Xenophobia and Bigotry
Moral Decline of America's First Black Irish University President
and her Leprechauns at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
These articles describe some of the most disgusting people
the author has met during sixty years in business and the academe.
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Contra Cabal web sites have achieved an extraordinary readership. If Paul Trummel dies before he completes his work, then trustees have authority to continue publication as an educational project through the newly formed Contra Cabal Foundation, London which will own all publication rights. The Foundation will publish Contra Cabal in perpetuity in the way that Sonia Orwell posthumously published the collected works of George Orwell. Foundation trustees and directors (professional people, lawyers, and academicians in UK and US connected directly and indirectly with the International Federation of Journalists) will supervise editorial and design functions using young investigative reporters and graphic designers who wish to further their education in journalism. They will receive trade union freelance rates of payment for their work. The Foundation will respect former trustee the late William D Winn's last admonition "Go get 'em!" by continuing to report academic malfeasance and to expose morally repugnant academicians and public officials. Readers should consider the articles and case studies as a work in progress. More information about academic or government fraud and deceit frequently surfaces after victims or their associates read Contra Cabal. That information becomes part of a relevant case study after verification and validation. Students and current faculty members write letters to the editor on politically sensitive issues. Some correspondents request name withholding to avoid retaliation. Contra Cabal electronic magazine contains expose and satire. Probably one of the first to appear on the web, it has now published since 1992. The hits/month range between 100,000 and 150,000 with more than 1.5 million hits by about 60,000 unique visitors during the past twelve months. The "New Releases" menu lists new, updated, or revised articles on the four Contra Cabal sites. |
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Late 1985, I joined School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Language, Literature, and Communication (H&SS/LL&C), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to complete a doctorate as a mature graduate student. I already held terminal degree qualifications in several disciplines. Somewhat naively, I expected to receive equal courtesy and consideration from faculty members many years my junior.
Instead, I found a cabal of xenophobic tenured professors who exhibited irrational fear or contempt for foreigners and unfamiliar ideas. Their intolerance to traditions and a loathing or hatred for members of other races, ethnic groups or nationalities blatantly violated university equal opportunity regulations and constitutional and human rights.
George Orwell probably hit the mark when he said: “All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders”.
I later realized that much of the sociopathic behavior of several H&SS/LL&C cabal members resulted from xenophobia founded in campus-wide support for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid) a front for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1980s, Noraid actively organized itself on RPI campus and in the surrounding area with fund-raising so that the IRA could import arms from North America.
Two IRA terrorist threats at the RPI Field House when it scheduled British military performances convinced me of the rabid nature of the situation in which I had unwittingly become embroiled. Concurrently, United Kingdom banned Martin Galvin the Noraid leader which made the tenure of an Englishman in LL&C even more difficult. Galvin, now supports the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, an organization which rejects the Northern Ireland peace process and has been described as the political wing of the Real Irish Republican Army.
I did not suffer alone. Other qualified people with advanced education and teaching experience received similar treatment for a variety of bigoted reasons. The control of all aspects of H&SS grounded predominantly in cabals rigidly controlled by “plastic paddies” and other people posing as Irish. Before readers jump to conclusions about bigotry, I must add that I went to school during World War II with many Irishmen and served with them in HM forces on combat duty in the Middle East with great regard for them. I have learned from forty years experience in the US that plastic paddies comprise a xenophobic breed not found elsewhere, especially among real Irish people that populate both England and Ireland.
H&SS/LL&C Dean Thomas Phelan developed an ethnically oriented, racist constituency of plastic paddies to do his bidding - a practice that apparently continues to this day. RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson would certainly not have gained admission if she had applied for a job in H&SS or as a graduate student.
No people of color gained admission into LL&C and people with mixed marriages suffered castigation. However, a majority of the people portrayed in RPI publicity material suddenly developed suntans when Jackson arrived on campus. I am waiting for Jackson to declare herself Black Irish as part of her overall flimflam.
This insecure and pernicious cabal of tenured professors lacked academic research and industry experience in the discipline that they advertised as a specialty - graphic and technical communication. With hubris, they repeatedly abused people who had both industry and academic experience far in excess of their own. With fear of exposure, they attacked anyone with qualifications in the discipline.
