If events are as they have been portrayed here, this professor certainly has a great deal of apologizing to do.
Attempting to stifle debate, on either side of the political aisle, is not something tenured professors should aim to attempt.
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[…] Abuse of Power? […]
ppGaz
I read the “exchange” and I can’t imagine why anyone would get their shorts in a bunch over anything anybody said there.
Unless there is more to it than I saw, Professor Grump deserves one big GFY with prejudice.
srv
Ah, what makes a doctoral candidate think they have any freedoms?
In other news, your evil twin Professor Juan Cole has just turned on comments.
Steve S
Umm… Paul was clearly not acting civil, despite Goldstein’s mischaracterization. Regardless this professor was out of bounds taking this matter the direction he did.
However this website you just linked to is even more out of bounds, posting the guys personal information with the purpose of launching a retalitory attack.
This Goldstein appears to be quite a tool. You’ve linked to him several times now and he’s been wrong in each and every case.
Steve S
ppgaz – Yeah. The guy was clearly not being civil, but it wasn’t anything of the level that needed to be brought to the attention of his advisors.
Even so, I don’t understand why Goldstein is engaging in behavior he claims is wrong.
Jeff G
I am? Explain.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
*rolls eyes*
Yeesh.
Steve S
More projection on Goldstein’s part. That seems to be the pattern, he attacks others for doing what he himself does.
Pb
Maybe discourse to the effect of “I’m a Ph.D candidate and you’re pathetic” (I stopped reading the thread around there) is considered ‘civil’ over at Protein Wisdom, who knows–wouldn’t surprise me. Whereas taunting people for not stalking you on the internet strikes me as just plain stupid. Personally I’m glad to see him get called on for being a dick, at least. Were there any consequences beyond that?
Jeff G
But I ask again, how am I doing the same thing? Explain.
John Cole
What the hell is wrong with you people. Jeff merely highlights that it is wholly inappropriate for a tenured faculty member to troll the internet and then use his status to attempt to try and savage a PHD student’s career, and then provides information for how you can contact the faculty menmber in person and explain why he is wrong, and you launch a series of invectives against Jeff, calling him a tool, and denigrating his site. If I use my position to try to destroy a student for no reason other than he disagrees with my political opinions, I hope to hell someone posts the contact information to my chairman to make sure they are aware what I am doing. What that professor is doing is just WRONG.
You people need to grow up. The only person in the wrong here is the professor. And Steve S., cool your jets.
I get a little tired of you people just willy-nilly attacking everyone you disagree with, launching pointless and personal attacks. Find a flaw in jeff’s reasoning, good for you. Discuss it. Think Jeff is being inconsistent, post about it. You are even free to discuss it at jeff’s site.
But there is no need for you to be launching into nasty personal attacks on someone I respect, particularly when he has done nothing wrong and is right about the behavior of the professor in this case.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Jeff G,
Why did you kill your profanity-laden taunt?
Gold Star for Robot Boy
John,
Or did YOU erase it?
John Cole
And btw, here is Jeff in large part agreeing with Tim F. Is Jeff still projecting? Is he an idiot there? If so, why not attack Tim F. for voicing the same sentiments?
John Cole
I did. Jeff asked me to.
Jeff G
I asked John to remove it. Just because I’m called a lying tool doesn’t mean I need to turn around and call somebody I’ve never met a cocklord.
cd6
I think something rubs people the wrong way about “this guy tattled on a phd student, so let’s tattle on him” and then supplying email addresses. The inevitable results is going to be some kind of sad “you started it fight.”
And here’s the deal. If you were this guy’s advisor and somebody emailed you claiming to be a professor from the university of northern iowa, saying a student you most likely know very well, wasn’t being civil on the internet, would you reprimand the student? Would you even care? I wouldn’t. I doubt most will. I also doubt “let’s email HIM” is a great solution.
If we’re going to start angry email campaigns, why not do it about something that actually matters, like, say, government endorsed torture?
Don
For some reason all I can think of is the punchline to this comic.
nyrev
Ugh. Occasionally, I get nostalgic for grad school, and then I read something like this and remember what it was really like.
Paul was not so much “civil” as blatantly condescending and rude, but reporting him to his advisors was out of line. The moderator at Bitch PhD had apparently banned him and considered that the end of it (I checked the Alito thread in question). The professor that emailed the advisors apparently just likes to throw his weight around. A lot of tenured professors have that attitude and universities tend to encourage it. Unless a tenured professor is already in trouble for something, he’d have to practically kill and eat a student to get reprimanded at most universities.
That said, the professor in question is a jerk. The proposed lawsuit is over the top, though. From the sound of it, the professor emailed Paul’s department after Paul emailed him. Unless the professor fabricated or embellished the material he complained about, it was shitty and unprofessional but not libel.
Jess
Do people act like jerks on occasion when they’re in positions of power? Absolutely! Does this happen in academics? Yep–I had a professor try to block me from continuing on to my PhD because I criticized her favorite radical theorists in my MA thesis. Fortunately other professors who were happy with my work, whether or not they agreed with my position, stood up for me. No doubt Paul’s professors will likewise stand up for him and dismiss his attacker as a complete twit.
But should we take an incident like this as an occasion to question the wisdom of tenure? I hope not–there may be other reasons to question tenure, but this bit of silliness is not reason enough. If it is, then there’s a whole list of other institutions we should take to task, such as the tax-exempt status of the church. When judging the worth of a particular policy, it’s generally not useful to focus solely on the instances when things aren’t so ideal, except perhaps when people’s lives or health are at stake (i.e. capital punishment, torture, etc.)
tzs
Maybe we should insist that all flame wars be conducted in Latin….
