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MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin
jIyajbe writes MIT is indefinitely removing retired physics faculty member Walter Lewin's online lectures from MIT OpenCourseWare and online MITx courses from edX, the online learning platform co-founded by MIT, following a determination that Dr. Lewin engaged in online sexual harassment in violation of MIT policies. For an example of Lewin's colorful style, see this YouTube video. MIT has also revoked Lewin's title as professor emeritus, after the school determined that he "had sexually harassed at least one student online."
Apparently the videos were CC, so they should be available elsewhere. MIT just doesn't want their name associated with him anymore.
Maybe they should stop publishing works about Martin Heidegger while they're at, I understand he was a Nazi sympathizer which seems like a pretty terrible thing to be. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/... http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/... http://mitpress.mit.edu/search...
http://videolectures.net/walte...
The alleged victim was a female student in one of his online courses (and she claims he did the same to other students), so he could possibly have held a positifof power over her. Completion of the courses results in a certificate but zero academic credit, and MIT has bragged that thousands enroll in the courses, so the amount of leverage he could have had over her is questionable. But if he was using this MIT program at all to try to pick up women then that is wrong, and it makes sense for MIT to put a stop to it. We don't know exactly what he was doing unless we can read the correspondence in question. Most headlines make it sound like he "harassed" strangers online. No, it's a professor allegedly harassing one of his students, and it's not all that special if he did it "over the internet."
What does the professor's "on-line harassment" have to do with the quality and / or value of his lectures?
The message being sent is: "If you sexually harass our students you're done, you're gone, and we don't give a damn whether you are the star quarterback, the uber geek or the processor emeritus."
Not that there isn't something particularly gross about the elderly emeritus professor using his academic position and credentials to gain sexual leverage over a student forty or more years his junior,
I believe the point of suppressing it is to discourage people from doing other unethical experiments under an "ends justify the means" reasoning.
MIT OCW has the same courses covered by other professors, and Lewin's lectures are still readily available online as they are CC licensed.
Yes there are copies hosted at
http://videolectures.net/walter_h_g_lewin/
and elsewhere. The lectures are creative commons licensed from what I've been told. MIT exercised its right to stop hosting them but others can continue doing so. No need for guerilla archiving, just put them up someplace if that's what you want to do. In MIT's case it felt it had more duty to dissociate from Lewin.
Some of it is good, useful information. But nobody will touch it because of its source.
Nobody will touch it because we can't repeat the experiments. We have no way to verify it.
Eh... No. Yes many experiments were sadistic but they yielded information that is still used today. One example is how to treat different kinds of bullet wounds*, another how to treat people exposed to cold water** and/or how to increase survival chances if exposed to the same. There are others.
(* the Nazis simply shot people, added different kinds of contamination and then tried to treat the wounds)
(** they forced people into ice baths using different kinds of protection for different lengths of time and then tried to keep them alive)
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014...
"The investigation followed MIT protocol for complaints of sexual harassment. The head of the physics department, Professor Peter Fisher, ensured an objective and timely review, which included a review of detailed materials provided by the complainant and interviews of her and Lewin.
Based on its investigation, MIT has determined that Lewinâ(TM)s behavior toward the complainant violated the Instituteâ(TM)s policy on sexual harassment."
There was an investigation, there was evidence, and they came to a conclusion. I suppose you could suggest that the investigation was flawed somehow, but you are not in a position to review or challenge it and the only man who is hasn't attempted to.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
not can't, won't.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure