17 ms·

“The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research or merit.”

145 points by intunderflow 5y ago

exmadscientist 5y ago
I was fortunate to learn this lesson as an undergrad. My then-advisor, who could only be described as somewhere between "monster" and "disaster", who could not teach, could not lead a research team, and most certainly could not mentor (except as an anti-example!) somehow got promoted to full professor. Our group was shocked, and I learned something important about academia.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low" -- Wallace Stanley Sayre¹ ¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Also attributed to Clark Kerr.
jl2718 5y ago
He says it’s about nebulous politicking, but I have just a hunch that it’s more about fundraising.
- KSteffensen 5y ago
  My impression is that those are the same thing.
bakuninsbart 5y ago
You can't flee from "Office politics", it is everywhere in life. In fact, I consider it a talent for a person to be able to judge someone's merits fairly if they dislike them. Academia seems to be very extreme on this though, because a lot of professor and admin jobs are "islands with a king" where merit is much harder to define than in a department of a company for example.
- captainmuon 5y ago
  I don't know. I make a point of refusing to do office politics and being purposely fact-oriented, honest and "naive". It probably blocks some career possibilities but enables me to get things done where others can't, and I like to think also gain my colleagues' trust. I found inside a given university job, lets say a PhD or postdoc, it is easy to just do your thing and ignore politics. There is almost no consequences for anything, as opposed to in industy. The kicker is only when you switch jobs. You need to have connections, and goodwill. So, once you have a permanent position and are the king of the island, you can basically do whatever you want. You only have to play politics with the university leadership and funding agencies, but otherwise you can just do your thing. Of course, for the less priviliged people under you, this feels like politicking.
- Ataraxiaist 5y ago
  In a non-academic setting though I have not seen the extremely brilliant person get anything other than the promotions they deserve. The problem I have seen is that a huge percent of the average thinks they are that brilliant person when they simply are not. I know I surely am not. Academia though is a completely different animal. The whole system is completely broken beyond repair. Like trying to keep a 1992 Ford Taurus on the road in 2022. We are just setting money on fire to drive a piece of shit instead of investing in a new car.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
TedShiller 5y ago
Why does this person think they need to give him a reason? That’s not how hiring or promotions or tenure works. If you don’t get the job there is no obligation to tell you why.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  Note to self, never work for this man
- zivkovicp 5y ago
  Just out of common, and professional courtesy.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The usual reason is if you give a reason, then they'll argue with you about it and perhaps even sue that the reason is unfair. The safest course is to not give a reason.
  - sideshowb 5y ago
    Unfortunately this is often the case for hiring. It shouldn't be, but it is. When it comes to promotions it's a shitty employer that doesn't tell their people how to improve.
- gspr 5y ago
  Then I guess you same logic applies if you go to the store to buy some groceries, and one day they say "you, you right there, TedShiller, you're not allowed to buy apples from this establishment!" They have no obligation to tell you why, but society agrees that they owe you an explanation. Apparently you don't?
gfd 5y ago
> “But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?” I am not from academia, but can someone explain the "game" to me? Why do senior faculty win or lose based on who gets tenure?
- travisgriggs 5y ago
  (I have an extended family member who is currently a research assistant at MIT). Different faculty have different areas of expertise and research. Let's say you've got a handful of professors in the economics department. Each one has a thing (or two) that they're currently all about. One might be about international fraud, another about comparative economics, maybe another is into the whole basic income thing, so on and so forth. Each vies to attract other talent to the university that is complimentary or congruent to their own. They tend to want to see that grown into a larger "program" at the university, a sort of cabal. Academic merit is valuable as a second tier priority. You won't people that further your area of passionate research, and you want the people that do it best. And so those climbing the ladder, have to choose research that appeals to the people they want to retain them.
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inopinatus 5y ago
It's extraordinary to imagine that someone published books and papers in major journals without noticing the framework in which they did so. > one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hard work. MIT is an organisation, a body corporate; it is not the reification of some Platonic ideal of academe; and organisations are inevitably about resourcing, and teamwork. If you want recognition for individual merit, become an Olympic athlete. But of course, you'll then discover, that's about resourcing, and teamwork, too.
- cato_the_elder 5y ago
  Well, not all organizations need to be strict bureaucracies. Bell Labs didn't work that way. You could certainly argue that the giant bureaucracy model hasn't worked very well for science. Even if you think it has worked well, I think you could see why some people may not like being an ever smaller cog in an ever-growing soul-crushing machine.
  - inopinatus 5y ago
    That's pretty rich coming from a 2,200-year-old Roman consul who commanded thousands and literally wrote the first how-to guide of abusive labor practices in the mass agricultural sector.
    - cato_the_elder 5y ago
      :-)) I just noticed that I'm defending César. That's cruel to my great-grandson.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > It's extraordinary to imagine that someone published books and papers in major journals without noticing the framework in which they did so. When I was doing my PhD I found departments varied wildly, even within the same university. One of my colleagues, a PhD student in the biological sciences, was expected to come in 7 days a week, including christmas day, and regularly worked 10+ hours a day. His professor did have papers in science and nature though. Another colleague, a PhD student in the math department, estimated he got about 3 hours of useful math done in a day, spent the rest of his time in recreation, and completed his PhD a year ahead of schedule. An academic who took the norms of one department and tried to apply them in the other might find themselves unpopular in their new department, no matter which direction they went.
mam4 5y ago
throw3838 5y ago
》I was the only Hispanic faculty at my department, had 13k+ citations, 2 books, & papers in Nature, Science, & PNAS Author complains about merit, but list his race BEFORE his credentials.
- nawgz 5y ago
  Yes, he is leading the reader to the conclusion he drew by illustrating first his otherness and then his high performance. I don't see how this would serve as a counter-example to the claim "merit doesn't matter as much as <being in the in-group>" or whatever he claims supplants merit.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Minor nitpick: Hispanic is really not a race, even in the American world where Caucasian (which is always hilarious to me because, you know, the Caucasus is a real place) and "black" are ( and they aren't).
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    What is “really” a race anyway? Why wouldn’t Hispanic be a real race, but being black be?
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Scientifically, "Black" is probably less of a race than "Hispanic" in a global context, possibly that's reversed if you focus just on USA though. And neither are really races as science says were all the human race, just if you were going to say genetic similarity is 'race' that would be the case because of the vast diversity in African genetics that happen to have dark skin (which isnt even necessary to be 'black' in the usa.)