Heck, even in the Renaissance there were guys who went in for legal dueling rather than with actual swords. (They were arguing about the grounds for the duel and it ended up as a court case.)
Jess
tzs:
subigita te ipsum!
John S.
You know, just when I think that Jeff G. might be penning something that seems downright reasonable (as you are often championing him as doing), he just can’t resist throwing in some useless polemic:
A person with an academic background (as Jeff is proud in claiming) should know better than to falsely assert that because a website is operated by a “leftie” that strongly suggests that they would be inclined to delete messages they dislike.
This is where I find Jeff’s style incredibly lacking. I think he would find more people receptive to reading his views if he relaxed his parenthetical rhetoric.
Oh, and of course this means that I think that the professor in question has the right to ‘wield his position like a cudgel — defending the gates of academia from those whose ideological positions differ from his own’ without fear of reprisal. Oh, and I don’t think Jeff sounds like an arrogant prick who manages to queer a perfectly good argument on the grounds of political hackery.
Oh, that last paragraph – strike that, and reverse it.
SeesThroughIt
Why not? I think that’s a pretty good zinger.
Anyway, let’s all remember Marge Simpson’s spot on line: “Bart! Don’t make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice.”
ppGaz
I have no dog in the fight, or any fight in this thread.
But I must say, it’s amusing to see people tut-tutting over “academic” interests as if academic social intercourse is somehow any different from all the other kinds. I mean, if the referenced exchange is any indicator, academics are all just a bunch of keyboard-happy pricks like the rest of us.
And the gratuitous snark? Does anybody really think that they are going to walk the blahsphere any more and not see that sort of thing at every turn?
I mean, really, dahhhhling. Do you?
John S.
Snarking is fine, but I think it should be awarded based on individual merit. Hasty generalizations make for poor arguments (and terribly mundane snarking).
ppGaz
Well, after a few recent run-ins with Darrell, who am I not to join you in decrying the state of argument on the Internets?
As one who, years ago, got into many a flame war on engineering newsgroups in Usenet, may I say, though, that the state of argument in general has been in the toilet since the invention of these infernal machines.
If you can’t beat ’em, join em, I say. So, GFY. etc
hsawaknow
He was not being civil on that board.
It is obvious that the discussion was between liberals and did not NEED to foray into any discussion with a conservative. Sometimes liberals want to discuss things and talk them out amongst themselves. I just think that they had a right to ban him because he was not adding something to the conversation.
About contacting his PhD advisor?? i dont know about that…
hsawaknow
better add to that… i don’t think that was right. His advisor should not have been contacted.
i don’t want to start here being labeled a partisan.
John S.
Interesting, I invoke a line from Willy Wonka, and hsawaknow shows up…very interesting, indeed.
Kimmitt
1) Bitch, Ph.D. was well within her rights to ban his comments; he was trolling. He was neither civil nor interesting.
2) I am beyond baffled. Contacting the student’s advisor is massively unprofessional.
3) It’s also lame as hell to be posting phone numbers on the internets; they tend to get pranked pretty hard. Post email addresses instead.
4) The lack of thought process in the Protein Wisdom post is tremendous. “A professor abused his authority, therefore all professors abuse their authority, thus no professor should have authority.” Or something; I got lost in the anti-intellectualism and may have missed something.
5) I’d really like to hear what Dr. Hettle has to say about all of this before I start assigning the “cocklord” label to Dr. Hettle.
To sum up:
I feel tremendously sorry for Deignan, who got way more than he deserved for a little bit of trolling. I am baffled by Hettle’s unprofessional actions and would like an explanation. I am not particularly interested in the Protein Wisdom interpretation of this as emblematic of academic culture.
Kimmitt
Okay, reading a little more of Hettle’s blog, why is the little fucker going after B.Ph.D? All she did was ban his ass; it’s Hettle that caused him real troubles.
t. jasper parnell
A quick point. It does not sound like an abuse of authority on Prof Wally’s part. The young man is not his student, not at his universtiy and not in his discipline. Prof. Wally is, much like Mr. Goldstein promises and his supporters suggest they have, writing to an institution to complain of one of its member’s behavior. Prof. Wally may well, when writing, allude to his status as a “real professor” as a means of giving added credence to his complaint. So? Mr. Goldstein insists that he will use whater ever voice he has to defeat, dethrone, and generally trample Prof. Wally underneath the feet of the inappropriately outraged. Use of one’s professional or blogspheric status is not a misuse of power, although it may well be an overestimation of said status.
Kimmitt
Er, Deignan’s blog.
Kimmitt
t. jasper — it’s about context. When an academic receives information about his or her student’s misconduct from another academic, he or she takes it extremely seriously; it can have immediate and deadly career repercussions, and it should be saved for major violations — plagiarism or felonies. Not trolling an internet message board.
Whereas publishing lameassery done to you by some guy is putting things through appropriate channels.
t. jasper parnell
Kimmitt,
I am an academic. As such, if I were to receive information regarding a student’s behavior and after investigation found it to be serious I would act in a manner I found commensurate with the behavior. If I found to be a lot of Ballon Juice, I would not. In any event, I can say that I would not write to complain of internet behavior, unless it were totally out of bounds like the adjunct at Farleigh Dickerson who was an actual card carrying Nazi. However, what I would or would not do does not rise to the level of a standard for what other should or should not do. If Prof. Wally found the young man’s behavior a serious infraction, against say basic rules of civility, he is well within his rights as a professor and a citizen to write to whomever he pleases. In other words, my answer to the query Abuse of Power? is a resounding no.
metalgrid
Any idiot who doesn’t use the (mostly) anonymous nature of the internet to their advantage gets whatever their stupidity precipitated.
metalgrid
Errrr..
