How can I get the computer in one room to send stuff to the printer on my computer in another room. Internet?

The code of conduct issue is one I hadn’t considered. Perhaps he did not violate any explicitly written rules. In that case, I guess the removal of tenure is outrageous. But surely, “no inciting political violence against a student” should be added to the code of conduct. ?

I guess most of us fear the job-market, and if we will find the job we’re looking for. Then later we fear if we’re going to be happy in that job or not, and then start searching for other options around us. I believe every year more jobs enter the market, and more educational institutions are developed. A piece of advice that my supervisor usually gives me is to get involved in more community activities and try to do more work throughout the years of university that will make my CV shine compared to the others. Good luck!

Agreed on all those points–even if he’d been 100% he was still waaayyyy out of line.

Personally I favor RP/RJ style interventions wherein the harmed parties and the parties that caused the harm are brought together for a conversation (if they’re willing to have the conversation) to process through what was going on at the time, what they’ve been thinking about since, what the impacts were and how/if they could have been avoided, and what needs to be done to repair the harm.

In this case, I do disagree with the removal of the professor from their tenured position. Although they acted badly, incited hateful messages to be sent to the graduate student in question (for which he isn’t legally liable…), and otherwise has shown themselves to be a deplorable human being, unless the university is able to furnish an obvious violation of a code of conduct I think they stand in violation of the AAUP Academic Freedom constraints. They may have found a violation, but for some reason I thought that the hearings tended to not show that there was one.

To me, the way that this should have gone would have required robust criticism from *within* the professor’s respective discipline, as there was from the TA’s discipline given that they were in different departments. As awful as it sounds, I think that “punishment” would have had to come from peers, not an institution, for this to avoid becoming a “look at the liberal educational system being against conservatives” mess.

I really enjoyed reading your post! I think an ‘academic utopia’ as you alluded towards would be fantastic, however it definitely does come with a host of areas that would need to be addressed. As you put it, one of the greatest obstacle would be that of certification. I have heard stories of individuals who have taken courses online at community colleges that are able to complete a 3 credit hour course in a matter of hours. Using textbooks and academic documents with searchable functions make it easy for students to manipulate their comprehension of the subject matter. Extrapolating this idea really presents some significant issues that could pose a serious threat to this academic utopia.
Overall I found this to be a really interesting post. Thanks!

I feel conflicted about this. On the one hand, as you’ve noted there are a lot of problems instantiated by using just the GRE scores to hire individuals or even for graduate admissions. But, on the other hand, are they any worse than the SATs, GREs, or other types of arguably problematic testing benchmarks? I guess for me if that’s what someone can afford it seems problematic to toss it to the side and I wonder if there’s a way we can call into question the legitimacy of tests like this across the board while also acknowledging that in the system that may be some folks’ only accessible option for movement into academia or the workforce.

Thanks for your awesome comment. I think, yes, you are right. Context communication is probably the major challenge in terms of communication for international folks. I feel the major reason behind this is that most of them are not fluent in speaking and most of them don’t want to!I saw many people struggling in speaking, yet they love to speak in their native language most of the times. Honestly speaking, I think only a few of the international students are aware of their communication skills and feel the urgency to improve!