I founded the first, which became the largest, technical communication organization in London in the 1950s, and had an interest in adding academic insight to the pragmatic experience and research that I had completed in almost forty years as a CEO. I taught technical communication and its allied disciplines as an internationally recognized graphic designer. As a professor I taught graphic and technical communication and directed university presses.
I had teaching experience that ranged from indigent minorities and prison inmates for whom I founded a special program at my own expense and received an award from the City of Hartford, Connecticut to teaching graduate-level courses at a string of universities and other educational institutions. I found the H&SS/LL&C xenophobic behavior unlawful and morally unacceptable although I did not challenge it while resident in the department; however, I learned from that experience that political silence achieves nothing. [Soul Department]
Linked case studies provide examples of humiliation meted to people who had signed contracts in order to earn graduate degrees. Several professors, including the H&SS dean, had fraudulent credentials. The dean, an Irish Catholic priest, had not earned a post-graduate degree and posed for many years as a PhD. While aware of his deception, Rensselaer lauded him for his achievements on his retirement and in obituaries.
This problem frequently occurs in elite academic institutions with hubristic “star” faculty members or wannabes like Merrill D. Whitburn who politically coerced Rensselaer to grant him the illustrious title Louis Ellsworth Laflin Professor of English without a shred of academic achievement to support star status. Most other cabal members had achieved virtually nothing to further their careers or done anything related to technical and graphic communication which they touted as a department specialty. They had no knowledge whatsoever to enable them to teach the courses that they described as will become apparent from detailed case studies. [Rensselaer's Weasel]
I did not base my decision to move to Rensselaer on what H&SS/LL&C people who interviewed me said, which did not make much sense anyway, but on the iron-clad referral that I had from University of Massachusetts (UMass) and a Rensselaer reputation as a high-class institution. Little did I know at the time that H&SS had never lived up to that reputation and existed as a poor cousin under the “auspices” of a fraudulent, unqualified dean to the rest of the Rensselaer academic community.
I had moved to campus from Fitchburg, MA and had to live in a trailer without water or electricity because the previous tenant had not vacated the apartment that Rensselaer had promised. The department had virtually no available office accommodation except for preferred graduate students now dubbed “easy riders”. It had absolutely no equipment for teaching technical communication except for an unusable antique drafting table. Robert Krull controlled minimal computer equipment within the department and only easy riders had access to it. [Easy Riders]
After three months, I negotiated a campus apartment and moved my fully equipped studio from Massachusetts into it. I had to purchase (for an additional $1,500.00) a TRS-80 computer and accessories from the local Radio Shack so that I could commence my research. A year later I managed to obtain a modem interface to the RPI computer system. Halloran cancelled that mainframe link which resulted in deletion of my research data. I had to work in my apartment because the library had imposed its limit of one semester use and, in any event, it had neither computers nor modem connections.
Having worked for several years as a university professor and administrator, I developed a sixth sense about academic corruption. I immediately had some concerns about the people who interviewed me; however, I set aside those intuitions as assumptions without grounds for implication then shelled out approximately $8,000.00 in cash toward tuition at one of the highest rates in the US. I did not recognize the morally repugnant xenophobia.
I expended in three years the current equivalent of $100,000 on tuition and legal fees for which I received absolutely nothing. The debt has now accumulated interest and penalties amounting to about $400,000. Debt collectors continue to pursue payment by unlawful harassment and by pestering friends and acquaintances despite Jackson receiving a request to cease and desist harassment about three years ago. Overall loses over two decades of harassment and abuse started by the H&SS/LL&C cabal, which they extended to other universities by blackballing and blacklisting, have now reached more that $4 million.
Integrity
Honor codes have traditionally established a standard of academic integrity - a firm adherence to values founded on the concept of honesty with respect to intellectual pursuits established over nine hundred years since the founding of the first university in Bologna, Italy (1088).
