Word: macke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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According to the New York Times, the report filed by the committee (which has yet to be presented) is sharply critical of Mack's scholarly methods even as it defends his right to think and write about any subject that interests him. What will become of the report is itself uncertain. Again according to the Times, Dean Tosteson could do anything from recommending that Mack's tenure be rescinded to congratulating him for his intellectual honesty...
...more likely that something along the lines of the former option will transpire. Perhaps because he feared the committee's report would be very negative and that his job would be in jeopardy, Mack retained the services of two lawyers. Mack and Harvard may be in for a full-blown war over alien abductions...
Bizarre though some of his opinions may seem, it is absolutely critical that Mack's academic freedom be defended and that his tenure be preserved. Academic freedom would be a hollow and meaningless construct if it were employed to guarantee only those opinions which are commonly considered valid. The possibility of alien abduction may be hard to fathom, but it is precisely in this extreme case that Harvard's commitment to freedom of thought needs to be staunchest...
...case of Mack's Abduction is not quite so simple as, let's say, an idiosyncratic work of literary criticism. As a physician, Mack is charged with healing the ill and must not indulge his own particular whims and caprices at the expense of his patients' health...
...there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that Mack's intellectual idiosyncrasies have cost his patients good treatment. In the end, what seems to be at stake is the simple fact that Mack's radically un-orthodox views are an embarrassment to fair Harvard. Dean Tosteson and the Harvard Medical School should feel free to take issue with Mack's findings. His job, however, must not be threatened...