Word: patterson
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These academic complaints were not, however, deserving of censure, as Social Studies Chair David S. Landes has proposed. Although Patterson's diatribe was written with all of the charm and insight of a whiny kindergartener, it was well within the boundaries of legitimate academic debate...
WHAT does deserve censure are the attacks by the head tutor and the chair of the Sociology Department on Social Studies concentrators and sociology graduate students. Patterson denounced these students as "disloyal" and lacking "a healthy predisposition to squash the competition." In a none-too-subtle warning to graduate students, Davis called teaching in Social Studies "a dead end professionally." These heavy-handed tactics, more than the bickering over methodology, deserve the scrutiny of Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence...
...course, house masters enjoy the same right to free speech as everyone else at Harvard. But Davis can be held accountable professionally for violating the standards of civility that an academic community demands. Then again, Davis and Patterson may have punished themselves enough by publicly exposing their insecurities...
...hurt by the antics of its head tutor and department chair. How many first-year students will be attracted to a department where senior professors are reduced to petty name-calling? How many graduate students will want to join a department that brands them "disloyal"? If Davis and Patterson know what is best for their department, they will apologize for this irrational incident and get back to work...
Crimson reporters can attest to the great reluctance that I have hitherto shown to add fuel to the dispute between Sociology and Social Studies. But Acting Sociology Department Chair Orlando Patterson's "commentary" does suggest that a few words--half in anger, half wracked with laughter--from a teacher with a foot in both camps may cast light on some of the issues involved...