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Comment by mkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Felleisen is an academic, and his behaviour is very common in academia. It's trivial for college professors to get away with bullying people. In comparison, the software industry is relatively friendly and rewarding.

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I can assure you that while it certainly is easy for faculty to get away with this behavior (Matthias himself being evidence of that fact), his behavior is well outside of the range of what could reasonably be considered normal, at least within computing academia in general.

I suppose it depends on your definition of "normal." Just reading a couple of anecdotes about Matthias pattern-matches well against more than one faculty member I've encountered; if, say, 5% of faculty openly act this way with near zero repercussions, is it really "abnormal?"

Agreed. One of the many (and there were many) reasons that left me to leave academia was the huge egos and bullying of the famous professors. Getting chewed out by a cantankerous member of your academic community was just a cost of being an academic when I was in academia.

Hopefully this isn't what you meant, but behavior like that isn't acceptable regardless of how common it is.

I don’t think this is actually more common on academia than elsewhere, really - but I do think that once you have reached a certain level in academic career, there are few consequences for it. This makes it stand out.

I think that's probably true. Without the freedom/protection afforded them by their positions, they would have to disguise their behaviors more.

Matthias is a special case, who just needs to be ignored sometimes on conferences. Much better not to take him too seriously on certain topics. Esp. types.

This is exactly how bullies flourish.

He _wants_ to be ignored by reasonable people sometimes. So he can continue being an asshole to some individuals whenever he wants.

What he _needs_ is to be uninvited to conferences, and pushed out of leadership positions in projects.

"Uninvited": this sounds like cancel cuture.

I don't think it matters. Do you? Abusive people who are enabled by their privilege need to have that privilege restricted. I believe they deserve such restriction as a form of punishment, a moral consequence of their abusive behavior. But even if you reject that moral analysis—and there are reasonable arguments for doing so—putting or keeping abusive people in power harms the community, and keeping community members from being harmed by an abusive person is more than enough justification for restricting the privilege of that person.

If by "cancel culture" you mean, as is often the case, "bad actions having consequences", then yes.

A fuckwit in a profession full of fuckwits - is still a fuckwit.

(And Linus circa 1990 thru 2018 or so is a counterexample to your second sentence...)

If Linus can do it, anyone can.

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