Categorical Aperitif

A curious development in America's Wang:

State Sen. Mike Haridopolos is the newest faculty member at the University of Florida.

Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, will act as a lecturer both within the university's political science department and the newly founded Bob Graham Center for Public Service.

By hiring Haridopolos, the third-ranking person in the Senate and a former Brevard Community College staffer, the university says it has added a teacher with plenty or real world public policy experience.

"Mike Haridopolos brings a combination of academic experience teaching government and real life, hands-on experience in Florida politics to the Graham Center," said former U.S. Sen. and Florida Gov. Bob Graham in a news release issued Thursday.

It also puts on its payroll someone who should have tremendous influence on the university's budget in the coming years. Haridopolos is in line to become Senate president in 2010. From that position, he will hold great sway over how much money flows to the university from Tallahassee.

Hmmm. Now, there's nothing unusual about politicians also working in academia; Michael Dukakis, for example, has taught political science at a number of universities, including UCLA, since losing the presidential race in 1988 and leaving the Massachusetts governorship. As the story points out, Haridopolos has taught before, and it stands to reason that poli-sci and government departments might benefit from having around people with real-life legislatorial experience. But check out this sweetheart deal:

Haridopolos will be paid $75,000 a year in his new position, $5,000 more than his predecessor.

Joe Glover, the interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UF said Haridopolos' job would cover two areas, teaching and overseeing the Graham Center's internship program. During the fall semester Haridopolos will likely teach one or two classes in the political science department, Glover said.

In the spring, when the Legislature is in session in Tallahassee, he will turn his attention to the internship program.

Glover said his primary responsibility would be to identify and create internships in the public policy arena and to match UF undergraduates with those internships.

$75K—to teach "one or two classes" in one semester (will these be the sort of classes where all of the actual work besides lecturing is done by teaching assistants, hmm?) and to run an internship program in the other semester (and how much of that will actually be done by university staffers, hmm?). But wait—it gets better:

Haridopolos' hiring at UF, which was effective Feb. 15 according to the university, has ruffled some feathers within the university's faculty.

Unlike most full-time faculty members, Haridopolos does not have a doctorate degree. And the hiring was done without consulting the faculty of the political science department, which normally would have input on new hires.

Stephen Craig, the department chair, said he has no problem with Haridopolos himself. In fact, he said, he hired the senator in the past to teach individual classes about campaigning.

"My biggest concern is simply that the department was not consulted."

In his new role, Haridopolos will be paid far more than other lecturers. The two other full-time lecturers in the department, both of whom have doctorate degrees, are paid an average of $46,580.

So: even without a Ph.D., "Senator Mike" will be making $30K more than lecturers who have doctorates—to do what one suspects will be far less work. And the department he'll be a professor in wasn't even consulted about his hiring. This for a guy who's only been a legislator since 2000, so it's not like he's some "old lion of the Senate" or anything. Sweet.

The story mentions suspicions that this cushy deal has been made with an eye to when Haridopolos becomes Senate president in 2010—and can then potentially be a sugar daddy for UF. I'd almost prefer that form of possible corruption to the other one that occurs to me: there's a legislato-educational complex right alongside the military-industrial one that Eisenhower warned us about, and it takes care of its own with the same kind of sneering disregard for taxpayers and others among The Unconnected.