Support Academic Freedom and Piet Hut
Further Background
The official IAS position
on the court case against Prof. Hut focuses entirely on the issue of whether a 1996 agreement
is valid or not.
These legal issues are irrelevant to the present
petition,
which simply urges the IAS not to try to get rid of Prof. Hut, irrespective of
legal technicalities.
The official IAS position
is that he was asked to leave because of
substandard academic performance.
However, given his astrophysics
publication record,
many of his colleagues feel that the real reason was
IAS disapproval of Prof. Hut's choice of research topics,
in particular his side interest in computer science and
philosophical issues such as
relations between Western science and Eastern views.
For more details on this issue, see the
letters of support
on Prof. Hut's website.
Scientific Freedom
400 years ago,
Giordano Bruno
was burned at the stake because the Pope disapproved of
his choice of research topics (which included heliocentric astronomy),
and
Galileo
was put of trial for the
same reason. In the last century, scientists were fired in Nazi Germany for their choice
of research topics (relativity theory was denounced as ``Jewish Physics'').
In the IAS vs. Hut case, the stakes are clearly smaller (no pun intended), but the idea
under attack is the same: scientific freedom, i.e.,
that researchers should not be punished for their scientific interests or views.
The Tenure System
Many view tenure is a critical cornerstone of academia. Once scholars have demonstrated their
worthiness to be granted tenure, it allows them to explore the
frontiers of knowledge according to their own sense of where the most important and
interesting problems lie. The only grounds for revoking tenure have traditionally
been personal or professional misconduct, e.g., embezzlement, harassment or plagiary.
If you feel that lack of appreciation for the research topics pursued
is not a legitimate basis for revoking tenure, then we ask for your
support by signing the
petition.
You may sign even if you oppose the tenure system, providing that you
would like to abolish it by ceasing to grant tenure rather than
by revoking it retroactively.
Is There More to the Story?
Because the IAS action is rather unprecedented,
an obvious question is whether there are additional reasons why
the IAS wants Prof. Hut to leave, e.g., some form of misconduct.
However, the court documents filed by the IAS, which are
publicly available, make no mention of any such wrongdoing.
Arguably the only surprise in these documents is that
substantial amounts of text are devoted to arguing that there are
problems related to Prof. Hut's academic performance and his side
interests, despite an
official IAS statement
that the court case is not about such issues.
More details on the case are available on
Prof. Hut's website
and on
the IAS website.
(Prof. Hut himself had nothing to do with the creation of this petition,
which was initiated by the
ad hoc Committee in Support of Piet Hut and Academic Freedom,
a group of
concerned colleagues.
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If you have corrections, suggestions, questions or comments that you don't
want to have posted here, you can contact us at
hutcoll@yahoo.com.
Return to the petition