The following stories were collected from seven Master’s and/or PhD program alumni who endured severe and prolonged bullying from the same advisor at MIT. Their experiences span 14 years, from when the first of them joined the group to when the last left. All of them suffered deep injury to not only their careers and wellbeing, but also the scientific rigor of their research. By silencing dissent, shutting down inquiry, and demanding that data be massaged to fit pre-existing theories, this advisor and his unchecked abuse directly threaten MIT’s fundamental mission and its reputation for expanding the bounds of human knowledge. These alumni do not share their stories to disparage the Institute, but rather to highlight the failures of current policies in responding to cases of advisor abuse. They implore the MIT administration to listen to grad workers and accept the MIT GSU’s proposed grievance procedure for harassment, discrimination, and bullying. This change would offer grad workers suffering advisor abuse real protection and recourse, thus making MIT a better place for both researchers and research.
In the following paragraphs, we will refer to the alumni as Alums 1-7.
A ubiquitous theme in the alumni stories is that the professor, as Alum 5 put it,“rules by fear.” All the alumni report regularly seeing members humiliated in front of the rest of the group. Alum 1 recalled “Once, in front of a bunch of other people in the lab, he scolded me, saying ‘When someone smarter than you tells you to do something, you need to do it!’” Alum 5 remembers “watching him berate some of the research scientists in our group.” But the mistreatment wasn’t just in public — Alum 2 recalled that “My advisor quite often bad-mouthed a student behind his/her back to other students.” Some of the advisor's behavior was so perversely bad that it bordered on surreal. Upon learning Alum 4 was using mental health services to work through the stress of supporting their ailing father, the advisor was incensed and criticized them, saying “You’re sick. How can I work with you when you’re sick? This is why we are not making any progress.”