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Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked with him on a project as a student and said half the team dropped out due to his behavior. He would call the remaining team at 2am or 3am to yell at them sometimes (according to my friend). I'm not sure how I feel about this coming out. I don't get the feeling that he's doing this on purpose. I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. At the same time, he's been making people feel like shit for decades. Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions. What if not understanding social conventions comes off to others as bullying, though? Racket could be better off without him. He might be brilliant, but he is so difficult to work with, he hurts his own project.

EGreg 5y ago
I met Richard Stallman’s lawyer several years ago, having made an appointment with him to discuss our open source framework, Qbix. Eben Moglen had a nice office near Lincoln Center in NYC. Somehow on the way to the office, he had taken a look at our site and mistook something on it... by the time I arrived, he spent the entire time yelling at me and berating whatever he could find out about me. A very strange character. Having said that, he did help me find out what I was after: how to make sure large corporations wouldn’t use my open source code while smaller ones could — we should use Affero GPL. So, all in all it was a productive meeting. But still, it was pretty surreal. Apparently he has done it with other people too: https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook-2/ https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit... There is more to this. A couple years prior he had encouraged four NYU students to start Diaspora, a similar project to ours...
- NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago
  Sounds like a difficult experience for you, but the other example you cite (https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook-2/ https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit...) does not seem to reinforce your point that he's some sort of abusive individual. It belongs on one of those "Journalists Posting Their Ls" accounts on Twitter. The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned. It's hard to comprehend why some people are so allergic to the entire notion of personal responsibility; that changing the world starts with changing your behavior, not just bleating about it online and waiting for some regulator to fix your problems (whose incentives are likely not aligned with yours anyway).
  - nl 5y ago
    > The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned. It's interesting that I read the same reporting as you, and to me Moglen comes off as a zealot who is unable to see anyone else's point of view. I think this is best shown by this exchange: "Me: Well just for me personally right now, the utility seems to— Mr. Moglen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! You see that’s not true....."
- nirui 5y ago
  > all in all it was a productive meeting Maybe this is the reason. Some people are Result-driven, and would take anything "appreciate" to get the result. Even when the word "appreciate" is at it's lowest standard (Like, "The goal is reached, and no body is dead/jailed because of my action"). I said that because I'm a Result-driven person myself. And I (and many others, not rare, really) have this sociopathic ability to completely disconnect myself from other people's emotions while still remain rational. In that mode, I'm capable to say and do a lots of awful things without feeling even a slightest of guilt, in fact, I wouldn't feel anything emotional (That is, I can be yelling while completely emotionless). Of course, I can switch it back and immediately become empathic. For me, it's all by choice. Trying to put myself into his shoes, I guess maybe he thinks it's OK because "Things still gets done", maybe it's a compatibility test on whether or not he will still be "Accepted" after all that, or maybe it's a warning to show the bar of his tolerance. Personally, I wouldn't think too much of it, because the goal is reached (Oh wait...)
slibhb 5y ago
This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a path around them. Keep the professor who makes students cry but don't require anyone to take his classes, ensure that there's a path to a degree that goes around him. We should keep in mind that there may be no correlation between being a douchebag and being talented but there's also no correlation between being nice and being talented.
- chevill 5y ago
  >Training them to play nice may not be possible. I'm autistic. It is possible for the socially inept to learn to be less of an asshole and to have better interactions with other people. I did it and we should expect everyone to make an effort to be kinder.
  - jolux 5y ago
    I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some of the more clever ones are indeed rude and socially inept. They also invariably believe that their rudeness is an inescapable aspect of their brilliance, but knowing a lot of brilliant people, autistic and not, this is just untrue.
    - 123123as1asd12 5y ago
      The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,
chris_wot 5y ago
that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it No, normal civil behaviour is "the way it is", and he needs to get used to it.
Santosh83 5y ago
Anyone can throw dirt on identified people who will suffer real world consequences from anonymous internet throwaway handles and unsubstantiated claims. Why should anyone take anything you say as credible. You and your friends should either raise formal charges of harassment or at least come out with your real identities. Otherwise this smells like opportunistic attempt at cancelling someone.
- snotrockets 5y ago
  And then someone wonders vocally why people don't make complaints of harassment.
