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That MIT Guy Actually Went on His Hunger Strike

By bcohen on February 6, 2007.

Here's an update from a previous post about James Sherley, at MIT, who'd threatened late last year to go on a hunger strike to protest not getting tenure.

According to this story yesterday at ABC News (and, I now see, as also noted by Omnbrain), the guy is going through with it. Speculation following from my earlier post was that he'd either not do it, that it was strange to wait until now to start, or that there was more to it than we knew. I still don't know anymore about the case, and honestly forgot about it. But there he is, going through with it.

I wonder if anyone can help us, by now, get beyond the speculation. What are the merits of his case? If more than the news has so far reported?

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Nobody is against Sherley having tenure if he is the man for the job. It was never racial with him. His science if flawed, his science is bad and he is strident. Do we have others here who can attest to him standing up at meetings and causing problems from the audience. Only to be boo-ed out of the room?

Race never had anything to do with it and bullying MIT into a tenure position and acting 5 about it only proves he was never the man for the job.

Period.

Well, that stuff gives me the creeps. It's enough to make me seriously wonder what's going on there at MIT. Especially the part about denying that he was the first faculty member hired into BE. It just reminds me all too much of Ellen Swallow Richards, and how the chemical engineering department refused to grant her the PhD, even though she'd done all the work, because they just couldn't stand to have their first ever PhD go to a woman. Also how, though she was the first woman admitted to MIT, it was with the understanding that her admission did not set a precendent for the admission of women. "Professor Sherley, here is your BE appointment letter. Except please do not take this to mean that you are the first ever professor appointed into BE." Ah, there's nothing like MIT tradition. Gotta love my alma mater.