[berndi]

How is it possible that professors with impeccable academic credentials get fired for jokes nearly instantly [1], yet this student's professor was allowed to carry on until he resigned two years later [2]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_contro... [2] https://eu.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021/...

[rscho]

Well... non-PC jokes are a liability risk for the institution at large. Dead students are not. We have an identical phenomenon in hospitals: there are huge campaigns against sexism and the like, while there are multiple young professionals committing suicide from burn-out every year and noone does as much as bat an eyelash.

Contrary to victims of discrimination, dead people can't easily organize into coordinated legal action.

[specialist]

Said another way: Attention economy. There's no rhyme or reason for why any one particular outrage bubbles to the top and becomes today's cause célèbre.

[berndi]

You would think that allegedly driving a PoC student to suicide would count for something in the PC twitter sphere…

[throwaway894345]

I get the distinct impression that the Twitter sphere isn’t genuinely concerned about people of color, or else they would express concern over, say, inner city violence. Instead they work hard to brand any such concern as “far-right”.

[andromeduck]

It's mostly just wingnuts & entitled folks trying to make a name for themselves.

[throwaway894345]

Probably, but IMO they have too much power and their behavior is destructive.

[the_lonely_road]

Are Asians PoC? I thought they were not and that was literally the only reason the oft repeated phrase “black and other PoC” didn’t literally translate into “not white”.

[PicassoCTs]

So many different terms and abbreviations, for what is just humans..

[curtainsforus]

The most important thing about humans is which ones I'm allowed to attack.

[hackflip]

Only when it is politically convenient

[root_axis]

I have never heard the suggestion that Asian people aren't considered "PoC".

[throwaway894345]

Some woke people will argue that they are “white adjacent” when convenient (e.g., the Harvard admissions scandal) but also that they are people of color when convenient (e.g., the Atlanta spa killings).

[faeriechangling]

They are racial chimeras. Changing between majority and minority based on the speakers preferences.

[andromeduck]

According to Twitter we're "multiracial whites".

BIPoC is also often used as a dogwhistle to exclude Asians and Latinos when convenient.

[anchpop]

Are Latinos not indigenous to the Americas? (genuinely asking)

[bronzeage]

They can't be PoC because their higher than average success contradicts the narrative of victims.

[wyager]

They’ve recently started using the term “BIPOC” to clarify that Asians are excluded, and when they want to include Asians they’ll say “BIPOC and AAPI”.

[tomjakubowski]

No, by any good faith source that I have read, BIPOC does not at all exclude Asians. "The acronym BIPOC refers to black, indigenous, and other people of color and aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people."

Incidentally, one of the co-founders of the "BIPOC Project" is an Asian-American woman.

* https://www.thebipocproject.org/

* https://dbpedia.org/page/Person_of_color

* https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-bipoc-5025158

[wyager]

From the BIPOC project website: “We use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have”

If it included Asians they would just keep using POC.

[vimy]

European activists have started using BIPOC as well. They don’t seem to realize that indigenous means white in Europe.

[forgingahead]

The "PC twitter sphere" as you describe them are only interested in one thing: doing what is easy and public for burnishing their own stature, and nothing else. No real problems will be solved by them, because they prefer having the public think they are solving them, rather than putting in the actual work and disciplined thinking to do it.

[wpietri]

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful.

Jokes can also be used the other way, for social control. Growing up, I heard a lot of racist and sexist jokes, the practical effect of which was to demean: to create a place and put disfavored people in it. I'm old enough that nerds were a similar group, and I remember being the butt of a lot of jokes. When that happens, you're just supposed to take it; any objection to being demeaned is met with, "Why so sensitive! It's just a joke!"

So in the case you cite, the problem wasn't him telling a joke. There are whole books full of jokes for speakers he could have used. It was him invoking rank sexist stereotypes and suggesting the solution to his inability to manage his feelings was to push women out of the labs that they've been working for decades to get equal access to. And indeed, are still working on. At my alma mater, just this week a CS professor was just pushed out after dozens of women complained about sexual harassment in recent years. [1] It took dozens because early complaints were dismissed. And there are far more stories of professors like that then there are of ones being booted for "joking" misogyny.

[1] https://www.michigandaily.com/news/walter-lasecki-resigns-ef...

