
Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department - elinear
http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html
======
squirrel
I was a grad student and teaching assistant in Berkeley maths 1998-99. I
observed that the department intentionally admitted many more grad students
than it could possibly put through the full PhD, and had a well-tuned system
for weeding them out after a year or two - chiefly a "preliminary exam" that
was notoriously tough and (in my view and that of many others) unfair. A
charitable view would be that the department wanted to give many students a
chance to shine and graduate, so had a liberal admissions policy; a cynic
might observe that those who failed the prelim conveniently taught calculus as
TAs for a couple of years for a ridiculously low cost, hence provided cheap
labour (much cheaper than Dr. Coward for sure). After two years of
experiencing the kind of environment Dr. Coward describes, I definitely
adopted the cynical view. I left the university, and mathematics, and have
been much happier as a result. I wish Dr. Coward every success in changing
what I found to be a very unpleasant system in the department.

~~~
crimsonalucard
If hard working students fail a test, the failure is on the teacher, not the
students.

I highly doubt the majority of students at berkeley would be anything other
than hard working.

~~~
lzr_io
Unfortunately, hard work is not always effective work. When you embark on a
journey of learning, it is your own responsiblity to make sure that you learn
effectively. Hard work alone does not justify any merits - you have to make it
count.

~~~
emp_zealoth
That is exactly the job of a teacher - to make sure you learn effectively.

~~~
agumonkey
How many of your teachers focused on efficient learning ? I can't remember
one. Even the handful of teacher that left a deep trace in my memory never
mentioned 'learning'. They were just so well aware of their subject, they
could be the catalyst to bridge gaps in my view of things, triggering
inspiration and desire.

~~~
chris_wot
There needs to be a desire in the student to learn, but the teacher must also
be able to impart things clearly. Otherwise, why bother having teachers at
all? Why not have everyone self-learn? Ironically, that's what I'm actually
doing right now, but still it's good to get recorded lectures as this tends to
really help fill in blanks.

~~~
agumonkey
I'm doing a lot of self studies too, and what I'm missing the most is a little
peer pressure to focus and test, especially tests. That's why I personally
enjoyed MOOCs since they provide that. My experience is doubly biased, I don't
recall any teacher being really helping in learning as I said, but I went to
college at a time I couldn't interact with them normally too.

------
solveforall
If what he Dr. Coward says is true, and I have no reason to doubt him, this
makes me sad as a Berkeley alum. I remember taking Math 53 with an awful
professor who could barely speak English and refused to cover the material,
asking us to just read the material ourselves and ask him questions. This
professor had been there for many years despite repeatedly getting in trouble
for failing too many students (that he neglected to teach). This is
unfortunately the state of universities now, teaching is nothing, research is
everything. Lecturers are treated like crap and barely scraping by. I wonder
when the devaluation of teaching will catch up to us; maybe another country
that values teachers will be able to attract more of the best students in the
world.

~~~
tdaltonc
> teaching is nothing, research is everything

Teaching is nothing, research is nothing; grants, tuition, and donations are
everything.

I don't know what's sadder, how far universities have fallen, or the fact that
there's no sign that these trends are slowing.

~~~
solveforall
I stand corrected :)

------
berkmathstudent
I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was
his first semester here.

Pros:

1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I
never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by
inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous
amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives
out his cell phone number and asks students to call him any time if they need
help.

Cons:

1)His class is very poorly structured. No quizzes. The midterms don't count if
you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final. 2)His
Graduate Student Instructors that teach smaller group discussions get carte
blanche to be as lazy as they want. They don't have to administer quizzes and
the three that I saw didn't give a rat's ass. 3)His exams are a joke. Most of
it is literally just memorizing a proof. The basic derivatives and integrals
on the test are really easy. Many of the pre-med and pre-Haas students love
him because of the easy A's he gives out.