      - snicker7 5y ago
        Race is a social construct invented by colonizers (whites) as a way to categorize and other-ize everyone else. It has no biological or ethnic or cultural meaning. Race is not an inherent thing, but a complex relationship between groups of people with unequal power and privileges.
raverbashing 5y ago
> But one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hardwork. Yeah sorry about the disappointment. But no. Academia is very far removed from that. And probably even before you think. I might say we got good ideas from there not because Academia favours ideas and hard work (it doesn't), but despite of that.
gnicholas 5y ago
> “Look Cesar, the truth is that, if you are a mediocre researcher, but your department wants to keep you, they’ll find a way to keep you. And if you are a strong researcher, and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you.” Having seen people go through the tenure process at peer institution, this sounds right. Your department writes up an internal assessment of you and solicits letters from faculty at other institutions. They can stack the deck in your favor, and to some extent against you, by choosing favorable or unfavorable letter-writers. The people who review a tenure file that the department writes up can push back or ask questions, but it would be difficult for them to undo the effect of a department's framing — if the department worked hard to shade it one way or the other. > I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department. I don't think conclusion is warranted. Even if the people in a department don't want you around, if you have outside interest they would look like fools to have not tenured you. If you are sufficiently excellent to get outside interest from peer institutions, your home institution will be pressured to grant you tenure as well. They might not make you the most compelling offer to stay, but you will get tenure.
- overeater 5y ago
  This Reddit post offers an explanation, "From what I understand (second-hand info), personality not productivity drove this decision. He ran an unhappy lab, and he was arrogant even for MIT. I can definitely see that in the way he presents himself, so I can give credence to that explanation. Don’t know personally so he could be a great guy and I’m wrong, but there are valid reasons someone can be denied tenure even with research that goes above and beyond, and it isn’t hard to imagine that being the case here." https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/sv34ez/tenure_denial_at_mit_media_lab_in_2018_despite/hxe5tvn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/sv34ez/tenure_d...
  - sva_ 5y ago
    It does sound plausible, but I wouldn't put too much weight on such Reddit chatter, nor spread such gossiping rumors. That level of indirection ("reddit guy who knows a friend but isn't sure") is worse than "my aunt's neighbor's nephew". Imagine somebody did this about you, that'd suck.
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captainmuon 5y ago
I don't understand why hiring in academia is so weird. People are strung along for years, and then you are suddenly either out or you have tenure for life. (A friend compared a professorship it to being the pope, which I think is fitting.) You need to have a perfect track record. You have to have worked in a couple of different places, with no gaps, you need a lot of publications and "visibility". And even then, in my experience about 50% of positions are given on merit, and 50% are given seemingly randomly. Even if you are incredibly self-confident and count yourself among the top 5%, it is still a gamble. Academia works like a guild, or maybe like the military (up or out). But it seems everybody would benefit if hiring was changed to be more like outside academia. No more temporary positions vs unfireable professors, but instead hire everybody on regular open-ended contracts. Don't insist on an unbroken career and years of travelling journeymanship, but value broad experiences and career changers. I know a lot of people who are considered academic failures but were welcomed in industry "with kisses". I don't think the cause is just resistance from entrenched people, or ideology. There is a lot of neoliberal pressure to run universities more like companies. And I guess hiring is one of the few areas where this would not be a bad thing. Is it just shortsightedness then? Or lack of funding, and scarcity of jobs?
- gus_massa 5y ago
  If you can't get a tenure at MIT, you can try at a second tier university. If that fails, you can try at t third tier university. You will get a lower pay and less money for research projects and travel, and the students will be not as brilliant. Also, you may have to teach more courses and have less research time.
  - NonEUCitizen 5y ago
    Or try for a university in the wealthier parts of Asia and possibly get paid more?
  - balsam 5y ago
    Yeah this guy moved on to Toulouse in France it seems. He obviously had/has options, but I cant blame him for feeling betrayed.
goethes_kind 5y ago
The author is probably much smarter than me, but at the same time, I cannot imagine what kind of immature manchild he must be, to write such a banal article. Like, of course you have to develop and maintain a good relationship with your prospective coworkers if you hope to get handed a lifetime position working with them. Considering this amount of immaturity, I can extrapolate a few reasons why they were not keen on keeping him around forever.
- 3836293648 5y ago
  You realise this is a twitter thread through a reader, right? And not an article
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    So? It's written and published; what's the diff? (No, I don't think "the medium is the message".)
webmaven 5y ago
> In hindsight it was obvious. But one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hardwork. Ideas and hard work are extremely powerful, so of course they are weaponized in service to internal politics and power plays. So, what scores you points is working hard to further others' ideas and making them more powerful.
medimikka 5y ago
The corollary here is, and it is one I strongly support, that it doesn't matter how good you're in your job if you're a douche. I don't know the author, and it may totally be the case that, in a faculty that is anything but homogenous, there is a specific bias against Hispanics (that is not shared by above proportionally represented other minorities). But there's equally and probably more prevalently, a case to be made for the "decency is optional" culture in academia. We're essentially used to the eccentrics and outright incompatible with social life figures that wander our halls. The guy who never showers and seems to bathe in cat urine every morning, but it kept on because he once was fifth author on a paper written by a Nobel laureate. The professor who never shows up but gets all offended if you ask for help or presence at a faculty meeting. The prima donna who stormed out of a disciplinary meeting against them because the water they were served was not sparkly and did not have the right temperature. MIT's Media Lab seems to have taken strides to break this mold. Before his ties with Epstein came to light, Joi Ito was the director, he is followed by Dava Newmann. It hosts labs such as "Poetic Justice: exploring new forms of social justice through art," and more. There are always two sides to a story, and the other side might very well be one of "yeah, you're a decent researcher but your behavior does not fit into the changing landscape of our academic climate."
- manholio 5y ago
  One thing that can make you immediately unpopular in a community is implicitly accusing the community of racism when that's not actually the case, or, perversely, if it's a relatively small issue. A minority individual trying to gain the approval of the majority is in a bad Nash equilibrium spot and cannot openly confront latent racist attitudes without triggering an imediate community defense.
Barrin92 5y ago
>“I am sorry, I am not going to be able to simply talk about research. I just learned that my tenure case was denied.” He looked at me & said instantly: “But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?” He understood the game. My mistake was thinking I was a player when I was a pawn. I don't get it, the entire piece is a man old enough to qualify for tenure discovering that politics exists in academia? Written in the prose style of a Dan Brown novel? Could have at least given us the meat of the story here about what actually transpired because I honestly can't take that at face value