[zpeti]

Unpopular Opinion: people making these sexist jokes do actually think they are jokes. They aren't using them to push people down. Most people are nice people and don't realise they are being assholes and pushing people down.

On the other hand it's completely fair that people feel pushed down by them.

HOWEVER - this entire social justice movement is being used to outsource getting into conflict, and standing up for yourself. My guess is 80-90% of the time if you told someone who made a sexist joke that you are hurt by it, they would apologise (sincerely), and probably not do it again. But for that people actually need to get into a conflict situation, which is hard.

But it would make life a lot easier if we just sorted out these issues at the source, with two people, explaining what hurts and why to someone.

This modern solution of going to HR or to Twitter is not constructive to society, it creates massive divides, it also creates cowardly behaviour rather than encouraging actual people to talk to each other.

[pessimizer]

But this becomes a full-time job for minorities to explain what is bigoted to people they don't even want to be talking to, which

1) gets you attacked for seeing everything as bigoted - especially when you make mistakes because you can't know why everyone is doing everything, just see statistically stuff is happening to you and people who look like you more than everyone else, and

2) alienates you from your co-workers, who would prefer that you act according to the stereotypes they have of people like you and laugh at the jokes they're making about you (and your parents, and your parents parents, who were indisputably shat on.) They don't want to hang out with you because they can't relax around you. You're not going to get promoted unless the word comes from so far up you're going to get resented for it, and

0) it's just another burden to constantly be explaining how and why you're miserable to people, even (especially) the ones who consider it self-improvement to listen to you.

The temptation is just to coon for people, say what they want you to say and do what they want you to do, and just silently hate them and hate yourself.

> But it would make life a lot easier if we just sorted out these issues at the source, with two people, explaining what hurts and why to someone.

This is problematic thinking. For example, black people are 15% of the US population. It isn't one-on-one, it's one-on-five-and-a-half at best. And really, if you're a middle class professional (let's say programmer) where there's a lower proportion of black people that would be indicated by relative populations, it's one-on-a-small-army-20%-of-them-heavily-redpilled-and-angry.

I prefer to leave it to the twitter mob, although some of their positions are crazy, and it being twitter the people who are going to be the most vocal are going to have severe personality disorders (usually borderline.) It's still nice sometimes to have them deflect the belligerent white dude from you.

[wpietri]

Exactly. Very well put.

I once had a Black intern come back to his desk and I could see he was unhappy, which was far from his norm. I asked him what was up and there was this long moment of consideration, clearly deciding whether it was worth even explaining it to a white guy.

It turned out he'd left his badge at his desk and got trapped in the elevator lobby, something many people did going to and from the bathroom. When asking to be let in, a white guy gave him the third degree about who he was and whether he really belonged there. Nothing like that ever happened to me, even though my intern was a sharp dresser and I looked one notch up from a hobo.

After talking with my boss, I wrote this up for HR. At the intern's request, we never even named the interrogator. I explained that it was surely an unconscious bias incident and that I thought they'd want to keep track of things like that. In short order I get an email back from an HR lawyer denying, deflecting, defending. They did jack shit. So I also wrote the Black ERG heads. They jumped on it and raised it up to the level of the CEO, which I was very grateful for. It ended up being a reasonably positive experience for the intern on net; he felt heard and respected.

But it has always stuck with me how instantly this was dismissed by the normal power structure. They did not want to hear it, and no amount of me explaining "what hurts and why" would have made a lick of difference. And that was to a (white) manager with the backing of his (white) manager. I totally get why people targeted with this stuff just keep their heads down most of the time.

[monoideism]

> But it has always stuck with me how instantly this was dismissed by the normal power structure.

Your misunderstanding was believing HR is there to solve human interaction problems in the company. HR is there first and foremost to protect the company. In the case of legal, that’s even more the case.

But good on your for speaking up and trying to make the situation better. But I also believe your intern was smart to ask not to name the interlocutor. That would have only made enemies, and probably made things harder on him.

[wpietri]

Thanks, but avoiding future lawsuits for racial bias is part of protecting the company. As is making it safe for all sorts of people to work there, as that aids recruitment, retention, and results. So this wasn't about protecting the company.

