So much still to say about the curious case of UCLA philosophy lecturer/psychotic would-be mass killer Matthew Harris. For UD, the crucial question is – who hired him at UCLA? Simply put, how did a guy who apparently was a known problem — maybe even a danger — at his previous school – Duke – end up in front of a classroom at UCLA?

How long did UCLA keep him in the classroom?

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Here’s the bit on his time at Duke.

Harris received his PhD from Duke University in 2019. It has been alleged that while there, he engaged in a some inappropriate actions with or in regard to students, and that some faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Duke were aware of issues with his behavior; it has been alleged that some Duke faculty recommended that he not be left alone with students.

So far the above can’t be confirmed; and since everyone with any connection to Matthew Harris is currently running scared (he might be released on bond or sent to a low-security mental health facility), I wouldn’t expect anyone to say anything for awhile. But let us assume this information about his behavior at Duke is true. Let us assume that his madness definitely began to manifest at Duke, that the peril of the man was something of an established fact at Duke. How can we account for UCLA hiring, and for some time keeping, him?

Here are a few thoughts.

1.) Just as GW’s Jessica Krug had institutionally powerful enablers, so perhaps Harris had influential cheerleaders at Duke and/or UCLA. Sometimes it only takes one pivotal/assertive/aggressive advocate to tamp down misgivings other colleagues might have.

2.) Harris’s aggressivity, sense of grievance, and general strangeness might have been filed under “wounds of race” – just as Jessica Krug’s similar emotional profile — when people were under the impression she was black — was perhaps interpreted/mainstreamed in this way.

3.) Harris had great credentials – Duke, a respected thesis director, fellowships, prizes. I’m assuming he had strong recommendations. Nothing on paper argued against him, and it looks as though no one at Duke – formally or informally – shared anything worrisome. Or did they? Again, a strong enough advocate might find a way to neutralize worrisome information. (Interestingly, Duke was both Krug’s publisher and Harris’s graduate institution.)

4.) Once in the classroom at UCLA, Harris benefited from the praiseworthy tendency of universities to give professors enormous freedom in what and how they teach. But as a novice at the trade, Harris should have encountered more oversight than he apparently received. To make matters worse, the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries in the humanities means the absence of anything like an agreed-upon canon of readings to assign in any particular class. “[A] final exam … included an essay question about the hate-filled manifesto of Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer whose 2013 shooting rampage killed four people and wounded three others. Students were asked to consider the ‘oppression, disrespect and loss of dignity’ suffered by the homicidal ex-cop.”

Exactly the sort of assigned reading you’d expect in an undergraduate philosophy course. Before Hegel and Arendt, Christopher Dorner.

1.) A dismissed faculty member has had a psychotic break and has issued death threats against faculty, students, the whole school really. How well has the campus responded in terms of security?

2.) When did the school become aware (through student complaints, his Rate My Professor page, his social media, etc.) that Harris is a violent, mentally ill person? Did it act quickly, or did it drag its feet?

3.) How well has the administration kept students and faculty informed about the ongoing threat, and what people should do about it?

4.) The acutely psychotic condition of Harris makes me suspect that his madness was visible long before he began ranting about mass murder. Did anyone warn the philosophy department about him before they hired him? Did the department have reservations about hiring him which they decided to overlook?

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Oh. And don’t forget. 5.) “Every country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them.” UCLA must certainly proceed on the assumption that Harris enjoys a massive violent arsenal to match his massive violent mental illness.

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UPDATE: “[A] former instructor in a philosophy department is alleged to have sent members of the department threatening messages and was revealed to possibly have a history of problematic interactions with students, and possibly was observed in the past as problematic by superiors at institutions which (for reasons unknown) do not appear to have effectively responded to the situation or informed relevant others of it.”

So nu? How did Harris get to UCLA? Does his dissertation advisor, Andrew Janiak, have anything to contribute?

Were there other faculty in the Philosophy department who may have known, or suspected, that they were handing along a dangerous person to UCLA?

For him to land at that distinguished school, his letters of recommendation must have been excellent. All written by people with no negative knowledge of him?

Did this bit from his brief autobiography at the end of his dissertation not seem strange to anyone?

[H]e also gave lectures about his innovative philosophical research to crowds at Stanford University, Cornell University and Princeton University.

When students are contacting the FBI about one of their instructors, it’s a subtle hint that maybe something’s wrong with the instructor.

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This is a drip-drip-drip story. We’re starting with information from his students; eventually we’ll work up to his dissertation committee and the administration at Duke University.

[The instructor was] speaking haltingly, changing his syllabus willy-nilly and spending the first four weeks of his “Philosophy of Race” class without once showing his face over Zoom.

Things got weirder as the term progressed, students said, leading up to a final exam that included an essay question about the hate-filled manifesto of Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer whose 2013 shooting rampage killed four people and wounded three others. Students were asked to consider the “oppression, disrespect and loss of dignity” suffered by the homicidal ex-cop.

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.

[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 …?

UD’s been posting for a few days on the appalling Matthew Harris story, in which a notorious and dangerous madman has been handed on from one excellent university to another, first as a grad student and then as a lecturer.

For years, several people at these schools have known or suspected that Harris is a serious threat to society, but nonetheless he has been able to leap from one academic pinnacle to another, stopped only by behavior so terrifying that he’s now in jail.

How can we account for this series of events?

Let me first quote a bit from the latest story about him.

[C]urrent and former students at all three universities alleged negligence by the schools for letting Harris slide previously, despite his concerning conduct… [H]is behavior was well known within the small [Duke] philosophy program [but two students who were in the department at the time said they] did not feel they would have been supported by faculty if they’d come forward.

Whoa. Why the hell did they feel that way? I mean, if his threatening behavior was well known, why would faculty have failed to support people who formally reported it? What a condemnation of the Duke department.

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Did the students worry they would be accused of racism if they complained about Harris?

And what of the four professors who approved Harris’s dissertation, and the professors who wrote letters of recommendation glowing enough to get Harris a job at UCLA?

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A little more speculation here, if I may. I’m going to guess that no one read the thesis with much care, or indeed interacted much with Harris.

And a tad more speculation, please. I’m going to guess that influential people at Cornell and Duke championed Harris in a way that may well have made complaining about him seem not worth the hassle.

There’s much, much more to this story, and it will almost certainly come out. We will see if UD‘s guesses have any merit to them. Meanwhile, expect lawsuits. Expect faculty resignations. Expect professors having to testify at Harris’s trial. This one’s a real mess.