On the sociopaths and the liar/plagiarist, they were all denied tenure. One went on quite quickly to another institution. Another is trying to be a K-12 teacher, and the third is off my radar.
I will say, though, that there were two truly horrible yet very successful people, one with diagnosed mental illness, at one of my graduate institutions. The diagnosed individual was a notorious misogynist and stalker. The other was/is popular with all the grad students who have not yet been the person’s advisee.
My colleague who is not neurotypical is a pain. And they’re not an effective teacher. When I did observations, though, it was clear how much of their problem was because students weren’t willing to respond. My colleague had prepared like crazy, knew the material, asked good questions, and so on. But the students just sat around giving them some sort of dead-mackerel stink-eye. It was an agony to watch.
I don’t work in academia but i do work in a job where a good portion of my co-workers are field/operations personnel, most of my clients and customers are also in the development/construction business so a lot of blue collared guys. With that in mind a big portion of my leadership is women, and by far i’ve found them all to be a pleasure to work with. They’re wickedly smart, ambitious yet caring, and very people/service oriented and being surrounded by compassionate smart women is very inspiring to me and i’m sure its the same for my other co-workers.
I’m sure in the background there must be some BS and bias but overall my time here has been quite positive. I would hope that these kinds of workplace culture was something more people could experience themselves, and that would go double for academic pursuits. It really saddens me when i hear that some people are turned off from their personal journey because someone decided to be sexist or racist asshole
I don’t think that that’s anything special to that environment. People with that attitude and behaviour can turn up anywhere. Some people just don’t stop being cliquey, sniping, asses.
You have expressed it much better and more accurately than I could. Thank you; I agree with you and your conclusions. I understand my own biases better now.
I phrased that quote wrong; it was mostly ill-behaving men who drove me out of academia and who dashed my childhood dreams of being a professor. The more I think about it, all of my negative experiences, all of my resulting biases; it’s all fallout from the system reacting against the inclusion of more women, people of color, non-Christians, and LGBT+ people; but I didn’t really realize that until now. Thank you!
Thanks, but honestly, I feel like I’m howling into the wind on that note… people will theorize about it at conferences, or in professional magazines, but little will be done about it, mostly because there are so many other problems that need addressing in academia, not the least of which is the overall jobs situation for many fields, and then the funding cuts in some places (the recent one is Alaska comes to mind). You bring up issues like gender disparities, and some one with more political capital will most likely roll their eyes and bring up those issues, all while they are sitting in comfy positions that aren’t likely to be pulled out from under them.
If you think someone is “difficult to work with” or because they asked for reasonable accommodations for their disability, then firmly reminded you legal action was a possibility if you didn’t, and you eventually had to have them sign a document saying they will never say you violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in exchange for a fat check, it’s absolutely not legal and you feeling salty you had to pay them a settlement will only lead to more money being paid out if you retaliate for said not so fresh feeling.
There are several distinct issues here. (1) When she asked people (presumably faculty) other than her advisor for letters of recommendation, anyone who actively disliked her should have refused upfront to do so. (2) Her advisor: this one puzzles me. If their relationship was so bad, it should have ended long ago. Unless something has changed in UK universities since my time there, there is no obligation for the advisor to keep the advisee on to completion. There is no benefit to an advisor to undermine his or her advisee. (3) One of her examiners had the same strong impression of her lack of collegiality? If an outside examiner, how did they get that impression? If an inside examiner, what causes two different people working with a student to come to this kind of shared conclusion? (4) How bad were the letters really? Most letters written by US academics are pretty positive, in fact anything less than superlative rings alarm bells. Traditionally, letters written by UK academics are balanced and sometimes blunt, even the positive ones. When you sit on enough hiring university committees you get pretty good at interpreting letters in the context of their source, but without seeing the letter I for one can’t offer an opinion (though if they genuinely contained “insults and demeaning adjectives” then that is unacceptable). (5) “You will apply for hundreds of jobs, but rarely, if ever, be shortlisted. You will account for some of this by blaming bad luck. You’ll tell yourself it’s a numbers game, or the economy is bad, or there are too many applicants chasing too few jobs.” This isn’t enough to start either getting paranoid or start doubting your own abilities, the academic job market outside of very few fields really is a nightmare, and even the smartest, hardest-working, most collegial young academics apply for hundreds of jobs without a bite every day.
Yikes – wall of text. sorry.
One more thing: if confidential letters of recommendation become increasingly subject to this kind of request, they will become decreasingly useful in academic hiring. That might or might not be a bad thing, of course.
That’s why my last sentence was there. However, having sat on many searches, I can say that it isn’t obvious to me who would benefit if we stopped using them. For that matter, I can’t think of many jobs where references don’t play some role.
