[HN Gopher] Abuse isn't an "advising style": Consequences of MIT...
___________________________________________________________________
Abuse isn't an "advising style": Consequences of MIT sheltering
abusive mentors
Author : rendall
Score : 103 points
Date : 2020-09-28 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.usejournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.usejournal.com)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't want to condone violence or anything, but I've always
| wondered how advisors like this don't get murdered. I've
| definitely met PhD students who would prefer prison to the
| alternatives of quitting or staying under their advisor.
|
| I suppose people who are inclined in that direction would get out
| some other way before things get that bad.
| pavanky wrote:
| This is especially harder for international students because they
| are likely entering a new educational system and dont know what
| is the right thing to do in this scenario.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| IHTFP: alive and well, apparently.
| starkred wrote:
| Maybe it's my circles, but it seems like the majority of people I
| know with PhDs in a STEM field would have been a lot better off
| getting their Master's and getting out.
|
| They make peanuts, work for an advisor that's disinterested at
| best, abusive at worse, and get out in a world where kids with
| shiny Bachelor's Degrees are making twice their salary.
|
| Is there a value in PhD programs anymore?
| anon09282020 wrote:
| The same happens at other high profile universities and with bad
| managers at companies like Google. The organization seeks to
| protect itself, the same way that institutions handle
| paedophiles: pretend the problem doesn't exist, move the
| perpetrator elsewhere, and blame the victim.
| zwaps wrote:
| Infamous Professor at my university (eminent statistician):
|
| - Says he prefers Chinese students because they shut up and do
| the work without asking
|
| - "Your first research idea belongs to me"
|
| - Has apparently thrown coffee mugs at students
|
| - Walks out or stops grad seminars he is unhappy with
|
| He stays, because he brings in a lot of money.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton
|
| The underlying issue is the huge power differential between
| advisers and students. Whenever there is such a power
| differential, abuse is almost inevitable.
|
| I fear that unless that power differential gets addressed, any
| solutions are going to just be superficial band-aids on a
| festering wound.
| shuntress wrote:
| I disagree. The power differential is not the underlying issue.
|
| Power is certainly a part of it but the underlying issue comes
| down to oversight + accountability. Both in specific written
| rules and in general societal norms that influence how those
| rules are used.
| wegs wrote:
| Lack of accountability is part of the power structure. At
| MIT, if you do something sufficiently nasty as a faculty
| member to embarrass the Institute, everyone is now pressured
| into signing NDAs / non-disclosures. If you don't, you're
| liable to get scapegoated yourself.
| vkou wrote:
| Power corrupts, but more importantly, power reveals.
|
| You can only get a real measure of a man, or woman, when they
| have power over you.
| hinkley wrote:
| "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true
| that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually
| attracted by other things than power." - David Brin
| LanceH wrote:
| Being corrupt without power goes unnoticed.
| NicolasGorden wrote:
| > Too often I have been told to be proud of the great work I am a
| part of, as if this should outweigh the negative and harmful
| things myself and others have experienced.
|
| Actually, that's how it works in the real world from my
| experience.
|
| Most geniuses have terrible shadows that are as dark and long as
| they are brilliant and tall.
|
| Most of us feel really lucky to get things done and be a part of
| something, and when we have to bear an unkind comment here or
| there... well, we're emotionally developed adults who balance the
| positive with the negative. It takes a lot of entitlement to
| expect to never hear anything negative or offensive or unkind.*
|
| College should prepare you for the real world, not shelter you
| from it.
|
| * Obligatory before someone makes a strawman: Of course if the
| advisor does something illegal, that's another matter, but the
| article never stated anything illegal being done. Just unkind
| from what I read.
| pavanky wrote:
| That is just a terrible terrible thing to say to excuse abuse.
| You cant expect others to toil away to benefit your "genius".