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Honor codes require that both professors and students exercise honesty and ethical behavior in all their academic pursuits whether study, course work, research, or teaching. They contain the fundamental belief that: To trust a person becomes a positive force in making a person worthy of trust;
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Academic Fraud - Graduate Programs - PhD in Communication and Rhetoric
After contracting for doctoral work I found that the RPI H&SS/LL&C program did not offer a delineated plan of study in keeping with the graphic and technical communication program which Robert Krull described and broadly publicized at UMass-Amherst to attract doctoral students. I also found that the first statement on H&SS/LL&C web site defined as a deliberate lie and an absolute travesty.
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For over 30 years, our PhD graduates have been the leaders in the study of the relationship between communication and technology. As new forms of technologically mediated communication emerge, research and scholarship are needed to describe their nature and account for their unique effects.
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I found a department ruled by an anarchistic, xenophobic oligarchy intent on destroying anyone who did not absolutely comply with its ideology. I have since realized that the ruling cabal within the department consisted entirely of sociopaths who felt threatened by the potential disclosure of their virtually non-existent knowledge base or facilities to support its advertised program. They had inherited a department of classical rhetoric then fraudulently renamed it technical communication for commercial purposes - a precursor to the rabid commercialization that now exists at Rensselaer under Jackson and at other universities.
LL&C devised a program that required four courses, each taught or controlled by an incompetent cabal member (Carson, Harrison, Krull, and Whitburn), each devoid of knowledge about technical and graphic communication. They presented totally unprepared orations to classes with content that had virtually no relevance to course descriptions. Some promoted discussion on anything and everything to avoid preparation for class. Others prescribed an inordinate amount of reading material but never discussed the content. [Theater of the Absurd]
H&SS/LL&C failed to conform with university regulations and deliberately violated state and federal laws. The department appointed Camillus Lee Odell as sole advisor for all new PhD students despite his having no demonstrated experience or knowledge in technical and graphic communication. Odell then arbitrarily decided in advance with whom he would work and allow to graduate based upon ethnic and commercial considerations regardless of merit.
Doctoral students had no choice of faculty advisor or dissertation topic - they all (except for easy riders) had to use C. Lee Odell until they achieved PhD candidate status. This gave Odell absolute control over who would and who would not succeed. I met with him once in three years at which time this blatant sadist used humiliation tactics in apparent retaliation for filing a complaint with Halloran about blackmail and retroactive grade changes by David Carson. [Easy Riders] [Grünewald Paradigm]
This meant that I had no advisor for the three years I spent in residence at RPI although Odell appointed a proxy after fifteen months. Absence of support became painfully evident after the first semester but came too late to do anything about it. I had entered an irrevocable contract for which I had paid cash in advance. Rensselaer breached that contract then refused to discuss the breach or allow due process under university regulations. [Theater of the Absurd]
Unlike most universities, the cabal did not grant normal visiting professor status for someone with my advanced qualifications and experience who would normally team-teach. Instead, they started a politically motivated ostracism campaign to humiliate and intimidate. However, the chair needed my qualifications and graduate teaching experience to take over teaching an off-campus graduate program that he had fraudulently implemented. Robert Krull, an incompetent cabal member, had evidently taught the class with disastrous repercussions from IBM students.
To bail out that situation, H&SS appointed me to the RPI faculty as a lecturer based upon my previous industry experience and as a graduate professor teaching technical communication and other subjects at several other universities. I attended the last session taught at the off campus IBM facility in Kingston, NY by Krull when I went for a personal introduction to IBM executive students. That experience confirmed my opinion the previous semester when I had listened to similar mumbo jumbo by Krull to graduate students on campus. The cabal had granted him control of one of the required courses when he had not a clue about technical communication. This allowed him to feed unwitting students with outrageous garbage. [Krull Krud]
H&SS/LL&C formed an illegal cabal to control student academic life absolutely by establishing required courses taught solely by cabal members who employed politically motivated, arbitrary grading at their sole discretion and without recourse. It denied the traditional right to due process and right to appeal. Instead of a code founded upon honesty, H&SS allowed a malicious LL&C cabal to use political criteria instead of merit to run a program contrary to the published description. That cabal effectively committed criminal fraud by not following recognized grading procedures and retroactively lowering grades. [Arbitrary and Capricious Evaluation]
To introduce an ironic note, continuing doctoral study required a 3.5 cumulative average. I had a recorded 3.85 average and had challenged some of the grades. The cabal decided to forge my transcript with the registrar to reflect a grade less than a 3.5 average. However, they did not do their math properly and the registrar reduced the grade to 3.5 which entitled registration for the following semester. When they realized their mistake they challenged my credentials. [Educational Qualifications]
The department favored a classical rhetoric special interest group to the exclusion of all others and employed no staff capable or qualified to teach graphic and technical communication. To make the program financially viable it admitted a full compliment of doctoral students each year many of whom existed only to stabilize income and to meet a numerical establishment.