My take is that HR's first goal is to protect HR, and their second to protect the powerful people in the company. Protecting the actual company is low down on the list.

[earleybird]

The phrase "outsource getting into conflict" caught my eye. To me, that is an interesting take/observation. I've been trying to sort out when a disagreement or argument becomes harassment and the closest I can come to is when there is a power imbalance between the parties. I'm inclined to agree that taking your grievance to the mob doesn't solve the real issue.

[wpietri]

I think it depends on what you mean a lot by "think". Did they wake up thinking, "Hey, let's go for some misogyny today"? Probably not. But on the other hand, it's not like their behavior is random, patternless. People often do things without really understanding what it means. Indeed, given how hard actually understanding a global society and its history is, I'd say we almost never totally understand anything we do. It's a big world, and people are universes unto themselves.

One book you might read here is, Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It's written by a therapist who mainly dealt with men in court-mandated therapy programs related to domestic abuse. Few of the men ever saw themselves as bad actors. There was always a reason they were justified in their abuse. He goes into great detail examining how abuse worked well for them.

I also think you misunderstand the systemic nature of things like misogyny and racism. You are effectively saying it's the job of women to fix sexists. Putting the burden there acts to support sexism. That's true anywhere, but it's especially true when we're talking about academia. Look at that UMich CS professor: he had many opportunities to understand his behavior was wrong. He surely heard it from women. He certainly heard it in trainings; "don't grope the students" is something every professor knows by now. Ignorance is not the problem, and suggesting that women with little power should educate men who can ruin their careers only helps abusive men.

Ignorance can be the problem in specific cases, of course. But even there, individuals are responsible for their own behavior. If men would like to not be sexist, they should study the topic. For the HN crowd, I might suggest Manne's "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny" and the follow-on book "Entitled". Both are sharp, readable, and very analytical looks at the topic.

[throwaway894345]

I agree that jokes can be subversive; I don’t agree (perhaps you don’t either) that subversive speech (jokes or otherwise) merit termination, which is to say I’m not an authoritarian. With respect to racism, I don’t doubt that there are too many racist jokes, but the Twitter sphere tends to miss those in favor of jokes which are decidedly “antiracist” i.e., jokes which make fun of racism (whether left-wing racism or right-wing racism).

[loup-vaillant]

Taking the Wikipedia article at face value, and taking for granted the exact word it cites, I fail to see anything sexist in what Tim Hunt said in that conference. If anything, he was joking about sexism itself. The people who say are offended by his words either read a quote out of context, or did the cherry picking themselves.

Assuming you followed the same Wikipedia link I did, it would seam you are guilty of cherry picking. Let's explore this mistake together:

> Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?

So at a first glance, it seems to be as you say. That would indeed be disgusting. Wait a minute though. In your haste, it seems you failed to read the words that preceded:

> It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists.

…as well as the words that followed:

> Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without a doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.

So first, he tells his audience to take the words that will follow with a grain of salt: "Hey, I'm a monster, don't be surprised if I say monstrous things!". Then he says the thing (with less than ideal words, he could have said "me" instead of using the generic "you"). And finally he explicitly signals that the joke is over ("seriously"), and go on encouraging women to do science, and fight the very misogyny he just incarnated in his joke.

Did he actually used rank sexist stereotypes to suggest that women should be pushed out of men's labs? Of course not, and you know this.

---

Now let's stop the cherry picking, and acknowledge that we have both false positives (people getting fired over misplaced outrage), and false negatives (people not getting prosecuted for serious offences). While I understand the need for getting fewer false negatives (rape prosecution rates for instance are appallingly low), the solution is not to move the cursor all the way to hair trigger sensitivity: you'd just end up with far too many false positives, and not enough attention left to solve the real issues.

[wpietri]

He did literally both use rank sexist stereotypes and suggest women should be pushed out of men's labs. There's just no denying that. He did that as part of what he may have intended to be a joke. But when your audience doesn't laugh, it's a bad joke. If one is going to joke about a fraught topic, there's a strong obligation to succeed.

