University Diaries » Cornell, Duke, UCLA: Each one of these schools maintained a dangerous madman on their faculty and/or in their student body. The students in his classes tried complaining and were ignored. His dissertation committee praised him and passed him along. How did this happen?

It took a judge ruling Matthew Harris too insane to go on trial to stop the upward trajectory of this man’s academic career.

A trail of red flags about his behavior toward women followed him throughout his academic journey to UCLA. In online class reviews, interviews and emails obtained last year by The Associated Press, current and former students at all three universities alleged negligence by the schools for letting Harris slide, despite his concerning conduct.

Here are my posts about him. An extremely obvious crazy person, sending out vile threats to female students, leaps from one great academic job to another. How ’bout that. UD thinks a class action suit might help all of these schools focus productively on their negligence; she also thinks the enthusiastic dissertation chair in the case should be handed a punitive year away without pay, during which he must take a basic criminology/psychology course in the characteristics of psychopathology. The bit where the model student/psychopath whips out his gun and blows away all the women in his class didn’t have a chance to happen in this case, but there may well be other dangerous madmen, and the dissertation chair needs help before getting enthusiastic and passing those along too.

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The lad was found with ammunition, but

[Harris] attempted to buy a “bodyguard revolver” at the Silver Bullet Shooting Range in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

The purchase was denied.

So the gun was still a work in progress. But you and I know that, if the law hadn’t come sniffing around, he would have gotten one somehow.

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As for the larger academic village that made the world safe for this madman… oy. UD is currently tossing her hands up in the air. A whole lot needs to change for professors and administrators to acquire the balls to identify and dismiss politically trendy psychopaths.

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Notes of a Neophyte

Anon Says:
February 3rd, 2023 at 8:28PM

A lecturer is “a great academic job” now?

Hiring NTT instructors — sometimes it’s a rigorous process and sometimes it’s not and any warm body that is available gets hired. I don’t think you can assume strings were pulled here.

Otoh, I don’t think I have ever seen a blunt, negative LOR. Don’t hire this person! It’s all fear of libel/defamation, right? Haven’t professors been sued for writing negative letters? I bet an advisor who refuses to write a letter could also be sued. What a world.

Margaret Soltan Says:
February 4th, 2023 at 12:07AM

Anon: I had in mind not his being a lecturer, but his being well on his way to a good tenure track position.

I think the process here was neither rigorous nor warm body. He was a flashy, highly-regarded minority hire. I think this was about personal connections. Cronies at the schools passed him along. Old/new, boys/girls network.

Yeah, refusing to write a letter is often one’s only move – but it’s also tricky to do that. I have to believe that some of the saner people who moved him along knew they were doing something very bad. OTOH it’s possible that in “moving him along” they were really just desperately trying to palm him off on another school before he imploded.

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