[One former Duke philosophy student described meetings with faculty about Matthew Harris] “as mostly unproductive.”
Faculty, for example, suggested that they hold more professional development sessions for graduate students.
“We were a little bit upset about this because this wasn’t a matter of professionalism,” the current student said. “This was a unique graduate student who was troubled and required over and above the typical graduate student’s needs.”
A madman in the department is behaving in a demented way and threatening the lives of various people.
Okay! Let’s hold another session on how you should dress for the MLA convention.
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And then there’s the curiously confused thesis director/recommendation letter writer. In two news outlets now, he has described Harris as a total weenie, a terribly shy harmless sort; yet he also acknowledges that Harris wrote things like “[this thesis is] dedicated to the immediate death of all those who oppose or slow the rise of the black man” in a draft of the dissertation that ended up online.
“I don’t really know how to describe it other than just incoherent, ranting and raving,” says the thesis director.
No kidding.
When you read this, you – what? – put a red line through it and wrote Maybe needs revision …?