qalmakka 5y ago
The world of academia is neither meritocratic nor fair. Everything from start to finish is based on mere politics, boot licking and any shenanigan known to man. There's are lots and lots of spoiled apples anywhere, no matter the country or institution.
throwaway984393 5y ago
A meritocracy might not be based on what you consider to be merit-worthy. Maybe politics and fundraising is the ability/achievement that advancement is based on.
throwaway22032 5y ago
Everything is simultaneously not about merit but also about merit. You don't get the biggest house through "merit" of being the best person. You get it via the "merit" of competing along all axes in the best way.
WalterBright 5y ago
A longtime friend of mine wanted to go into academics instead of business because academics was meritocratic and pure and free of the taint of profit seeking. Years of academia disabused him of that notion, and he decided to go into government service because that was meritocratic and pure and free of profit-seeking and the ills that afflicted academia. He discovered to his chagrin that government service was all politics. It was kinda brutal to his notions of meritocracy. The thing about business, though, is that failure to make a profit has a way of clearing out the deadwood and "purifying" the behavior of the business.
- everdrive 5y ago
  It’s politics all the way down. You’ll never remove politics from any human organization. All you can do is shuffle around the winners and losers.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  We need a politics MOOS (and no, I don't mean teenage years). Human limits (communication, understanding, trust) cause politics everywhere.
stavros 5y ago
I seem to be reading this differently from most people here. To me, this post reads like someone who's hard to work with. He listed his race first, coloring the entire rest of the story, and then he went on to air the seemingly confidential advice his president gave him in good faith. It's also a bit puzzling that he didn't realize that "being liked" is a valuable skill, and dismisses it as "I thought it would only be on merit, rather than any other pesky things like working well with people", as if that doesn't factor into merit. I wouldn't be surprised if it was his personality that lost him the position, instead of his race.
- emsy 5y ago
  Do you prefer bad research because the researcher is liked? Because this is what it ultimately boils down to. Ideally, meritocracy would be the most important factor. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be treated by the least competent but most liked surgeon. Why should it be any different in other professions?
  - stavros 5y ago
    If nobody wants to work with you, you won't be able to get research done. You shouldn't get tenure if you're so toxic that you make N other researchers quit. I prefer three good researchers to a great one. The exchange rate is not even close.
  - rizzaxc 5y ago
    It's not an either or. There's a threshold for everything. Saying "this is what it ultimately boils down to" is a slippery slope fallacy
  - mickeyk 5y ago
    Have you ever seen how many authors are on a research paper? Research in most disciplines is not some lone person at a bench doing experiments, it's a collection of people looking at previous work, generating new ideas, and testing them. People like to downplay effective teamwork as "office politics" but the best research comes not only from intelligence or "merit" but also from the ability to work effectively with others.
otikik 5y ago
What I am reading is that it's still about merit. It's just that part of that merit is being a good team member. Understanding other's motivations, helping them when you can, not standing in their way, etc. You don't have to be a people pleaser or a yes-man, but you must behave in a way that makes people want to have you around. Of course that includes providing good results in the more technical parts of the work. The fact that the author choose to name that "office politics" and "being liked by your department" (as if that was a bad thing?) seems to imply that maybe they have not yet fully understood that.
- fphhotchips 5y ago
  That's not what's being said here - you've missed the last line. The question is who stands to gain politically if this person is promoted? If the answer is no one, then it is in no ones interest to push the case for tenure. Frequently politics and 'being liked' are very different.
- native_samples 5y ago
  You say tomayto, I say tomahto. Academia's biggest problem is a severe lack of people willing to say, "that is wrong and you aren't doing real science". When you read the academic literature what you see is endless oceans of pseudo-scientific garbage, whole fields that evaporate when carefully examined by outsiders. This is correctly destroying people's confidence in science, and all the institutions that have implicitly hitched their own authority to that of "science" (e.g. public health, governments, legacy media). It shows just how far academia has decayed that tenure is now being restricted to people who others like to have around when the whole point of ideas like tenure and academic freedom was to empower people who are not good team members, and who can thus advance science in big ways by challenging the orthodoxy of the day. That sort of distinction is the justification for academia's existence. If they're only going to recruit people pleasing yes-men a.k.a. team players who they like to be around, why bother with academia at all? The results from corporate science labs are more relevant and don't need subsidies, after all.
  - balsam 5y ago
    It’s funny that you mention pseudoscientific garbage here. Apparently, Cesar Hildalgo’s phd advisor was Barabasi, the ardent promoter of the “scale-free network” concept. Which, while hot last decade, has (to put it charitably) gone out of fashion: https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2018/02/scant-evidence-of-power-laws-found-in-real-world-networks-20180215.pdf https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2018/02/scant-... I wonder if his advisor’s “bad luck” had rubbed off on him.
jokoon 5y ago
It's going to take a lot of years for people to realize merit doesn't exist. I wish people would read more Bourdieu. Merit is some fictional carrot you give to children so they can study at school. The whole concept of the degree is also quite pointless. Why grade the work of students? Why introduce competition in learning? What's the point of filtering students when they apply? Why would one school be prestigious and not another? People go to school to learn, so why put a limit on learning by measuring performance? Just look at this one simple fact: if merit does exist, then why are we still doing interviews? Because in the end, we want group homogeneity. People want to "feel" each other, they don't really care about competence or skill, they want other metrics that are far, far away from merit: politics, culture, identity, etc.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  > I wish people would read more Bourdieu. Any good starting points?
  - jokoon 5y ago
    The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relations to Culture (1979) Masculine Domination (2001) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977) State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (1998) He intervened several times on TV and there are audios of him, in french. Maybe youtube does auto subtitles.
sytelus 5y ago
This is sensational title but things are taken way out of context. In academia, it's all about respect from peers. One can publish 100s of papers and it doesn't mean a shit. Only their peers know that they are shit. If your own department has low opinion of you then there is a lot of self-reflection needed. This might mean that you been busy on quantity rather than quality. Or that you are not a good collaborator. MIT president gave a frank answer and there is nothing wrong with it. The "mediocre" or "good" research is defined by respect from your peers, not by number of citations or number of papers. Those metrics are gamed every day.
- vasco 5y ago
