Accuracy patrol
Honestly, they’re still getting this wrong.
The story: senior academic, a male, when a voice on a crowded elevator at a conference invites people to call out their floors, calls out “Ladies’ Lingerie!” Haw haw. Another academic, a woman, makes a complaint, and since this is in the Daily Mail you know the rest.
But then the senior male academic, Richard New Lewbow, telling this sad tale, gets to Tim Hunt.
I know many in my profession are more vulnerable to threats and bullying than I am — at 76 I am near the end of my career. But students and young dons will feel an even greater need to censor their thoughts in a world where people who take offence can muzzle others.
And it is not only young people at risk. You might remember the case of Professor Tim Hunt, a Nobel prize-winning biochemist who made an ill-judged joke to a conference in 2015 about his problems when working with ‘girls’ in the lab — either he fell in love with them, they fell in love with him, or he made them cry.
I certainly wouldn’t endorse this clunky attempt at humour, but the way the academic world turned on him was frightening.
He was forced to resign as a professor at University College London — a Nobel winner’s reputation in tatters over one ill-advised joke.
NO. That is wrong. He wasn’t a professor at UCL; he was an honorary professor, which is an honor as opposed to a job, and an honor that can be withdrawn at any time for any reason, as UCL says very clearly on its website. It wasn’t his job or his career, it was an honorary professorship; he was very sorry to lose it but it wasn’t comparable to being fired. At all.
You’d think a senior academic of all people could manage to get that right.
Not if he doesn’t want to get it right.
It doesn’t make a very good academic tale unless the poor guy who failed to “muzzle his thoughts” ends up losing his job. . .
and Hunt is the one who tattered up his reputation by talking like a total ass hole. . .
There was an old fellow named Hunt
Who once tried a bad joke to punt
It showed terrible class
Got him thrown out on his arse
Now the old boors keep his name ever front
But but but he is a free speech martyr just the same!
To be fair to Tim Hunt, I recall he did apologise and as far as I know, he hasn’t harped on it ever since. It seems to be others with their own agendas who hold him up as a martyr of PC madness.
Strangely, quite a lot of academics, especially of the old skool, take the business of honorary degrees and positions very, very seriously. Nobody knows why.
I’ve had a few visiting research positions over the years. The one and only reason they existed at all was to make it easier to get me an office key or a library card or to book me a parking space. The ‘job’ always consisted of whatever it was I was doing anyway, working with the people I was already working with. That is exactly how everyone saw it – a tedious business of having to fill in a stupid form every year for some unknown person to rubber-stamp, so I could occasionally use a meeting room or borrow a projector.
But I’ve met plenty of people who treat stuff like that as though they are achievements. They put this stuff on their CV. I’ve met people who insist “I’m a doctor and you should call me dr” because they have an honorary degree. And I’ve met a stupefying number of senior academics who boast about how many honorary degrees they have, and from which institutions. I’m sure they think they’ve somehow earned them, but they are handed out like confetti.
I wouldn’t be very surprised if this idiot genuinely can’t see the difference.
With tenure secure, who cares about getting anything right?
Academics.
In my experience and for the most part, academics care about the truth and why it’s the truth. But there are plenty who convince themselves that their comfort is more important.
There’s one particular academic from Newcastle and not in my discipline. She’s a friend for fuck’s sake, we’ve done some interesting work together. But holy shit is she on the speed dial of every journalist ever. She’s a psychologist and seems delighted to pretend that there’s some sort of study supporting or refuting whatever it is random journo wants to write about.
She just seems to love being on TV, lit moodily with the Tyne Bridge in the background, saying whatever shit she’s asked to. Her actual work is good, We’ve fallen out about this more than once.
Well to be fair it’s pretty irresistible to be on TV lit moodily with the Tyne Bridge in the background.