Fake Oregon Grad Teaching At RA Monterey Institute

[Dickie Billericay]

Oh, the irony. If you are going to lie about having a PhD why bother with some risky unaccredited place, when you can claim Gay Al's alma mater, the University of Oregon, and get better mileage? Gay Al might sue you (and lose) for using a Bob Jones degree in Oregon, but he can't (or won't) do a thing about a nonexistent Oregon degree in California.

This is what happens when you put a guy named Ramaswamy in charge of teaching us about Terrorism Studies. Didn't he have any relatives he could hire instead of a guy with the fake degree, like that guy at UIUC?

Using TSA logic, shouldn't all MIIS faculty now be receiving x-rays and full body cavity searches for hidden fake degrees?

Monterey instructor's resume sparks students' suspicions
Bill Hillar's students had doubts about his claims of dangerous exploits as a Special Forces colonel. Officials at the Monterey Institute of International Studies say the students' doubts have merit.

By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times
November 23, 2010

Bill Hillar, a part-time instructor at the [WASC-accredited] Monterey Institute of International Studies, told students enrolled in his workshops on terrorism and human trafficking about what he described as his own dangerous exploits as a former colonel in the U.S. Army's Special Forces.

He also boasted, they recalled, that the 2008 action movie "Taken," starring Liam Neeson, was based on his life and his daughter's kidnapping by men who wanted to enslave her.

Such claims, along with incidents in which Hillar seemed to borrow material from other people's books, raised suspicions among some of his graduate students about Hillar's resume and background. "He didn't seem to act like a veteran or someone who served so highly in the military," recalled Brian Hubbs, a graduate student and Marine veteran.

So this fall, Hubbs and several other veterans attending the graduate institute began investigating Hillar's resume. And the school now says their suspicions had merit.

Monterey Institute officials said Hillar, who has taught workshops twice yearly at the school since 2005, had claimed to hold a doctorate from the University of Oregon, but a check showed that he had only attended classes there. The institute, which is well-regarded for its foreign language and international relations courses, has been unable to confirm the instructor's claims of military rank and service, officials said.

Hillar, who has also been an expert speaker on security and leadership at other colleges and police agencies across the country, did not respond to messages left Monday at the phone number and e-mail address listed on his class syllabus.

Monterey Institute spokesman Jason Warburg said Hillar has not responded to the school's requests for a meeting and documents to verify his background.

The 750-student institute, a graduate school of [NEASC-accredited] Middlebury College in Vermont, has issued a public apology that it did not check Hillar's resume more thoroughly before engaging him to teach his three-day workshops. It promised that it would extend to part-time workshop instructors the background check required of all other faculty. And the school's president, Sunder Ramaswamy, has praised Hubbs and the other students for "the integrity they have displayed."

The institute is offering students replacement workshops and a chance to erase Hillar's courses from their academic records. But that does not fully satisfy Hubbs, who contends the school treated Hillar "like a superstar" for years and that the institute and other schools and agencies that hired him should have vetted him earlier.

"One of the mysteries of the whole incident is how could a guy like this go on for years," Hubbs said in an interview Monday.

An early clue, Hubbs said, came when Hillar told an October workshop a story about how he had counseled a student about creativity. The story sounded familiar and students said they tracked it down, attributed to others, in the book "Chicken Soup for the College Soul: Inspiring and Humorous Stories About College."

The Monterey students then used the Internet to research other of the instructor's claims and contacted a national veterans' group for help.

In his promotional material as a speaker on leadership and ethics, Hillar said he had provided "training for high-risk occupations" and listed more than 30 local, state and federal agencies and schools as clients. Among them was the Federal Executive Board of Greater Los Angeles, which coordinates efficiency and emergency planning for federal agencies in California, Arizona and Nevada.

The board's executive director, Kathrene Hansen, confirmed Monday that Hillar had been a speaker for several of the group's annual meetings, most recently in July. "He was very well received, very inspirational," Hansen said in a telephone interview. She said she had never heard of anything problematic in Hillar's background.

The University of Portland hosted a conference on human trafficking this month, where Hillar was scheduled to be a keynote speaker. Advance material described him as a retired special forces colonel "whose personal story inspired the movie "Taken." A university spokesman said Monday that Hillar did not appear at the conference. The spokesman referred questions to the conference organizers, who did not return phone calls.

In "Taken," Neeson plays a former CIA operative who saves his teenage daughter from slave traders. In interviews at the time of its release, its director and writers did not mention Hillar.

[ham]

school's president, Sunder Ramaswamy

Bill Hillar

The greatest nation on earth...