Even taking it as entirely sincere and well meant, something I don't think women in science are obliged to do, his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

I therefore think your theory this is a false positive is incorrect. I think the most that you can claim is that the level of outrage is disproportionate to the particular offense. But that analysis ignores the extent to which sexism is utterly commonplace in a society that has oppressed women for centuries and is still working its way out of it. So you can argue that this wasn't perfectly fair to this one guy, but it's not disproportionate to the problem this guy was part of. And a) that rings of himpathy to me, b) that ignores the much, much greater degree of unfairness caused by sexism, and c) that focus itself helps protect sexism. If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

[loup-vaillant]

> his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

That I can concede.

> If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

Agreed. This cuts both ways, though. Attention directed at slandering the guy on Twitter is attention not devoted to actually help discriminated women.

[wpietri]

If slander were the point, sure. But for a lot of the people calling out sexism, etc, the point is not really the one offending guy. It's the caste of guys who have been supporting and benefiting from the problem that the current focus is symptomatic of. It's the system itself. But humans mostly don't think in systemic terms act to solve systemic issues. They work in terms of narrative, of example.

[loup-vaillant]

If the point is not the one offending guy, how do we justify his sacking? We could say we needed to make an example of someone, and that ended up being him, but I bet my hat it wasn't a conscious choice.

My problem with this whole thing is that our attention is focused on the visible things, instead of the real things. Harassment to name one tends to happen quietly, subtly, often away from witnesses. There's also a good chance that sexist jokes in public speeches are a consequence of a sexist atmosphere more than they are a cause. While they should indeed be addressed, we should be wary of fixing the symptom (looking good on the internet or in front of journalists), without addressing the actual cause (toxic work environment).

[meowkit]

> for social control

I think you’re reading way too deeply into this. You’re referring to the Tim Hunt quote linked?

Everything is about control or manipulation - its implicit to the human condition.

[wpietri]

I am not particularly referring to Hunt's "joke" there. There's a whole genre of "jokes" used to denigrate women.

I disagree that everything is "about" control or manipulation, but as status-oriented primates, humans certainly do inject it into everything. However, that's all the more reason we have to examine little things like "jokes" and be conscious of the effects we're having.

[throwaway45209]

At a lunch for female journalists and scientists, Hunt gave a speech...

"It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without a doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me."

That is not a joke.

[newswasboring]

People keep bringing out that this can be a joke, but he said this two days later

"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. It is true that I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and that people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it's very disruptive to the science. It's terribly important that, in the lab, people are on a level playing field. And I found these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. I mean, I'm really, really sorry that I caused any offence – that's awful. I certainly didn't mean – I just meant to be honest, actually." [1]

He was given a chance to clarify, he doubled down. While I'm not saying a joke should cause people to be fired, but this is clearly more than a joke.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33077107

[Al-Khwarizmi]

So what part of falling in love with people in the lab, people in the lab falling in love with you, and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired?

Sorry, honest question. Being from a different culture, I honestly fail to get this kind of outrage. For me it's just a description of humans being human...

[b3morales]

It's painfully reductive and one-dimensional. What about envy and hate, hero worship, and other emotional attachments? Those have no effect on working environment?

What about men and women who aren't romantically attracted to (respectively) women and men? Are gay men relegated to the women's lab? But only one per batch, lest they fall in love with each other? (And bisexual people can only be trusted to do science on their own.)

In general don't we expect "professionalism" to include a level of managing your emotions? And this person is basically saying "I can't deal, therefore certain other people must be kept away so I don't get distracted". As well as tarring women in general as not being able to deal, which is unfair. I sure wouldn't want to work with this guy after hearing him say that.

[missedthecue]

Feelings of love are notoriously hard to "manage". This is the plot line of most Rom-Coms for instance.

[b3morales]

Romantic comedies are fiction, though, intentionally exaggerated for entertainment. I don't deny there's a kernel of truth to that kind of story -- or else they wouldn't be interesting at all -- but I hope we're not taking them as a model of workplace behavior.

[h2odragon]

> a description of humans being human...

Precisely. There's some sort of "if you have authority you must be better than me" feeling and "better than me" admits no flaws or human variety at all, apparently. Some folks want perfect Gods to follow and keep failing to make them from people made of meat.

[frickinLasers]

It is difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings between two people, from the case of a superior using their position to get their genitals wet and a subordinate capitulating for fear of losing their job.