In Summary: The department has valid claims against his classes, but he is
doing something Berkeley's math department desparately needs: teaching lower
division math better.

~~~
rootlocus
"The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your
grade can be the final." And that's your choice. How is it his fault for
giving you a choice?

"Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof." Proofs are more important
than memorizing a formula and forgetting it after a couple of month.

"Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math." That's way
more important than stuffing you with formulas, algorithms and problems. If
you have a passion for something, learning comes more easily and naturally.

By giving you confidence and passion, he gave you the greatest gift he could
possibly give. You can find theorems, proofs, problems and solutions in
countless books. The information is there, all of it. Structured in many
different ways. And he gave you the courage to go out and explore. I wish I
had that as a freshman. Instead I got fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being
mocked in class. Fear of not being good enough. And I cowered in fear. I
learned mechanically, memorizing formulas and problems by heart. What good
where the quizzes, hard exams and midterms to me when I couldn't understand
and apply what I was supposed to be learning?

~~~
TruePath
While _I_ agree that the most important thing is convincing the 1 person out
of 1,000 to be a math major (or physics or whatever) I'm afraid the university
isn't ok with handing everyone else As without mastering a certain minimum
skill set.

Besides, the math department isn't a free agent in this. Other departments
expect students who have passed math 1A to have certain skills. If the math
department was free to teach math 1A as an advertisement for mathematics (the
way other departments get to teach their base courses) it would be a much
different class. Hell, it wouldn't even be about calculus.

So long as the physicists, economists, chemists etc.. etc.. say "we need
students with skills X, Y and Z" there has to be a class whose content (and
hence a decent grade in) is X, Y and Z. The name of that class is 1A and it
helps no one to just teach a different class under that name without reforming
the system.

The math department ALREADY OFFERS OTHER CLASSES DESIGNED TO DO EXPOSE
STUDENTS TO MATH IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU MENTION. These are courses that
deliberately avoid the equations and rote memorization that generated so much
fear in high school and are designed to be low stress while showing off the
wonder and creativity of mathematics.

Unfortunately, few people ever take these courses because students don't want
any more math than they have to take and the guidance counselors and
university won't push or require them.

As you said about the final (which I wholeheartedly agree with) if you give
students the choice how is it the department's fault you take it. Students
have a choice to approach math in a more exploratory, more encouraging fashion
but they choose to do the minimum needed to take whatever other class they
need. It's ironic because that's also what makes calculus so hard for
them...they want to apply a rule and confidently move on...not think hard
about a math problem in ways that might be dead ends.

That is what's so sad about math education. Understanding comes from trying to
fit the concepts together and even (especially) professional mathematicians
fail 90% of the time. Students, especially those who haven't done well in math
find that very distressing. Hell, pick any subject you aren't good at (which
has clear success/failure conditions) and really try to do it well. It makes
you feel dumb and you give up. Add to that years of pre-college math (often
taught by teachers who themselves seek the reassurance of rote procedure)
which brain washes the curious kids into believing that doing math _is_ just
applying procedures and it's an uphill battle.

Ultimately, I think the problem is that we try and force kids who aren't
really interested to know math they don't need. Just like other subjects let
the students who want to learn come to you. With the advent of modern computer
algebra system no one benefits making kids memorize rote procedures beyond
basic arithmetic since without understanding they will never apply it in the
real world.

~~~
argonaut
There is no evidence to indicate he deviated from the actual required
_content_ of the course, only that his _lecturing style_ deviated from what
the department wanted. (This is indicated by the department having reviewed
and approved his final, among other things).

Also, I'll repost what I said earlier: there is no evidence he gave out A's
more freely than other professors.

The grade distribution for one of Coward's classes (16B) is available online
for you to check:
[https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016...](https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016...).
It shows his class average was a B-, whereas most other professors around the
year he taught had a B or B+ average.

~~~
caskance
And that by itself is inconclusive, as all the lazy students looking for easy
A's know to sign up for Coward's class.

~~~
argonaut
I wasn't claiming he was harder on the students. I was claiming that there is
absolutely no evidence he was popular because he gave out easy As. So you're
agreeing with me.

