MIT indefinitely removes online physics lectures and courses by Walter Lewin
newsoffice.mit.edu
newsoffice.mit.edu
So it wasn't an isolated incident.
"Based on its investigation, MIT has determined that Lewin’s behavior toward the complainant violated the Institute’s policy on sexual harassment. Following broad consultation among faculty, MIT is indefinitely removing Lewin’s online courses, in the interest of preventing any further inappropriate behavior."
There was an investigation, run by the head of the Physics department, and they determined sexual harassment happened through MIT online materials. The faculty of the department were consulted, and it was decided to remove his material, to prevent any future issues.
He used his online content to prey upon female students. They removed that content. I mean what was the alternative for MIT? Not tell anyone? Leave it up, with a warning that you shouldn't contact the professor because he has harassed women in the past?
Call me old-fashioned, but I think when people abuse their positions of power and authority in order to victimize others, the institutions SHOULD cut ties with those individuals. As far as I know, nothing prevents Lewin, or others, from hosting the videos of his lectures elsewhere.
But MIT is right to disassociate from somebody they have determined to have behaved inappropriately.
That's not what that statement says, and indeed it's sort of strange to think that's a plausible occurrence.
His lecture and notes didn't do any harassing. He did, through interaction on the online platform. That's not the same thing.
I'll agree that his video lectures themselves probably didn't have him acting inappropriately. His website says his video lectures are coming soon, so I suspect he may release the content there. But MIT is, in my view at least, not obligated to promote or host his content on EdX, and if I were them I wouldn't want to be associated with the guy. And that's assuming that they weren't worried about further people contacting him and being harassed.
OCW is not that. It's just videos and notes posted online for people to work through on their own. Very different situation.
Taking down existing video content, which is only incidentally connected to the problematic behaviour (Lewin seems to have his role as the course instructor rather than the videos as an excuse to make contact with course participants), to me would be more akin to burning the books written by an unliked person than to any act legitimately defending MITs or the course participants' interests.
Every time I delete a file, am I a book burner?
I think taking down a video is directly analogous to stopping providing a course. Hosting those videos could reasonably be construed as endorsement of that person as an educator, something MIT clearly doesn't want to do.
In the end it's their site and their reputation on the line.
If you are the official source and don't provide a mirror, arguably.
Still, a statement as vague as this allows imaginations to run wild. If they are going to publicly humiliate a respected professor like this, you would think they would be at least a little more specific as to the allegations. They couldn't do any more damage to him than they did here anyway, and the term "sexual harassment" covers a vast spectrum of conduct. This statement paints him as the worst kind of sexual predator, who was so dangerous that he could only be stopped through public humiliation and immediate disassociation from MIT. Since no crime has been alleged, the impression they have created is probably not aligned with the facts.
Why is is not relevant that a bunch of smart people who were friends of the accused looked over the evidence and concluded that the university should no longer be associated with him? I get the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, but it feels like a lot of people here are bending over backward to deny that sexual harassment might have happened.
And as for "the worst kind of sexual predator", that seems more than a little extreme based on what's been said, doesn't it? MIT is under no obligation to reserve punishment for illegal conduct. If they have established community standards for their online spaces that go beyond "no illegal behavior" and they want that community to trust that those standards count for something, this seems like a perfectly reasonable action to take.
No. But I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would find it appropriate to send out a press release announcing the firing of someone based upon an internal sexual harassment claim. I would fully expect to be sued if I did such a thing. Unless the conduct would also meet a jury's definition of sexual harassment, and not just violate the internal policy, it's a perfect libel case.
>And as for "the worst kind of sexual predator", that seems more than a little extreme based on what's been said, doesn't it?
In word: no. That is the impression I was left with based upon the actions they took. If it was worth destroying his reputation, as they did here, then in the absence of additional information we are left to assume the worst.
They could have easily not made this statement and just removed his classes from the site, or kept his lectures up and had another professor handle interactions. They instead chose to publicly tar and feather him. That may or may not be justified, but we don't have enough information to make that judgment. If his conduct was on the lower end of the sexual harassment spectrum (an "online learner" thought it was inappropriate that he asked her out, for example) then making this statement was uncalled for. They just ruined this man's career.
Assuming that the accusations were substantiated and did violate the MIT harassment policy (which, just to emphasize this, was the conclusion of a committee led by his own colleagues in the Physics department that did see all the evidence), I think it's clear that Lewin ruined his own career.
