5 ms·

Why I Jumped Off the Ivory Tower

63 points by cantankerous 13y ago

shaggyfrog 13y ago
In case anyone else sees an almost-empty page, it looks like Ghostery ends up blocking all the content. Or should I say, the owner of the website has inextricably and inexplicably tied the basic functionality of their blog to an advertising script (Disqus). Very lame.
- jafaku 13y ago
  The same happened to me, the page is broken.
- triplesec 13y ago
  it works for me. I'm on chrome in win32 on this machine, running flashblock, should any of that be relevant.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Ironically: with Javascript entirely disabled, it works. Still, that's flag-worthy.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  In what way Disqus is an advertising script?
  - spindritf 13y ago
    It's not but if you configure Ghostery's filters strictly, it blocks a lot of third party elements that are widespread on the web and as such can be used to track you. Ghostery in general doesn't target ads in particular. That's what AdBlock is for.
doctorpangloss 13y ago
>I should begin by acknowledging that I've had some major and sometimes quite public conflicts with my home department and administration, especially about their treatment of my spouse, which I strongly believe to be the result of highly sexist attitudes. What does that concretely mean?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dead_phish 13y ago
  If you go back through his archives (which took more time than I thought it would) you find a FAQ post about an essay concerning alleged sexual discrimination in his wife's tenure hearing [1] (it's referenced here [2]). Both claim to have links to the original article, but they're dead. EDIT: Concretely? It seems like his wife was up for tenure and was denied it on account of what the author claims was sexism, based on past actions of the administrators in his department. [1] http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com/2012/03/sex-discrimination-essay-ifaq.html?m=1 http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com/2012/03/sex-discrimination-... [2]http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-accusation-of-sexism.html http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-...
auctiontheory 13y ago
My impression of (tenured) academics is a lot like my impression of Microsoft: they're making out like bandits in the short-term, while seriously head-in-sand about fundamental changes necessary to tackle the long-term.
- slurry 13y ago
  In the short term the pay is not so great and getting worse, in the long term they still can't get fired. Your analogy does not work. Unless you are talking about their administrators. In which case yes, quite a bit like Microsoft.
- zainny 13y ago
  I don't think "making out like bandits" is accurate at all. Tenured academics don't seem like they make all that much money and I think most would make more in corporate.
- grovulent 13y ago
  This comment sounds flippant - but it has some truth... I've had a lot of experience with many academics from many different disciplines, from science to media studies, to philosophy. The sense in which they are 'making out like bandits' in the short term is simply the kind of isolated freedom that tenured academics have been able to enjoy for so long. They only have to talk to one another and get the esteem of their most immediate peers - but beyond that the world leaves them alone. The sense in which they have their head in the sand is that the world is increasingly asking them to justify their existence more and more - which is forcing academics to engage in various ways more with the external world. And naturally, they don't enjoy doing this. But rather than bite the bullet and tackle full on the problem of demonstrating their value - they just become somewhat histrionic at the suggestion that they have to justify themselves... and in the end - and this is the important bit - FAIL to deliver a coherent defense. And before you say it: "Academics need to be left alone to their own devices otherwise you won't get innovations borne of long terms motivation and incomprehensible (to the common folk) abstract thinking." This doesn't help - even if true. Because what is needed is a cost-benefit analysis of all the wasted resources going into the research community as a result of tenured academic life vs the the innovations that this system alone could produce. I for one have no idea how to a) identify the innovations the definitively WOULDN'T have been generated by an alternative system, nor do I - b) know how to measure the costs. However, the one group of people that probably are smart enough to figure out an answer to this are the people who don't want to even consider the question. (If anyone knows of actual research on this question - I'd be very interested).
mathattack 13y ago
It's hard to imagine questioning a tenure decision on your wife can ever end well. Not that you shouldn't stand by your spouse, but anything you say will appear biased. I suspect that Mizzou knew they would lose both of them. Here is a slightly sympathetic commentary. http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-accusation-of-sexism.html?m=1 http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-... EDIT: Fixed a typo.
pfortuny 13y ago
He is so right on the 'interdisciplinary' thing: as long as you try to learn something new, you are wasting your time (not only from the financial standpoint but also from the 'status' one). Even more: those interdisciplinary studies will most likely be seen as 'not interesting' by each of the 'departments' they link. So... less ranking for your possible publications. And on and on and on. It takes guts not to grind the same mill as everybody. And of course, it requires a permanent position to begin with! Otherwise, you will not get it.
- mathattack 13y ago
  There are reasons that departments exist, and that they are primary. For better or worse, you trade off interdisciplinary studies (and organizational flexibility) when you have a tenure driven department system. My impression is that some schools (MIT & Stanford?) seem to get it right, but most don't. Of course getting interdisciplinary right could just be the job of the real world.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    Oh, certainly, I am not the one to disagree on then necessity of departments. The problem is that Rectors seem to push for "interdisciplinarity" but without any reward for it in any way. So, it is just grandiloquent speech as far as it goes on like this.
blakesterz 13y ago
As a recovering Academic myself I really enjoyed this post. And as good as it is, that first comment really moved it from good to legendary: "Like many career academics your pompous prose distracts from the content of your argument."
sfbsfbsfb 13y ago
What I took from this story was a first hand account of resistance to change. This does not bode well for the ability of specific academic departments to maintain relevance in the years ahead. Experimentation in the best ways to educate has been embraced by the private sector. It will be interesting to watch the level of competition that universities can provide.
Anon84 13y ago
Just a small datapoint when it comes interdisciplinarity, at least when it comes to Physics. I'm faculty in a Physics department working in an interdisciplinary field (Social Networks/Human Dynamics with applications to Sociology and Epidemiology). Over the years I've seen reactions spanning the entire range from "how is that physics" to "that's awesome". Reactions tend to be correlated with "age". Younger faculty and students tend to love it and find it extremely interesting why Older (and more entrenched) faculty tend to dismiss it completely. Institutionally, life is not always easy. Physics departments don't really know what to do with publications in WWW, KDD, BMC Medicine or EPJ Data Science and CS departments don't know what to do with a PRL or a BMC Infectious Diseases. Not all of these publications (CS ones in particular) are indexed by ISI so you keep having to direct people to your Google Scholar page if you don't want them to miss a large fraction of your publications. On the bright side, being interdisciplinary means that it's easier for you to reach out the outside world and working on applications to "real life problems" means that you're more likely to actually make an impact in the world. It also means that you get a bit more of media coverage than your collegues which both helps and hurts you (hell hath no fury like a scientists ego scorned). I have my list of complaints as many others do, but at least when it comes to research I can't really imagine myself doing anything else. Less teaching or more research funding would be awesome but (at least so far) they haven't been deal breakers.