  Seems a bit pointed to speak so matter of factly about this being out of context unless you were there. For all we know the peers loved the author but "the boss" wanted to give tenure to someone else. The author is a bit naive though in this view of the world that either a place is either a pure meritocracy or the absolute opposite. Props to the president for being so candid with them and sharing what's what.
abhv 5y ago
I am a professor and have served on tenure committees in computer science. The process at a MIT Media Lab could be different, and other factors may have been at work here. But here are some observations to help interpret the interesting story: 1. When you go for tenure, your tenure committee solicits letters from 8-10 external reviewers who you have not written papers with, have grants with, etc; i.e., "arms-length" letters from experts in your field. These letter writers generally need to be "full professors" (i.e., tenured, which means "Associate Professor", and then promoted post-tenure to "Full Professor"). These letters are a crucial aspect of a tenure case. For tenure at a place like MIT, these letters basically need to say that "you are the top person in your field" and who "is driving a significant line of work in the field..." etc. Even if you have "2 books, 13k citations, and a few good papers at top venues" as the OP author does, this is a very high bar to clear. If there is another researcher at a less prestigious place who is doing as well or better, this is going to be a structural problem for your tenure at a top-5 place. There are several people who I know in CS who have amazing groundbreaking results in CS who did not get tenure at MIT, and I've guessed this to be the reason. They go on to great amazing places and continue their work (like this author has seemed to do). 2. Above is the process at the top 5 CS schools; it is different at schools in the 5-30 ranked places. I have never seen the type of politics this author talks about. For the most part, pre-tenure professors (called "Assistant Professors") get annual feedback on how they are doing. They get a 3-year review which is a "mini-tenure" case to pinpoint any issues with their record so they have a chance to improve it. And when they prepare their cases, they get a lot of help from mentors in the department. Tenure committees are supportive and try to present the strongest case possible. I am sure there are political places, in which this "who benefits from your tenure" argument makes sense. Maybe the media lab is one such place. My point is that academia is still, for the most part, a model of a great working environment which allows people to thrive and reach their potential. 3. It is a huge privilege to hold an academic position. We produce more research scientists than there are academic spots in the US. I can think of top researchers in the US who could have easily cleared the MIT tenure bar, but who are at "lower ranked" places for various reasons. This author is still doing academic work, and thus has a very fulfilling career in which they drive their own agenda. I for one feel extremely lucky to be an academic; I know there are other people in this world who are more capable than me and would have done better than me had they been given the same resources and opportunities.
zerr 5y ago
Isn't the "culture fit" the same thing in a (non-academia) private sector as well? Usually, the premise here is that being a "good person" has a higher priority over being a "highly-skilled person". And of course, nepotism, favoritism and elitism in academia is a totally different dimension as well.
danielrpa 5y ago
We are hearing just one side of what happened. I'm sure tenure, as promotions in companies, are about a lot more than merit. But do we even know if this person is a MIT tenured professor caliber? Maybe they are simply not as good as MIT expects. Maybe they are arrogant, unpleasant or hard to work with. I have been on corporate promotion committees where I rejected, and have seen others rejecting, promotion cases. Everybody thinks they are amazing and deserve to be promoted. Trust me, that's not always the case.
bachmeier 5y ago
It's worth pointing out that this is not a story about "academia". What happens in the top few schools is not a good indicator of how stuff gets done at the vast majority of institutions of higher education. An obvious one is that there's no mention of the quality of undergraduate instruction. Compare that with a small liberal arts college, where there might be no discussion of research in a tenure decision. Another way in which MIT is different is that there's no such thing as getting tenure at MIT due to merit. They can have their pick of researchers from around the world. It's a question of the type of department/institution they want to build. Fit is important - finding qualified people willing to take an offer is not a challenge if you're MIT.
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hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
To be honest, I found this to be a painful read, as I often find when I think the author is woefully lacking in self awareness: > “Look Cesar, the truth is that, if you are a mediocre researcher, but your department wants to keep you, they’ll find a way to keep you. And if you are a strong researcher, and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you.” > I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department. The first paragraph basically defines every group of humans in the history of humanity. If you are trying to join a group (and, mind you, under rules that can make it extremely difficult if not impossible to ever kick you out of that group), if people plain old just don't like you, they will try very hard not to let you in the group. You can complain about this being "office politics", but that's just plain old human nature. And the fact that the author thinks the second paragraph, a conclusion that "The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit", follows from the first, just shows a woeful lack of understanding around how human groups organize. I'm certainly not denying some places have worse office politics than others, and academia is famous for "the emotions are so high because the stakes are so low"- type of drama, but when I see missives like this, where the author just seems so clueless as to how corporations functions, I feel a ton of pity for him, but also can't help but think I probably wouldn't want to work with him either.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  He doesn't go into why they didn't like him, but he doesn't seem particularly surprised, either.
- namelessoracle 5y ago
  Academia attracts these types like a moth to a flame. It's a type of arrested development. They go from high school, to high school plus (modern college), and then they don't know what to do enter the "real world" and so they stay in school and get upper graduate degrees.
vehemenz 5y ago
Honestly, I don't buy the incredulity. Even first year PhD students know about faculty politics and how it shapes your future. And to expect anything different at MIT?
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commandlinefan 5y ago
> and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you That's not MIT or even academia, that's everywhere. Once I realized that bonuses and promotions are just popularity contests, it completely changed the way I approach work.
etempleton 5y ago
This is true almost anywhere. You need to be likable or people won’t do you any favors. Doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. With that said, academic hiring is a broken process. Professors should be hired and fired like anyone else. It would benefit everyone except already tenured professors who have decided to coast after making tenure. Tenured professors who are doing great would have better job prospects and be able to move more freely as there would be more open competition for top talent.
Vaslo 5y ago
We are only hearing one side. I worked in graduate research and we had some very angry and difficult professors who were denied tenure despite solid publications. They had a lot of challenges getting folks wanting to work for them, and typically had to farm overseas to (barely) fill their lab. They were terrible leaders, difficult people, and mediocre at best in teaching. Even with a solid background in research they were viewed as a liability and there was the tough decision of hoping the devil you don’t know (whoever takes that spot) than the devil you do know, who you are denying tenure. Also, I don’t see anywhere that this is about race and not sure why he is bring it up.