As it happens, I'm a physics professor myself. And let me tell you, I know good and well that my tenure wouldn't be worth squat if I asked a current student for a date. It's not like this is complicated. Why does the blame so easily get assigned to the university ("They ruined his career") or to the victim ("She got him fired")?
I doubt they looked at the evidence and made this decision lightly.
To be fair, and to your point, we don't have enough information to speak intelligently about this.
The man had some of the most popular lectures ever put online. Wikipedia claims over 12 million views. You don't just take down those videos without giving a reason. With celebrity comes a loss of privacy.
Also, they did not just ruin his career. He is 78 and spent over 40 years in the classroom at MIT. He already had a more than successful career. They ruined his ability to continue to have one-on-one interactions with students, and rightly so if he was sexually harassing them.
> MIT’s action comes in response to a complaint it received in October from a woman, who is an online MITx learner, claiming online sexual harassment by Lewin. She provided information about Lewin’s interactions with her, which began when she was a learner in one of his MITx courses, as well as information about interactions between Lewin and other women online learners.
1. A student claimed online sexual harassment by Professor Lewin
2. This student provided information of these interactions.
3. MIT conducted an investigation
4. The investigation found that Lewin's behavior violated the current sexual harassment policies.
Seems pretty straightforward, except for #2, though I guess we can reasonably surmise that the information involved screenshots or saved chat logs. Otherwise, what other kind of information are you looking for that would help clarify whether or not MIT's sexual harassment policies were violated or not?
Exactly what he did? "sexual harassment" is an extremely broad category. Was it a few sexist remarks, or something much worse?
http://web.mit.edu/policies/9/9.5.html
Here's the overview of sexual harassment:
> Sexual harassment may take many forms. Sexual assault and requests for sexual favors that affect educational or employment decisions constitute sexual harassment. However, sexual harassment may also consist of unwanted physical contact, requests for sexual favors, visual displays of degrading sexual images, sexually suggestive conduct, or offensive remarks of a sexual nature.
As to why MIT doesn't get into more detail...that's kind of the modus operandi for these kinds of internal, non-criminal investigations. I don't know what you're reading into this, but perhaps you think the professor has been harshly punished for a few ambiguously sexist remarks, and you think seeing them would vindicate him? Perhaps. But it's also possible that the professor did something egregious, and it may not be helpful to air that out (especially if it means reproducing offensive photos that were allegedly sent).
So when is conduct benign enough that the University could just publish, and when is it not? That's a difficult decision. But for the most part, if the purpose of a press release is to explain why online materials are no longer online, it's not necessary to get into the nitty gritty of the findings of the investigation. If the professor wants to publicly fight the investigation, then it'd be more appropriate for the university to reveal the damning information it has.
The only issue here is lack of (public) evidence.
Extremely vague.
Students look up to their professors. Being persued sexually by one is more demoralizing than almost anything else, and humiliating. Very, very humiliating. Especially when being offered preferential treatment in class, that's unwanted, has been rebuffed, and is being spectated and/or resented by fellow classmates.
You really think transparency for the court of public opinion is more important in the interest of the professor's reputation (with a naieve assumption the professor wasn't doing anything he'd be humilliated by, should those allegations go public), than it is to protect the victim—who's ALREADY been through a humilliating, self-esteem erroding ordeal?!
I didn't say there was no reason a man should go into a ladies room. I said that it's easy to imagine a situation in which a man entering a ladies room would very definitely be sexual harassment. Like, you know, chasing after a specific woman.
Frankly: if the dynamic between two individuals is as such, that for one to walk into a room has been plainly stated to violate the imposed boundaries of another, THAT is harassment. Textbook. Harassment. That's what restraining orders are for.
And unless the person in question chooses to contest the allegation, either in a court of law or a court of public opinion, they would seem within their rights to do so. Firing is between an employer and an employee, not an issue of societal justice that requires full transparency. Certainly I know that if I was fired for stealing from my employer I'd very much want them to keep the specifics private.
MIT (and all academic institutions) reviews cases in private. Behind closed doors. The same way the court system works. They make and deliver a judgement, after reviewing evidence. Doing so, protects the victims/claimants in cases. It's NOT "MIT is satisfied a person broke the policy," it's "MIT took time to review a complaint, deemed it was valid, and took action."
Filing a complaint RARELY means punishment will happen. Especially in situations of sexual harassment. In my case, my professor was never even admonished.
Grow. Up.
Court records are public, and for good reason. Jury deliberations are private, but witness testimony, expert evidence, and even the advocates' arguments are all matters of record.