Since feelings are only a biological impulse, and we humans frequently suppress our impulses in the form of self control, it's much easier to look for that oxytocin fix in a more appropriate arena.

The military has been doing this for ages, forbidding officers from fraternizing with enlisted. And plenty of civilians abusing positions of power have proven the wisdom of such a policy.

[Veen]

It's difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings from exploitative lust everywhere. It's a constant of human experience and has very little to do with power dynamics.

[zozbot234]

The controversial part is where he suggests that this is a "problem" and might be a good reason to exclude women from working in the lab alongside with males. That looks like he's starting out with a very sexist attitude and trying to justify it with flimsy excuses.

[anewhnaccount2]

That part was the joke. He's saying it's a real problem, but that's clearly the wrong solution. For him, it's obviously a bad solution, and so worthy of ridicule.

[wrs]

By framing that as “exclusion” are you assuming the women-only labs would be worse places to work than the men-only labs?

[b3morales]

As a policy it denies both women and men the opportunity of working together. If you are a man and a woman happens to be working on the same problem that you are investigating, would you like to be excluded from learning from her? And vice versa.

[newswasboring]

> and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired?

Hard to not assume malice when you accuse someone for implying something they explicitly said they don't want to imply.

[timoth3y]

> So what part of falling in love with people in the lab, people in the lab falling in love with you, and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired?

Fundamentally, he is saying that since he has trouble keeping his emotions in check around women, the solution is to not allow women in the lab rather than developing his own managerial or social skills.

It's understandable why some would question the wisdom of having this person responsible for developing the skills of female scientists.

Should he have been fired? I don't know. Certainly not if tis joke was is only "offence", but I suspect there is a bit more history to the situation.

[pasabagi]

I guess for me the thing that's really crappy about this quote is that it shows his underlying attitude - that women are basically always potential romantic partners.

If he was into men, and he said he didn't want men in the lab because he might fall in love with them, you can sort of see how absurd it is, and how unpleasant it is to be the object of romantic fantasy when you're just trying to get on with your job.

[rscho]

> women are basically always potential romantic partners

Ok, why would that not be the case? Laws? PC? Age difference? Love/biology doesn't care about social rules, and this has been shown time and again in every possible situation you could think of.

> you can sort of see how absurd it is

Huh, no I can't. What makes it different when you reverse the situation?

[pasabagi]

> Huh, no I can't.

The point is, any human can be a romantic partner to any other. Therefore, his argument should be that no pair of humans should work together ever for risk of romantic entanglements.

Except it doesn't work that way, because we're all really used to the idea that in the workplace, you treat your colleagues as colleagues, not as fantasy-future-partners.

This isn't PC. It's just basic common sense, that he's lost his grip on, because he sees women first as romantic partners or sex objects or whatever, and second as scientists.

[bumby]

>Ok, why would that not be the case?

Because of professionalism. The root of term used for “professions” like law, medicine, engineering etc. is that one professes to a code of ethics. That code should overrule base desires.

We generally wouldn’t accept a doctor who views and treats patients primarily as an income stream despite greed being a near-universal human drive and we shouldn’t expect a professor to view subordinates as potential romantic partners. Acknowledging the drive exists isn’t a reason to condone it.

[toss1]

“Human nature, is what we are put on earth to overcome.”

--Katherine Hepburn, in The African Queen

A few of the good words to live by

[iamadog3]

Not really, no. Human nature is what we're dealt, we must embrace both the positive and negative aspects of it. Perhaps the inevitability of two people gravitating towards one another can be leveraged? Perhaps the disparities can elucidate us on unseen proclivities in different populations, things that can also be leveraged and positively.

What we should avoid is cramming people into functionary roles and instruct them they must act as would a machine. No longer can they be compelling or compelled but only impelled as would be a gear turning in the insurmountable forces of the engine that drives.

[toss1]

>>things that can also be leveraged and positively.

And, exactly how is this NOT overcoming human nature?

>> should avoid is cramming people into functionary roles and instruct them they must act as would a machine

What in that quote, or its context, ever suggested cramming people into functionary or mechanical roles?

[curtainsforus]

Should you try to overcome your survival instinct?

[toss1]

Often, yes (though usually not to the point of actually dying). Overcoming survival fears is behind every act of physical courage, e.g., saving a friend or stranger, or exploring any new zone that will normally kill you (mountaineering, undersea, space, etc.).

