, one advicing Eisgruber or Prentice (the script is unclear there and so is the content of the conversation, we will need to invent a bit) in Camp Stan in Upstate NY, talking to Mucksack -who was working for him that summer- about the process, and then sitting down to start this blog, after being interviewed by the investigation committee.  

On another set, Eisgruber meets Monica after she becomes the dean and tells her in kind of sincerely concerned classical PC blabber how concerned he is with the African American community at Princeton. Monica replies confidently that she will change that dramatically, seeing not only the chance to score some brownie points, but to get some more bodies to vote with her in the faculty room so he can control the place. Next scene, some months later, they meet again and Monica tells him very excitedly that she has managed to cajole the faculty to approve three African-American appointments in one go. Eisgruber sheepishly tells her, looking through the window, that, with hindsight, perhaps is better to go a bit slower with the appointments. Monica sighs.  

From The Pinnacles of Academic Idiocy.

Oops! Wrote too quickly. Mucksack sits down to start this blog, not Stan.

... after going to talk to the investigation committee.

So the link I posted above and here-

http://www.princeton.edu/repor...

demonstrates that the University was committed to diversity prior to these events AND the report was written at the time of appointment. Knowing how slow large committees move on campuses one cos say this was the causal result of an initiative that was established when Allen was the Dean. Secondly, based on conservative patterns demonstrated by Presidents at other equally well established American institutions, this report would not have been initiated by at that level, but was an act of support after there was a demonstrated need and concern in the community.  

NOW- with respect to the four people- which is still an egregious inaccuracy if you look at the faculty- more people than those 4 applied for this position. So bad mouth the entire search pool for stepping into these waters if you're going to try to discredit people based on (non)correlating events. 

AND- "Nothing further from my intentions, in fact I feel sorry for those who went through the process for nothing. For what I have googled now, these are all capable and effective faculty, well considered by their students and institutions. But I do not see how do they contribute as a group to the SoA. I do not see an academic intention there, other than “teaching people.” In bulk."

Reads as "Hey, don't mind me. They look ok. I wouldn't invite them to my party because they're commoners- but to each their own..."

That's still trolling.

Here's a speculation/question... What if AZP was seen as a diversity hire way back when...

It clarifies a great deal- given that this commission created the report that serves as the foundation for targeted searches across the entire University. Otherwise this hypothetical piece of paper would not exist. In addition, I'd bet that the text in that piece of paper had a lot of boilerplate language in it that you can find in other initiatives across the campus- this isn't just an architecture issue (although I find the need to make it just about architecture interesting). 

I don't know anything about the search, but I do know that Princeton- given it's resources and established PhD program- would have received more than 4 applicants as you suggest. Stop trying to make the application pool and the short list the same number. In addition, you're backing of your claim they would hire number of 4 suggesting the applicant pool was just 4 (your argument remains thin and slippery). An application pool of 4 would almost certainly qualify as a failed search in the view of the Dean of Faculty and no hire.

Finally AZP as a diversity hire is totally relevant, because that would set a precedent for the "reckless PC (paraphrase)" behavior you so object to. So it would come back to you suggesting that's the type of minority hire you would support, but the other (insert slippery number here) are egregious.

You continue to demonstrate-

-A lack or unwillingness to understand the search process at the University level.

-A lack or unwillingness to understand the historic context for hiring practices in favor of superficial translations.

-A lack or unwillingness to understand how hires in the School of Architecture are effected by University wide initiatives.

-Consistent reporting regarding the actual hiring process.

Start posting content that can be supported and stop throwing shit at the fan. That was when this was a valuable thread.

Don't try to pawn off your claims on me. Initiatives are not exclusive searches. And I'm while I'm not familiar with the incentives at Princeton, I am familiar with one at another Ivy. 

Again- exclusive? no. So no "ah hah!" for you.

Final set of questions- exactly who are these 4 hires diversity hires? Stop being obtuse and name names from the faculty list.

So 3 -not 4 were on a list- only 1 was hired. You're guessing at two more, one of which would not consider stepping down to accept an lower level position. 

 Show me where in the description they said "African-Americans only." That needs to be in writing. Not a conversation, because we can all reference decades of preference against- as you did. 

For the sake of argument we could reference the current search, assuming the other names you mentioned are- I see nothing that says "African-Americans only."

The sea change you suggest is inaccurate.

I think you need to get the letter that proves this was a ”must.” The one you saw- there’s you smoking gun. I’m surprised it hasn’t popped up already. You have internal allies-clearly they could go to HR too.

As for me and “my experience”

It’s all annoying. The selective memories about targeted ‘international hires” 10-15 years ago. Or the need for programs to manipulate diversity goals to recruit international students, knowing full well the language is tied to recruiting and retaining nationally underrepresented people of color and women.  And let’s not forget that the targeted searches were geared towards hiring people “who look like the international  students we are recruiting-“ along with study tours and exhibitions. 

Only to be told that “I’ should be ashamed of applying for a job because it was ethnically targeted at me, and not someone else. I should be ashamed because the gaze and the fetish shifted in an unanticipated, and undesirable direction in at place where it’s unacceptable for that to happen- my perspective is not serious enough. Oh- and the assumption that I know some of them. Yep- from the annual meeting “we all’ have. 

Seriously, find a hard copy of that letter you claim you’ve seen and scuttle that search. And then scuttle any other search- including the one for “Asianists (history term)” if they are all from Asia.  

But don’t be patronizing and selective in what you deem as right and wrong if you don’t charge at all the windmills.

Hey, what happened? Dinosaur got banned and erased by the moderators? We thought that this was an open forum. Some of us valued his opinions and the information in his posts. This thread contains comments that insult and threat with physical violence, others make anonymous accusations of plagiarism and even sex with interns. Those remain there and some of them even get featured. What was Dinosaur’s sin? Was it the revelations about the searches or the betting? And why remove all the comments and not just the offending ones. The thread makes no sense now, and there was a relevant discussion going on. Can we get an explanation for this? What is your ethics policy?

So it was no comet, global warming or volcanic eruptions that made dinosaurs go extinct, it was racism. Hope the polar bears are paying attention...

That’s right, it was racism what terminated Dinosaur. A new strand of it grown out of sick political correctness that has led the moderators to perform the ultimate fascist act: the deployment of their power to entirely suppress and eliminate dissent. Or has it been a letter from Princeton? They haven’t justified, and why should they? They have that power.

What is left from the discussion gives a perfect account of the miserable quality of his contenders arguments, with the honorable exception of Marc.

I have no doubt that the facts that Dinosaur was researching and revealing are true, and that Princeton attempted a series of racially exclusive “opportunity” appointments in 2016-2017 at the SoA, from which I believe he gave a rather precise account.

Who knows, maybe Dinosaur had to be sacrificed to prompt the release of the evidence by the group of people who abhor the creeping of insane political correctness in universities. Will the release of a “smoking gun” merit the revival of Dinosaur, or rather the extinction of all of us?