Several stayed only as long as it took them to awake to the treatment that they had received or until the cabal assassinated them by arbitrary and capricious evaluation. Cabalists retained students useful as teaching assistants or to perform tasks connected with commercial contracts for which they personally received payment although they had no intention of allowing those students to graduate.
[H&SS/LL&C PhD Admissions and Graduation National Comparative Analysis]
The cabal devised and implemented a malicious policy of academic sabotage to eliminate students considered surplus to establishment. “Academic sabotage” defines as purposeful vandalism directed against any academic endeavor: impeding individual or group efforts; stealing written material, laboratory or field experiments, or equipment used in teaching or research; tampering with computer programs or systems; destroying computer files; crashing or attempting to crash computer systems; causing atypical computer behavior; and, infecting systems with viruses, worms, time bombs, trap doors, Trojan horses, or any other kind of invasive program. [UW/RPI Systems Sabotage] [Nothing Succeeds Like Excess]
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Jackson |
Harrington |
Palazzo |
UN-UDHR |
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The RPI return email message claimed: “Message rejected because of unacceptable content” which admitted censorship and violated federal law. How many similar acts of electronic censorship occur each week? Does Big Mama censor academic research when politically expedient? Evidently, Big Mama wants to absolutely control the flow of information on the Rensselaer campus by stopping faculty and students reading about administrative wrongdoing. Systems administrators probably do not realize that they implicitly condone crimes reported in the content they suppress or to which they deny access on the web. In effect, they admit that they knew about the wrongdoing before they suppressed the information which could make them accessories after the fact in a cover-up of racketeering - a much more serious federal crime than prior restraint. Ironically, the next generation will not have to deal with officials who advocate censorship. If technocrats continue the present way, and academic apologists continue to maintain political silence, then nobody will know that any form of censorship ever existed. |
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Unethical and Sociopathic Behavior
I found that the traditional ethical framework that I had experienced for forty years in both my professional and academic careers and in the development of employees and students had degenerated into a self-serving orgy. I always tried to behave with Kant’s categorical imperative in mind: act so that you treat human beings always as ends and never only as means. By that, I tried to treat employees and students with the dignity and respect that they deserved.
I expected similar respect when I became a mature PhD student at RPI. Instead, I encountered an unremitting tendency to treat most graduate students with disrespect as a means to sate advisors’ unethical egotism: a state that required advisors to believe that they had no duty except what they considered best for themselves. They subordinated their advisory work to personal advancement and self-aggrandizement to the detriment of the students whom they advised.
A professor used the phrase "full human presence" to describe the combined professional and personal obligations of a faculty member to guide students in integrating the multiple facets of their lives. Instead, LL&C graduate advising classified as political expedience. Generally, advisors develop an integrated identity as a scholar within an academic family. If H&SS/L&CC graduate school existed as a family, then a clinician would classify its multiple dysfunction as sociopathic. [Curriculum Vitae - Introduction - Sociopath]
Students knew that following a path to the professorate would present them with an inevitable dilemma: to advance, they knew that they would become a person they disliked. It appeared to them that the responsibly of advisors to serve as mentors to students conflicted with their personal survival as a professor. Without coercing students they could not produce as many research papers for their future promotion and tenure.
[Arbitrary and Capricious Evaluation]
Domination resulted in students not revealing themselves, their doubts, and their criticisms which arose during research activity for fear of retaliation and ostracism. Perhaps more importantly, students feared the inevitable blackmail of unsupportive letters of reference, fewer opportunities to have work showcased or even acknowledged, and blackballing to deny employment opportunity.