You have got to suppress your naive survival instinct (or remain massively ignorant) to climb on top of a rocket with thousands of tons of explosive material...

[skystarman]

FUnny you leave out the part where he also said if you criticize a woman in the lab they cry...

He made a terribly misogynistic "joke" and paid the consequences for it.

You'd think someone with a Nobel prize wouldn't be so clueless

[prepend]

> FUnny you leave out the part where he also said if you criticize a woman in the lab they cry...

Do you think women in the lab, when criticized, are more likely, less likely, or equally likely to cry?

Is the scientist’s comment mean spirited, or sexist, or just an observation?

I think it’s important to consider what the intent behind these jokes are. The Wikipedia article calls out statements from 29 other scientists that note how women (and men) were advanced within his lab and outside his lab.

So if this person thinks that the women he’s worked with cry when criticized, so we not want him to say that? It seems more like the goal should be to not stigmatize crying as that seems pretty reasonable for all genders, rather than to stigmatize talking about crying.

[whatshisface]

The rule is really simple: it makes people uncomfortable when you make generalizations about natural traits shared by the group they're in. Period. All groups (even groups people feel proud to be a part of), and all generalizations, even ones that sound positive or don't apply to the listener. I'm not going to list examples but if you're having a hard time thinking of them just imagine overhearing a conversation at a coffee shop about "those <something you are>, they're always <something you do or don't do>."

[skystarman]

"WHen making terribly misogynistic comments his INTENT wasn't to be misogynistic, it's just based on his experience that women are driven primarily by their emotions and unable to handle pressure!"

Really solid defense!

[zepto]

‘Doubled down’ on what?

I’m curious if you think any of his statements are untrue?

[newswasboring]

The one about woman crying when they are criticized? That one is certainly untrue. While some people cry when they are criticized (I personally am severely effected and have cried in the past but afterwards), women have no extra tendency to do this.

[zepto]

> The one about woman crying when they are criticized? That one is certainly untrue.

What makes you so certain?

> women have no extra tendency to do this.

The data say otherwise:

https://www.thecut.com/2015/01/why-do-women-cry-more-than-me...

[afarrell]

Honestly, the people who jump to conclusions about him saying this need to read some Berné Brown.

[AussieWog93]

That quote is a textbook example of self-deprecating British humour.

[throwaway45209]

It's actually self-congratulating, while deprecating others.

[hnuser123456]

I can't see it that way. He is open about his own weaknesses as well. We don't have to look up to him for saying this, but that doesn't make it your typical one-sided bashing.

[helloworld11]

One ambiguously offensive comment during a speech by an aging professor isn't something I'd particularly detest. Outraged cancel culture social media mobs screaming for someone's head at the slightest supposed provocation, on the other hand are thoroughly detestable.

The balance of the problem here isn't this professor, who otherwise spent a large part of his own career helping many women (many of who defended him after his speech) with their own scientific careers. Instead the much more insidious problem is a hysterical social tendency of people with influence in their support for an increasingly dominant social norm then mobbing together under said social banners to destroy entire careers and lives at even minuscule transgressions of their ideas of correct thinking.

The point of these attacks often isn't even about genuine justice for marginalized people. Instead it's about establishing dominance while virtue signalling as aggressively and righteously as possible.

[teddyh]

I’ve noticed a pattern where, wherever someone feels the need to write (after a disparaging story about someone else) “They were not joking” or “They really said this”, it’s almost always false, and the disparaged person really was joking, or really did not say that, or it was taken wildly out of context, etc.

[alisonkisk]

What's the missing context here? That he used an important public speaking opportunity to actually mock the women he was assigned to help, and we misunderstood it as a serious appeal? That he was being fake offensive because it would be funny or enlightening? This wasn't an opportunistic pun. Humor is rooted in one's worldview.

[Veen]

> What's the missing context here?

The missing context is that many women he worked with defended him. That he has consistently worked with, hired, supported, and promoted women throughout his career. That he has done far more to benefit women in science and humanity generally than the whining Twitterati who denounced him ever will.

