The title almost reads like the Simon Winchester book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. That book tells the story of a retired U.S. Army Surgeon who, while jailed in Broadmore, a criminal asylum in London, for murder, the good surgeon was instrumental in the production of the first Oxford English Dictionary.
This might be a touch crazier, even for current or past NYU lecturers. Former and past NYU professors over the last ten years, in no particular order nor a need to name each of them, have: sued James Franco, allegedly taken up-skirt photos of colleagues and students, shamed a PhD candidate for obesity, and roamed the streets of New York indiscriminately yelling at dogs. I should also mention that when I use alleged in regards to Heleen Mees, I was being quite liberal with alleged. The woman is said to have sent no less than 1000 emails to Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter.
Dutch Economists Are A Passionate Lot, Apparently
And not just your run-of-the-mill emails. The emails she sent included photos of her masturbating, naked photos of herself and other women, as well as emails asking if “We should adopt a child,” and my favorite, “What can I do to make it right? Shall I lick your b—s?”
Both economists in question are Dutch-borne, a group of people I’ve found to be quite boring in their homeland but a sexually interesting lot when on vacation. Perhaps the famous “red light” district of Amsterdam is contagious if you don’t put a condom over your head.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Lovesick Economist
While some of those emails could almost be viewed as pleasant, a few were apparently not so nice including one that read, “Hope your plane falls out of the sky.” This was followed by a series of emails that included photos of dead birds. Apparently, Ms. Mees thought that her former lover who spurned her flies in planes drawn by Disney animators in The Rescuers.
On February 27, Mr. Buiter sent Mees a cease-and-desist letter, but that did nothing to deter the love-crazy professor, who proceeded to fire off several hundred more emails to him, according to court documents.
Willem Buiter has chaired the World Economic Forum and was on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. In 2010, he was hired as Citigroup’s chief economist.
Over the past three decades, Buiter has taught economics at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, including Princeton, Yale and Cambridge universities. His wife currently teaches at University of London’s Birkbeck college.
