Middle-Aged White Guy Sues Columbia for Discrimination
An Interview with Roy Hollander, Men’s Rights Pioneer

the face of oppressionRoy Den Hollander — Columbia B-school grad and self-described “anti-feminist” — took aim this week at his alma mater’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. In a lawsuit charging sexual discrimination, Hollander calls the institute “a bastion of bigotry against men.” Using Title IX as an “analogy,” Hollander adds the Columbia suit to a growing stable of “Men’s Rights” crusades, including a lawsuit protesting Ladies’ Nights at bars, and another against VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act.

In an hour-long phone interview, Hollander waxes poetic on physical desire, his background as a draft-dodger, and the best places in New York for middle-aged dudes seeking jail-bait booty (dance class). As for Women’s Studies at CU:

The whole program is about benefiting females and teaching that guys are evil and that guys are responsible for all the world’s evils.

He also told me about his “Russian mafia prostitute stripper” “mistress to a Chechen warlord” ex-wife, and how she used VAWA to persecute him and/or attain US citizenship.

Roy is surprisingly interesting for a guy who spends 90% of his waking life plotting the destruction of feminism, and the other 10% trying to get laid. Our epic conversation, after the jump.

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Ivy League Grad Ruins Irony by Actually Becoming a Whore

it's hip to be sharedRadar magazine delivers a shocking blow to elite education by including an Ivy Leaguer in gonzo-journo story “Inside the World of High-Class Hipster Hookers.” Seriously, $40K-per-year education and Sally Straight-A grows up to be a hipster?

Just kidding! The shock is that she became a whore:

After graduating from an Ivy League college in 2006, Kelly says she was thinking about going to grad school to become an English professor. She’s decided to put that aspiration on hold, though, while she rakes in the equivalent of an investment banker’s salary selling sex.

I’d make a joke, but I used them all up on a nearly identical story last March.

As it turns out, finance is something of a sister industry to the whore-o-sphere. The three main characters get into the business of vag-selling at the behest of some “sleazy banker types” they meet at a bar. Whore #1 gets sleazy banker’s business card, and before you know it she’s making $3000 a thrust! The ladies frequent “douchebag spots in the Meatpacking District” and turn themselves into an unstoppable trio of whoredom. Each girl has a special personality niche, just like in Charlie’s Angels:

These days Heather tends to book with more bankers and Wall Street types, Olivia with a lot of retired hipsters and club owners, and Kelly with men from the art world. During a typical week they each entertain at least three different clients—and sometimes as many as nine. “I don’t mind sleeping with two guys in a night,” Kelly says. “Just as long as the second client isn’t rough with me.”

Ivy League Angel has all the time management skills.

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Calling All Blog-ily Inclined Ivy Leaguers!

come fly with usAs we prepare for our grand return this fall (regular posting schedule resumes after Labor Day), this little ol’ blog is looking for fresh meat.

If you’re interested in editing, contributing, or becoming a columnist, email tips [at] ivygateblog.com. “But wait,” you say. “That’s the tipline!” Did I mention we’re looking for tech staff, too? We want photographers, videographers, tech folk, business folk, and basically anyone with any sort of skill that we can exploit, manipulate, and/or sell on the street. This is the Ivy League, after all. You people are supposed to be talented.

I Take Back Everything I Wrote in the LATimes

oh noes! the interweb hates meRemember the time Jacob and I said Facebook isn’t actually destroying humanity, because people are intelligent and increasingly sophisticated at interpreting the internet? Well, a funny thing happens when you write a pro-Facebook editorial. First, you get a zillion friend requests from editors, bloggers, etc. You feel like you have to accept them because you just said Facebook is cool, so you’d be a total hypocrite if you didn’t! But in your heart of hearts, you suspect people may not be quite as sophisticated as you hope; deep down, you know that “superpoke” and “business contact” are two concepts that ought never interact. Yes, our culture is evolving to keep up with the internet. But, um, we might not be all the way there, yet. We’re kind of cyber cro-magnon.

After unlocking his left-leaning profile to a Fox News producer, Jacob wasn’t allowed to go on the air. Then, a few days ago, this chick I had to email for my new job freaked when she saw “IvyGate” listed under “networks.” She got internet-pissed at me and caused a minor hubbub. She wrote me this nutty email where she called me an un-American alien, which I would call racist, but I can’t remember if I unlocked my pictures for her or not, so maybe she doesn’t know I’m Asian. After the jump, Rachelle’s email, including these sentences:

In case you missed the memo, they are going to represent the United States, YOUR country, in Beijing this August. Your lack of support for our athletes and the Olympic spirit is a disgrace

Look, I love the Olympics as much as the next spandex junkie, but this chick needs to get a grip. It’s an athletic competition featuring teenage girls ribbon-dancing on floor mats, not a war zone.

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Merry Summer Vacation, Ivy Leaguers

Merry Summer Vacation, Ivy LeaguersWe’re on hiatus. Do as you please on the comment board and look for summer editors starting June 16. If you’d like to be a summer editor - or maybe you are lonely without your daily IvyGate and would like to share A/S/L + sexi pic? - drop us a line before May 16.

Also, how rad is this baby portrait? Will some Whartonite please use it for a senior yearbook portrait? Please?