[emn13]

It sometimes surprises me how people don't seem to see that while all of this is part of a healthy (and seemingly normal) societal change, that it's unfortunate that not just are oldfashioned behaviors shunned, but that merely talking about struggles with them is so taboo. Is society really going to adapt better because people lash out so uncompromisingly?

[NovemberWhiskey]

I don't know any of the context here, but it seems to me that what the quote actually says is that the author admits that he is unable to function effectively with female colleagues, that there are other men like him, and that it's a problem that mustn't be allowed to hold women back from doing science.

[teddyh]

I don’t know anything about this specific case. It might be the exception which proves the rule.

In general, I try to follow the HN guideline: “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”

[hnuser123456]

He also implies that if you're too good of a student, at least around him, he might fall in love with you and become a worse teacher, and he's just being honest about it. You could mock men for being bad at suppressing feelings equally from the same comment.

[dwighttk]

"Now, seriously..." it isn't a very good joke, but what makes you think that isn't a joke?

[gjulianm]

For one, you're cherry-picking two examples. Some professors don't get fired for jokes nearly instantly and others get immediately fired for abusing their students.

Second, amplification plays a part. A story with "two sides" (such as the joke one) will draw far more public attention than another with only one side, just because there will be more debate and people using it to advance their agendas. In this case, it includes "PC Twitter" but also all of the people who scream "freedom of speech" whenever someone is criticized for saying something dumb or inappropriate.

[TrackerFF]

Much easier to prove the case of terrible jokes or non-PC behavior. Twitter has streamlined that stuff for years now - and what's more, that kind of behavior is much more relevant for more people, rather than academic fraud which might be a very niche thing, only relevant to small circles of people.

One could ask - why is it that petty theft can land some people behind bars for years, while wealthy people committing tax fraud only get fined, or at most a couple of months in a cushy white-collar crime facility? Well - for one, the former crime is much easier to prove, especially if you're caught red-handed. The latter crime tends to be incredibly complex, and will cost a ton of resources to prosecute.

I guess the same goes for your questions. Professors incriminating themselves on twitter or youtube - easy as pie.

Collusion rings with respectable professors, that probably use students for dirty work and plausible deniability, and resources enough to fight their employer in the courts: hard fight

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Not all targets and not all campaigns are created equal? If someone has a lot of power within the institution, and the campaign comes mainly from people the institution doesn't care about… you can fill in the gaps.

I seriously doubt that exactly what someone has done is the major factor. People in weak positions can easily lose them over the tiniest of things; people in strong positions can get away with murder!

[skywhopper]

Number one was a highly offensive “joke” minimizing a truly serious problem that was made to a number of journalists to whom it definitely wasn’t funny. Plenty of people are fired regularly for making complete fools out of themselves and the institutions they represent by offending important outsiders.

[skystarman]

Comparing these personnel decisions from not only different universities and entirely different incidents but also an entirely different country seems unwise to me.

[underseacables]

The tenure system. It protects more bad professors than it retains good ones.

[rscho]

No tenure, no exploratory science and no moonshot. Newton was a dangerous asshole. Would you exchange differential calculus for squeaky-clean academia? I don't think so ...

[b3morales]

There's an old quote to the effect that, if forced to choose one thing to destroy: either the Principia Mathematica or the Sistine Chapel*, choose the Principia. The reason? The Principia is a monumental achievement, but it's also universal, and it can be rediscovered. The paintings are the unique creation of one moment in time, unduplicatable.

*Or some other work of art; I can't remember the original exactly.

[sdenton4]

Well, it's not a real choice... We also had Leibniz.

[iamadog3]

There's a lot of questions that we need to address, cause and effect in the case of tenure and the general priorities of academia.

First you implicitly assert that tenure effects the cause of emergent moonshots. How much evidence do we have to the contrary? Cursory research shows the modern application in the US dating to the vague "19th century" not a long timeframe. Tenure itself appears to have emerged in the same timeframe. The modern US application of tenure (secondary) was put in place in 1940.

I'll grant you that we have seen a good deal of progress, but I don't know that you could make a robust argument that without tenure, that progress would be absent. I would assert that it falls into inconclusivity, and that to form an argument would require speculation and conjecture. All things are not made equal, and so finding a suitable control group to compare against would be impossible.

