When I first heard that David Petraeus was going to make $200,000 for teaching a course and giving a couple of lectures at the City University of New York, I was not indignant. If anything I was surprised by the controversy. Compensation of greater amounts, for lesser amounts of teaching, is routinely granted to people of far lesser renown at many leading research universities where teaching takes a back seat to research and reputational enhancement. What would the public say if it learned about the $300,000 professors at, say, the University of Texas with lighter loads?
CUNY, which in the face of public outrage now saysit will pay the former general just $1, was no doubt trying to seize on the Petraeus name for publicity. But universities, largely unaccountable to anyone, routinely waste buckets of money on all sorts of things. (My university, Ohio University, recently paid $50,000 to move a tree, rather than $1,000 to cut the tree down and plant a couple of small new ones.) The package offered to Petraeus was not overly outrageous when viewed in light of the fact that universities often pay famous outside speakers $25,000, $50,000 or even more to give a single lecture.
