Overcoming the pyramid of professional oppression
“ Why is it that Nobel prize winners are always nice, and the people right below them on the professional ladder are complete assholes?” This question was asked to me about ten years ago by one of my hosts, a senior professor in economics, when I was giving a talk at a university in Florida. My host was perfectly right – fully confirmed by my own experience of the last 22 years at MIT. A fair share of Nobel prize winners reside at MIT and Harvard, and many others come to visit – usually they are a pleasure to talk to, and amazingly approachable. The same universities are full of people with huge egos, right below the Nobel prize winners, who are convinced that they deserve the Nobel prize and just didn’t get it because some assholes were against them. These people pull the levers at the most respected academic institutions, as editors in chief of prestigious scientific journals, making tenure decisions for junior faculty, and deciding on funding and promotions. Usually, the...