Board of Regents Promotes Inmate to Full Professor at CCSU.

The poet Ravi Shankar had a day unlike any other Department of Corrections inmate Tuesday. Connecticut’s Board of Regents promoted the Central Connecticut State University faculty member to a full professorship at a regular meeting while inmate 396964 spent his fifth day in prison.

Shankar, who was convicted of giving the police a false statement in a credit card fraud scheme, has accumulated a jarring record of arrests. Read about them here and here. Criminal charges pending against Shankar in Connecticut include criminal impersonation, violation of probation, and illegal operation of a motor vehicle while under suspension. Some of the charges have appeared on the Superior Court docket 24 times in nearly 2 years. Shankar is due to return to court on May 22nd.

A spokesman for the Board of Regents seemed not to know late Tuesday that Shankar is in prison. If anyone had confidence in the Board of Regents, this latest incident would erode it.