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I am deeply sorry that the sentiment you express has been your
| experience. That is not the way it is or must be everywhere,
| and I hope you are treated better in the future.
|
| Even so, I want to say explicitly that the idea that we should
| allow geniuses to abuse us and harass us because they are
| geniuses is dangerous and misguided nonsense. Being smart is
| not an excuse to behave poorly. With rare exception, producing
| something great for the world, or believing you are working on
| something great, is not justification for hurting others or not
| taking into consideration their needs or feelings, especially
| when they are working for you to try to help you.
|
| I also think that your reduction of 100-hour-minimum work
| weeks, no free time, emotional manipulation to prevent
| reporting, and frequent unnecessary cruelty disguised as
| "advice" or "help" to "unkind comments" is absurd. If people
| _chose_ this lifestyle, knowing what they were getting into,
| that 's one thing (and even then, it would still be dubious to
| demand it in the first place) - but clearly the author and
| their peers were mislead and manipulated into it.
|
| Finally, what is illegal and what is immoral are not the same
| thing, and we can and should hold people, as a society, to a
| higher standard than "guess they didn't break the law" when we
| put them in positions of power over other people.
|
| Edited to add: I had the pleasure of working as an undergrad
| with several professors and PHD students in a research
| capacity. Some of these people, I would absolutely consider
| "geniuses" in terms of both intellect and achievements. I still
| speak with many of them, and consider some of them good
| friends. I never, not once, observed or heard of people being
| treated in the ways described in this article (nor was I
| myself), despite the relatively prestigious people I worked
| with and their relatively prestigious work. It is not that way
| everywhere.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| No one "expects" to go through life without hearing insults,
| but that does not mean they should be tolerated. I fully expect
| to continue to hear racist, homophobic statements from US
| politicians. I do not want to, and I want to work to change
| that.
|
| Sure, the real world sucks. I don't see that as a reason to
| prevent colleges from improving.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| They already went to college. PhD students are employees doing
| self guided research that brings in lots of recognition and
| money to these institutions. They are making little money yet
| doing work harder than 99.9% of people. They should not be
| demeaned. There are many work environments that are not like
| this and we should not pretend like it is the norm. If it is
| genuinely the norm, the we should work to fix it, not just say
| 'thats how the world works.' we get to define how the world
| makes. Let's make it less shitty.
| hinkley wrote:
| You need enough hubris to overcome friction, to dismiss or at
| least reframe the question, "Surely if this were possible,
| someone else would have thought of it first, right?"
|
| But you still get one quadrant that's mostly assholes and
| another that's more reasonable people.
|
| For a given event, the observed population is a factor of the
| number of distinct occurrences and the duration of each
| occurrence (eg, why Apple sales numbers are smaller than usage
| numbers). A kind genius will know when they are beaten, and
| wrap up the effort. The asshole will persist (increasing
| duration) and deflect (increasing anecdotes, and the likelihood
| those anecdotes will be recalled).
|
| Essentially you have not only survivor bias in effect, but also
| the Availability Heuristic telling you that if it's easier to
| recall 5 instances of assholes instead of nice people, then
| there must be a lot more assholes.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| This is very very common. As long as professors publish, they can
| get away with a lot of things, bonus points of the students are
| indentured to their H1B. I've seen Ph.D students in their 30s,
| mother of children, cry in front of me because of the abusive and
| neglectful actions of their advisors. They essentially run their
| lab as a personal fiefdom, and HR is powerless in this situation.
| Sexual harrassment cases are moth-balled, meanwhile the school
| prints tons of material talking about gender-equality, etc.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Not H1B. Some Education visa.
| m0zg wrote:
| Fair warning: you _never_ get the full picture if you only hear
| one side of it. It is possible that the advisor is a manipulative
| asshole (though it's unlikely that they are to such an extent),
| or it is possible that the author grew up always getting
| participation trophies and now isn't getting any (far more
| likely, IMO). So before you render your judgment, wait for at
| least some semblance of corroboration.
| croissants wrote:
| > it is possible that the author grew up always getting
| participation trophies and now isn't getting any (far more
| likely, IMO)
|
| Why do you think it's "far more likely" that the student is the
| problem?
| m0zg wrote:
| Because you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to
| the extent described in the article. At least I haven't seen
| it, in a quarter century of my adult life. I quite frequently
| see folks who treat any demands that they do what they've
| signed up to do as "abuse" though.
|
| Think about it: say you are a judge and you wanted to
| _really_ understand why someone is divorcing their spouse.
| Would you listen to just one spouse or both?