The review systems of private institutions, of course, are not currently held to the same standards. But the reality is that in today's world this kind of public judgement can carry much the same consequences in terms of future employment etc. as a criminal conviction. So maybe it's time they were regulated the same way, with the same rights of representation, due process, appeal and so on.
Therefore I think we're allowed to retain a bit of skepticism of this completely nontransparent case. MIT internal politics can be utterly brutal and nontransparent, see e.g. the termination with extreme prejudice of the Applied Biology department when it was part of the School of Science.
For example of confidentially as part of the resolution process in a public organization, see the EEOC's own internal resolution guidelines at http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/adr/resolvehandbook.cfm .
You are right that the court decisions are nearly all public.
Bu to be clear, you want every investigation of a violation of internal policies to be public? Including things that aren't illegal, like plagiarism, or drinking on the job when internal guidelines prohibit it, or not following the dress code? Or is there something about this case which is special, and if so, what?
In the case of EEOC-related topics, your advice seems to be contrary to what's regarded as best practices.
You also seem to want an entire new level of government rules and oversight. For examples: What's the publication system for those decisions? Who can access them, and for how long are they made available to the public? Are they required to be in English? Can anyone start a internal proceeding or is it limited to managers? Or to the CEO? What about customers and students? In the courts, the plaintiff can be anonymous, as it was in Roe v. Wade. Does the same hold for publishing internal cases? In EEOC guidelines, invalid accusations made in good earnest are protected from retaliatory action, including requirements for management to prohibit retaliation from co-workers that find out about the issue. Does the same hold for the now-public internal investigations? Do other employees have a right to refuse to make a statement they know will be public, and who has the responsibility for preventing the use of this resolution system as a fishing expedition? Which government authority has oversight over the process? What are the penalties for an organization which refuses to publish their internal investigations?
Really, a requirement that all these proceedings be public seems open for a world of pain, and I don't see what the benefit is, given that it's ripe for abuse. If a hundred Global Warming Deniers send 5 complaints each about the corrupt practices of a climatologist, then is the employer (like the court) required to publish all of the false claims and make an investigation? Your proposal makes things less susceptible to public judgement because ... why?
Interesting, I shall have to read more. But that document seems to be about negotiated resolution prior to a formal complaint, and explicitly disclaims any findings of right or wrong - if we're making analogy with the legal system it seems to correspond more closely to the settlement/plea bargaining stage (which is confidential).
> Bu to be clear, you want every investigation of a violation of internal policies to be public? Including things that aren't illegal, like plagiarism, or drinking on the job when internal guidelines prohibit it, or not following the dress code?
Sounds right to me. That would make it easy to e.g. explain to a subsequent employer that the reason you don't have a reference is only that you violated the dress code, or conversely if you really had been fired for major misconduct you couldn't bluff that away. Transparency is better for society.
> Or is there something about this case which is special, and if so, what?
I think the very public announcement from MIT changes things; in the "ancestral legal environment" someone who was fired for misconduct would, at worst, leave town and be able to continue their life elsewhere. But I think in the longer term that's where society is headed - once you can instantly look up even obscure bits of background of anyone you meet, maybe different legal standards are appropriate. (Alternately, elsewhere in the thread someone claimed that this announcement opened MIT up to a defamation lawsuit if a jury wouldn't agree that what he did constituted sexual harassment. Maybe that's an adequate check, and nothing needs to change.)
> You also seem to want an entire new level of government rules and oversight.
Yes I do. I think the angry public of the internet has become a powerful weapon that can destroy lives, and new regulation is appropriate.
> Really, a requirement that all these proceedings be public seems open for a world of pain, and I don't see what the benefit is, given that it's ripe for abuse. If a hundred Global Warming Deniers send 5 complaints each about the corrupt practices of a climatologist, then is the employer (like the court) required to publish all of the false claims and make an investigation?
We have those kind of issues already with e.g. FOIA requests. They don't seem to be insoluble.
The goal for alternate dispute resolution methods is to avoid the full machinery of the courts, which is expensive and takes time. Nor do I agree with the "if we're making analogy with the legal system" .. courts like ADRs as well, for the same reason, and according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_dispute_resolution "some courts now require some parties to resort to ADR of some type, usually mediation, before permitting the parties' cases to be tried"
So if we're making the analogy with the legal system, then confidential mediation for workplace problems corresponds to confidential mediation in the court system. There's no need to compare it to settlement/plea bargaining.
There's no way a jury would be involved. The specific complaint is "MIT policy on sexual harassment was found to be violated." MIT's policy could be stricter than the bare minimum required by EEOC or Title IX. Do you really want external juries to decide what internal policies mean?