63 points by cantankerous 13y ago

In case anyone else sees an almost-empty page, it looks like Ghostery ends up blocking all the content. Or should I say, the owner of the website has inextricably and inexplicably tied the basic functionality of their blog to an advertising script (Disqus). Very lame.

jafaku 13y ago
The same happened to me, the page is broken.
triplesec 13y ago
it works for me. I'm on chrome in win32 on this machine, running flashblock, should any of that be relevant.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Ironically: with Javascript entirely disabled, it works. Still, that's flag-worthy.
vdaniuk 13y ago
In what way Disqus is an advertising script?
- spindritf 13y ago
  It's not but if you configure Ghostery's filters strictly, it blocks a lot of third party elements that are widespread on the web and as such can be used to track you. Ghostery in general doesn't target ads in particular. That's what AdBlock is for.

doctorpangloss 13y ago

>I should begin by acknowledging that I've had some major and sometimes quite public conflicts with my home department and administration, especially about their treatment of my spouse, which I strongly believe to be the result of highly sexist attitudes. What does that concretely mean?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dead_phish 13y ago
If you go back through his archives (which took more time than I thought it would) you find a FAQ post about an essay concerning alleged sexual discrimination in his wife's tenure hearing [1] (it's referenced here [2]). Both claim to have links to the original article, but they're dead. EDIT: Concretely? It seems like his wife was up for tenure and was denied it on account of what the author claims was sexism, based on past actions of the administrators in his department. [1] http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com/2012/03/sex-discrimination-essay-ifaq.html?m=1 http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com/2012/03/sex-discrimination-... [2]http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-accusation-of-sexism.html http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-...

auctiontheory 13y ago

My impression of (tenured) academics is a lot like my impression of Microsoft: they're making out like bandits in the short-term, while seriously head-in-sand about fundamental changes necessary to tackle the long-term.

