I don't know much about this guy's story, but I do remember from my time as a UC Berkeley undergrad that being a popular lecturer with the students is a sure fi

I don't know much about this guy's story, but I do remember from my time as a UC Berkeley undergrad that being a popular lecturer with the students is a sure fire way to get yourself unpopular with the tenured staff. The brass professors at UC Berkeley seemed to be catty like that in all departments. They didn't like it when some young gun became more popular than them for teaching the same topics that they'd been teaching for a generation. Which makes sense, popular professor sell things and get rich, and they way they saw it, they weren't going to lose to some young upstart.