I really tried to write a parody of the “Sound of Music’s” opening ditty “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” about UPenn’s disgraceful Professor Julia Alekseyeva, but her last name defeated me. Do you know that no English words rhyme with “eva”? Anyway, she proved beyond a shadow of any doubt that she is not fit to be entrusted with young minds.
First the assistant professor indulged in a disgusting outburst of admiration for Luigi Mangione, whom we are supposed to call a suspect in the ambush assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but who is obviously the killer. Then her absurd Pazuzu Excuse apology proved beyond any doubt that she is a liar. Be proud, University of Pennsylvania alumni! No wonder your alma mater belched up a murderer when it hires faculty like this.
Alekseyeva responded to the arrest of Mangione by posting a video of her smiling and bopping to the “Les Miserable” anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing” with the comment “[I]have never been prouder to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania,” which Mangione attended. Alekseyeva then called him “The icon we all need and deserve.” To be fair, that part’s a bit ambiguous. If by “we” she means the nation’s deranged progressive assholes, she might have a point.
The University of Pennsylvania knows bad publicity when it sees it, so a spokesperson stated, “Much concern was raised by recent social media posts attributed to Assistant Professor Julia Alekseyeva. Her comments regarding the shooting of Brian Thompson in New York City were antithetical to the values of both the School of Arts and Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania, and they were not condoned by the School or the University.”
Then the school commenced its cover-up: “Upon reflection, Assistant Professor Alekseyeva has concurred that the comments were insensitive and inappropriate and has retracted them. We welcome this correction and regret any dismay or concern this may have caused.”
Translation: Upon being informed by school administrators that she would find a horse head in her bed if she didn’t issue an abject apology even if everyone will know she’s lying through her teeth, Professor Alekseyeva agreed to retract her sentiments though she obviously meant every word of them.
Insulting everyone who read or heard her flagrant “Never Mind!,” Alekseyeva wrote: “Late last night I posted a TikTok, as well as several stories on my Instagram. These were completely insensitive and inappropriate, and I retract them wholly. I do not condone violence and I am genuinely regretful of any harm the posts have caused.”
Liar. When does anyone publicly say what they don’t believe when they publish it and it is that extreme and inflammatory? She does condone violence. She said so, clearly and distinctly. Gee, it must have been that awful Pazuzu again, putting terrible words in her mouth like she made poor Regan say “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell!” to father Damien!
This was a Level 11 apology, the worst below the worst, on the Ethics Alarms 1-10 Apology Scale:
“11. The Impossible Apology: An inherently unbelievable apology for conduct or words so unethical and so extreme that nobody could possibly say or engage it accidentally or unintentionally. Such an apology for words or conduct of signature significance, indicating that the speaker or wrongdoer is unethical and untrustworthy because no individual who is ethical and trustworthy would behave in such a manner even once, is not merely cynical and a travesty, but insulting to its intended audience.”
He’s my solution to this problem: The woman is only an assistant professor. She’s not tenured. She should be fired, and forced to spend her working career as a cashier at a shooting range or a fill-in chorister for amateur productions of “Les Miz.” She is irredeemable as a person, and intolerable as a teacher.
Ethics Alarms 
I would expect no less than her dismissal from the faculty.
If she hates the fact that firms make a profit from offering products that spread the total costs of health care over its policy holders then she should give up her health insurance and negotiate directly with her health care providers.
Addendum: If government picks up the health care costs of Americans and we cannot spend more that we take in what will happen to other services?
Why doesn’t she travel back to her homeland and back in time to the Soviet era. That would solve the problem. Why does the American academy breed and foster these anti-American subversives? Why are these guests always rearranging the furniture? And, dare I say it? Angry lesbian pissed off at everything and wanting to kick all the furniture and make everyone miserable?
Depending on how you choose to pronounce it, you might try one of “saver”, “clever” or “cleaver”.
Yeah, that’s cheating. Long E Eva, not Ava Gardner.
What about using an -eve word followed by the article “a” right at the line break?
There once as a professor named Alekseyeva,
who placed upon her sleeve a
scarlet A
so all might say
she was a horrible rotten diva?
I could have done that with a limerick, except that the name also creates scansion problems because it’s 5 syllables with the accent in the fourth one so the first line has to be “A professor named Alekseyeva.” Then each rhyme would have to be gimmicks like “deceive-a”, “receive-a”, so in a longer song that uses the name repeatedly like Oscar’s. Once is funny, more than that is cheating. A song that annoyed me in “Wicked” began, “Nessa, I confess a…” in a melody that emphasized the cheat and wasn’t a comic song. Maybe that was why I bailed—I found Schwartz’s lyrics so pedestrian and they were still on my mind.
Just have the speaker speak in Bostonese. Every word ending in -er will sound out as -ah.
How is that “cheating”? Ryan Harkins’s suggestion, pronounced the way I would with some elision, precisely matches the way I myself pronounce “cleaver”, for instance. So, just how would that name be pronounced in such a way as to dodge between all these suggestions?
It’s cheating any time a lyricist alters a word or name to fit the meter (or rhyme) of an established framework, like a limerick. Sometimes a lyricist cheats as a joke, but other wise its just laziness or desperation. For some reason there have been a lot of terrible parodies of songs in commercials lately, like the parody of “Holiday Road” that is so bad I flip the channel every time before its over. Alekseyeva is a five syllable name with the accent on the 4th. If you’re going to use it to start a limerick, you have to put it in after the third beat.