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions. When and where was that?
- sdenton4 5y ago
  somewhere between richard stallman's office mattress and jeffery epstein's wallet, perhaps.
wolverine876 5y ago
> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. It's an issue of power. If they didn't have power, nobody would say that. If a student behaved that way toward Felleisen, certainly nobody would say that to Felleisen. Power corrupts.
- RobertKerans 5y ago
  Or it reveals?
  - tasuki 5y ago
    I believe it rather corrupts. I believe most people go to politics with genuine intentions to make things better. Then they face a situation in which they either have to sacrifice their ethics and win, or keep their ethics and lose. Guess which ones eventually prevail. I'm from a post-communist country, and I've seen many former dissidents, who clearly had stellar ethics (often they were made to suffer for publicly opposing communism), who got into power after the revolution and their behaviour became more and more ethically questionable over time.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    No more than opportunities to do good reveal. We all have good and bad in us. Today you have an opportunity - do some good!
anon3664573346 5y ago
I also had a bad experience with him years ago at a time I was considering going back to academia, which contributed in my decision to stay in the industry. I don't think the details are important but yeah, he wasn't the nicest person on the table, made several comments that where really out of place, none of the professors around said anything but a couple just left the table in a way that made think that this was a common behaviour from him. It surprised me that such an important character in the PL community could say such things and walk out like nothing. I believe most people could easily get fired from a company nowadays if they made similar comments. Anyway, it's good to see he's taking some time to analyse how he interacts with other people.
goto11 5y ago
> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. Perhaps, but usually bullies are only bullies when they are in a position of power and are perfectly capable of behaving different to people who have power over them. How often to you hear about employees calling their boss and screaming at the boss at 3 in the morning? Strangely this rarely happens. > What if not understanding social conventions comes off to others as bullying, though? If you know who you can bully and who not to bully that means you do understand social conventions.
- blagie 5y ago
  I know a lot of people like that. I'm from a culture which is perceived as abrasive, harsh, critical, and aggressive in the US. That goes up, down, and sideways. We're often perceived as bullies until we learn to code-switch. African Americans get a pass here, since most people are familiar enough with African American culture and mannerisms to know how (or at least that) people use language differently, body language differently, and raised tones mean different things. Immigrants don't get that pass. I'm from a culture most Americans wouldn't recognize as a distinct culture -- there just aren't enough of us here. For my culture, what you described would be a fine litmus test -- if someone is harsh downwards, they're a bully. If someone is harsh up and down, it's a cultural difference. There are other cultures which are more hierarchical there, though. One of the key things to remember is that people condition to cultural communication styles growing up. When someone yells at me in contexts where an American would totally feel bad and bullied, I don't feel that way. The emotional meaning of expressions and communication styles changes. The same tone-of-voice can convey loss-of-control in one culture, aggression in another, and excitement in a third. Coincidentally, without cross-cultural background, we perceive Americans as insincere, plasticity, dishonest, and political. Everyone smiles all the time, even if they hate you, and even the most common question, "How are you?" results in a lie. I'm firmly convinced that the way to inclusiveness is on the receiving end -- it's a lot easier to learn to interpret that an American isn't being dishonest with fake smiles and constant white lies designed than it is to change how one speaks. Receiving end also doesn't mean adopting one cultural style over another.
  - 5y ago
StellaX 5y ago
Ha. I had a CTO who was so bad that people literally hung up in the middle of a phone call with him and walked away from his project. With "I will not work with this guy ever again". Or a freelancer who, when renewing his contract put an extra clause in it, stating something like "I officially to refuse to work with this guy". Or he unknowingly blamed another guy for a work somebody else did in the past and he recommended him to leave the company. The later was out of pure malice. Or once in a month or so he went on a psychotic rage against someone. The list is longer. Only a handful of people are capable of working with him over the years. And even that looks a bit like some weak form of servitude. Nobody really likes him. He's been having just one buddy in the whole company of ~150 people. And even this guy is a bit antisocial, lone standing figure. And the two don't work on the same project. It's been perfectly clear, this guy has some personality disorder and once a colleague who was interested in psychology told us what it is. Some sort of psychopathy, IIRC.
Crontab 5y ago
> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is I doubt this is true. I would wager that he doesn't treat those with power over him this way. He probably does it because he knows he can.
mathattack 5y ago
Apparently you’re not the only subordinate he’s loaded off in academia. https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html

