Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows (MIT Press)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (955 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0262015943 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 248 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-01-04 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
(John Deutch, Institute Professor, MIT)MIT is one of the world's great academic institutions and Jay Keyser presents an intimate insider's view of how it actually works in the best of times and in the worst of times. (Paul E. Keyser is a shrewd and insightful observer of academe. J. Jay Keyser's report of his voyage through MIT's life is as riveting and important as de Tocqueville's report on life and social practices in the early 19th century United States. His experiences in three universities, Brandeis, UMass, and MIT, enrich his perspectives about the way universities work, and his exploration of the culture of MIT is brilliant. Gray, Professor and President Emeritus, MIT) . His book will be an inspiration to anyone committed to preserving both the excellence and the humanity of American higher education. Keyser writes with verve and great humor. The reader
Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy from 1977 to 1998, he also held the positions of Director of the Center for Cognitive Science and Associate Provost.Lawrence Bacow is President of Tufts University and the former Chancellor of MIT. Samuel Jay Keyser is Professor Emeritus in MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and Special Assistant to the Chancellor.
Keyser observes that MIT is hard to get into and even harder to leave, for faculty as well as for students. Keyser also describes a visiting Japanese delegation horrified by the disrepairof the linguistics department offices (Chomsky tells them "Our motto is: Physically shabby. Keyser had to run a department ("budgets were like horoscopes") and negotiate student grievances -- from the legality of showing Deep Throat in a dormitory to the uproar caused by the arrests of students for antiapartheid demonstrations. And he explains the special faculty-student bond at MIT: the faculty sees the students as themselves thirty years earlier. Writing about retirement, Keyser quotes the song Groucho Marx sang in Animal Crackers as he was leaving a party -- "Hello, I must be going." Students famously say "Tech is hell." Keyser says,"It's been a helluva party." This entertaining and thought-provoking memoir will make readers glad that Keyser hasn't quite left.. When Jay Keyser arrived at MIT in 1977 to head theDepartment of Linguistics and Philosophy, he writes, he "felt like a fishthat had been introduced to water for the
Sensationalized account of a boring experience Amazon Customer This book, especially the chapters on campus life, is just wildly inaccurate.I was at MIT during the first half of the period Keyser describes (and in fact lived in the house he oversaw for four years). Very little of what he writes in the book is as dramatic as he makes it out. The reason it's the "MIT nobody knows" is that it doesn't quite exist.His account at the end, of a student who died hiking in 1983, suggesting that the student d. inaccurate and irresponsible Professor Keyser was housemaster of Senior House in the early 80'swhen a popular student I knew from the house went missing during a mountaineeringaccident. Keyser describes the reaction of students at the house as "oblivious."Clearly the oblivious one was Keyser himself--students went to search fortheir missing friend, and one wrote to tell me of the presumed death.. Narrow minded perspective Keyser's book may be a well meaning recollection of his times at MIT, but it strikes a bitter note when it strays into disparaging those elements of the experience that caused him to feel like a fish out of water. In particular, his recollections of his years as a housemaster at Senior House are mean spirited and off base. While he admits that this dorm was the most free spirited on campus, he also makes it clear that he dispised this fr