You have a very romantic and false view of what the old days were like. Blacklists have been used since at least the late 1800s to fight unionization, and the Hollywood blacklist prevented people who were believed to be sympathetic to communistic causes from working. This was all pre-internet, and pretty much at the start of the time when people could 'leave town and be able to continue their life elsewhere'.
As a specific example, my g'grandfather left his wife in the US and got remarried in Canada - without divorcing his first wife. Eventually work got around that he was a bigamist, and he was arrested and jailed.
(And woe be a German speaking member of the Amish in New York in the 1700s, or a black slave in the south, or a serf in feudal society! Really, your 'move to another town' view of our ancestors was until recently only really possible for the privileged few.)
You assert that "Transparency is better for society". You have no evidence for your beliefs. While I have evidence against it. A transparent society can't work when there's a power imbalance. The list of mining company owners is public, but the unionizing workers had no power over them. Publishing the blacklist wouldn't change anything. In NAACP v. Alabama, the employee list of the state of Alabama was public, but the membership list of the NAACP was not. The courts wrote:
> "Immunity from state scrutiny of petitioner's membership lists is here so related to the right of petitioner's members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment"
Making that membership list public would certainly have lead to retaliation against the members. Your call for a transparent society is, quite literally, un-Constitutional and would break that "ancestral legal environment" that you praise elsewhere. Plus, you want to abolish medical privacy and other laws we already have, like the Video Privacy Protection Act put into place after Bork's video tape rental history was published for the world to see.
You mention FOIA requests. You do realize that FOIA requests can take years to resolve, right? If someone is violating workplace rules (let's say a ban on drinking caffeine at work), do you really think that a multi-year process, with recourse to the equivalent of a defense attorney, is appropriate before being able to carry out any corrective action?
Also, FOIA requests are not made public, and don't contain accusations. You propose that every single claim be made public, yet somehow believe that won't be used to bring the "powerful weapon" of the internet to bear on innocent people?
Could you at least try to answer my questions? Since I feel like all I'm getting from you is unsubstantiated belief, with no understanding of the difficulties, or the historical realities. It comes across like you are from a privileged position in life, eg, as a member of a majority ethnic, religious, etc. group which has never had to worry about how public knowledge of who you are can lead to social ostracism or physical punishment.
Yes, and I think that represents a great threat to justice, for the same reasons. If courts are too slow and expensive, let's address those problems directly, not throw out the whole court system.
> Do you really want external juries to decide what internal policies mean?
Maybe. A jury of ordinary people provides an important sanity-check on the law. If the policy relies on some abstruse definition of sexual harassment that goes against the common-sense meaning of the term, maybe it's a bad policy.
> Really, your 'move to another town' view of our ancestors was until recently only really possible for the privileged few
Do you argue that electoral fraud doesn't matter because until recently the vote was only granted to a privileged few? The right response to privileges is to extend them to everyone, not to weaken them.
> Making that membership list public would certainly have lead to retaliation against the members. Your call for a transparent society is, quite literally, un-Constitutional and would break that "ancestral legal environment" that you praise elsewhere. Plus, you want to abolish medical privacy and other laws we already have, like the Video Privacy Protection Act put into place after Bork's video tape rental history was published for the world to see.
You're putting words in my mouth. Yes, there are counterpressures, specific cases where opacity is necessary to society. But secret laws and secret courts are among the deepest horrors of totalitarianism.
> You mention FOIA requests. You do realize that FOIA requests can take years to resolve, right? If someone is violating workplace rules (let's say a ban on drinking caffeine at work), do you really think that a multi-year process, with recourse to the equivalent of a defense attorney, is appropriate before being able to carry out any corrective action?
There were times when we said things like "better a thousand guilty go free than a single innocent be wrongly convicted". When you're talking about "corrective action" with the kind of impact on someone's life that this public firing will have, yes, I do think that the basic rights to due process, legal representation, and one's day in public court are appropriate. If you can't provide that without a multi-year process, the problems are with your process, not the responsibility of the accused.
> You propose that every single claim be made public, yet somehow believe that won't be used to bring the "powerful weapon" of the internet to bear on innocent people?
Not at all. I just want to know the actual judgement of facts. I think that's vital to the public interest.
> Could you at least try to answer my questions? Since I feel like all I'm getting from you is unsubstantiated belief, with no understanding of the difficulties, or the historical realities. It comes across like you are from a privileged position in life, eg, as a member of a majority ethnic, religious, etc. group which has never had to worry about how public knowledge of who you are can lead to social ostracism or physical punishment.