Inexperienced students do not have the ability or opportunity to say “enough is enough” to personal abuse and breach of expensive contracts. As a seasoned professional, professor, administrator, and civil rights activist I felt an ethical responsibility to refuse or accept abuse and to abide by the contract and letter of the law but to my detriment. [Blackballing and Blacklisting] [Eindhoven]
Rensselaer claimed that its mission included instruction and research endeavors, emphasized its positive interactions and relationships with industrial firms, government agencies, and other universities, then admitted that conflicts of interest can occur - a travesty to say the least. In general, “conflict of interest” defines as an opposing interaction, or the simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, tendencies, or responsibilities. More specifically, a conflict of interest can be defined as a conflict between the private interests and public obligations of a person in an official position which precisely defines the modus operandi of H&SS/LL&C cabal.
Orgy of Discontent
For every PhD candidate who commits suicide, hundreds become clinically depressed, drop out, or grimly endure bad situations in silence through poor relationships with their advisors who hold too much power over their lives. Conversely, a committee of professors involved early in the evaluation of student work provides protection from abusive advisors. I know that if I had such a committee at RPI instead of a hubristic and insolent advisor unfamiliar with my discipline, then things would not have occurred the way that I describe.
In the course of interviews over many years with graduate students, I found that many worried about damaging their careers. They would speak only on condition of anonymity which as a journalist I readily gave to them. Those who asked for academic counseling enjoyed that privilege anyway. Those interviews revealed that academic advisors generally have a reputation for unethical behavior aimed at self advancement and that students intuitively fear them. In that respect, LL&C classified as a leader in the practice of cabalistic abuse when compared with other universities at which I worked as both administrator, professor, and counselor.
Although department chairs classify this type of fear as unfounded, students know that financial aid, attending conventions, grants and even tenure depend on strong letters of recommendation. Many students can only obtain those letters from their program advisor. Their fate hinges on the whims of a single person.
This practice also manifests in close-knit communities where the insidious practice of putting a wrong word in the right ear can ruin a career. Blackmail, blackballing, and blacklisting for political control has run rampant in most of the universities with which I have had any connection particularly at RPI and UW. [Blackballing and Blacklisting]
Much of the pressure comes from advisors who answer to no one and control when PhD students graduate. In a decentralized universities like RPI and UW, autonomy without accountability becomes the norm. H&SS has gained notoriety for independence allowed by most RPI schools and colleges who recognize it as fraudulent and want nothing to do with it. That situation allowed an unhealthy and unfair personality cult or cabal to develop. Under those conditions, students worried about how to please their advisor more than ethical behavior then fall into the trap set for them - they turned to sycophancy and allowed their research to become controlled by avaricious, intellectual dwarfs.
Even students with “favorite son” status like H&SS/LL&C Easy Riders had a very real and rational fear in the sociopathic advising relationship forced upon them. They feared that faculty psychosis, alcoholism, and substance abuse could easily cause their advisor to turn on them and dash their hopes for an academic career.
LL&C faculty members and administrators have for more than two decades shown a propensity for dysfunctional behavior by their involvement in unlawful or criminal acts. Freshman should ponder course content before making commitments to H&SS/L&CC and reflect upon the misery that could ensue. Leopards do not change their spots neither do sociopaths change their attitudes and behavior unless they have undergone therapy. [Roll of Dishonor - Case Studies]
Unethical faculty members voluntarily joined advisors in behavior that can only define as dysfunctional personality disorder. They became unable or unwilling to maintain personal integrity and used psychological transference to project their own dysfunctional behavior onto graduate students. They indulged in unlawful activity of no mean proportions for more than two decades to advance their own careers.
This three-factor study gives some idea of the problem at RPI and UW. The authors eliminated criteria relating to criminal incarceration and juvenile delinquency by statistically analyzing three factors of psychopathy better applicable outside forensic populations. This clearly provides data suitable for analyzing dysfunctional behavior within closed societies like universities.