EGreg 5y ago

I met Richard Stallman’s lawyer several years ago, having made an appointment with him to discuss our open source framework, Qbix. Eben Moglen had a nice office near Lincoln Center in NYC. Somehow on the way to the office, he had taken a look at our site and mistook something on it... by the time I arrived, he spent the entire time yelling at me and berating whatever he could find out about me. A very strange character. Having said that, he did help me find out what I was after: how to make sure large corporations wouldn’t use my open source code while smaller ones could — we should use Affero GPL. So, all in all it was a productive meeting. But still, it was pretty surreal. Apparently he has done it with other people too: https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook-2/ https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit... There is more to this. A couple years prior he had encouraged four NYU students to start Diaspora, a similar project to ours...

NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago
Sounds like a difficult experience for you, but the other example you cite (https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook-2/ https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit...) does not seem to reinforce your point that he's some sort of abusive individual. It belongs on one of those "Journalists Posting Their Ls" accounts on Twitter. The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned. It's hard to comprehend why some people are so allergic to the entire notion of personal responsibility; that changing the world starts with changing your behavior, not just bleating about it online and waiting for some regulator to fix your problems (whose incentives are likely not aligned with yours anyway).
- nl 5y ago
  > The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned. It's interesting that I read the same reporting as you, and to me Moglen comes off as a zealot who is unable to see anyone else's point of view. I think this is best shown by this exchange: "Me: Well just for me personally right now, the utility seems to— Mr. Moglen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! You see that’s not true....."
nirui 5y ago
> all in all it was a productive meeting Maybe this is the reason. Some people are Result-driven, and would take anything "appreciate" to get the result. Even when the word "appreciate" is at it's lowest standard (Like, "The goal is reached, and no body is dead/jailed because of my action"). I said that because I'm a Result-driven person myself. And I (and many others, not rare, really) have this sociopathic ability to completely disconnect myself from other people's emotions while still remain rational. In that mode, I'm capable to say and do a lots of awful things without feeling even a slightest of guilt, in fact, I wouldn't feel anything emotional (That is, I can be yelling while completely emotionless). Of course, I can switch it back and immediately become empathic. For me, it's all by choice. Trying to put myself into his shoes, I guess maybe he thinks it's OK because "Things still gets done", maybe it's a compatibility test on whether or not he will still be "Accepted" after all that, or maybe it's a warning to show the bar of his tolerance. Personally, I wouldn't think too much of it, because the goal is reached (Oh wait...)

slibhb 5y ago

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a path around them. Keep the professor who makes students cry but don't require anyone to take his classes, ensure that there's a path to a degree that goes around him. We should keep in mind that there may be no correlation between being a douchebag and being talented but there's also no correlation between being nice and being talented.

chevill 5y ago
>Training them to play nice may not be possible. I'm autistic. It is possible for the socially inept to learn to be less of an asshole and to have better interactions with other people. I did it and we should expect everyone to make an effort to be kinder.
- jolux 5y ago
  I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some of the more clever ones are indeed rude and socially inept. They also invariably believe that their rudeness is an inescapable aspect of their brilliance, but knowing a lot of brilliant people, autistic and not, this is just untrue.
  - 123123as1asd12 5y ago
    The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,

chris_wot 5y ago

that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it No, normal civil behaviour is "the way it is", and he needs to get used to it.

Santosh83 5y ago

Anyone can throw dirt on identified people who will suffer real world consequences from anonymous internet throwaway handles and unsubstantiated claims. Why should anyone take anything you say as credible. You and your friends should either raise formal charges of harassment or at least come out with your real identities. Otherwise this smells like opportunistic attempt at cancelling someone.

snotrockets 5y ago
And then someone wonders vocally why people don't make complaints of harassment.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

> Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions. When and where was that?

sdenton4 5y ago
somewhere between richard stallman's office mattress and jeffery epstein's wallet, perhaps.

wolverine876 5y ago

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. It's an issue of power. If they didn't have power, nobody would say that. If a student behaved that way toward Felleisen, certainly nobody would say that to Felleisen. Power corrupts.