Any idiot who doesn’t use the (mostly) anonymous nature of the internet to their advantage, DESERVES to get whatever their stupidity precipitated.
Note to self: posting after several glasses of Cardenal Mendoza Solera leads to a general breakdown in sentence structure.
Kimmitt
I agree with the principle, but I believe that Prof. Wally’s professional obligation to restrain his communications with Henke’s advisor to either academic subjects or extremely serious infractions very much overwhelms it. That is, Dr. Wally is within his rights but acted unprofessionally.
Gossiping about a student’s private life is unprofessional. Sure, we all do it to some degree, but I think that a line was crossed.
t. jasper parnell
Kimmit,
It is not really “unprofessional” to “gossip” about private life, is it? Acting on gossip about someone’s private life, private actions which are immaterial to whatever position they might have or might aspire to, is unprofessional. However, your characterization of an exchange in a comment section as part of anyone’s private life is in error. Like it or not the internets are public. Making comments on or in a public forum can have consequences. A fact that supports metalgrid’s point. An academic to commenting on an academic’s blog, which I believe Bitch PhD’s to be, needs to keep in mind that those to whom and about whom he comments may be current or potential colleagues and thus he or she ought follow Mr. Cole’s suggestion and keep it civil. Whether or not we agree with Prof. Wally’s decision does not mean that it was in and of itself wrong or abusive.
t. jasper parnell
any academic commenting
aop
I can kind of see it both ways. On the one hand, the professor ratting on the grad student seems unprofessional and stupid.
On the other hand, it’s kind of nice to see someone incur some consequences for behaving like an asshole on the internet, both with the professor contacting the guy’s advisor, and Jeff posting the professor’s personal info. Goose, gander, etc.
Andrew J. Lazarus
I’m in agreement with everyone else. Those were not civil comments Deignan was making, they were arrogant, unpleasant, and seemed like sour grapes from someone who hasn’t managed to finish his dissertation yet. (I at least managed that and washed out of the tenure stream later.)
I don’t see why it would warrant contacting an advisor though. Idiots who waste their time trolling where they aren’t wanted seem so likely to flunk out anyway!
Otto Man
Please. Right-wing blogs regularly delete comments — some by Andrei were removed here recently — and many more don’t even have comments to begin with.
A right-wing blog accusing someone else of demanding adherence to the orthodoxy. Gee, project much?
You’re welcome to be as snarky as you’d like to be — it’s your blog, do what you will with it. But please don’t act stunned when people identify snide comments as being snide.
John S.
Ah yes, the ‘civility’ of Paul Deignan:
With an opening salvo like that, it’s no surprise that the thread quickly degenerated. Perhaps had he focused on making his points rather than making snide comments, he may have enjoyed a vigorous dialogue.
Lines
Lets see, Protein Wisdom basically uses the worn meme of “Academics Professors are all Liberals, destroy them!”
Its old, its useless and its wrong. Jeff G is once again trying to paint with a 2×4 and is upset when someone points out it looks like shit.
If a blogger can’t take critisism, quit. Its not worth the ulcers. If you live in an echo chamber, quit.
But back on the subject: the professor was wrong. Whether he is liberal, conservative or whackjob leader of an auto-parts store, he is just an asshole over-reacting to another asshole.
But as well, anonymity is useful. Just ask me, I’m Jeff G’s Pussy and I don’t care.
Otto Man
Yeah, I’ll agree with that. Neither Deignan nor Prof. Wally look very good there. Both need to be sent to sit in the corner.
All in all, I’m surprised that Deignan pushed this so far, when he’s the one without a permanent job right now, in an industry that places a high premium on civility. Regardless of his politics, what department is going to want to hire a guy like that?
Justin Slotman
Have you seen Deignan’s latest yet? With he threatened lawsuit against bitch? And this comment, referring to Dr. B and Pseudonymous Kid: “BTW, reading the blog in question was a troubling experience. I really feel badly for that child. It was like swimming in a sewer. How can a woman put her son through that?” Just total lunacy. I think Jeff may have picked the wrong wronged person to build a public shame campaign around.
Jeff G
Paul was called a Nazi, a wannabe-slave owner, and other things in that thread. That his tone took on a bit of snark is hardly unsurprising. But let’s face it — 95% of the commments here are less civil than those Paul made. And on top of that, his comments were largely substantive. Not unexpectedly, I notice that those of you quoting from them have managed to avoid those comments.
And I never attributed such behavior to all professors, though I’ve known and worked with many myself who were just as bad. Nowhere did I said no professor should have authority. In fact, what I wrote was “People like professor Hettle need to be held to account if we are ever to reclaim the integrity of the humanities departments, overwhelmingly comprised of those who share Hettle’s ideological bent (though not necessarily his character deficiencies).” Which would seem to suggest the opposite of such a charge.
Finally, to anyone who (disingenuously or idiotically) finds any correlation between my posting the public contact information of a professor (taken directly from the University site) for purposes of voicing displeasure as his wholly unprofessional conduct, to tracking down and calling a grad student’s dissertation advisor to say he’s engaged in “stalking” and hate speech — well, that’s just par for the course around here, I guess.
Lines
Deignan is an asshole, no doubt, but he’s not the kind of asshole that deserves to have his career destroyed over a disagreement of politics. But when one wants to throw bricks over the fence, one shouldn’t do it with nametags attached. But what he did in that little blog isn’t anything that can go on anywhere. Both of them are wrong, the professor is more wrong. Overall, this spat isn’t anything to get upset about, and its definately not an issue that highlights “liberalism in academics” so much as “there are assholes in the world that like to abuse their power”.