slurry 13y ago
In the short term the pay is not so great and getting worse, in the long term they still can't get fired. Your analogy does not work. Unless you are talking about their administrators. In which case yes, quite a bit like Microsoft.
zainny 13y ago
I don't think "making out like bandits" is accurate at all. Tenured academics don't seem like they make all that much money and I think most would make more in corporate.
grovulent 13y ago
This comment sounds flippant - but it has some truth... I've had a lot of experience with many academics from many different disciplines, from science to media studies, to philosophy. The sense in which they are 'making out like bandits' in the short term is simply the kind of isolated freedom that tenured academics have been able to enjoy for so long. They only have to talk to one another and get the esteem of their most immediate peers - but beyond that the world leaves them alone. The sense in which they have their head in the sand is that the world is increasingly asking them to justify their existence more and more - which is forcing academics to engage in various ways more with the external world. And naturally, they don't enjoy doing this. But rather than bite the bullet and tackle full on the problem of demonstrating their value - they just become somewhat histrionic at the suggestion that they have to justify themselves... and in the end - and this is the important bit - FAIL to deliver a coherent defense. And before you say it: "Academics need to be left alone to their own devices otherwise you won't get innovations borne of long terms motivation and incomprehensible (to the common folk) abstract thinking." This doesn't help - even if true. Because what is needed is a cost-benefit analysis of all the wasted resources going into the research community as a result of tenured academic life vs the the innovations that this system alone could produce. I for one have no idea how to a) identify the innovations the definitively WOULDN'T have been generated by an alternative system, nor do I - b) know how to measure the costs. However, the one group of people that probably are smart enough to figure out an answer to this are the people who don't want to even consider the question. (If anyone knows of actual research on this question - I'd be very interested).

mathattack 13y ago

It's hard to imagine questioning a tenure decision on your wife can ever end well. Not that you shouldn't stand by your spouse, but anything you say will appear biased. I suspect that Mizzou knew they would lose both of them. Here is a slightly sympathetic commentary. http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-accusation-of-sexism.html?m=1 http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/12/zachary-ernsts-... EDIT: Fixed a typo.

pfortuny 13y ago

He is so right on the 'interdisciplinary' thing: as long as you try to learn something new, you are wasting your time (not only from the financial standpoint but also from the 'status' one). Even more: those interdisciplinary studies will most likely be seen as 'not interesting' by each of the 'departments' they link. So... less ranking for your possible publications. And on and on and on. It takes guts not to grind the same mill as everybody. And of course, it requires a permanent position to begin with! Otherwise, you will not get it.

mathattack 13y ago
There are reasons that departments exist, and that they are primary. For better or worse, you trade off interdisciplinary studies (and organizational flexibility) when you have a tenure driven department system. My impression is that some schools (MIT & Stanford?) seem to get it right, but most don't. Of course getting interdisciplinary right could just be the job of the real world.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Oh, certainly, I am not the one to disagree on then necessity of departments. The problem is that Rectors seem to push for "interdisciplinarity" but without any reward for it in any way. So, it is just grandiloquent speech as far as it goes on like this.

blakesterz 13y ago

As a recovering Academic myself I really enjoyed this post. And as good as it is, that first comment really moved it from good to legendary: "Like many career academics your pompous prose distracts from the content of your argument."

sfbsfbsfb 13y ago

What I took from this story was a first hand account of resistance to change. This does not bode well for the ability of specific academic departments to maintain relevance in the years ahead. Experimentation in the best ways to educate has been embraced by the private sector. It will be interesting to watch the level of competition that universities can provide.

Anon84 13y ago

Just a small datapoint when it comes interdisciplinarity, at least when it comes to Physics. I'm faculty in a Physics department working in an interdisciplinary field (Social Networks/Human Dynamics with applications to Sociology and Epidemiology). Over the years I've seen reactions spanning the entire range from "how is that physics" to "that's awesome". Reactions tend to be correlated with "age". Younger faculty and students tend to love it and find it extremely interesting why Older (and more entrenched) faculty tend to dismiss it completely. Institutionally, life is not always easy. Physics departments don't really know what to do with publications in WWW, KDD, BMC Medicine or EPJ Data Science and CS departments don't know what to do with a PRL or a BMC Infectious Diseases. Not all of these publications (CS ones in particular) are indexed by ISI so you keep having to direct people to your Google Scholar page if you don't want them to miss a large fraction of your publications. On the bright side, being interdisciplinary means that it's easier for you to reach out the outside world and working on applications to "real life problems" means that you're more likely to actually make an impact in the world. It also means that you get a bit more of media coverage than your collegues which both helps and hurts you (hell hath no fury like a scientists ego scorned). I have my list of complaints as many others do, but at least when it comes to research I can't really imagine myself doing anything else. Less teaching or more research funding would be awesome but (at least so far) they haven't been deal breakers.