next »

[chaosbydesign]

If you have never worked at American University Bosnia, and have never had any association with AUBIH in any way, then why become an elephant on a thread to which you have nothing to offer?  I agree with AUBIHPROF, something seems very, very odd.

I can tell you that Vox is in no way affiliated with AUBIH. I know this for a fact.

Nobody here is against you or the other posters on this thread, Crkens. The things that have been said have been said because of what the CHE moderators wrote about the removal of the last threads about this university. People are trying to avoid having this thread deleted for the same reasons.

[voxprincipalis]

If you have never worked at American University Bosnia, and have never had any association with AUBIH in any way, then why become an elephant on a thread to which you have nothing to offer?  I agree with AUBIHPROF, something seems very, very odd.

I can tell you that Vox is in no way affiliated with AUBIH. I know this for a fact.

Nobody here is against you or the other posters on this thread, Crkens. The things that have been said have been said because of what the CHE moderators wrote about the removal of the last threads about this university. People are trying to avoid having this thread deleted for the same reasons.

I don't know how to explain this to you any more clearly, crkens.

If there are universities engaging in practices that are harmful to faculty, I think it would be good for existing and potential faculty members if those practices were brought to light. (Translation: I am on your side, for no reason other than that I think that bringing those practices to light is the right thing to do.)

Are the free, pseudonymous online forums sponsored by the CHE the right place for that to happen? Given that the CHE gets to dictate the rules of the sandbox, and given that those rules include not directly naming and identifying individuals at institutions (a rule that is applied across-the-board, by the way, not just to your threads or to threads in the Working Overseas forum), probably not.

What is likely to happen if you continue to make the kind of posts that you are making? Nothing good. If you cross whatever the staff mods feel is the line, they will remove your posts and possibly prevent you from posting in future. I do not know where that line is, but I know it exists and I suspect you are within spitting distance of it.

I am trying to HELP YOUR CASE by encouraging you to find an outlet where your writings are not subject to approval from moderators. You are making it very, very difficult to help you. If it will make you happy, I will cease posting to this thread, but if you continue on in this way and the thread or other posts are deleted, don't say I didn't warn you and don't complain afterwards. Consider whether the way you are going about things is helping your cause or hurting it.

VP

[crkens]

I understand that I may be banned, but that would hardly be the end of the world.  Also, I probably don't need to be advised of this possibility.  What I am asking some of you to understand is that your piling in makes that more not less likely.  What do I mean by this?  Go back in this thread to the first post by AUBIHPROF and my subsequent post telling people to be careful.  I was suspicious of it because I had been at AUBIH and know the unethical practices of the owner and his administrative staff.  I was roundly condemned because of my post.  In AUBIHPROF's second post he explained why I was right to be suspicious.  It's the experience of having been there that determines what I say, and the lack of said experience that determines your reaction.  All some of you have done is divert the thread and obscure the real issue.  Stating the obvious once, just in case, is appreciated.  Stating the obvious, over and over again, trying to prove some obscure point of decorum, isn't.  I'm sure that in some parallel universe Chicken Little is still trying to tell everyone that the sky is falling.  In this universe we are still waiting and wondering.     

[drfitz]

Crkens, I have been where you are. Not literally, in that I never taught at AUBiH, but in a very aversive place where I felt angry all the time, for justifiable reasons, and afraid quite a lot, for reasons more justifiable, I lashed out at people who were trying to help.
The problem is there is no help, and it is not about you.
My fixation on AUBiH is more or less literary and clinical. I would like to write an article about professors who have had very bad experiences abroad. I have a venue, and time to do it, owing to the fact that I have a really good job now.
So please PM with anything you want to tell, and this one has no issues about naming and shaming. It would help if it was true.

[crkens]

Thanks Fitz, but I was saved multiple times yesterday.  I'm now in need of a reverse exorcism.

[drfitz]

No, you are in need of a good hard vent. So was I, and thus my article. I have gotten some fascinating contributions via PM, and I encourage more.  Especially about AUBih. That place really bites. But here is even worse:  I was contacted by a person, whom I refuse to call Hu, despite my desire to protect the privacy of my sources, who said that her University required grad students who wrote papers and presented them at conferences to name a Professor as author-they could only be co-author.
What warped and horrid mind thought of that?

[mended_drum]

There's also California University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  And Miami U. in Ohio.

Complete digression, but I'm confused about putting Miami in the list.  Located in the Miami Valley, close to the original home of the Miami tribe, it was founded over eighty years before the incorporation of Miami, Florida (named for a completely different group, the Mayaimi, who have no relationship to the Miami of Ohio).  The Great and Little Miami rivers are tributaries of the Ohio.

Or, to quote t-shirts once popular in the area, "Miami's in Ohio, dammit" and "Miami was a university before Florida was a state."

[drfitz]

No, but we all need a laugh from time to time. So here is my contribution. My favorite student, who is not as smart as he seems to be, has been accepted to grad school at an East Coast Ivy. We are all proud of him, and understanding when he derails Seminar to boast. I have given him all my DVDs in order for his English to become more idiomatic. So last Seminar, in which I had to tell him to STFU several times, I ended by digressing about how my husband loves cats, and I do not. I don't hate them or anything. I would enjoy life more if they were not around. I used it to illustrate the principle of compromise.
Well, student saw me shopping downtown, and was incredibly happy to see me, and then announced, "I Love You! Your Husband is a Pussy Hound."
Teaching abroad does have an upside.

[zharkov]

I was contacted by a person, whom I refuse to call Hu, despite my desire to protect the privacy of my sources, who said that her University required grad students who wrote papers and presented them at conferences to name a Professor as author-they could only be co-author.
What warped and horrid mind thought of that?

That was actually a common practice in the US at one time, and may still be, in some fields.  (Not anymore in mine.)   That is, grad students would be second author if/when there work was published, the advisor being first author.