Now, how can I connect that back to Bush/Cheney? Hmm, boggles the mind. I’ll leave that to the imagination.
John Cole
What Jeff said.
I am beginning to think Lines is on glue.
Lines
Jeff G: Its two assholes calling each other out. The only reason you decided to get involved was because you saw a “liberal” professor (since there are no conservative professors, right?) abusing his power. Well, might it have occurred to you that no one is right in that argument? Leave assholes alone, let them shoot each other in a dark parking lot somewhere and concentrate on real issues, like how Hillary killed Vince Foster with a candlestick in the Green Room.
Lines
Jealous? It makes reading Jeff’s site much easier, actually.
Steve S
But it’s ok for Jeff to use his site to try to destroy the career of a professor, simply because he disagrees with his political opinions? Whatever. Jeff did the same exact thing as that nutty professor. You can’t defend it, as it’s right there in black and white.
Yeah, yeah… they were merely going to send him polite little notes on “why he is wrong.” Uh huh. Then why is the Department Chair’s name there? Why is the University Presidents name and number there?
And the nutty professor was merely interested in helping the young student find the path to enlightenment.
That’s just BS and you know it.
You’ll get no fucking sympathy from me on this. I used to work at a university too and once got a call into the office of my boss because of something I wrote on on a local usenet board. I had complained about the company that had the exclusive contract to provide us PCs(Which I still to this day maintain were crap) and apparently pissed off the person who managed the contract.
And it’s unfortunate you deleted goldstein’s profanity laced tirade against me. I thought that did a good job at summarizing the person he really is.
John S.
Jeff-
As someone pointed out, your attempt to paint
picturescaricatures with a 2×4 proves to be sloppy, at best. Or to put it another way…I would take the time to pick through your post and point out the flaws in your thinking, but I don’t think it would be worth the effort — I’d be putting in more effort and thought than you are willing to invest yourself.But here are a few things I am curious about:
Substantiate with specifics, please.
Who is “we”?
What’s par for the course? If you mean incivility, I agree 100%. Thanks for your contribution.
I guess everyone here (except you and John, of course) are either idiots or full of shit if they don’t conform to your perspective on things. Not that I think there really is any correlation – because I don’t. The only correlation I see is between you and another person equally as smug and arrogant, to the extent that anything interesting you both may have to say is obscured by a veil of pompousity.
Joel
I’m curious as to both John Cole’s and Jeff G’s opinions on Denigan’s threatened lawsuits, esp. as it pertains to BitchPhd and the apparent attempt to “out” her. They seem to me to be purely vindictive and almost totally without merit (though no expert on libel law am I).
Justin Slotman
What Joel said. The threatened outing of Dr. B–who clearly wants to remain anonymous, and who is only tangentially related to the matter at hand–is indefensible.
Steve S
Here’s something for you to really poor down some outrage, instead of your faux variety:
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/110805/news1.html
I’m from Iowa, and know of Grassley and he’s a good man and a reasonably good Senator. And to further tie this into the current thread… Grassley graduated from UNI back when it was Iowa State Teachers College.
Anyway, it’s deeply disturbing that one of his aides was attacked, like out of some movie. Watch that one for developments… they’re obviously onto someone or something.
Jeff G
I think going after the site proprietor is unnecessary. I’m unfamiliar with the site, frankly — though I know some people who comment there.
But it’s not my call. He has a post on why he’s doing and what he feels she did wrong. You should go comment there and ask him.
My beef is with this professor. He abused his position. To give you an idea of just how seriously we need to take what he did, I had professors in grad school teach me how to write a “nice” letter of rec that was coded to give other profs a message to be wary. Not sure what today’s code phrases are, but I imagine that system is still in use.
So a direct nasty word from one of your “peers” against a grad student is taken seriously.
Kimmitt
Let me rephrase then: One’s non-professional life.
nyrev
Professor Whatshisname’s an unprofessional ass, but he didn’t do anything illegal. Paul doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually winning a libel suit, although he apparently has more time and money than most grad students. As for attacking Dr. B — not only does he not have any legal or moral grounds to do so, but what he’s describing in his blog comes perilously close to cyber-stalking. If he is actually concerned about how this mess is going to affect his academic and professional career, someone should tell him that being slapped with a restraining order will not help his case.
Kimmitt
I can’t find a list of Deignan’s comments on the thread; could you find and post the ones you’re speaking of?
Jeff G
Sorry for the formatting. I’m pulling these off a pdf doc.
Oops. Sorry. That one wasn’t his.
Pb
From what I understand–and I’m no lawyer either–libel is notoriously hard to prove in America. It seems you have to show (apart from proving that there was at least one false statement made) that there was some actual harm done, and that there was an intent to do so.
So let’s go through this. Even if you concede that there was at least one false statement (which I don’t personally know for sure, it sounds more like a he-said she-said case to me at the moment) and waive the harm requirement (which you can apparently still sometimes do when the libel is that a criminal act is what is being alleged) you still come back to that intent requirement–which is perhaps the hardest element to prove.
I just don’t see it. But, as I said before, I am not a lawyer. Apparently one man’s innocuous throw-away aside in an e-mail is another man’s libel suit. Now, I’ve definitely gotten annoyed in the past when people (who don’t know me) on the internet have lied about me, my character, my beliefs, etc., you name it. It’s just stupid. But lawsuit stupid? Not for me. Don’t feed the trolls.
