:The answer is money. Lots of dumb rich folks donated lots of money for dumb shit like this. Stuff like this (and worse) tends to happen in private universities. But OTOH, PEAR is a fucking joke and nobody takes them seriously. Go to Princeton's physics department and ask them about it. It's a black eye for princeton, but not as bad as being Kansas. Worse things have happened in universities, like libraries and scholarships being named after racist motherfuckers in Georgia ( 15:50:47, 2005-08-11 (UTC))