145 points by intunderflow 5y ago

I was fortunate to learn this lesson as an undergrad. My then-advisor, who could only be described as somewhere between "monster" and "disaster", who could not teach, could not lead a research team, and most certainly could not mentor (except as an anti-example!) somehow got promoted to full professor. Our group was shocked, and I learned something important about academia.

inopinatus 5y ago
"The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low" -- Wallace Stanley Sayre¹ ¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Also attributed to Clark Kerr.

jl2718 5y ago

He says it’s about nebulous politicking, but I have just a hunch that it’s more about fundraising.

KSteffensen 5y ago
My impression is that those are the same thing.

bakuninsbart 5y ago

You can't flee from "Office politics", it is everywhere in life. In fact, I consider it a talent for a person to be able to judge someone's merits fairly if they dislike them. Academia seems to be very extreme on this though, because a lot of professor and admin jobs are "islands with a king" where merit is much harder to define than in a department of a company for example.

captainmuon 5y ago
I don't know. I make a point of refusing to do office politics and being purposely fact-oriented, honest and "naive". It probably blocks some career possibilities but enables me to get things done where others can't, and I like to think also gain my colleagues' trust. I found inside a given university job, lets say a PhD or postdoc, it is easy to just do your thing and ignore politics. There is almost no consequences for anything, as opposed to in industy. The kicker is only when you switch jobs. You need to have connections, and goodwill. So, once you have a permanent position and are the king of the island, you can basically do whatever you want. You only have to play politics with the university leadership and funding agencies, but otherwise you can just do your thing. Of course, for the less priviliged people under you, this feels like politicking.
Ataraxiaist 5y ago
In a non-academic setting though I have not seen the extremely brilliant person get anything other than the promotions they deserve. The problem I have seen is that a huge percent of the average thinks they are that brilliant person when they simply are not. I know I surely am not. Academia though is a completely different animal. The whole system is completely broken beyond repair. Like trying to keep a 1992 Ford Taurus on the road in 2022. We are just setting money on fire to drive a piece of shit instead of investing in a new car.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

TedShiller 5y ago

Why does this person think they need to give him a reason? That’s not how hiring or promotions or tenure works. If you don’t get the job there is no obligation to tell you why.

sideshowb 5y ago
Note to self, never work for this man
zivkovicp 5y ago
Just out of common, and professional courtesy.
WalterBright 5y ago
The usual reason is if you give a reason, then they'll argue with you about it and perhaps even sue that the reason is unfair. The safest course is to not give a reason.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  Unfortunately this is often the case for hiring. It shouldn't be, but it is. When it comes to promotions it's a shitty employer that doesn't tell their people how to improve.
gspr 5y ago
Then I guess you same logic applies if you go to the store to buy some groceries, and one day they say "you, you right there, TedShiller, you're not allowed to buy apples from this establishment!" They have no obligation to tell you why, but society agrees that they owe you an explanation. Apparently you don't?

gfd 5y ago

> “But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?” I am not from academia, but can someone explain the "game" to me? Why do senior faculty win or lose based on who gets tenure?

travisgriggs 5y ago
(I have an extended family member who is currently a research assistant at MIT). Different faculty have different areas of expertise and research. Let's say you've got a handful of professors in the economics department. Each one has a thing (or two) that they're currently all about. One might be about international fraud, another about comparative economics, maybe another is into the whole basic income thing, so on and so forth. Each vies to attract other talent to the university that is complimentary or congruent to their own. They tend to want to see that grown into a larger "program" at the university, a sort of cabal. Academic merit is valuable as a second tier priority. You won't people that further your area of passionate research, and you want the people that do it best. And so those climbing the ladder, have to choose research that appeals to the people they want to retain them.

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inopinatus 5y ago

It's extraordinary to imagine that someone published books and papers in major journals without noticing the framework in which they did so. > one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hard work. MIT is an organisation, a body corporate; it is not the reification of some Platonic ideal of academe; and organisations are inevitably about resourcing, and teamwork. If you want recognition for individual merit, become an Olympic athlete. But of course, you'll then discover, that's about resourcing, and teamwork, too.

cato_the_elder 5y ago
Well, not all organizations need to be strict bureaucracies. Bell Labs didn't work that way. You could certainly argue that the giant bureaucracy model hasn't worked very well for science. Even if you think it has worked well, I think you could see why some people may not like being an ever smaller cog in an ever-growing soul-crushing machine.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  That's pretty rich coming from a 2,200-year-old Roman consul who commanded thousands and literally wrote the first how-to guide of abusive labor practices in the mass agricultural sector.
  - cato_the_elder 5y ago
    :-)) I just noticed that I'm defending César. That's cruel to my great-grandson.
michaelt 5y ago
> It's extraordinary to imagine that someone published books and papers in major journals without noticing the framework in which they did so. When I was doing my PhD I found departments varied wildly, even within the same university. One of my colleagues, a PhD student in the biological sciences, was expected to come in 7 days a week, including christmas day, and regularly worked 10+ hours a day. His professor did have papers in science and nature though. Another colleague, a PhD student in the math department, estimated he got about 3 hours of useful math done in a day, spent the rest of his time in recreation, and completed his PhD a year ahead of schedule. An academic who took the norms of one department and tried to apply them in the other might find themselves unpopular in their new department, no matter which direction they went.

mam4 5y ago

throw3838 5y ago

》I was the only Hispanic faculty at my department, had 13k+ citations, 2 books, & papers in Nature, Science, & PNAS Author complains about merit, but list his race BEFORE his credentials.

nawgz 5y ago
Yes, he is leading the reader to the conclusion he drew by illustrating first his otherness and then his high performance. I don't see how this would serve as a counter-example to the claim "merit doesn't matter as much as <being in the in-group>" or whatever he claims supplants merit.
sofixa 5y ago
Minor nitpick: Hispanic is really not a race, even in the American world where Caucasian (which is always hilarious to me because, you know, the Caucasus is a real place) and "black" are ( and they aren't).
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  What is “really” a race anyway? Why wouldn’t Hispanic be a real race, but being black be?
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Scientifically, "Black" is probably less of a race than "Hispanic" in a global context, possibly that's reversed if you focus just on USA though. And neither are really races as science says were all the human race, just if you were going to say genetic similarity is 'race' that would be the case because of the vast diversity in African genetics that happen to have dark skin (which isnt even necessary to be 'black' in the usa.)
    - snicker7 5y ago
      Race is a social construct invented by colonizers (whites) as a way to categorize and other-ize everyone else. It has no biological or ethnic or cultural meaning. Race is not an inherent thing, but a complex relationship between groups of people with unequal power and privileges.