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to the
| extent described in the article
|
| What do you make of the Me Too movement?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _Would you listen to just one spouse or both?_
|
| Here's the dirty secret: competent wifebeaters look like
| really splendid people to all the world. The incompetent
| ones without social skills are weeded out early, that
| leaves the good ones.
| adamsea wrote:
| > Because you don't get to stick around if you abuse people
| to the extent described in the article.
|
| I feel like you must have worked hard to not give credence
| to things you've heard from folks about their jobs, Phds,
| etc.a
|
| Or perhaps not known many people who've been in a toxic
| work situation.
|
| But grad school has been talked about as a toxic nightmare
| for like a decade now ...
| croissants wrote:
| > you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to the
| extent described in the article
|
| It's very uncommon for student complaints to affect a
| professor's employment, especially a tenured one. As long
| as the professor brings in grant money, doesn't piss off
| the entire department, and graduates at least a few
| students, they are probably fine. It would take something
| beyond generic cruelty to students for a person that checks
| all three boxes to not "stick around" --- think something
| illegal or against university rules, and with clear
| evidence.
| T-A wrote:
| > you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to the
| extent described in the article
|
| This went on for decades before there were consequences:
|
| https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/geoff-marcy-
| exopl...
| [deleted]
| yardie wrote:
| I was an undergraduate work-study student working in my
| university lab. I got to talking with a Ph.D student helping set
| up his equipment,
|
| "how long you been working on this?"
|
| "Almost 10 years."
|
| "Seems really long."
|
| "Yes, normally it's 5 years but I can't enough time to finish it.
| I'm always working on Prof. Engineer's research projects."
|
| "I mean can't you just leave?"
|
| "No, not at all. You are completely beholden to your advisor.
| Can't get money, lab time, assistants without them. I'd have to
| walk away from all my research."
|
| I was gobsmacked. Professor Engineer was teaching a course I was
| taking, though he wouldn't recognize me in my shop bunny suit.
| His attitude towards students was nothing like his attitude
| towards his graduate researchers. This was not the first story I
| heard and I assumed that's how grad school worked.
| etrautmann wrote:
| This is really odd to me. In most contexts I've experienced,
| the professor's research and the student's are more or less one
| and the same. Yes, you might have an extra project, but how
| could someone get stuck for an _extra_ five years?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > In most contexts I've experienced, the professor's research
| and the student's are more or less one and the same.
|
| A PhD is an individual research degree - ideally you're
| supposed to be working on your _own_ ideas not someone
| else's.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| That's not how it works in a lab that relies on expensive
| equipmentvand multi-year research programs. Those PhD
| thesis projects are minor variants on your PIs research
| program.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Parent was comparing undergrad classroom behavior to the
| (reported) research lab behavior.
| tyingq wrote:
| Ouch. Think I'd just research real world salaries for the
| Masters degree and likely flee.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I'm told this is a common path, at least in CS. apply to a
| phd program to get funding, do some research, take some
| courses, then drop out because you "just can't handle it"
| once you have enough credits for your free masters degree.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Academia is probably unavoidably abusive because it's all
| personal relationships[1] but PhDs are definitely abusogenic
| compared to professional doctorates like JDs or MDs. You
| absolutely need your supervisor[2].
|
| [1] Academic science is one of the most feudal environments I
| have ever personally experienced, and human genetics perhaps
| even more so. A few large groups of collaborators with
| connected pedigrees share post-docs and promote each other's
| work, and fund young researchers coming up through their
| network. Any researcher who crosses one of the lords of human
| genetics could be excluded from a whole patronage set, and
| sources of funding, as these networks populate the grant-review
| boards.
|
| https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/17/d-5/
|
| [2] It also illustrated a truth in academia from what little
| I've seen and experienced within it: it is a highly feudal
| culture defined by patronage networks and an ordered
| understanding of the relationship of superiors to subordinates.
| As they say: "You come at the king, you best not miss."
|
| https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/03/
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| This is one of the downsides of a centrally planned economy
| where all the funds are allocated by an authority who doesn't
| profit from investment returns.