~~~
caskance
I studied there, and during that time, spoke to and tutored many such
students. Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence.

~~~
argonaut
And I brought to you a non-anecdotal, total-population statistic. Again,
justifying the null hypothesis (that there is no evidence he was any harder or
easier on students in the grade distribution).

~~~
caskance
No, you repeated Coward's own assertion, stripped of its original context.

~~~
argonaut
This is a non sequitur.

(more specifically: we weren't arguing about my first assertion, we were
arguing about my second assertion. So the fact that you're trying to refute my
second assertion, that there is no evidence he have out A's more freely, by
attacking my first assertion, is irrelevant. I fully acknowledge that absent
the department's response, we don't have the full picture of whether or not
the department's issue was with the actual teaching content, but that was not
what you and I were discussing)

------
wildboarcharlie
As a UC Berkeley student who's never taken one of Coward's classes, I've heard
great things from every single friend of mine whose taken his class ("I love
Coward" is heard a lot). I know students are already rallying to keep him at
Cal. However, I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve
such a great professor if the system is as decrepit as described.

~~~
archgoon
> I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve such a great
> professor if the system is as decrepit as described.

At the very least, Coward does not deserve them.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Coward is the Math department. Calling the administrators members of said math
department is a disservice to all of education.

------
philip1209
I'm not associated with UC Berkeley, but I have been involved in a lot of
campus politics in the past. Because I see many alumni commenting here about
the effectiveness of this lecturer, I offer a suggestion: Give a restricted
gift to the university. Earmark it for something like the salary or research
of Dr. Coward. If they want to play politics, you can too and restrict that
your donations are tied to his continued employment.

~~~
j2kun
Why not just send Coward a check directly?

~~~
runholm
It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.

~~~
j2kun
So why not send a message that isn't open to loopholes? Like mail them a
picture of you personally giving him a check with a letter explaining why, and
then post it on the internet.

------
mvanveen
I had the pleasure of taking Differential Equations from Dr. Coward at UC
Davis back in undergrad. He was one of the best math professors I ever had.

------
socrates2016
Have a Berkeley math degree. Two observations. Student ratings are whack. I
had a professor I thought was really good but had an average rating. I had one
fellow student state that he hated the professor. I am pretty sure the
professor did nothing to him that deserved that hatred. People don't like it
when they don't do as well as they expect. Second, it appears that the math
department hires based on research because I had a newly minted professor who
was just plain indecipherable.

~~~
ak217
I have a triple major from Cal with math among them. All I can say is that
Berkeley math classes were the most brutal, boring, and demotivating classes
that I've ever encountered. For the longest time I tried to suck it up and
blame myself. Luckily, since then I've had enough great classes and mentors to
realize it really was the department and its professors that made me
miserable, and I overcame the massive GPA drop and near-suicidal tendencies
that Berkeley Math drove me to.

~~~
dustintran
You've voiced my own feelings exactly.

------
laxatives
I graduated from Cal in 2013 in Physics and CS. I had a full time lecturer
(not a professor) for a course in Analytic Mechanics and the teacher (Charman)
was in a similar situation. Despite having ratings well above average and
being immensely popular, he was let go. It seems like lecturers are treated as
second class citizens, much like contract workers or outsourced positions.

~~~
joshAg
Lecturers are Cal's version of adjunt professors. Just like how GSIs are Cal's
version of TAs.

~~~
tikhonj
That's definitely not true in the CS department, at the very least. Lecturers
in the CS department can get "security of employment" which is tenure in
everything but name and, while I was there, most of the intro courses and some
advanced undergraduate courses were taught by lecturers like that.

Of course, the CS department is in a different college (Engineering), has a
different culture and, probably, way more funding than the math or physics
departments, so there's plenty of reasons for it to be different.

