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Professorial ethics

Being a minor celebrity (is that what we call this?) has the amusing side effect that various people will be talking about you elsewhere on the internet. Thanks to the awesome search capabilities of the internet, these can be found fairly easily. Here’s an funny one from a few days ago given by Scott Ashworth, Professor and Director of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy PhD program, and editor-in-chief of Quarterly Journal of Political Science:

When he first tweeted it, I quote retweeted it (naturally). What usually happens after I do this is that they either delete the tweet or protect the account. In this case it was the latter, but he came back in a bit. But then apparently, some others found it.

Also https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/leah-boustan-urges-scott-ashworth-to-snitch-on-people-they-disagree-with and https://www.poliscirumors.com/topic/scott-ashworth-of-the-uchicago-harris-school-tweeted-this-and-locked-his-account. Apparently, Scott is an amusing fellow:

You don’t know SA [Scott Ashworth]. He’s one of the most arrogant, anti-intellectual blowhards in the discipline. Had this been a serious person, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt. But it is not a stretch to say that SA is the most narrow minded person I’ve met in my career. It only feels fair that he’s met with the same pre-judgement that he’s been applying to the rest of the field for his entire career.

This minor event is probably best summarized by this tweet:

https://twitter.com/IntellectualEm2/status/1253013699691819008

Perhaps a next step here is submitting a paper to his journal about political bias in academia, and cite this instance of a professor seemingly harassing students for reading people with the wrong political views (perceived!).