<p>Simply not done unless you happen to be “God” in your department. Then, aparently, you can do what you d*mn well please.</p>
<p>I don’t see the emails as bullying. Disappointing? yes. Troubling? that too. But not bullying. I see considerably more frankness here than one might expect.</p>
<p>Sometimes academics are territorial and even devious. It was a very hard lesson I had to learn; that even people with great academic minds can have unsavory personal qualities, that people I might admire intellectually may have considerable deficits in their maturity and objectivity. Some very ugly and petty things go on in academe. The good work and great stories outweight these bad things, but make no mistake those of us in academe see a lot that disappoints.</p>
<p>When two scholars compete, things can get very ugly and underhanded. This wasn’t underhanded; it was very direct. Frankly, this gifted young scholar may do better, and make more contributions, on another campus where this particular issue of overlap doesn’t exist. She knows that now, and is acting on it. The honesty may not make those emails right, but it’s nowhere near as slimy as some would paint it (IMO).</p>
<p>Yes, in a sense it would have been far slimier for him to have all those feelings and NOT to have communicated them to her. He could have put on a happy face of yielding to his colleagues’ decision, and then simply impeded and undermined her work for a few years until she and they learned their lesson. Instead, he was forthright. And had the whole thing not blown up in public, she would have had a substantial professional IOU to collect from him, for turning down an MIT appointment at his request. (I don’t think a man would have behaved any differently at all. What rational, ambitious junior faculty candidate would choose an appointment at Prestigious University A, with a guarantee of conflict with the dominant senior faculty member in his field, over a trouble-free appointment at Prestigious University B and a guarantee of years of cross-institutional support from the famous PUA professor?)</p>
<p>personal beef?</p>
<p>maybe they have a history.</p>