Oh, come off it; I'm engaging, you're just dismissing the opinion of anyone you disagree with. Did you copy-paste that?
Edited in response to comment below, exact same point stands.
Quoting that 2005 news release: "Federal and MIT rules require that investigations be conducted in strict confidence to protect the integrity of the review process and to avoid unjustified damage to the reputations of individuals, including innocent colleagues and collaborators."
Why do you think they would do something different here?
Or are you proposing that the MIT and federal rules are by definition suspicious?
Doesn't MIT hold the copyright?
but do any of you see the opposite viewpoint? that's the one that barely anyone in this HN thread is discussing? that MIT is basically saying to any profs "you play around with this and you're done"?
I feel like it's extremely encouraging to women, and may very well outweigh the marginal benefits of yet another physics lecture set online, particularly since they can easily be reinstated after the punishment and political message sinks in.
all of this stuff about the sanctity of information rings really hollow in a forum full of cynics anyway. and the skepticism about the accusations is just the cherry on top.
However good this guy might be at teaching physics, this "loss" to the community cannot begin to approach the loss of uncountable women who decided to avoid quantitative fields because of the male culture dominance.
Meanwhile, as we discussed a few days ago, image processing researchers continue to use the studio-lit, soft focus, 1970s slide film captured, limited color gamut, badly scanned, low resolution 'Lena' image as if it is even a tiny bit relevant for today's image processing applications.
I'm sure there are many fun and engaging physics teachers at universities big and small across the world who can lecture equally well and don't harass women online. One of them can step up.
I'm not saying it is an appropriate image. Rather, at this point its continued use could easily be thanks simply to inertia rather than crushing sexism. However, I don't work in image processing so I can't say for sure.
This comparison is completely inappropriate. You're pitching the contributions of one individual against the mores of the entire society over generations, as if Walter Lewin is single-handedly responsible for this "loss of uncountable women". How are you not ashamed to do this?
> I'm sure there are many fun and engaging physics teachers at universities big and small across the world who can lecture equally well and don't harass women online. One of them can step up.
Well, MLK was a plagiarist. Do you think it'd be a good idea to stop celebrating his life and works, stop citing him, revoke the holiday, etc.? After all, there are many fun and engaging civil rights activists around the world. One of them can step up.
For someone calling shame on another for poor debating tactics, engaging in this level of misdirection is pretty poor form.
Not to mention that MLK has been dead for over 40 years, so it's not like he's stepping down to leave a place vacant right now.
MLK being dead plays to the strength of this analogy, because Lewin is retired. Removing his lectures on OCW, recorded 15 years ago, is like refusing to read or watch MLK because of his moral failings. The issue with the MOOC on MITx, where he participated as late as last year, is different, and I would agree with barring his participation on the platform in case the transgressions are serious enough. But if you look over the discussion, it is the removal of the static, non-dynamic, incredibly popular and famous lectures on OCW that strikes many people as unjustified.
P.S. Feynman was a creep, and anyone who thinks that fact should cause people to stop reading his justly famous textbook and prefer that others "step up" is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot.
While on the other hand, MIT has public, written rules against sexual harassment and takes active measures to reduce sexual harassment. It's also illegal for MIT to be a workplace which allows sexual harassment.
It's a bit of a stretch then to make the comparison. Why not be more direct and use Bill Cosby as your comparison? Last I heard neither Cosby nor Lewin have been charged with any crime. And Viacom has stopped showing reruns of "The Cosby Show", last recorded 22 years ago.
We don't want to give him a pass, we just don't think society should suffer for his sins.
The loss here isn't a scare-quotes loss, it's a real loss. Removing freely accessible, high quality instruction makes it just that much less likely future generations of people (including women) seeking to be scientists will succeed.
No one has said genius academic output forgives sexual harassment. That's a straw man. It's not under discussion here.
Punish him for his actions. That should be done. What we're saying is that the action MIT has chosen punishes everyone else as well.
> Following broad consultation among faculty, MIT is indefinitely removing Lewin’s online courses, in the interest of preventing any further inappropriate behavior.
It sounds like they're worried that just having courses up (even if not offered) might encourage future interaction between students using the material and the person listed as instructor (e.g. by email), which they don't want to provide as an avenue. They do have an archive of past courses [1], so one in-between option might've been to remove them from the current MITx site and stick them in the archive. But it's possible they were worried that would be insufficient. (It's also possible I don't understand how MITx courses are organized, and what the archive is for.)
