Wednesday, February 13, 2019

In other news...

7 comments:

  1. So... Lee's behavior is so far beyond the pale that he's no longer allowed to accept grad students, but undergrads are somehow OK?

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  2. That was where I did my PhD! In my years there, we evacuated twice because of an ammonia tank leak, there was an organometallic fire after I left, but nothing as big as that. Looks like no one was injured which is a relief.

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  3. On the U of Minnesota story, it's about time universities got serious about not looking the other way when a professor treats subordinates in a way that would never be tolerated in a corporate workplace. I suspect this kind of behavior toward subordinates also wouldn't be tolerated if it happened in the university administration building rather than in a lab.

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  4. Wait, Gianluigi Veglia is also at Minnesota. The administration really has a track record of tolerating misconduct until it really can't be hushed up any longer. It's time to swap out the higher-ups.

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  5. I came to know of someone in a STEM graduate program who was told by their advisor that their decision to have a child during graduate school would be detrimental to their career. If an experiment didn't work it's because they were spending too much time with the baby and not in the lab. The advisor is very careful to harass this person verbally and alone (so no witness or hard evidence to go to HR with). Moving to another advisor was suggested but the faculty in this Department have their own 'groups' where students are often caught up in the cross-fire, so it will make things worse. All I could think of was counseling, who can better explain options of action, or (unfortunately) help the person to withstand it. Anyone have any suggestions?

    I am coming across an alarming number of professors across all fields acting unprofessionally and are enabled because of tenure. It seems for some people education doesn't lead to enlightenment. Where is the accountability for such situations?

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    1. The article says that this problem is small in numbers.. but the description of his behavior sounds like most chemistry PI's I've known. Including my PhD PI! He was (is) an abusive alcoholic, so the department felt like they had the excuse of his "disease" to cover up his reprehensible behavior.

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  6. If there is a settlement over harassment it might cost the university the size of a startup package for a new faculty member. Why do universities still put up with that kind of behaviour? These days you can easily find someone who is competent and productive and not an arsehole.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20