~~~
Animats
Now that may be the problem. Perhaps the mathematics department should be
moved to Engineering. Stanford did that with computer science back in the
1980s. It used to be part of Arts and Sciences, run by a rotating committee,
and was graduate-only. The education side was disorganized, with schedules and
staffing not matching up with admissions. The entire department was
transferred to Engineering, was better organized, and got much better on the
educational side.

The research side was dominated by logicians to and through the "AI Winter".
Then they brought in machine learning people for the DARPA Grand Challenge,
and that turned the research side around. Now the machine learning people are
in charge, and most of the logicians and expert systems people have retired.

Science progresses one funeral at a time.

------
NickHaflinger
Alexander Coward: 'My student evaluations for the two classes I had completed
were the highest on record in the Mathematics Department'

Berkeley Mathematics Department: ".. I hope and expect that you will be able
to align more with our standards for the remainder of this semester and during
the next academic year."

Translation: Your students are doing significiently better than ours and
therefore showing up our mediocre teaching performance and for that reason -
you're fired ..

[http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMath...](http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html)

------
dustintran
_Note_ that this should not validate or invalidate his claims, but here are
videos of his teaching:
[http://math1afall2015.blogspot.com](http://math1afall2015.blogspot.com)

~~~
joeevans1000
Wow. He is a really engaging lecturer. I'm actually going to watch these
videos to learn. I would have loved a professor like this.

------
anindyabd
Instead of teaching at a large research school which cares more about
professors obtaining grants, he should teach at a small liberal-artsy school
where the professors are expected to spend more of their time actually
teaching students.

~~~
dwaxe
He'll have more students (and therefore more total impact) at a large public
school.

Also, maybe the goal is to change the expectation that research universities
lack good teachers? Public colleges educate many times more students than
private ones, let alone small liberal arts schools.

~~~
bpicolo
UC Berkeley IS a large, public school.

~~~
narsil
Seems like dwaxe knows that and was suggesting why the OP would prefer
Berkeley over a smaller school.

------
phantom_oracle
2 things about this fascinate me:

1) The knock-on effect of having this cross-published on HN and reddit will
somehow make this story reach some form of news-media -> which in turn will
influence UC Berkeleys decision, as they will be under the media-spotlight.

2) I always thought many STEM professors were useless educators who only
taught students as a by-the-way while they chased fame/recognition among their
peers for academic-success (or status). I guess this rings true for Math
departments in many parts of the world.

As many others are saying, it would be better for this guy to leave, because
if the department was overtly toxic before, the true assholism will shine once
the other profs create a siege mentality against this guy for "outing them".

~~~
Simulacra
Very good point. A professors job should be foremost to teach. Research and
chasing fame should come second. In my opinion, universities have flipped this
on its head. They've allowed and in some ways forced professors to relegate
teaching to a level of "by the way". Students pay and go to university to
learn from teachers, not to subsidize researchers. There's something very
wrong when a University places more emphasis on research than in teaching
students

~~~
wfo
There are research universities and teaching universities. If you want to go
to a college that focuses on teaching calculus 101 they exist though I don't
know why as a budding mathematician you'd want to sprint full speed away from
doing real mathematics.

The research has to be done somewhere. It's supposed to be subsidized by the
public or private donations but funding is regularly and methodically cut so
the only remaining reliable source of income is tuition which ends up having
to pay for both.

Not an ideal situation but unless Americans start deciding research is worth
paying money for (unlikely) it's what we have.

------
vessenes
What a great and inspiring letter from someone who is clearly under
significant public and private pressure; I'm sure he was repeatedly advised
not to go public in any way by friends, enemies and lawyers on both sides.

