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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner works at a major U in the US. Top 200ish. They are solely focused on revenue. Teacher pay rarely raised, but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m, seems like a great idea. FFS, her dept went past the paper budget for one semester, about 5 years ago. The resolution? Do without paper until the next semester. That's what students insane tuition prices bought them. Apathy over education.

> Teacher pay rarely raised There's an oversupply of most PhDs, so there's no need to raise their pay. And that's for professors. Grad students that teach are practically free.

> There's an oversupply of most PhDs

Which PhDs are in undersupply?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a formal conspiracy when you have an elite with converging interests.

There's a joke from a comedian I forget if it is L̶o̶u̶i̶s̶ ̶C̶K̶ George Carlin o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶. But basically is along the lines that you don't have explicitly collude when you all come from the same backgrounds. The interests are aligned already. It's pointing out that representatives need to actually be from representative populations of people. But he did it in a funny way, this comment really isn't. Edit: thanks lo…

George Carlin, and he wasn't joking. This was a point he made during an interview in all seriousness.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#213
post #185

Her actual whistleblower declaration contains a lot of the evidence some may be looking for: https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/up... To sum up the first few pages after skimming it, Facebook tried to bribe her (well "fund" her research), she refused. Later she had a meeting with the former head of comms at Facebook, who was now on the Dean's council, where he became incredibly angry with her r…

Not sure why I decided to spend so much time on this on a Monday morning but I've read to page 35, and the picture is much more muddled. It looks like the FB Archive project gains momentum and launches but Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way (which understandably is very upsetting, you can feel the pain on every page). It does seem clear that the Dean doesn't approve of Dr. Donovan/TASC and he eventu…

> Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way

this is described dismissively and in the passive voice, but it's an active action, and quite damning.

who sidelined them, and why?

it seems the answers are: the school, because the researchers upset facebook, who was giving the school money

> if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school, then the title of this post is pretty misleading

this is misleading: if the research is allowed to continue, it should continue under the researchers who did the research, unless there's a good reason otherwise

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#214
post #151

Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at university level? Is it expensive or require their resources? Obviously institutions are at risk of capture by special interests. We can call them non profit but doesn't stop the economics and human nature. Same is true for politicians so oversight could make things even worse as it would be even more centralized and easier to capture . So we should look for…

Why are you copy pasting the same question over and over in this thread?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#216
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few very large unis i looked into all made massively more money off investment returns than any operational income. the year i reviewed for the university of texas system showed they could have charged zero tuition that year and still make a profit there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those endowments choosing specific investment options with their many billions of dollars

My partner works at a major U in the US. Top 200ish. They are solely focused on revenue. Teacher pay rarely raised, but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m, seems like a great idea. FFS, her dept went past the paper budget for one semester, about 5 years ago. The resolution? Do without paper until the next semester. That's what students insane tuition prices bought them. Apathy over education.

> but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m, seems like a great idea.

This doesn't have anything to do with universities specifically. There's always money for endeavors that have positive ROI. You can tell what a person, group, business or institution actually values by the things they spend money on that are true losses.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#219
$500M is a lot of money for one university, especially as bad as Harvard. Insane. But let's not forget that's a common practice. Qatar and et al. compromised many humanities departments. Oil money helps fund pro-Palestine protests in these universities. Now they need to show the money was well spent.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/jwhsqhrat

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