raverbashing 5y ago

> But one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hardwork. Yeah sorry about the disappointment. But no. Academia is very far removed from that. And probably even before you think. I might say we got good ideas from there not because Academia favours ideas and hard work (it doesn't), but despite of that.

gnicholas 5y ago

> “Look Cesar, the truth is that, if you are a mediocre researcher, but your department wants to keep you, they’ll find a way to keep you. And if you are a strong researcher, and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you.” Having seen people go through the tenure process at peer institution, this sounds right. Your department writes up an internal assessment of you and solicits letters from faculty at other institutions. They can stack the deck in your favor, and to some extent against you, by choosing favorable or unfavorable letter-writers. The people who review a tenure file that the department writes up can push back or ask questions, but it would be difficult for them to undo the effect of a department's framing — if the department worked hard to shade it one way or the other. > I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department. I don't think conclusion is warranted. Even if the people in a department don't want you around, if you have outside interest they would look like fools to have not tenured you. If you are sufficiently excellent to get outside interest from peer institutions, your home institution will be pressured to grant you tenure as well. They might not make you the most compelling offer to stay, but you will get tenure.

overeater 5y ago
This Reddit post offers an explanation, "From what I understand (second-hand info), personality not productivity drove this decision. He ran an unhappy lab, and he was arrogant even for MIT. I can definitely see that in the way he presents himself, so I can give credence to that explanation. Don’t know personally so he could be a great guy and I’m wrong, but there are valid reasons someone can be denied tenure even with research that goes above and beyond, and it isn’t hard to imagine that being the case here." https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/sv34ez/tenure_denial_at_mit_media_lab_in_2018_despite/hxe5tvn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/sv34ez/tenure_d...
- sva_ 5y ago
  It does sound plausible, but I wouldn't put too much weight on such Reddit chatter, nor spread such gossiping rumors. That level of indirection ("reddit guy who knows a friend but isn't sure") is worse than "my aunt's neighbor's nephew". Imagine somebody did this about you, that'd suck.

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captainmuon 5y ago

I don't understand why hiring in academia is so weird. People are strung along for years, and then you are suddenly either out or you have tenure for life. (A friend compared a professorship it to being the pope, which I think is fitting.) You need to have a perfect track record. You have to have worked in a couple of different places, with no gaps, you need a lot of publications and "visibility". And even then, in my experience about 50% of positions are given on merit, and 50% are given seemingly randomly. Even if you are incredibly self-confident and count yourself among the top 5%, it is still a gamble. Academia works like a guild, or maybe like the military (up or out). But it seems everybody would benefit if hiring was changed to be more like outside academia. No more temporary positions vs unfireable professors, but instead hire everybody on regular open-ended contracts. Don't insist on an unbroken career and years of travelling journeymanship, but value broad experiences and career changers. I know a lot of people who are considered academic failures but were welcomed in industry "with kisses". I don't think the cause is just resistance from entrenched people, or ideology. There is a lot of neoliberal pressure to run universities more like companies. And I guess hiring is one of the few areas where this would not be a bad thing. Is it just shortsightedness then? Or lack of funding, and scarcity of jobs?

gus_massa 5y ago
If you can't get a tenure at MIT, you can try at a second tier university. If that fails, you can try at t third tier university. You will get a lower pay and less money for research projects and travel, and the students will be not as brilliant. Also, you may have to teach more courses and have less research time.
- NonEUCitizen 5y ago
  Or try for a university in the wealthier parts of Asia and possibly get paid more?
- balsam 5y ago
  Yeah this guy moved on to Toulouse in France it seems. He obviously had/has options, but I cant blame him for feeling betrayed.

goethes_kind 5y ago

The author is probably much smarter than me, but at the same time, I cannot imagine what kind of immature manchild he must be, to write such a banal article. Like, of course you have to develop and maintain a good relationship with your prospective coworkers if you hope to get handed a lifetime position working with them. Considering this amount of immaturity, I can extrapolate a few reasons why they were not keen on keeping him around forever.

3836293648 5y ago
You realise this is a twitter thread through a reader, right? And not an article
- CRConrad 5y ago
  So? It's written and published; what's the diff? (No, I don't think "the medium is the message".)

webmaven 5y ago

> In hindsight it was obvious. But one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hardwork. Ideas and hard work are extremely powerful, so of course they are weaponized in service to internal politics and power plays. So, what scores you points is working hard to further others' ideas and making them more powerful.

medimikka 5y ago

The corollary here is, and it is one I strongly support, that it doesn't matter how good you're in your job if you're a douche. I don't know the author, and it may totally be the case that, in a faculty that is anything but homogenous, there is a specific bias against Hispanics (that is not shared by above proportionally represented other minorities). But there's equally and probably more prevalently, a case to be made for the "decency is optional" culture in academia. We're essentially used to the eccentrics and outright incompatible with social life figures that wander our halls. The guy who never showers and seems to bathe in cat urine every morning, but it kept on because he once was fifth author on a paper written by a Nobel laureate. The professor who never shows up but gets all offended if you ask for help or presence at a faculty meeting. The prima donna who stormed out of a disciplinary meeting against them because the water they were served was not sparkly and did not have the right temperature. MIT's Media Lab seems to have taken strides to break this mold. Before his ties with Epstein came to light, Joi Ito was the director, he is followed by Dava Newmann. It hosts labs such as "Poetic Justice: exploring new forms of social justice through art," and more. There are always two sides to a story, and the other side might very well be one of "yeah, you're a decent researcher but your behavior does not fit into the changing landscape of our academic climate."

manholio 5y ago
One thing that can make you immediately unpopular in a community is implicitly accusing the community of racism when that's not actually the case, or, perversely, if it's a relatively small issue. A minority individual trying to gain the approval of the majority is in a bad Nash equilibrium spot and cannot openly confront latent racist attitudes without triggering an imediate community defense.