Another interpretation is that other current or future faculty could get ideas about sexually harassing online students. "... preventing any further inappropriate behavior..." sounds like they're worried about other current or future faculty being pervs, and want to nuke him from orbit.
Walter Lewin's course took me from failing physics to loving the field so much that I switched my major from comp sci to physics.
I am disgusted that MIT chose to respond in this way. An institution of learning should know better than to do the digital equivalent of a book burning.
As you say, they wouldn't remove an author's books in this case. How are course notes and videos any different?
Poor decision, in my opinion.
First, as others have pointed out, the linked statement suggests (without providing details) that MIT was concerned that Lewin would continue a pattern of using his connection with their online courses to harass students. Without being privy to their investigation we don't know what all led to that ongoing concern, but it's plausible to assume they have reasons.
Second, it may be that MIT's policy in these cases is to formally cut all ties with the harasser, or something to that effect. This might be the online equivalent of insisting that a disgraced emeritus professor give up their office on campus. There are clearly downsides to the community for such a policy, but there are indisputable benefits as well.
And finally, it strikes me that MIT has very little leverage to punish a retired professor who damages the university's reputation and community in this way. But this action of taking down a big part of his life's work is a way of hitting him right in his legacy. I know that were I in his shoes, I would be devastated by such a decision. I hope it has a strong deterrent effect on any other faculty who might be prone to similar abuses of their positions.
This is something I really didn't need to read on the internet today. Hitting a physicist right in his legacy. I'll just turn off my computer now, I'm seeing red, can't write a reasonable response to that.
Math and the other sciences don't suffer from this as much these days: folks drift away there, too, but the gender disparity isn't as great. Among the natural sciences, it's just physics that sticks out.[0] So yeah, right in his legacy. I'm actually pretty happy to see punishments with teeth for guys whose actions perpetuate the situation.
[0] To the extent that computer science is a math/science subject, it's worth noting that CS has plummeted down to near-physics levels of gender disparity in recent years. I think it's very likely that similar cultural issues are at work.
8.01: https://archive.org/details/MIT8.01F99
8.02: https://archive.org/details/MIT8.02S02
8.03: https://archive.org/details/MIT8.03F04
Edit: I don't know if all the problem sets are up there.
When I was an undergrad at MIT in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Walter Lewin was synonymous with amazing physics teaching. We would watch his videos on MIT's internal cable TV channel, to better understand (or just to understand) our physics homework.
I wasn't surprised to find that Lewin became an online teaching star, and that he was repeatedly praised for his instructional videos. Indeed, just a few days ago, I showed some of his videos to my 13-year-old daughter, who is showing some interest in physics.
So the videos are good and useful, and nothing changes the fact that Lewin is an exceptional teacher.
At the same time, it looks like MIT has investigated these charges of sexual harassment, and that there is truth to them. True, without hearing more details, we have to rely upon their judgment, which is frustrating. But the press release tries to make it clear that the investigation was handled by multiple people, including faculty members, and that it wasn't a one-time occurrence.
So I'm willing to believe, and be profoundly disappointed, as I accept the fact that Lewin engaged in sexual harassment. Such behavior is unacceptable, and I'm glad that MIT wants to stop it.
However, I wonder whether removing high-quality courses from the Internet is the right way to do that. I assume that they removed the videos so as to remove any reputational damage that Lewin's actions might cause to MIT. But there is also some educational damage here, and many people will suffer as a result.
There is no good or right answer here. I think that MIT is trying to do the right thing, but I'm not sure if their actions were, on balance, the right thing to do. I do hope that their actions will make it clear to other faculty members that they simply cannot behave this way, though.
The problem, of course, is that this digital book burning is also causing reputational damage to the Institute, and I would guess quite a bit more. That professors are human is hardly a revelation. That the world's top engineering university would engage in such an overreaction, cutting off students in the middle of study (even if copies are available elsewhere, many will not learn of them, and there's disruption and chaos in the meantime), putting its online teaching efforts into jeopardy ... that's really big.
Did you just equate being human to forcing unwanted sexual interactions on individuals under your power and stewardship? Wow. Just wow.
cutting off students in the middle of study...
It may cut off a few students this one time but the overall effect is to improve study conditions for multiple students for years to come.
Yes, it's well within the arc of normal human behavior (power corrupts and all that). If you weren't surprised to learn of this event you should agree, unless:
More generally, another MIT professor said, to great acclaim from the class including myself, that "Original Sin is an empirical observation". And this is the precise fault line between the right and the modern left: is man "fallen", or perfectible?
And getting back to this case, if the latter, what do you do with those you can't perfect? From that comes, among other things, examples like this of making people unpersons.