Steve S
You know. I was thinking in light of Jeff G’s deleted post here.
How are we to know that this guy didn’t archive the thread at a point after some of his posts had been deleted?
So you go to this Paul’s website… and he has this little gem:
He’s linking to some sort of archive of the discussion, where Bitchphd makes a statement.
He highlights the part which talks about spoofing, and claims he was doing no such thing.
What’s interesting is that he does not object to the first point about the deleted messages, one of which had an implied threat.
The plot thickens. It appears there is more to this story than Paul is letting on.
RSA
A few thoughts from another academic:
There goes the reputation of the University of Northern Iowa.
Does anyone seriously think that an engineering professor at Purdue is going to take a history professor’s comments about one of his students seriously? If I were to receive email complaining about what one of my students posted in comments on a blog, I’d show my student and we’d have a laugh over it. WIth permission, I’d black out the student’s name and pin a print-out to my door.
Does Paul D. think he’s suffered any real harm? On the contrary, up until he started talking about a lawsuit, his stock was probably on the rise.
“Unless he starts IP spoofing again” seems like awfully shaky grounds for a libel suit against Bitch Ph.D.; as nyrev suggests above, it makes Paul D. look like a paranoid idiot. Not to mention a Ph.D. student who has too much extra time on his hands.
Otto Man
Agreed. But aren’t these guys in completely different fields? What are the odds a history professor is writing a letter of recommendation for a guy in a mechanical engineering? Zero, right?
This was a case of a grad student trying to use his academic status to give his personal views weight, and then a professor trying to use his status to trump that claim. Both are idiots for doing so, but I think it ends there.
I really doubt a Mech Engineering department is going to care what a History professor from UNI thinks about the guy. However, they probably will care that the guy responded to it all like a stalker. Would you want someone down the hall from you who acted like this?
Otto Man
Well, RSA beat me to it.
Jeff G
I’m no lawyer either, but I think Paul is talking about the fact that Wally misrepresented him — intentionally — to his “boss,” and that such a thing could hurt his academic career.
Jeff G
Well, it certainly would have had Wally not called the guy’s advisor.
And keep in mind that, Paul’s lawsuit aside (which is his business), my complaint has been that the professor misused his authority.
Whether or not a Mech Engineering advisor is likely to take such a call seriously or not is beside the point; because the thing is, there’s a chance that s/he could, and that the professor clearly wanted the advisor to do so.
Sorry, but this is a way to chill speech. And I’m convinced that as contrarian as many of you are, you know it to be the case.
PZ Myers
Nonsense. If I got email of that sort, I would treat it with exactly the serious it deserves…that is, none at all. At worst, I might be annoyed with the person cluttering my mailbox with tripe.
As for all the babble about Deignan’s career being “destroyed”–nonsense squared. An email from an unknown academic about trolling the web is not going to have the slightest effect on his career.
Flinging nuisance lawsuits around, though…that’s a sign of a major asshole, and that’s what’s going to hurt Deignan. Not anything Hettle might say, but what Deignan does.
Jeff G
Actually, my understanding is she deleted the messages, but he had a record of them, so she put them back up. There are no other deleted messages. Look at the pdf. Paul enters at a certain point and then is banned at a certain point.
But again, you can go over to his site and ask. I’m sure he can give you the run down. Unless you’d rather just stay over here, intimate that he may just not be telling you the whole truth, and leave the suspicion you’ve cast his waying hanging out there like a ripe fruit.
Otto Man
Sorry, I still don’t see what authority he had in the first place. He’s at a different university, so there’s no institutional oversight. He’s in an entirely different field, so his opinion matters not a bit. The prof has no power over the grad student at all, and so no authority to wield against him.
This is just one guy complaining about another, and I can’t imagine it will have any impact at all. Yes, it’s an effort to chill speech and the prof ought to be ashamed of that. But it still stands that it’s an incredibly ineffective effort to chill speech.
Jeff G
Excuse me if I don’t take how you would react as indicative of how all professors would react. Anybody who’s ever read Erin O’Connors writing on her experiences at UPenn, or looks through the FIRE archives, will realize that such things can have a deleterious impact on one’s academic career.
And as I said upthread, I saw enough during my years teaching in a humanities department to know that offense is routinely taken, and that grudges are held and acted upon.
RSA
Oops, I forgot to add the obvious: Wally Hettle gives activist Democrats, especially academics, a bad name. What an idiotic thing to do. And while I may disagree with Jeff G.’s snarkiness, he didn’t make use of any non-public information, as far as I can tell.
(As a side note, one of the balancing factors of having tenure at a public university, and thus having the chance to be a “public intellectual”, is that lots of information about you is public and beyond your control. For example, anyone can walk into my university’s library and find out my annual salary, to the dollar. Hettle is fair game, short of being harrassed–he’s got tenure to protect him.)
PZ Myers
Nah, Deignan is going to have trouble throughout his career, if he has one in academia, because he is a patent asshole. All this escapade means is that he’ll use that email from Hettle as an excuse for his own failures.
And inventing vague and generic slanders against those petty academics who you just know will use email from a stranger as an excuse to stick the knife in is just so persuasive, you know? No one ever talks about the malicious backbiting going on in the garbage truck crew or the sales staff down at the mall, but academics — oooh, they’re subhuman creatures of evil intent who are looking around for opportunities to sabotage their colleagues’ careers.
Get over it. There are bad guys in academia, but the majority are just ordinary well-meaning people.
Steve S
Let’s see… From the PDF and the bitchphd thread.