| croissants wrote:
| Unsolicited advice for any potential PhD students choosing
| between schools/advisors: you should try very hard to talk to
| current PhD students, preferably in person or at least over the
| phone or video call (at any rate, not in writing). Try to talk to
| as many as possible.
|
| Good advisors will probably have a few students who will speak up
| for them, and great advisors almost certainly will. In contrast,
| bad advisors will probably have a few students who give middling
| recommendations, cryptic comments, or outright warnings. Good
| departments typically have meet-the-current-students-without-
| faculty-present events to facilitate exactly this discussion. If
| the potential advisor does not happily put you in contact with
| current or recent students, that alone is a red flag.
|
| This is not foolproof. Even a great advisor may have one bitter
| student, and a generally terrible advisor might still have some
| good student relationships. But having a bad advisor will make
| grad school so much harder. This is a situation where doing a bit
| of due diligence can have a huge impact.
|
| I was lucky; I had a great advisor, and I was always happy to
| talk to potential students, since I wanted my advisor to have
| more good students. Talk to students!
| m463 wrote:
| I think this is how Steve Jobs worked out who was good.
|
| He would go to people and say "I heard so-and-so sucks" and if
| he didn't suck people would adamantly stand up for so-and-so,
| but if he DID suck, there would be a lackluster response.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| This is great advice. Talk to as many people as possible,
| including those who didn't make it through to PhD. If you talk
| to those who made it, you are getting a very biased sample. Ask
| to talk to some students who left with a masters or otherwise.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Another bit of advice, see if the lab has had any suicides in
| recent memory.
|
| Also, if one or more occurs, gtfo before the stress gets you.
| ColanR wrote:
| How would you check that? I remember there was a (rumored)
| suicide at my school while I was there, and it was hushed up
| really well so that even a lot of students wouldn't have
| heard about it.
|
| Far as I know, there isn't a searchable database of 'suicides
| per school'.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Web search for obits. If someone dies young and the reason
| isn't clearly stated, it's suicide.
| gumby wrote:
| MIT does not cover the, up, to my knowledge. Quite the
| opposite.
|
| The only one I knew personally died for reasons unrelated
| to the Instititute-- in fact it was one of his bright spots
| in some ways (though he suffered dreadfully from the
| imposter syndrome as well so in other ways it made things
| worse).
|
| However MIT can be a very difficult place and I don't want
| to gloss over that. And I think the institute could do a
| lot to improve things.
| neolog wrote:
| Are there labs with more than one recent suicide?
| wiredfool wrote:
| I'm a little hazy on it now, but my sister's lab had at
| least one while she was there, and it directly led to her
| death a few years later.
|
| It was ... not a healthy environment.
|
| Some warning signs would have been easier to see from the
| same coast, and some of them were obvious in hindsight.
| marvin wrote:
| So sorry to hear that.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Divorces, too. A family member was applying to med schools,
| and during one of the visits there was a boast of a >100%
| divorce rate among students. Every married student who
| entered that program was divorced by the end, as were some
| who got married during the program. To have such a stressful
| program is bad enough, but to boast about it as a sign of
| prestige and dedication is even worse.
| waterhouse wrote:
| > to boast about it
|
| What the actual fuck? Why would anyone who loves their wife
| or husband choose to enter such a program? (Best-case
| scenario: a few years of data produced this anomalous
| result, someone noticed it and decided to draw attention to
| it, and it has since scared away all married students, so
| that there will never be any future data points to
| contradict it.)
|
| Still, from what I know about medical school and residency
| in general, any place that periodically assigns 24-hour
| work shifts _just because_ is ... perverse.
|
| Edit: Ok, it's not 100% "just because"; there _are_ some
| rationalizations. https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-
| students/residency/3-tips...
