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I feel compelled to respond to his (by no means unique) claims about teaching and tenure. "Doing a good job with teaching is perversely seen as a cardinal sin

I feel compelled to respond to his (by no means unique) claims about teaching and tenure. "Doing a good job with teaching is perversely seen as a cardinal sin in some departments." Name one. Give some examples. If you're going to play this game of taking the obviously popular side of "ethical enough to do your job" then you need to be more forthcoming. The part about teaching is self-promotional BS. Perhaps in the very best departments, where they have so much money that good researchers rarely teach, tenure decisions are not based solely on research. There are very few institutions for which that is true though. You don't have to be a star teacher, but claiming that anyone not entertaining the students at a level to win university-wide teaching awards means they are "Torturing a captive audience every semester with soul-sapping lectures is criminal theft of tuition" is quite a jump. This is one of the most arrogant blog posts I've ever read. He did what most faculty members do to get tenure. He did research, teaching, and service at an acceptable level.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
He mentioned his adviser, Olin Shivers (works on Scheme, inventor of CFA, very famous in PL).
- bachmeier 11y ago
  He was at Georgia Tech. The tenure standards are very high. It's unlikely that he was denied tenure because he won a teaching award.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    No, there was politics involved, as always. And that dean is no longer there, I heard.
    - mattmight 11y ago
      Olin (my advisor) deserved tenure on his strength as a teacher alone. (If tenure were awarded on such things anyway.) He also founded the entire field of static analysis for higher-order languages (like Scheme, Python and Haskell). His long-term research impact has been extremely significant. It's hard to figure out any surface reasoning on which to deny him tenure, except that he refuses to thin-slice his work into many tiny papers. He operates on the model of "one paper = one major idea." Denying Olin tenure (after an overwhelming faculty vote in favor of tenure) seemed to me to be the tipping point that led ultimately to the ouster of the Dean.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago

He mentioned his adviser, Olin Shivers (works on Scheme, inventor of CFA, very famous in PL).

bachmeier 11y ago
He was at Georgia Tech. The tenure standards are very high. It's unlikely that he was denied tenure because he won a teaching award.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  No, there was politics involved, as always. And that dean is no longer there, I heard.
  - mattmight 11y ago
    Olin (my advisor) deserved tenure on his strength as a teacher alone. (If tenure were awarded on such things anyway.) He also founded the entire field of static analysis for higher-order languages (like Scheme, Python and Haskell). His long-term research impact has been extremely significant. It's hard to figure out any surface reasoning on which to deny him tenure, except that he refuses to thin-slice his work into many tiny papers. He operates on the model of "one paper = one major idea." Denying Olin tenure (after an overwhelming faculty vote in favor of tenure) seemed to me to be the tipping point that led ultimately to the ouster of the Dean.