Dirty laundry

Via Jordan, a horrifyingly fascinating tale of scandal at the Stanford Business School. The best (worst) bit is the negotiating advice in the emails from the dean to his new partner about how to negotiate with her estranged husband:

Phills had also come to believe that, with Saloner, the co-author of a textbook on strategy, now egging her on, the normally diffident and indecisive Gruenfeld had suddenly grown more aggressive, even ruthless, in their ongoing divorce and custody disputes.

“You are being too rational and generous,” Saloner—sometimes posing as “Jeni Gee” on Facebook—had counseled her at one point. “Spewing the anger that you feel, even if it is unrelated to what you want, would make you a less predictable and rational adversary.” Telling Phills what she really thought of him, he advised, would “push him back like a right to the jaw.” At regular intervals, he bucked her up. “You are awesome,” he told her. “You are the victim here. Roar!” Or “You’re a star! Way to totally act w power.... Can you drive this process home now while you have momentum?”

Everyone seems to have behaved with implausible degrees of recklessness (I am especially horrified by the details about electronic passwords and shared accounts); there is a cautionary tale here, too, about how to think about the generous housing benefits that universities dole out to their most valued faculty....