Prof Frank Douglas is resigning from MIT over the James Sherley tenure case...!
Something tells me this story is not over yet.
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James Sherley, a biological engineering professor at MIT and a Harvard grad, was recently denied tenure. He's going on a hunger strike in February if the decision isn't reversed. So reports Inside Higher Ed yesterday.
I won't weigh in on the merits of either side, since I know only what this…
This now becomes the third in an unplanned series on James Sherley's threatened, acted upon, and now ended hunger strike.
I saw notice of this in Science [print issue*] last week. Then, curiosity piqued once again, I found an article ("MIT professor ends 12-day hunger strike") from the Boston…
Does this seem very outlandish? I can't imagine in a million years that someone at MIT would be denied tenure because of their race. Especially in todays P.C. academic environment. Does anyone in his field know what his qualifications were and whether he probably should have gotten tenure?
A…
Here's an update from a previous post about James Sherley, at MIT, who'd threatened late last year to go on a hunger strike to protest not getting tenure.
According to this story yesterday at ABC News (and, I now see, as also noted by Omnbrain), the guy is going through with it. Speculation…
Should I be reading between the lines, on seeing Prof. Frank Douglas's photo on the linked-to page, that this is an endorsement of the theory that there is racism at MIT?
If so, we probably will be hearing more about this. Consider what happened at Harvard over sexism...
Insufficient data.
MIT is not exactly renowned for its liberal tenure policies, so it is hard to judge from a signle case.
But it is even rarer for senior faculty to resign in protest over the fate of a junior colleague.
My "secret sources" at MIT are not volunteering info, and very sensibly so.
I have a secret source at MIT, but I probably won't even ask -- he's in the Physics department, anyway, and I don't want him to get in trouble for talking to a blogger who suffers from verbal diarrhea.
(Like, say, for example, I've probably just given you enough information to figure out who my Secret Source is....)
-Rob
i found this summary site and even a brief look tells us this one will get interestin'. An anti-embryonic-stemcell / pro-adult-stem cell researcher? game on. But a hunger strike? sheesh.
It also brings up an interesting point--what would it take for you to resign from your tenured position? I'd be interested in what some of the tenured folk have to say about that.
The last time a tenured faculty member resigned, where I actually knew the professor beforehand, it was because he was caught spending research grant money on fixing his boat. And he was not in Oceanography. He was, however, in deep.
Really. I'm not joking.
I also knew an alcoholic psychopath academic-fraudulent Dean who "quit" because the university offered said Dean a deal cheaper than a protracted lawsuit: resign as dean, continue to draw Dean salary for 3 years, and spend one of the 3 years on sabattical (writing the planned book based on the academic fraud), then get the hell off campus. It was a sweet deal for everyone involved. Except, of course, those faculty members whose careers had already been derailed by Dean.
Qutting tenured position almost always means that there's some really deep doo-doo involved, which nobody wants to talk about to reporters.
Sherley has apparently left MIT for the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, whatever that is.