PS: Saw this one coming a mile away.

Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/Yalie

Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/YalieSound the alarm! A break in the ranks! Princeton grad and Yale 1L Amelia Rawls defies the Ivy tribe this week in a column for the Washington Post, “Best and Brightest, but Not the Nicest,” where she reveals the most closely guarded of our cabal’s secrets: We are not bionic superheroes. We are not Mother Teresa. In fact, some of us aren’t even nice.

I mean the kind of “nice” that involves showing compassion not merely because membership in community service groups demands it. The kind of “nice” that involves sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn’t have one.

…these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to “do what is right.”

What kind of horrible people was Amelia friends with in college, that she thinks thwarting sick people and teasing the homeless is normal among her peers? As for taking out the trash — well, seriously, do you know any 18-year-olds who do that voluntarily?

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Venkatesan Speaks! …and speaks, and speaks…

Venkatesan Speaks! ...and speaks, and speaks...Talk about long-winded. The Dartmouth Review interviewed Priya Venkatesan, who babbled for two days straight. (Literally. The interviewer ran out of tape.) She flip-flops on whether or not she’ll sue and explains how Writing Program Director Tom Cormen used top-secret alphanumeric codes for covert intimidation:

PV:One time Tom Cormen was sitting in the class, and she [a student] asked me, how many T’s are in Gattaca. This was the kind of question she was asking, “how many T’s are in Gattaca?,” and I was about to answer her and Tom Cormen pre-empted me, “two t’s.” I’ll leave you to interpret it.
TDR: No. No, I don’t understand that.
PV: I have to tell you: it means tenure track.
TDR: Oh, okay.
PV: Because I wasn’t tenured track.
TDR: Oh, okay, yes.
PV: They were trying to intimate that I wasn’t ready for tenure track.
TDR: Yes, okay, I didn’t realize that’s what that meant.
PV: I’m kind of making this leap because this is the kind of subversiveness that was going on in that environment. That [girl x] would ask how many t’s are in Gattaca and that Tom Cormen would respond, “two T’s” as if I had no grasp on tenure track. ..but with [girl x], something’s going on with her. I’m not a doctor, but she’s not all there.

This interview is so bizarre, it’s breathtaking. Venkatesan repeats every sentence at least five times, which explains why she never had time to answer questions during lecture. I tried really hard to imagine a context in which such loquaciousness would make sense-Dartlog is holding her captive? She is Scheherzade and silence is punishable by death?-but it’s hard. The interview is nearly 8000 words long (that’s 30 double-spaced essay-pages). And since you probably don’t want to read all that, we’ve got the Cliff’s Notes version after the jump.

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Ragtime May 1, 2008: In which the Daily Prince gets a little schizo

Princeton Juggling Team Toys with Freud in Ball-Caressing Videos

At college, you can do anything. You could learn a new language, play a new instrument, start a blog! You could even to learn to juggle, and find dozens of like-minded juggle-people to toss bricks and balls and bowling pins through the air with you. And that brings us to the most glorious YouTube channel I have ever encountered, PJuggling, home of Princeton’s official juggling team.

To whet your appetite, I present first a promotional video for a PJuggling show apparently themed on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. A boy in a plaid shirt wanders into a men’s lavatory, only to find every stall occupied by a short man tossing tiny balls in the air, a creepily knowing smile dancing across his lips. The boys attempts to leave the lavatory, but the ball-tossing man blocks the exit! A cornucopia of bizarre imagery later, the boy awakens and finds a phallus in his bed.

After the jump, however, things get even better. How could such a thing be possible, you ask? Clues: Simian Mobile Disco’s “I’m a Hustler Baby.” Lip syncing. Break dancing. Yo-yo. The robot.

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Putting the “Class” in Class Action. Also, the “Ligitious and Passive-Aggressive Book-Peddler” in Professor.

Putting the "Class" in Class Action. Also, the "Ligitious and Passive-Aggressive Book-Peddler" in Professor.The D reported yesterday on lecturer Priya Venkatesan (also undergrad ‘90 and a Med School researcher) who, in a series of strangely passive-aggressive group emails, announced a plan to sue her students for workplace harassment based on “intolerance of ideas.” The emails-reported first in Dartlog and forwarded to a zillion email lists within seconds-also contain info on Venkatesan’s upcoming Academy X rip-off where she plans to “name names.” Venkatesan tapped into the email list from her Winter 2008 Writing 5 class:

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35
From: Priya Venkatesan
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day. 

The phrase “anti-federal discrimination laws” made me think she was emailing drunk; follow-up messages and press statements indicate that Venkatesan is, in fact, serious.

Few of Venkatesan’s students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to the D,

cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism

Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.

“I was horrified,” Venkatesan said. “My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line … I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.” …She canceled class because the incident caused her “intellectual and emotional distress,” she said.

Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning.

Possibly awesome turn of logic: If the students’ crime was “intolerance of ideas,” and the idea in question was post-modernism, does that mean post-modernism is Venkatesan’s religion? In which case academia has finally curled so far inward as to truly out-po-mo itself. “Where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain,” indeed!

After the jump: More emails from Venkatesan and Dartmouth authorities, and a sample of Venkatesan’s evaluations.

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