[Albert Hidel]

The Freakishness of Sociology
Mike Adams

If you want to avoid seeing your 18-year-old turn into a freak within the first year of college, it's best to make sure he, she, or it avoids taking a course in sociology. That is especially the case if your kid plans to attend Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Professor Laurie Essig teaches a course at Middlebury called "The Sociology of Freakishness." She justifies the course by saying that "American popular culture began with the freak show"? and that "P.T. Barnum taught us that freaks are always made- not born." Better not tell that to GLEAM (Gay & Lesbian Employees at Middlebury). They might argue that there's such a thing as a "freak gene." Next thing you know, the freaks will be entitled to their own "Freak Resource Center."

According to Essig, a freak is "a performance or display of otherness for fun and profit." She claims that she has designed her course in order to "explore the history of the freak in American culture as well as how our culture is still structured around the trope of the freak show." She wants students to become "sociologists of freakishness" whose job it is "to ask what configurations of power are at play in the performance. How do gender, race, nationality, sexuality and class come into play and how are those forms of power translated into a performance of otherness that forces us to watch it over and over again?"

After I read that job description I began to worry that I might be one of those freaks they're studying. After all, a lot of sociologists read my columns "over and over again," seemingly "forced" to do so. Maybe, there's a freak-watcher gene, even though "freaks are made -- not born."? Maybe there's even an intellectually consistent sociologist somewhere. Maybe the moon landing was faked. Maybe professional wrestling is real.

I want to take "The Sociology of Freakishness" if no other reason than to take in the excellent assigned readings. Among those are Catherine Dunn's Geek Love and Rosemarie Thomson's Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body.

There are also numerous lectures I found on the course syllabus for "The Sociology of Freakishness," which make me want to enroll right now. For example, one lecture, scheduled for early October, requires students to read Suzan-Lori Parks', "Venus." Next, students ponder these profound intellectual questions: Can the freak be reclaimed as an active subject in her own enfreakment? Is that what Parks was trying to do? And why?

By mid-October, students are asked to read Lori Merish's "Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics," and then watch Shirley Temple films in class. Finally, they are urged to bring to class "some contemporary examples of Children as Freaks."?

Shortly thereafter, students read Cecile Lindsay's, "Bodybuilding: A Postmodern Freak Show," and Cyril Siorat's, "Beyond Modern Primitivism", from the book Tattoo. They are then asked to "Come to class with examples of bodily freaks in our own culture- for example, tattooing, piercing, ear stretching." They are then asked to "Think about the relationship between bodily freaks and notions of the 'primitive.'" That's some deep thinking to require of sociology students.

By the end of October, students read the professor's own writing, specifically "Plasticity: On the Unexpected Uses of Plastic Surgery". They are then asked to discuss this profound question: When is surgery ""essary” and when is it "freakish"??

In an early November class meeting, students are asked to "Think about contemporary manifestations of blackface as a genre of the freak show." In order to provide a real balance to the class, students are then encouraged to study whiteface. In other words, they read about Michael Jackson. The reading is David D. Yuan's, "The Celebrity Freak: Michael Jackson's Grotesque Glory."

Students are then asked to "Do some research on the most recent Jackson trials and Michael Jackson as a racial and sexual freak." It is unclear whether students are asked to visit Never-land Ranch or attend a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association. But, then again, calling the NAMBLA meeting a "freak show" might offend GLEAM. So many victims, so little time!

Just before Thanksgiving, students are introduced to a lecture on "YouTube, MySpace, and the importance of self-enfreakment." They are told to find some examples in new media of freakishness. When they return from break, students get to read the professor's own essay, "The Pleasure of Freaks." This all takes place within a lecture titled "Does Pop Culture Need Freaks?"

I don't know about "pop culture" but academia doesn't need any more freaks. We just need to put bars on the professors' windows and charge the public to peer inside their offices. Spectators should be allowed to toss them an occasional peanut or banana.

Eventually, we'll need to pay someone to clean up the stuff that gathers in their cages. The freaks may call it scholarship. But it smells like crap to me.

[ham]

You mean that is all there is to dr. Uri Schweinboim's seminars on hate and genocide, senator Hebbitz plea to stand up for Israel, prof. Pedro Garcia's la raza classes, dean Leroy Jamal Malcolm Jackson's African oppression series and dr. Loreen 'Muffy' Sham-Levy gut-wrenching feminist appeals?

Professor Laurie Essig

Give her credit...comparing you-know-whos to freaks takes some guts...

In a move that Baylie Roth has deemed as "an outrageously stupid decision," Middlebury College has denied pre-tenure to Laurie Essig, a popular Middlebury Sociology professor.

mrs Vinegar is doing a great job...I'm not sure AIPAC approves entirely.