Barrin92 5y ago

>“I am sorry, I am not going to be able to simply talk about research. I just learned that my tenure case was denied.” He looked at me & said instantly: “But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?” He understood the game. My mistake was thinking I was a player when I was a pawn. I don't get it, the entire piece is a man old enough to qualify for tenure discovering that politics exists in academia? Written in the prose style of a Dan Brown novel? Could have at least given us the meat of the story here about what actually transpired because I honestly can't take that at face value

qalmakka 5y ago

The world of academia is neither meritocratic nor fair. Everything from start to finish is based on mere politics, boot licking and any shenanigan known to man. There's are lots and lots of spoiled apples anywhere, no matter the country or institution.

throwaway984393 5y ago

A meritocracy might not be based on what you consider to be merit-worthy. Maybe politics and fundraising is the ability/achievement that advancement is based on.

throwaway22032 5y ago

Everything is simultaneously not about merit but also about merit. You don't get the biggest house through "merit" of being the best person. You get it via the "merit" of competing along all axes in the best way.

WalterBright 5y ago

A longtime friend of mine wanted to go into academics instead of business because academics was meritocratic and pure and free of the taint of profit seeking. Years of academia disabused him of that notion, and he decided to go into government service because that was meritocratic and pure and free of profit-seeking and the ills that afflicted academia. He discovered to his chagrin that government service was all politics. It was kinda brutal to his notions of meritocracy. The thing about business, though, is that failure to make a profit has a way of clearing out the deadwood and "purifying" the behavior of the business.

everdrive 5y ago
It’s politics all the way down. You’ll never remove politics from any human organization. All you can do is shuffle around the winners and losers.
agumonkey 5y ago
We need a politics MOOS (and no, I don't mean teenage years). Human limits (communication, understanding, trust) cause politics everywhere.

stavros 5y ago

I seem to be reading this differently from most people here. To me, this post reads like someone who's hard to work with. He listed his race first, coloring the entire rest of the story, and then he went on to air the seemingly confidential advice his president gave him in good faith. It's also a bit puzzling that he didn't realize that "being liked" is a valuable skill, and dismisses it as "I thought it would only be on merit, rather than any other pesky things like working well with people", as if that doesn't factor into merit. I wouldn't be surprised if it was his personality that lost him the position, instead of his race.

emsy 5y ago
Do you prefer bad research because the researcher is liked? Because this is what it ultimately boils down to. Ideally, meritocracy would be the most important factor. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be treated by the least competent but most liked surgeon. Why should it be any different in other professions?
- stavros 5y ago
  If nobody wants to work with you, you won't be able to get research done. You shouldn't get tenure if you're so toxic that you make N other researchers quit. I prefer three good researchers to a great one. The exchange rate is not even close.
- rizzaxc 5y ago
  It's not an either or. There's a threshold for everything. Saying "this is what it ultimately boils down to" is a slippery slope fallacy
- mickeyk 5y ago
  Have you ever seen how many authors are on a research paper? Research in most disciplines is not some lone person at a bench doing experiments, it's a collection of people looking at previous work, generating new ideas, and testing them. People like to downplay effective teamwork as "office politics" but the best research comes not only from intelligence or "merit" but also from the ability to work effectively with others.

otikik 5y ago

What I am reading is that it's still about merit. It's just that part of that merit is being a good team member. Understanding other's motivations, helping them when you can, not standing in their way, etc. You don't have to be a people pleaser or a yes-man, but you must behave in a way that makes people want to have you around. Of course that includes providing good results in the more technical parts of the work. The fact that the author choose to name that "office politics" and "being liked by your department" (as if that was a bad thing?) seems to imply that maybe they have not yet fully understood that.

fphhotchips 5y ago
That's not what's being said here - you've missed the last line. The question is who stands to gain politically if this person is promoted? If the answer is no one, then it is in no ones interest to push the case for tenure. Frequently politics and 'being liked' are very different.
native_samples 5y ago
You say tomayto, I say tomahto. Academia's biggest problem is a severe lack of people willing to say, "that is wrong and you aren't doing real science". When you read the academic literature what you see is endless oceans of pseudo-scientific garbage, whole fields that evaporate when carefully examined by outsiders. This is correctly destroying people's confidence in science, and all the institutions that have implicitly hitched their own authority to that of "science" (e.g. public health, governments, legacy media). It shows just how far academia has decayed that tenure is now being restricted to people who others like to have around when the whole point of ideas like tenure and academic freedom was to empower people who are not good team members, and who can thus advance science in big ways by challenging the orthodoxy of the day. That sort of distinction is the justification for academia's existence. If they're only going to recruit people pleasing yes-men a.k.a. team players who they like to be around, why bother with academia at all? The results from corporate science labs are more relevant and don't need subsidies, after all.
- balsam 5y ago
  It’s funny that you mention pseudoscientific garbage here. Apparently, Cesar Hildalgo’s phd advisor was Barabasi, the ardent promoter of the “scale-free network” concept. Which, while hot last decade, has (to put it charitably) gone out of fashion: https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2018/02/scant-evidence-of-power-laws-found-in-real-world-networks-20180215.pdf https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2018/02/scant-... I wonder if his advisor’s “bad luck” had rubbed off on him.

jokoon 5y ago

It's going to take a lot of years for people to realize merit doesn't exist. I wish people would read more Bourdieu. Merit is some fictional carrot you give to children so they can study at school. The whole concept of the degree is also quite pointless. Why grade the work of students? Why introduce competition in learning? What's the point of filtering students when they apply? Why would one school be prestigious and not another? People go to school to learn, so why put a limit on learning by measuring performance? Just look at this one simple fact: if merit does exist, then why are we still doing interviews? Because in the end, we want group homogeneity. People want to "feel" each other, they don't really care about competence or skill, they want other metrics that are far, far away from merit: politics, culture, identity, etc.

dorchadas 5y ago
> I wish people would read more Bourdieu. Any good starting points?
- jokoon 5y ago
  The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relations to Culture (1979) Masculine Domination (2001) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977) State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (1998) He intervened several times on TV and there are audios of him, in french. Maybe youtube does auto subtitles.

sytelus 5y ago

This is sensational title but things are taken way out of context. In academia, it's all about respect from peers. One can publish 100s of papers and it doesn't mean a shit. Only their peers know that they are shit. If your own department has low opinion of you then there is a lot of self-reflection needed. This might mean that you been busy on quantity rather than quality. Or that you are not a good collaborator. MIT president gave a frank answer and there is nothing wrong with it. The "mediocre" or "good" research is defined by respect from your peers, not by number of citations or number of papers. Those metrics are gamed every day.

