Hat tip to Ohio State University's Professor Dale Oesterle for alerting us in his Business Law Prof Blog to how Stanford University president John L Hennessy has made a killing from his extra-curricular financial activities. He's picked up $43 million, and that's not from his day job which earned him $616,000. The information comes from a piece that appeared in The Wall Street Journal last month.

The WSJ's John Hechinger and Rebecca Buckman write:

"Mr. Hennessy, an engineer who co-founded a semiconductor company, has used his talents, Silicon Valley connections and academic position to help win billions of dollars for Stanford. He has done well for himself, too."

The university has told the WSJ that it's built in protections to prevent conflicts of interest but the piece details some disturbing points where the lines seem to cross, raising questions of which hat Hennessy was wearing at the time. Stanford University president? Or investor?

These sorts of conflicts are inevitable when there is a cross-over between a university and the corporate world. More importantly, they raise questions about the university's governance. If this is the new model for academia, we can expect more of these sorts of issues to come up.

You can read the WSJ piece here.