My favorite part is where he imagines the Math department is "jolly cross".

~~~
ericjang
I agree. He really knows how to substantiate his grievances with choice words
and data. I don't know any of the players involved in this drama but the
letter was so damning that I could not help but look up profiles of Stark,
Ogus, Christ, and Evans just to get a picture of their faces.

Politically, this was an excellent play - with his popularity among students,
the Math department (and in particular, named faculty) will have a really
tough time getting students in their classes.

I don't know the full story and obviously his perspective is biased, but all
the same, I pity the fool who has to battle his wits.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
I tried to be a skeptic reading his commentary, but I definitely drank his
kool aid. That being said... as a healthy dose of realism, nobody will care
next year. The administration can easily just ignore this.

------
grandalf
> The Mathematics Department uses its privileged role in providing service
> teaching for undergraduates in all the sciences and social sciences to
> justify its size and all the trappings that go with that like funding and
> office space.

The above is a very important point and deserves attention in its own right.
What it means is that because the requirements for graduation in a particular
liberal arts major include several math courses, this gets the math department
lots of headcount which translates to budget.

The key lesson for students is to try to avoid those "cattle car" classes with
tons of students competing to meet a requirement that they are not interested
in learning about.

------
hendzen
Not the only skeleton in the UC Berkeley Mathematics closet - see the story of
Jenny Harrison [0] for another example.

[0] -
[http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_j...](http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_jenny-
harrison)

~~~
archmikhail
I had her for a class a few years ago, and like Coward, she was an excellent
teacher who didn't care for the norms of the department. She was actually
working on a new textbook at the time which was all about teaching the
fundamentals of mathematics in a completely different way to give a better
foundation for higher level mathematics. At the time, she had just taken a
small group of non-STEM majors, and using her book, got them to graduate level
math in just 1.5 years. Sadly I haven't seen the book released, but one can
only hope the work of these talented individuals will not be hindered by silly
politics.

~~~
JennyHarrison
I am glad you enjoyed my course, archmikhail. The last chapter of my text
needs to be written. I will do that as soon as the department lets me teach
H110 again. Birkhauser accepted it years ago, but we need a new contract. I
could just sell it on amazon as an ebook, I suppose. I have gotten a flurry of
emails asking for copies this morning. This is very encouraging, but I have to
finish it before releasing it.

------
wbillingsley
His lectures are up on Vimeo, eg:
[https://vimeo.com/140890185](https://vimeo.com/140890185)

From what I can see, he's a talented lecturer. He's articulate, genuinely
interested in his students' understanding, and has some uninhibited dramatic
enthusiasm that keeps the audience engaged.

He's doing a start-up centred on teaching skills for lecturers/professors; I
wonder if behind the scenes the issue is simply about that?

Not sure how this particular argument will play out (yikes, it's quite public
now though) but he's a smart chap and should land on his feet.

~~~
spaceflunky
I don't know much about this guy's story, but I do remember from my time as a
UC Berkeley undergrad that being a popular lecturer with the students is a
sure fire way to get yourself unpopular with the tenured staff.

The brass professors at UC Berkeley seemed to be catty like that in all
departments. They didn't like it when some young gun became more popular than
them for teaching the same topics that they'd been teaching for a generation.
Which makes sense, popular professor sell things and get rich, and they way
they saw it, they weren't going to lose to some young upstart.

------
roflchoppa
As someone who is not going to berkley, but studying higher level math.

Alexander, if your students are giving you a 6.4-6.5 out of 7, for calc 1a and
1b, you're a beast.

------
analog31
_In addition there are further mischaracterizations of my teaching in my
personnel file that I am prevented from sharing because the University claims
it is their property._