vasco 5y ago
Seems a bit pointed to speak so matter of factly about this being out of context unless you were there. For all we know the peers loved the author but "the boss" wanted to give tenure to someone else. The author is a bit naive though in this view of the world that either a place is either a pure meritocracy or the absolute opposite. Props to the president for being so candid with them and sharing what's what.

abhv 5y ago

I am a professor and have served on tenure committees in computer science. The process at a MIT Media Lab could be different, and other factors may have been at work here. But here are some observations to help interpret the interesting story: 1. When you go for tenure, your tenure committee solicits letters from 8-10 external reviewers who you have not written papers with, have grants with, etc; i.e., "arms-length" letters from experts in your field. These letter writers generally need to be "full professors" (i.e., tenured, which means "Associate Professor", and then promoted post-tenure to "Full Professor"). These letters are a crucial aspect of a tenure case. For tenure at a place like MIT, these letters basically need to say that "you are the top person in your field" and who "is driving a significant line of work in the field..." etc. Even if you have "2 books, 13k citations, and a few good papers at top venues" as the OP author does, this is a very high bar to clear. If there is another researcher at a less prestigious place who is doing as well or better, this is going to be a structural problem for your tenure at a top-5 place. There are several people who I know in CS who have amazing groundbreaking results in CS who did not get tenure at MIT, and I've guessed this to be the reason. They go on to great amazing places and continue their work (like this author has seemed to do). 2. Above is the process at the top 5 CS schools; it is different at schools in the 5-30 ranked places. I have never seen the type of politics this author talks about. For the most part, pre-tenure professors (called "Assistant Professors") get annual feedback on how they are doing. They get a 3-year review which is a "mini-tenure" case to pinpoint any issues with their record so they have a chance to improve it. And when they prepare their cases, they get a lot of help from mentors in the department. Tenure committees are supportive and try to present the strongest case possible. I am sure there are political places, in which this "who benefits from your tenure" argument makes sense. Maybe the media lab is one such place. My point is that academia is still, for the most part, a model of a great working environment which allows people to thrive and reach their potential. 3. It is a huge privilege to hold an academic position. We produce more research scientists than there are academic spots in the US. I can think of top researchers in the US who could have easily cleared the MIT tenure bar, but who are at "lower ranked" places for various reasons. This author is still doing academic work, and thus has a very fulfilling career in which they drive their own agenda. I for one feel extremely lucky to be an academic; I know there are other people in this world who are more capable than me and would have done better than me had they been given the same resources and opportunities.

zerr 5y ago

Isn't the "culture fit" the same thing in a (non-academia) private sector as well? Usually, the premise here is that being a "good person" has a higher priority over being a "highly-skilled person". And of course, nepotism, favoritism and elitism in academia is a totally different dimension as well.

danielrpa 5y ago

We are hearing just one side of what happened. I'm sure tenure, as promotions in companies, are about a lot more than merit. But do we even know if this person is a MIT tenured professor caliber? Maybe they are simply not as good as MIT expects. Maybe they are arrogant, unpleasant or hard to work with. I have been on corporate promotion committees where I rejected, and have seen others rejecting, promotion cases. Everybody thinks they are amazing and deserve to be promoted. Trust me, that's not always the case.

bachmeier 5y ago

It's worth pointing out that this is not a story about "academia". What happens in the top few schools is not a good indicator of how stuff gets done at the vast majority of institutions of higher education. An obvious one is that there's no mention of the quality of undergraduate instruction. Compare that with a small liberal arts college, where there might be no discussion of research in a tenure decision. Another way in which MIT is different is that there's no such thing as getting tenure at MIT due to merit. They can have their pick of researchers from around the world. It's a question of the type of department/institution they want to build. Fit is important - finding qualified people willing to take an offer is not a challenge if you're MIT.

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hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

To be honest, I found this to be a painful read, as I often find when I think the author is woefully lacking in self awareness: > “Look Cesar, the truth is that, if you are a mediocre researcher, but your department wants to keep you, they’ll find a way to keep you. And if you are a strong researcher, and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you.” > I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department. The first paragraph basically defines every group of humans in the history of humanity. If you are trying to join a group (and, mind you, under rules that can make it extremely difficult if not impossible to ever kick you out of that group), if people plain old just don't like you, they will try very hard not to let you in the group. You can complain about this being "office politics", but that's just plain old human nature. And the fact that the author thinks the second paragraph, a conclusion that "The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit", follows from the first, just shows a woeful lack of understanding around how human groups organize. I'm certainly not denying some places have worse office politics than others, and academia is famous for "the emotions are so high because the stakes are so low"- type of drama, but when I see missives like this, where the author just seems so clueless as to how corporations functions, I feel a ton of pity for him, but also can't help but think I probably wouldn't want to work with him either.

commandlinefan 5y ago
He doesn't go into why they didn't like him, but he doesn't seem particularly surprised, either.
namelessoracle 5y ago
Academia attracts these types like a moth to a flame. It's a type of arrested development. They go from high school, to high school plus (modern college), and then they don't know what to do enter the "real world" and so they stay in school and get upper graduate degrees.

vehemenz 5y ago

Honestly, I don't buy the incredulity. Even first year PhD students know about faculty politics and how it shapes your future. And to expect anything different at MIT?

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commandlinefan 5y ago

> and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you That's not MIT or even academia, that's everywhere. Once I realized that bonuses and promotions are just popularity contests, it completely changed the way I approach work.

etempleton 5y ago

This is true almost anywhere. You need to be likable or people won’t do you any favors. Doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. With that said, academic hiring is a broken process. Professors should be hired and fired like anyone else. It would benefit everyone except already tenured professors who have decided to coast after making tenure. Tenured professors who are doing great would have better job prospects and be able to move more freely as there would be more open competition for top talent.

Vaslo 5y ago

We are only hearing one side. I worked in graduate research and we had some very angry and difficult professors who were denied tenure despite solid publications. They had a lot of challenges getting folks wanting to work for them, and typically had to farm overseas to (barely) fill their lab. They were terrible leaders, difficult people, and mediocre at best in teaching. Even with a solid background in research they were viewed as a liability and there was the tough decision of hoping the devil you don’t know (whoever takes that spot) than the devil you do know, who you are denying tenure. Also, I don’t see anywhere that this is about race and not sure why he is bring it up.