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Three-Factor Model of Psychopathy |
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Arrogant/Deceitful |
Deficient Affective Experience |
Impulsive/Irresponsible |
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Glibness/Superficial Charm |
Lack of Remorse or Guilt |
Need for Stimulation/Boredom |
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Egocentricity/Grandiose Self-Worth |
Callous/Lack of Empathy |
Parasitic Lifestyle |
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Pathological Lying |
Shallow Affect |
Lack of Realistic Long-Term Goals |
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Cunning/Manipulative |
No Responsibility for Actions |
Impulsiveness/Irresponsibility |
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Cooke and Michie eliminated criteria related to criminal incarceration and juvenile delinquency and statistically analyzed three factors of psychopathy. This conception of the psychopathic personality is better applicable outside forensic populations. |
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To support their abuse and other criminal activity, LL&C cabal subjected students who had fallen from grace to a silent treatment for months on end. They expelled several students by arbitrary and capricious grading without due process and altered transcripts to support their contentions. Even more disturbing, normally ethical professors in the department looked the other way because they considered the cabal invincible.
At an LL&C meeting of doctoral students convened to address these issues, a majority concluded that they had an “aversion to dirty laundry”. By that, they allowed administrators arbitrarily to outlaw any behavior that they, either collectively or individually, found inappropriate. Other PhD students lived in fear and accepted outrageous abuse during their sojourn in LL&C; however, they suffered silently for fear of repercussion and ostracism while easy riders partied with their faculty drinking buddies and several of them slept with professors.
Emotional Stress
An original stress conceptualization proposed by Selye addressed the positive affective response to the stress process and used the term “eustress” to define a feeling of fulfillment. Lazarus divided stress into two component parts: “eustress” and “distress”. They concurred that response to stress included adaptation, psychological coping such as stress management, anxiety, and depression. Over the long term, distress can lead to diminished health or illness; to avoid serious disability stress needs management.
Eustress means stress that enhances function (physical or mental) and distress means unresolved stress through coping or adaptation which may lead to escape (anxiety) or withdrawal (depression). All stress, whether positive or negative accumulates and both types tax the body. The stress experienced by students in H&SS/LL&C defined as the negative kind - distress which allegedly resulted in at least one attempted suicide.
A Harvard example provides insight. A graduate student jumped from a campus library to his death. His suicide sparked a campus wide debate about advising. Harvard's Graduate Student Council asked PhD candidates to fill out a survey in which they complained about advisors who neglected to read theses and only met with students every two years. Others bemoaned grueling work schedules.
According to an LL&C professor, a department student under stress attempted suicide. Unlike Harvard, Rensselaer took no action to investigate department culpability in the stress issues which resulted in the attempted suicide. Instead, LL&C covered up the incident. When questioned about other student stress issues, a campus medical doctor callously claimed that if students have emotional disorders they will soon drop out which solves the problem as far as it concerns the university.
The centerpiece of the Harvard plan involved pre-thesis committees - a group of three professors, including the student's advisor - that would meet with individual PhD candidates on a yearly basis to discuss research and career goals. The underlying hope: to increase contact with other professors so that no one person could have total control over a student's life. However, that positive situation cannot exist in self-serving, oligarchical cabals bent upon anarchy.
At other universities, I have seen graduate students overloaded with projects for professors in order to curry favor and, perhaps more important, an academic letter of reference. David Carson, an LL&C professor forced untold unpaid hours upon graduate students to produce a journal for which he received payment.
I had first-hand experience with Carson when I refused to do unpaid consulting work for his private client. The work included a research project which I had done many times before as an industry consultant; however, he refused to share the fee then tried to blackmail me. When that did not work, he retroactively changed my required PhD course grade from 4.0 to 3.5 and reclassified it as incomplete. A complaint to Halloran never received due process. [Carson]
I counseled several students at LL&C and many students at other universities (both officially and privately). They described repeated instances in which the climate in their departments and relationships with advisors contributed to unhealthy levels of stress both physical and emotional. Instances of that nature make the transition from student to scholar almost impossible.
Dysfunctional relationships with advisors that result in stress, mental and emotional fatigue, and depression are critical factors in the doctoral experience. Too often, mental health practitioners claim that advisor relationships prevent individual students from adjusting to the demands of doctoral study. A better understanding of student mental health would attribute those symptoms to the complex interaction of personal, social, and institutional factors caused by an advisor’s psychotic transference.