11.02.05 – 9:12 am – In both
11.02.05 – 9:28 am – In both
11.02.05 – 9:39 am – In both
11.02.05 – 12:00 pm – In both
11.02.05 – 12:02 pm – In both
11.02.05 – 1:07 pm – In both
11.02.05 – 1:30 pm – In both
11.02.05 – 2:09 pm – In both
Paul’s PDF was taken on 11/2/2005 at 6:58 pm according to the PDF document properties. That corresponds with the last posting in the PDF as being at 11/2/2005 at 6:56 pm.
As you can see from the very top of the PDF, at this point Paul had already been banned by the webmaster. Presumably this was for a reason? Bitchphd did note on 11/3/2005 that she had deleted many of his comments. Where are they? Everything in Paul’s copy is in the still existing thread.
I’m afraid Jeff, you’ve been taken in by a troll who is now Outraged… OUTRAGED I TELL YA!… but is not telling you the entire story.
Oh… Bitchphd has more on this issue.
Now, Jeff and John… are you going to issue an apology or do we all have to sue you for libel? LOL! :-)
Steve S
PZ Myers –
The professors I worked for in the Agronomy department were far less interested in politics, and far more interested in soil tests, crop yields and effectiveness of herbicide versus organic cultivation techniques.
Now I find out they were all part of a gigantic liberal conspiracy to promote To-Fu! And here all this time I just thought it was because Iowa was one of the primary producers of soybeans in the nation and they were interested in finding ways to promote their use.
DAMN! I’ve been so had! I better call David Horowitz and give him my story of abuse in the heartland of academia.
nyrev
Non-politically speaking, I’d say that when you get to grad school, the good guy to bad guy professor ratio is closer to 50/50. Stolen research, shitty working conditions, misplaced funding and general abuse… there’s a reason why grad students across the country are starting to unionize, and it ain’t for the paid holidays.
Retief
Any sympathy I might have had for Paul has evaporated after reading his susequent posts to his blog. Are we going to hear the update when he never files that lawsuit?
Knemon
“Any sympathy I might have had for Paul has evaporated after reading his susequent posts to his blog.”
I’ll drink to that. At first I felt solidarity. Now, not so much. Hopefully this will fizzle out – though we all should be able to get some more vicarious enjoyment before it does.
*
“Let’s make a deal: you start railing against all the crapola I have to tolerate in the media from the likes of Hannity, Coulter, O’Reilly, all of Fox News and whole slew of intelluctually dishonest rightwing bloggers, and I’ll agree you have a legitimate issue. ”
…
…
my cat’s breath smells like cat food!
Jane Finch
This account begs for “the other side of the story”.
John S.
Well, in Jeff’s world there is no other side to the story. He has posted numerous times that those seeking clarification should merely go to Paul’s website – because naturally, he will give everyone a fair and unbiased account of events.
And then there is the matter that Paul is up against a vast left-wing academic conspiracy meant to overthrow any upcoming conservative genius who dares to question the liberal orthodoxy in a petulent fashion.
It’s all a very sordid affair.
Oh and Jeff, thanks for not bothering to answer a few simple questions.
p.lukasiak
Calling this an abuse of power is such bullshit that it demonstrates how ridiculous JC (and his wingnut buddy Jeff)are at times.
The professor who wrote to Deignan’s advisor had no “power” over Deigan to abuse. He simply notified the advisor that one Deignan was acting inappropriately in a public forum that raised questions about his suitability as a PhD candidate. The advisor has the responsibility of evaluating the information, and taking whatever steps he deems necessary.
The fact is that Deignan very first “contribution” was denigrating, and his second was awash in ad hominem attacks…(e.g. “Should I bother with the rest of your unexamined talking points? I don’t think it would be worth the effort–I’d be putting in more effort and thought than you are willing to invest
yourself.”)
Granted, in the world that Jeffy and JC (and the rest of us) inhabit, such “mild” expression of contempt for someone probably counts as “civil.” But you don’t have to use the “c-bomb” to be uncivil, and Deignan’s attack on the character of the person to whom he was responding was uncalled for.
Deignan has done far more damage to his prospects as a PhD candidate by trying to make this into a federal case than the professor who “ratted” on him could have ever accomplished. But Deignan may have the last laugh — he might get a job thanks to his wingnutterry at (as one of his respondents in the thread said) “one of those all expenses paid, live in a hotel at your think tank
internships to keep you from the horrors of graduate school or the risk of having a woman
boss in the corporate world. (and we all known how those corporate women bosses are …)”
p.lukasiak
And keep in mind that, Paul’s lawsuit aside (which is his business), my complaint has been that the professor misused his authority.
Jeff, explain WHAT authority the professor in question had over Geignan. Then we might take you seriously.
Slartibartfast
If the Purdue Engineering faculty is anything like it was when I was there a couple of decades ago, they probably had a good laugh over this during fluids lab. I really, really doubt that this could have damaged Deignan in any way. However, as Jeff’s pointed out, what any of us think along these lines is not all that relevant, unless one of us is Paul Deignan’s advisor. I didn’t seen Deignan as uncivil or abusive even to the extent that Hettle was, so dropping a note to Deignan’s advisor was just…unprofessional, and also an indication of Hettle’s inability (or disinclination, which is almost as bad) to defend his position. I doubt I’d get as worked up about it as Deignan, but it’s not my call.
Slartibartfast
On the other hand, Hettle’s acted sufficiently unprofessionally in a public forum to justify raising questions about having his tenure revoked, if such a thing were possible. See how that works?
rs
Did this pussy get his 15 minutes on O’Reilly yet?
