Burning Bridges
December 27th, 2006 • Business, Education
This story about a MIT associate professor claiming racism which has kept him from gaining tenure caught my eye. This little snippet from a letter written by the professor is really telling of the story:
“I will either see the Provost resign and my hard-earned tenure granted at MIT, or I will die defiantly right outside his office,” he wrote. “This is the strength of my conviction that racism in American (sic) must end. What better place to kill a small part of it than at a great institution like MIT.”
As I’ve written about before, people should learn the language if they are to be taken seriously. In this case, a college professor is writing a public letter with grammatical errors (”American” instead of “America”). I’d say he is probably being denied tenure on his inability to communicate than the color of his skin. I know racism exists in America. I’ve dealt with it for a large part of my life. So this isn’t to belittle this issue. But I think the cause, in this case, is something other than racism.
Also, this act of escalation (threatening a hunger strike) will get him nothing other than hurt feelings among the people who are his peers and managers. He won’t be able to stay (or at least, be effective) at MIT because of the bridges he is burning through these actions (or threatening these actions). The effect of burning bridges is always amplified regardless of the manner in which these actions are taken. In this case, this story is public and others who might have hired this person will probably steer clear. I know I would never recommend the folks who have acted irrationally and burned their bridges with me or my company. But then, like the proverbial elephant, I never forget those things.