I can understand getting rid of his e-mail address and office (which I believe were also done).
If he really engaged in sexual harassment, then he deserves to have the book thrown at him.
The question isn't whether to punish him or make an example out of him. The question is whether we should remove all of the high-quality work that he did because of his moral or legal failings.
I'm not sure. Emotionally, I like the idea of removing his work from EdX. But I find it hard to justify pedagogically.
Heck, his "Banned in Boston!" works might achieve greater fame, lure of the forbidden fruit, and plenty of us had never particularly heard of him before now....
Do the excellent lectures he's put online to help millions of students suddenly become illegal material, akin to child pornography?
I find it ironic how the new "politically correct" legions behave increasingly like a subversive fascist movement. "Incorrect" thoughts and opinions become illegal taboos, and alleged "criminals" are assumed guilty without trial.
The irony resulting from the escapades of these so called "social justice warriors" would be comical, if the results weren't so tragic. Walter Lewin's lectures are an incredible resource for the entire world. Taking them down because of alleged misconduct is the height of absurdity. MIT is harming millions of students worldwide who don't have access to any other resources.
The time has come to stop these modern witch trials, and return to a sane legal process. Particularly, innocence until proven guilty.
This is how courts work.
This is not how humans work.
Are you suggesting that no action can be taken against anyone by anyone for any reason until a court proves the charge? That's nuts. I am allowed to conclude that someone is guilty or not in my own estimation. Unless I'm a juror it has no force of law, but I can assume someone's guilty without trial NO PROBLEM. Obama's guilty of suppressing evidence of torture. Bush's cronies are guilty of torture. Neither will be tried for any crime. How exactly is my opinion a problem? Should I wait for a court to validate it, or what? Courts can be completely, hilariously, 100% in the wrong. Plessy v Ferguson. Citizens United (arguably, anyway).
As a person, I have freedom of association. If I think someone's a rapey asshole because someone came to me with an accusation, it is -well- within my rights to sever ties. Likewise, OpenCourseWare has no particular obligation to host this guy's stuff.
Nobody is stopping him hosting it himself if it's so useful, or CC licensing it, or handing it to Archive.org. MIT isn't stifling anyone. There is no persecution here.
I say this as someone who 1) probably wouldn't want to watch his lectures due to this but 2) think they should still be available for people who would find them useful. It's too bad MIT decided to take it down. But they're big boys and can make the decision on their own.
I'd settle for "proven by anyone, anywhere", honestly. (In general, obviously not relevant to this instance!)
Society is way too trigger-happy about believing any amount of muck about a person regardless of how flimsy the accusations may be, especially given the current media climate. Not judging someone badly until whatever attack on their character is reasonably proven (empirically, not legally) is the only decent thing to do.
All that said, even if there was photographic evidence, timestamped logs released to the public so that there was no doubt he did what he was accused of, pulling down educational content because of that strikes me as a terribly backwards thing to do.
Well they performed a review and appear to have found him guilty
Personally, I find a measure of real justice in MIT punishing Lewin for degrading the MIT name by taking what steps they can to deflate his academic legacy. It's the only leverage they have, and it's powerful.
MIT is harming millions of students worldwide who don't have access to any other resources.
As we all know there are no other resources available for learning physics on the internet. Surely this heralds a plunge back into the dark ages.
edited for typo
I just wanted to repeat this bit for emphasis.
MIT does not wield the state's authority. Only the state can effect censorship; private choices are not enforced by state power.
I think MIT could have left the lecture videos online, prefixing them with a notice, which would have amounted to the same thing (disassociating from Walter Lewin and punishment for him), except that countless people that used those videos would not be punished.
I do hope there is a torrent with the archived Electricity&Magnetism lectures.
People seem really quick to forget that fundamental science endures and political correctness is fleeting. I wonder what the next world threatening catastrophe to make people remember will be.
Certainly there are plenty of cases of universities making terrible decisions in this space eg men being expelled for sexual assault, followed by conviction of the complainant for making a false report.
Levin seemed to be very popular with his female students; on one of the courses some of them actually came in at the end and sang him a song of appreciation.
I'm similarly amazed that the existence of examples of false accusations is taken as a more salient fact than the overwhelming weight and history of cultural indifference toward sexual harassment (or even approval). False accusations are the "man bites dog" story: they get attention because they're so far from the norm.
You do make a good point. "no harassment happened" shouldn't be the strong default belief (I'm not sure it actually is for many people here). But based on the statement and what is known about the relevant politics in academia, "serious harassment definitely occurred" shouldn't be one either.