RobertKerans 5y ago
Or it reveals?
- tasuki 5y ago
  I believe it rather corrupts. I believe most people go to politics with genuine intentions to make things better. Then they face a situation in which they either have to sacrifice their ethics and win, or keep their ethics and lose. Guess which ones eventually prevail. I'm from a post-communist country, and I've seen many former dissidents, who clearly had stellar ethics (often they were made to suffer for publicly opposing communism), who got into power after the revolution and their behaviour became more and more ethically questionable over time.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  No more than opportunities to do good reveal. We all have good and bad in us. Today you have an opportunity - do some good!

anon3664573346 5y ago

I also had a bad experience with him years ago at a time I was considering going back to academia, which contributed in my decision to stay in the industry. I don't think the details are important but yeah, he wasn't the nicest person on the table, made several comments that where really out of place, none of the professors around said anything but a couple just left the table in a way that made think that this was a common behaviour from him. It surprised me that such an important character in the PL community could say such things and walk out like nothing. I believe most people could easily get fired from a company nowadays if they made similar comments. Anyway, it's good to see he's taking some time to analyse how he interacts with other people.

goto11 5y ago

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. Perhaps, but usually bullies are only bullies when they are in a position of power and are perfectly capable of behaving different to people who have power over them. How often to you hear about employees calling their boss and screaming at the boss at 3 in the morning? Strangely this rarely happens. > What if not understanding social conventions comes off to others as bullying, though? If you know who you can bully and who not to bully that means you do understand social conventions.

blagie 5y ago
I know a lot of people like that. I'm from a culture which is perceived as abrasive, harsh, critical, and aggressive in the US. That goes up, down, and sideways. We're often perceived as bullies until we learn to code-switch. African Americans get a pass here, since most people are familiar enough with African American culture and mannerisms to know how (or at least that) people use language differently, body language differently, and raised tones mean different things. Immigrants don't get that pass. I'm from a culture most Americans wouldn't recognize as a distinct culture -- there just aren't enough of us here. For my culture, what you described would be a fine litmus test -- if someone is harsh downwards, they're a bully. If someone is harsh up and down, it's a cultural difference. There are other cultures which are more hierarchical there, though. One of the key things to remember is that people condition to cultural communication styles growing up. When someone yells at me in contexts where an American would totally feel bad and bullied, I don't feel that way. The emotional meaning of expressions and communication styles changes. The same tone-of-voice can convey loss-of-control in one culture, aggression in another, and excitement in a third. Coincidentally, without cross-cultural background, we perceive Americans as insincere, plasticity, dishonest, and political. Everyone smiles all the time, even if they hate you, and even the most common question, "How are you?" results in a lie. I'm firmly convinced that the way to inclusiveness is on the receiving end -- it's a lot easier to learn to interpret that an American isn't being dishonest with fake smiles and constant white lies designed than it is to change how one speaks. Receiving end also doesn't mean adopting one cultural style over another.
- 5y ago

StellaX 5y ago

Ha. I had a CTO who was so bad that people literally hung up in the middle of a phone call with him and walked away from his project. With "I will not work with this guy ever again". Or a freelancer who, when renewing his contract put an extra clause in it, stating something like "I officially to refuse to work with this guy". Or he unknowingly blamed another guy for a work somebody else did in the past and he recommended him to leave the company. The later was out of pure malice. Or once in a month or so he went on a psychotic rage against someone. The list is longer. Only a handful of people are capable of working with him over the years. And even that looks a bit like some weak form of servitude. Nobody really likes him. He's been having just one buddy in the whole company of ~150 people. And even this guy is a bit antisocial, lone standing figure. And the two don't work on the same project. It's been perfectly clear, this guy has some personality disorder and once a colleague who was interested in psychology told us what it is. Some sort of psychopathy, IIRC.

Crontab 5y ago

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is I doubt this is true. I would wager that he doesn't treat those with power over him this way. He probably does it because he knows he can.

mathattack 5y ago

Apparently you’re not the only subordinate he’s loaded off in academia. https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html