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Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

The "First Commandment" of MIT is to not embarrass the Institute, so, yeah, a concern of reputational damage is certainly at the forefront here.

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.

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That professors are human is hardly a revelation.

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.

"Did you just equate being human to forcing unwanted sexual interactions on individuals under your power and stewardship? Wow. Just wow."

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 completely understand removing Lewin from the faculty as a professor emeritus.

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.

Revenge, for that is the best possible interpretation of MIT's deletion action, and is I assume related to your emotional desire, frequently makes poor policy. If it is motivating you, you should think really, really hard about it, preferably at a remove from what sparked it (and if you can't achieve that, e.g. victims and those close to them, then have some people you trust provide that).

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....

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