Don
Slarty, of course you wouldn’t get as worked up. The dude was hanging out in a liberal gabfest looking to pull people’s chains. He’s a jerk and the professor is a snotty doucebag. Yet another story with no heros…
Steve S
This is the thing I like about this blog. After some back and forth, we got to the bottom of this story and showed how hyperbole from either the left or the right can make a whole bunch of people look like fools.
You should never assume that someone is telling you the whole story when they say they’ve been wronged. Look for the other side of the story before jumping to conclusions.
Jim
The latest from Paul the miscreant’s site:
“Take action now and we might continue to have an internet where we can exchange ideas freely.”
That’s right, he is taking legal action so that we don’t have an internet where we can exchange ideas freely. He is definitely someone to champion. (Not that what the Prof and N. Iowa did was right or good.)
ss
Good lord, John Cole, who are these people? You used to be cool, man. Then you started hanging out with the angry smoker kids. Now, see, for example, Steve S is a total delusional tool. If he’s praising this site, it’s gone badly wrong.
Joel
I’m a little baffled by the refusal by Jeff G to comment on the merits of Denigan’s threatened lawsuits (beyond a very tepid “probably unnecessary”). I’ll be blunt: I don’t see any difference between Denigan and Henke at this point. They’re both thin-skinned jerks using inappropriate means to settle a personal dispute. Denigan’s lawsuits seem almost totally baseless and are likely purely vindictive in nature. Additionally while the harm Denigan may have suffered is purely speculative at this point and likely exceedingly trivial (and only exacerbated by his own actions) the harm of these potential lawsuits is potentially very great even if only from a financial point of view. So why all the vitriol for the asshole prof. and none for the equal jackassery of the grad student?
The Cavalry
This is typical of the leftist politically correct anti-free speech ethos that has ruled our college campuses for the past 20 years. The left is all for free speech when it is anti-George Bush blather, but when push comes to shove, they want to shut up the opposition by any means necessary.
Slartibartfast
And not that a free exchange of ideas was ever in the cards.
Kimmitt
Thanks for the heads up — Deignan’s first post may have contained content but was completely ruined by his incendiary bullshit at the end. He trolled a message board and got banned, and he should stop being an asshole.
Justin Slotman
Slart, a free exchange of ideas was impossible from Deignan’s first post onwards. Maybe this is some bizarre information theory experiment that’s intended to provide objective proof of the intractability of the abortion “debate.”
Slartibartfast
Impossible…I do not think that word means what you think it means.
And I’m sorry, but Deignan’s first post was MUCH more civil than three-quarters of the comments I see here.
John S.
A play from the Jeff G. handbook…
Would you care to cite some specific examples of the sheer incivility here that trumps Paul’s statement that someone isn’t worth the effort because they are lazy and stupid?
Or, if you prefer spouting hasty generalizations that in fact undermine your point, then feel free to do so. Just don’t be surprised when people lose sight of the possible merits of your rationale because of poor style (much like Jeff and Paul).
Phillip J. Birmingham
And not that a free exchange of ideas was ever in the cards.
You know, no matter how sweetly the love letter reads, opening it with “Dear Asshole,” kinda ruins the effect.
John S.
This is precisely the point I am trying to drive home. Perhaps it is the fact that I am in advertising that I place so much importance on style.
I liken this scenario to having an expensive diamond ring you want to give someone. If the ring is packaged in a nice little velvet box inside of a gift box with a ribbon on it, then a person will be inclined to open the box to see the valuable contents inside.
On the other hand, if you take the ring and place it inside of a plastic bag of dog shit and then place that inside of a brown paper bag soaked with gasoline, you will find someone reluctant to open the package to see the contents within – valuable or not.
Content may be king, but it remains second to marketing so long as it is emperor.
Slartibartfast
I had no idea he had one, and I’m pissed that I don’t have a copy.
Paul said that? Lazy and stupid? You should link me to that comments thread; I’ve obviously been looking at the wrong one all along. I’m guessing with the level of concern you have with incivility, the Internet is positively ablaze with your emails to ppGaz, Steve S, Lines, p. lukasiak, etc to please stop the madness.
Again, I missed that one. Perhaps it’s one that BitchPhd deleted and has not yet restored.
Oh, it’s an issue of style? ‘Nuff said.
Jeff G
Here’s a follow-up post.
TallDave
The lefty commenters here are a neverending source of hilarity. I’m sure they would have the exact same position if it were a lefty PhD candidate being trashed to his advisers by a righty professor for alleged “incivility” on a righty blog called “Asshole PhD,” rather than, say, screaming about “Nazi tactics” and “crushing of dissent” and not only suing but demanding the professor be fired.
Freedom of speech for me, not so much for thee.
John S.
I suppose you could interpret his comments another way:
You still haven’t provided a single quote from this thread that backs up your claim:
You should link me to this here in the comments thread; I’ve obviously been looking at the wrong one all along.
And of course, TallDave is a neverending source of hilarity to anyone reading his comments.
Slartibartfast
I suppose I could, and did. Deignan showed more manners than most of you do.
That’s because I wasn’t referring to just this thread. Still, this is rather less civil than Deignan was. As are this, this, this, this and this. Your pointing out that I haven’t achieved the requisite 75% on this very thread makes my larger point crumble into dust. Or I could have been using a little hyperbolic excess; your pick.
Still, I’m writing to all your moms.
Slartibartfast
Crap. All the links that were just fine in preview failed on post. If you can’t find at least a half-dozen less civil posts on this thread, though, you need glasses.