For many students, academe has become a hostile environment in which the intellect has become some sort of organism detached from self. Words like loneliness, isolation, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, hazing, ridicule, sexual harassment, benign neglect, and abuse dominate student descriptions of their doctoral experience. Parents and society generally need to question whether students pay exorbitant tuition to make professors and administrators wealthy despite their contractual responsibilities to students. The presumption that the best and brightest will survive anyway does not suffice. For many the problem does not relate so much to survival but whether they have a willingness to persist under conditions that are injurious to their emotional, intellectual, and physical well-being.
The most valuable feature of research analysis addresses whether a piece of work stands on its own. Students do not need advisors to tell them whether their work has that quality. In fact, when the advisor doubles as the professor of record he is not qualified to evaluate anything. Advisors have no business whatsoever in evaluating their own students. Moreover, objectivity ranks as a sine qua non (prerequisite) for academic discourse which cabalistic advisors do not possess.
Universities must control advisory roles to carefully circumscribe them. Advisors should help the student to verify claims to original work for which a simple “yes” suffices and accept evaluation as the prerogative of faculty members as far removed as possible from the research group while still capable of understanding the thesis statement.
In the long run, ethical advisors appreciate working with talented students without the specter of advisory recommendations and self-interest haunting the student. Attendance at graduate school, unlike any other period of life, should allow students to totally immerse themselves in the learning process with a brilliant mentor and gifted peers sharing their enthusiasm.
Potential graduate students must visit their top-choice institution. If they have any misgivings whatsoever, then they should not enrol just because it has a reputation as a leading institution. They should interview former students especially when a department has geared course requirements in a way which denies freedom of expression.
They would obtain better service and learn more at a second-tier university, with an atmosphere conducive to learning without political or commercial control. In a utopian situation, faculty members treat PhD students with kindness and respect. Those faculty members go out of their way to help students succeed and their programs treat PhD students with dignity - the problem lies in finding those institutions.
After five decades of ethical behavior in my professional and academic endeavors, I have no intention of allowing these people to continue to affect me with their lack of ethics. Consequently, I have listed in the Roll of Dishonor the names of those administrators at both Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Washington who have aided and abetted the criminality of Judd, Halloran, Phelan, and Whitburn et al.
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What has happened to me, could happen to any one of you. Today, the threat to intellectual liberty comes from academicians, the apologists of totalitarianism. The attack upon intellectual liberty comes from university administrators and technocrats. Both groups negatively influence the survival of academic freedom. |
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First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty to speak and to write without fear of restraint. This freedom of expression closely links with freedom of the press. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that state laws grant equal protection to all.
The behavior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Washington mutually relates. Their political correctness and political silence over two decades has contributed to a bizarre escalation of malfeasance and collusion between a private and a public institution. Moreover, from a legal perspective, the individuals named in the case studies have consistently abrogated established judicial procedures designed to safeguard the legal rights of the individual.
The cabalists have shown how despotic behavior, and failure to conform with promulgated regulations, transformed a minor issue into one of vast proportions. They regularly conspired to act illegally and subversively. They denied due process and matters have reached an irrevocable state. As time has progressed, ever more of them have committed crimes in attempts to cover up the original acts of their colleagues.
I expended in three years the current equivalent of $100,000 on tuition and legal fees for which I received absolutely nothing. After blackballing and blacklisting primarily by Halloran, Odell, and Whitburn over two decades, the Rensselaer experience has cost me in excess of $4 million. Outstanding debt has now accumulated interest and penalties amounting to about $400,000. Debt collectors continue to pursue payment by unlawful harassment and by pestering friends and acquaintances despite Jackson receiving a request to cease and desist harassment about three years ago.
Odell’s behavior apparently prevented several technical communication students from proceeding with their doctoral work and they left Rensselaer because of the abuse; meanwhile, classical rhetoric students received easy rider treatment. I do not regret my time at Rensselaer because it gave me the opportunity to expose the wrongdoing and, hopefully, future students will heed what I have written and think twice before enrolling in a program that could affect their physical and mental health.
See Portable Document File (PDF) for citations.
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Paul Trummel PhD (RPI ABD), PhD (UW ABD), MS (RPI), MSc (UK), BSc (UK) Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired) International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (International Press Card)
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© Copyright 2007 by Paul Trummel |
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