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| That's scary because being married is positively correlated
| with success in professional school.
| wegs wrote:
| Former students too.
|
| Talk to them, and look up what they're doing. If a lot of
| former students ended up where you see yourself in 10 years,
| that's a great sign. If a lot of former students are in dead-
| end careers, that's a bad sign.
|
| Of course, that discriminates against tenure-track faculty, but
| avoiding tenure-track faculty is good advice too. Tenured
| professors have the luxury of being able to care about you.
| Tenure-track need to do what it takes to succeed.
| jbgreer wrote:
| Friends told me that a former advisor started a side business
| counseling couples, and made some of his students pretend to be
| married participants during larger group sessions.
|
| One kicked a PhD student out of her lab after he spoke to a local
| news reporter about his line of research without her approval.
| Not even a scientific article, just a personal interview. He
| started over in a new line of research.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| I think the problem here is credentialism. People have been
| incentivized too strongly to need a degree from the most
| prestigious institution and so put up with things they wouldn't
| have before. Great work is being done all over the world now,
| there is no reason people should still see one of a few schools
| as a requirement for a serious resume.
| canjobear wrote:
| Abusive advisors exist at universities of all prestige levels.
| sevensor wrote:
| I'll say. I've got stories from my time at Big State U that
| would make your blood run cold.
| mxwsn wrote:
| As a current MIT PhD student, this ideas are incredibly important
| to hear. Establishing an appropriate widespread sense of what
| normal is crucial for changing culture.
|
| More people need to talk about changing labs as well. A
| surprising fraction of PhD students do this and is fairly normal
| as well. I switched labs in the middle of my PhD and had the
| unusual and lucky opportunity to be able to take my work with me.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| MIT is FAR from the only offender here, so much so that I find it
| odd to be calling MIT out in particular.
|
| And abuse takes a lot of forms. My advisor once went eighteen
| months without ever laying eyes on one of his doctoral students.
| wittyreference wrote:
| >so much so that I find it odd to be calling MIT out in
| particular.
|
| Because the author is relaying their personal experiences as a
| student at MIT.
| jjcon wrote:
| I'll second that - I went to a decent uni (in EU) and while I
| escaped a lot of the negativity a few very close colleagues of
| mine in an almost identical lab went through years of hell at
| the same institution. It totally could have been me in their
| position if my focus had been just slightly different. It was
| kinda just was luck I ended up where I did.
|
| I think about it a lot and how I'm sure a lot of brilliant
| people are not able to fulfill their potential due to these
| issues.
| djaque wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've actually been warned against their
| physics department for grad school. The other rumour I heard is
| that Harvard is even worse (for physics grad students). Tons of
| toxic behaviour like sabotaging labmates in the name of
| competition and advisors holding onto students for like a year
| after they should have graduated to pump out that last paper
| from them.
| wegs wrote:
| Physics and bio departments tend to be the most toxic.
| Students have no BATNA.
| djaque wrote:
| Actually, I've heard that chemistry departments are a
| standout in terms of abuse and that seems true just from
| the students I've talked to at my institution. There's like
| this weird old school attitude of "this is the way we've
| always done it" so I'm going to pass you through the flames
| too. Add that to the motivation of "if I can just get
| through this then I can get a cushy pharma job".
|
| Come to think of it, the news stories I remember (just off
| the top of my head) of advisors pushing their students to
| the point of suicide were chem. advisors.
| fireflies_ wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised to hear it put this way. Aren't physics
| students usually welcome in finance as quants?
| wegs wrote:
| (1) Most don't want to be quants. It's a soul-sucking no
| work-life-balance career path. You're getting paid
| better, but it's a hyper-abusive work environment.
|
| (2) Quant hiring is super-competitive. most physics
| students wouldn't get jobs. A lot of quants are
| physicists, but the converse isn't true.
|
| (3) And students? Not so much. Quants like to hire Ph.Ds
| or possibly ABDs.
|
| Ones who are ALSO good programmers can go the CS route,
| but most aren't. You need to do basic programming to do
| physics, but not industry-grade software engineering.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Most employed programmers can't do "industry grade
| engineering". Physics grad students are plenty capable,
| with a boot camp if needed.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I went to a SUNY school. My advisor kept me waiting 20 minutes
| after outside of his office for an appointment made a week
| earlier, only to walk out with coat on, announcing that he was
| going to happy hour. He suggested that i set up another the
| following week through the department secretary.
|
| I walked over to do that, discovering that he was actually
| going to happy hour at the airport, and from there India, and
| wouldn't be back for a month. Ended up getting locked out of
| classes as I couldn't register.