We can look at history, though, and see that there was a plenitude of highly driven scientists publishing and advancing understanding prior to the advent of tenure. But to say that we can transpose that to the contemporary model itself is a conjecture.

Simply, we do not know, and can not know.

As to the priorities of academia, and tenured individuals, and the metrics that institutions use to enlighten themselves on the performance of individuals we seem to have come upon a system of perverse incentives. That is exactly everything, to me, it seems we had ought to avoid. Tenured academics can obviously be terminated, but not in frivolous contexts. They are expected to hold some degree of real responsibility. What tenure grants is their freedom of opinion, and the right to fail in their pursuit. As we know, science is the art of failing upwards in a controlled direction.

"In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead. Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." --Theodore Herfurth, 1894

But the cutthroat competition, the model of "publish or perish" elimination, the perverted demand for conclusivity all stand to imperil the actual aims of science. This is all somewhat incentivized by the tenure system, by personal interest, and by the implicit obligation to "realized" progress - except this is of course not real progress. It isn't as concrete as the fundamentals, the traces are laid much finer these days and replication of research appears more often infrequent, while the quality of publications is increasingly called into question and an economy of debauchery contaminates data for capital and personal gain. And thus the bastion of humanity is corroded while evermore maintaining its authority outward. A real hazard if you ask me.

I believe it all needs reform and serious reflection to build it back better.

[hellbannedguy]

Tenure

I had a professor in a chemistry lab that was proud of the amount of complaints he received against him.

He literally threw the two ring binder it at me while I was in his office. It must have been a hundred pages. He kept it on the wall like a trophy.

I talked to a Counselor at the school, and before I could complete my sentance, he said Dr. Berzergian? (I don't remember the exact spelling of his name.). The Conselor said he, and the Dr., almost got into fisticuffs over his attitude. He told me to take the course at another college.

I realized later all his "problem" students were young males.

Yes--I truly believe this was his twisted way of hitting on people.

A few years later, I was in a bar in San Francisco talking about this professor whom really gave me a bad time. By chance, he knew of the guy, and told me about him.

This was in the nineties, but oh boy if he acted this way today, and I stole that stack of complaints---well who knows?

This professor caused students to change majors, and even drop out.

[zaphod12]

I'm sorry to be this guy, but it's "tenure"

[rscho]

Getting tenure means (ideally) that the system considers you have proven yourself as a competent researcher and therefore accepts to release a bit of pressure on publishing to allow you to pursue more exploratory objectives. It does not mean you're allowed to behave badly and (officially) does not protect oneself from the consequences of such behaviour. Remove tenure and you remove the last bastion of real research we have left in our industrialized and quasi-corporate western research institutions.

Removing tenure would completely trash western science and in practice yield total scientific leadership to eastern powers, who still have old style academic systems with strong tenure positions and less concern for academic mistreatment and "wokeness".

[soco]

Where do you draw the line for tenure? So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it. How about hitting them with a baseball bat? How much tenure we need for that? Should Einstein be allowed to kill physicists because he's a genius? If we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff, let's make it official and negotiate the legal borders.

[rscho]

> So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it

> we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff

Re-read my above comment. Never said that. I said removing tenure entirely is a very bad idea for the health of western science.

[soco]

Removing tenure is indeed a very bad idea. However I think we're talking about using tenure as a hall pass for whatever asocial attitude some might practice. Because hitting your fellow researchers with a binder doesn't do much to advance science, that's for for sure... it's not like the tenured scientists had all the answers and by being aggressive they actually quench different - and possibly novel - ideas.

[whatshisface]

There's nothing in tenure that requires universities to force bad teachers to continue teaching.

[a1369209993]

For that matter, there's nothing in tenure that requires universities to allow bad teachers to continue teaching. Tell him to go research something, and if anyone thinks his attitude is worth dealing with for his expertice, they can approach him volutarily.

[raverbashing]

And this is what students pay thousands of dollars per year for?

Yeah, there are bad teachers and there's this.

Why this kinds of abuse is tolerated is anyone's guess. But school and college management are usually too coward to deal with those issues.

[jjoonathan]

Supply and demand. Everyone wants to do cutting edge research but nobody wants to pay for it. People who know how to get it paid for hold all the cards and can therefore get away with anything.