Shygetz
Look, the guy published his comments under his own name, and flaunted his professional affiliations while doing so. While I think that contacting his advisors was dumb, especially as his comments had nothing to do with his profession (he wasn’t spouting insane theories about mechanical engineering), the professor was within his rights–he didn’t “out” the guy, he just did something that, by current appearances, was infantile and dumb but probably had no effect on the student. Hell, when I was a PhD student, if a humanities professor at my own university had complained about my on-line comments, the only thing my advisor would have done is ask me when did I have the time to play on the internet. If there are other comments that we have not seen, the professor may even have been correct in contacting the advisor, though I doubt it.
If the professor used his professional affiliation in contacting the advisor, then the advisor and/or the student have the right to complain to his superiors. However, Jeff was way off base in asking the commentariat in general to complain about something to the professor’s superiors, when they obviously do not know both sides of the story, and they have not been affected by the action. And the student’s threats to sue are just sad; talk about an overly-litigious society. Why isn’t Jeff screaming “Tort Reform!” and “Frivilous Lawsuit!” at this one? Has he been placed on probation? Has he suffered any damages at all other than receiving publicity for non-anonymous comments he made in a public forum? If so, then he should sue his advisor and Purdue for censoring speech on without cause. If not, then get over it. And Jeff should not invite his commenters to complain to a private individual’s superiors based on incomplete information. That’s just classless, and could be viewed as inciting harassment (ooo, another lawsuit!)
John S.
Slartibartfast-
Color me less than impressed by your repetition of the same meme Paul was guilty of: If you are too stupid to research the validity of my baseless claims, then you are an idiot and hardly worth the effort.
You may want to familiarize yourself with the concept of burden of proof – you make a claim, you back it up.
Slartibartfast
No, it’s really more like this: if you’re idiot enough to ascribe to me the above viewpoint, you’re too much of an idiot for your opinion to matter to me.
Already made its acquaintance, thanks; it says hello and says you should stop by more. Now, can we stop playing gotcha with what was clearly NOT (if you mistook it as such to begin with, you have no excuse after my last post) a statement of fact?
John S.
Slartibartfast-
All I have to say about this ridiculous matter I have already said here.
If you disagree, fine. If you agree, fine. Just bear in mind that making blanket generalizations without providing supporting evidence is a pet peeve of mine. And I’m not a big fan of stating opinions as if they are fact, either.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Opinions are like assholes – we all have them. Any attempt to try and convince me that your asshole is superior to mine merely because it is yours will fall on deaf ears.
Brett
The answer to Andrei’s rhetorical question as to why conservatives get elected if academia is so liberal is obvious: the majority of voters do not have degrees. This is why academics are considered an elite–oddly enough, both inside and outside the academy. The non-academics say so because they are well aware that the academic minority wants its ideas to govern the hoi polloi, and the academics because they think they are smarter than any non-academic who disagrees with them.
It’s time to stop subsidising these elites with tax revenue. They wouldn’t have time to rule us were it incumbent upon them to produce wealth rather than consume others’.
John S.
What America are you living in? Academics don’t rule shit. And despite the fact that many poltiicians have degrees, that hardly qualifies them as “academics”.
As to their voracious consumption of wealth, I don’t think any wealth ditribution chart would show that academics consume a majority of the wealth. However, when it comes to creating wealth, academia is responsible for producing the folks that inhabit most R&D positions in any enterprise, so you may want to re-think branding them as not pulling their fair share.
In my estimation, we are dominantly controlled by mundanity. Or to put it another way, the world is controlled by C-students rather than by the A/B-students that often go on to join the ranks of academia.
Brett
I live in the United States, where academics’ ideas find much expression in legislation. Where do you live?
I’m not saying we don’t need higher education; we do, however, need less. When it comes to government-funded education, a lot less.
Of course R&D positions in the private sector produce wealth. I was referring to professional academics, who do not produce wealth, but consume that of others. Despite the usual word games, these are not “investments.”
Of course academics don’t consume the majority of wealth. The private producers do, and they have every right to do so. What academics do consume is a taking from those producers, a privilige they have come to view as a right.
As you didn’t understand any of my points, why address them?
John S.
LESS higher education? According to the last census, scarcely 1/4 of Americans had Bachelors degrees, and those that DO made nearly double their high school only counterparts. And yet you want LESS education? Troubling.
Speaking of ‘word games’, where the hell do you think the people with higher degrees (whom you want less of) came from exactly? That’s right, they came from professional academia first before they moved into the private sector. One cannot get a PhD without being part of professional academia – even if for a short time. It is part of the process.
Because your original points were overly simplisitc, and amounted to little more than “Liberal academia sucks!”
I am happy to see that upon pressing you, that you were able to provide some much needed clarification to your earlier post. However, I still find some of your ‘new’ points a bit troublesome and I have addressed them as thus.
And please, don’t confuse understanding with disagreement. They are not one in the same, despite your best attempt to make it so.
Josh
This guy’s lawsuit is ridiculous. And if you’re planning on filing a lawsuit, one thing you don’t do (as any lawyer will tell you) is keep blathering about it, and making potentially damaging admissions, on your website.
Knemon
“the hoi polloi”
GRR. Pet peeve: this is redundant. “hoi” = “the” (plural masculine). Just say “hoi polloi.”
Brett
I’m troubled by the idea that higher education is a social program. That’s a good way to degrade the academy, whose purpose should be to gather and disseminate knowledge. A society of 100% degree holders, expecting higher than average incomes by virtue of the piece of paper would be economically dysfunctional, absent a slave class.
Strip out all the unnecessary government positions occupied by degree holders, and the income differential will narrow. These mandarins skew the figures.
Knemon–Greek is not English.
Knemon
Brett – would you say “the les miserables?”
John S.
Knemon-
Do you really want to know the answer to that?