| jandrese wrote:
| Sounds like you dodged a bullet there. Imagine if you were
| successful in registering.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes, that's right. An MIT grad student should perform a study
| across all universities to get a representative sample before
| writing a blog post about his experiences. This is the only
| acceptable thing. He is not permitted to share what happened to
| him.
| iokevins wrote:
| caltech
| temp667 wrote:
| This comes via Graduate Students for a Healthy MIT, Black
| Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Student Council
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee as a bit of context -
| the author themselves is anonymous.
|
| Note that I've seen advisors who came through an older system
| (ie, if this prof was older) not mesh well with new groups of
| candidates.
|
| You OBVIOUSLY need to talk to a few students - ideally those with
| a somewhat similar background to yours - to get a sense of fit.
|
| Some notes.
|
| In old system, if a grad student had kids (usually you waited
| till much more plentiful back then tenure track position to start
| family), the (male) grad student's partner stayed home full time
| with the children. Now families often have two working / studying
| parents - so your grad student is MUCH more likely to have more
| parental responsibilities - which despite what anyone says IS a
| big distraction (yes, I know lean in says you can have it all,
| but raising kids is wonderful but also takes time).
|
| Manner of speaking etc. The article mentions the advisor making
| fun of how folks speak (??). That's a weird thing to make fun of
| frankly, but groups someone advised used to be very homogenous. I
| notice this just with age gap - so much more shorthand / casual
| communication style.
|
| "My advisor's words would pierce right through me and the period
| at the end of each sentence felt like a punch in the gut."
|
| Pretty intense stuff! A period = a punch?
|
| BTW - I think 80% of the phd system is a bit of a racket :) But
| that's only because I got to hear (daily) complaints about
| advisors and research and being a phd candidate (and then postdoc
| hell continues this!!).
| waterhouse wrote:
| On that subject, from 24 years ago: > I need from
| you a few paragraphs describing your personal interests, >
| advising style or philosophy, background and professional
| interests. > ... I'm preparing a document to give the
| freshman for them to use to > select an advisor. I need to
| receive your info by early next week. I was born and
| raised in Atlanta, Georgia, majored in mathematics and Computer
| Science at Yale University, and I got my PhD in Computer Science
| at CMU. I've lived in Paris, Hong Kong, Peking, and New
| Jersey. I tend to look for weak, uncertain students
| and feed off of their insecurities; by preying on their
| poor self-images, I manage to temporarily assuage my own
| feelings of inadequacy and failure. I've also found
| undergraduate advising to be a terrific vehicle for venting a lot
| of my own pent-up rage and frustration. I'm not sure
| if this counts as a philosophy, but it's the closest thing I've
| got to an "advising style." > Thanks again for
| volunteering to advise! My pleasure.
| leetcrew wrote:
| do people actually expect meaningful advising in undergrad? my
| adviser hardly even had a chance to "vent" at me (he didn't
| really seem like the type anyway). I met with him once each
| semester as a formality to get the key I needed to register for
| classes. aside from the one time he suggested I not take the
| three hardest courses in the major concurrently, he didn't
| really say much. I was usually in and out in fifteen minutes.
| pavanky wrote:
| is there any more context to this? All I could find is this:
|
| https://www.ccs.neu.edu/~shivers/advisor-stmt-original.txt
| costigan wrote:
| Just to be completely clear, this was satire. The professor
| who wrote it is very well-regarded by his students.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| OS also has this: https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html (I
| understand it to be intended as humorous, BTW.)
| VectorLock wrote:
| Maybe we are a bit more "puritanical" but I think yes today
| even joking about pulling a gun would be seen as a "bad
| idea."
| waterhouse wrote:
| The page that used to link to it said, "At MIT, my students
| chose me after reading a [little thumbnail bio](link to just
| the first paragraph) published by the undergraduate office.
| But you can see the [original, pre-censored version](the link
| you posted) that I mailed in." Much of Shivers's (excellent)
| humor has been purged from his home page; that may
| unfortunately be necessary in today's more puritanical times.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Is this the same Dr. Shivers that's running for a Senate
| Seat in MA?
| waterhouse wrote:
| Googling a bit, all I see are a Dr. Shiva running for
| Senate in MA, and a Dr. Ayanna Shivers in Missouri. In
| either case, no, different person.
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