When you put something in quotes you are saying that someone actually said that. As you can see from my post, I did not say that. I simply said we don't know much about the situation. So please stop misleading people.
I certainly do not exclude that he did sexually harass someone or more than one person. I have personally seen many cases of people in a position of power who abuse that power in many ways.
Even the court system with public hearings and a very high standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) regularly produces miscarriages of justice. Google the "innocence project" for many such cases.
The recent fiasco at Rolling Stone magazine (they specifically and repeatedly emphasized how they had verified the claims made in painstaking detail) reinforces retaining an open mind.
http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/classical-mechanics/20...
Lewin = undergraduate-level physics Susskind = graduate-level physics, converted to minimize math and maximize accessible explanations, but still graduate-level physics.
I would highly recommend his Quantum mechanics lectures [0] too, which are very interesting.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=189C0DCE90CB6D81
It's a shame he overstepped boundaries in another way, leading to the removal of a really seriously good resource. On the other hand, one can understand MIT's point of view, given the facts. It would be very wrong of them not to remove his online course and allow the platform to continue to be misused in this way.
I hope that Lewin or a colleague will release a statement, since at the moment there is such an enormous scope in the possibilities regarding the accusations. It could cover anything from otherwise polite, oblique references to students' appearances in a photo, to something overtly sexual and predatory. All kinds of sexual harassment are wrong and unwarranted, but some kinds are much more serious.
MIT is not trying to decree that the guy has some egregious objective moral failing. They're saying that they ran an internal investigation, with the help of other physics faculty, and found Lewin to be in violation of their institutional sexual harassment policies, and as a result, they're removing his content from their platform. This is a perfectly good reason to distance themselves from him, as well as making it clear that they take sexual harassment very seriously by impacting his legacy so negatively.
MIT OCW continues to host courses for 8.01 and 8.02, the courses his lectures covered, with lectures given by other faculty[2]. The loss of material to learn from is marginal at best - these videos are for the same courses at the same school with much of the same infrastructure (notes/recitation videos/etc).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/For-Love-Physics-Rainbow-Journey/dp/14...
[2] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-fall-2003/
We're not talking about stripping his materials off the shelves of a library. We're talking about taking them off the shelves of a store.
And MIT, as a brand, has no intent to sell products (for charge or not) which are associated with sexual harassment. This is even more important in the higher education space than in other industries because of the fact that the instructor is very much part of the product - it is an expectation of academic materials that the author can be contacted with inquiries about them.
The choice here for MIT, I think, is not about burning books. It's about continuing to present Lewin as one of their products. And when he's been found to have harassed women, it's obvious that they cannot do so.
That said, I've watched a good portion of Ramamurti Shankar's lectures from Open Yale courses [0]. They're pretty good, but perhaps not broken down as logically as the three courses of Lewin's.
There is also some really good lectures from Leonard Susskind's The Theoretical Minimum [1]. However, these are perhaps a step beyond the normal undergraduate lecture series.
People need information and actual cases to define the boundary. Just "common sense" is not enough. The way that MIT handles the information of investigation is really scary to me.
I know that smart guy does stupid things. However, a power that can punish people without going through court or public, isn't it scary?
Basically, an investigation conducted by a bunch of people behind the door does not hold more credits than an individual. Anybody has the same feeling?
But the one good he did in the world is now being taken away to the detriment of many. Think of it this way- Right now you can find books in the library written by people who have committed genocides. If we were to ban all the good (or at least of academic value) works of people who also did some very bad things, we'd have to burn A LOT of media, and arguably to the detriment of us all. Cutting off the nose to spite the face...
He should have been punished somehow, but not in this way.
Anyway, I'm sure his lectures will be torrentable, if they're that good.
https://archive.org/details/MIT8.01F99
I can understand MITs decision to remove the materials from OpenCourseWare, OpenCourseWare is not a library. Removing his materials from there distances themselves from him, and his actions. They have however allowed them to be made available elsewhere.
Found a positive article on him. Seems like a really cool prof, those are hard to find, sigh
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/426949/the-professor...
What bothers me is that we're entering a world where most of the things that are considered "real" live online, so this is a rather large hit to the legacy of this guy, looking back on this day from the future.
I hope another copy of them pops up. It'd be great for them not to be lost from public availability without MIT having to support it.
edit: Of course, I don't think I ever archived a copy of these edX courses (it was difficult to) but I'll check when I get home.
Having and excellent resource and not using it is stupid.
Aren't the courses pre-recorded/-written/-etc. materials?