That's worth confirming with a lawyer. AFAIK most states require employers to
let you copy your personnel file.

~~~
jleader
My guess would be that you're allowed to copy, but they probably don't want
you to publicly share what you've copied. Whether that desire for you not to
disclose is legally enforceable should be confirmed with a lawyer, of course.

------
kelukelugames
I had Ogus at Berkeley! He still looks like a lemming. :)

Keep in mind this is only one side of the story.

Also, if you are going to come out against Berkeley, Klein Perkins, or someone
else equally powerful then please make sure you can easily prove every
allegation. It's the best way to avoid defamation lawsuits.

My lawyer said "It's not slander if it's true." ;)

------
escherplex
Curious. Was it ever considered that this may be fallout from the decision to
hold classes during the campus AFSCME strike back in late November 2013,
justification outlined in an impassioned e-mail sent to students? see:
[http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-
in/2014-...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-
in/2014-09-02/cal-lecturers-email-students-goes-viral-why-i-am-not) and the
collection of heated pro/con responses which followed. Absolutely bizarre.
Reminds me of the dismissal of the physicist David Bohm from Princeton in
early 1950s orchestrated by then president Harold Dodds, a rabid anticommunist
with close ties to the McCarthy era State Department who viewed Bohm as a
Marxist unionist. May be what goes around comes around. Does Chancellor
Nicholas B. Dirks and a majority in the Math department happen to have close
ties to Sacramento and AFSCME? If so the real rationale for proposed dismissal
may be that the professor is deemed insufficiently Marxist unionist by the
powers that be. Just glad I had the financial resources to eschew that
institutional quagmire.

~~~
brianchu
Doubtful. I was a student during that time and I can't recall _any_ math or CS
(or STEM) classes that cancelled a class session because of the strike. The
most that happened was some teaching assistants cancelled their section for
one day.

~~~
escherplex
Started reading Peat's 'Infinite Potential - The Life and Times of David Bohm'
yesterday and came across this post on HN. Knowing of the stir created by the
2013 e-mail, the possible parallels with events associated with Bohm's
dismissal from Princeton (although for seemingly opposite political reasons)
were striking. As an irrelevant aside, Bohm's 3-world
intentionality/stochastic/objectified space hypothesis is interesting because
it reduces the Schrödinger cat metaphor to a useful fiction.

------
userbinator
_This question is one that I asked, and in response it was made very clear to
me what is meant by the norms of the department. It means teach from the
textbook._

Incidentally, some of the _worst_ instructors I've had were these. It doesn't
inspire much conference when you see one whose teaching involves verbatim
copying from the textbook onto the blackboard and making serious errors on the
parts where he/she doesn't. The impression I get from those is basically "if
you can't even figure out clearly what you're doing, what makes you think you
can teach us about it?" The best tended to be ones who didn't ever use a
textbook at all.

Coward is such an ironic name for him, as from this article he is anything but
a coward. I think he should find a better place to work where his skills are
far more appreciated. That's what I did when I encountered a similar situation
in computer science.

------
phillipwei
He was previously in the news for "crossing a picket line":

[http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-
in/2014-...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-
in/2014-09-02/cal-lecturers-email-students-goes-viral-why-i-am-not)

------
akjj
Let me offer up another version of Dr. Coward's story: An employee is hired
and does his job brilliantly in some aspects and along some metrics, but his
employer has complaints in other areas, which are hard to read since we
haven't heard their side. These issues are brought up with the employee in
writing multiple times over the course of a year: September 2013, April 2014,
and November 2014. Apparently, the employee does not address the issues and
instead insists that he's doing a brilliant job and that the employer's
criticism is really about him being too awesome. Employer decides that they
don't want a rogue employee and fires him in October 2014, effective June
2016. Why such almost 2 years of lead time? Maybe it's contractual, but I'm
sure that if they really wanted to, they could fire him at the end of the
academic year. I read this as the employer trying to get the employee to take
them seriously and still giving him another chance to change. Now, in 2015,
the employee obviously still doesn't care what the department thinks.

Not everyone who claims to be a misunderstood and persecuted genius actually
is one. There are people who are brilliant in some areas, but unwilling to
accommodate being part of a larger group and difficult to work with. In
programming terms, imagine an extraordinary programmer who's unwilling to use
the organization's standard programming language or version control. I'm not
sure that the Berkeley math department is really any different in preferring a
pretty good in all areas to someone brilliant in some, but flawed in others,
and, most importantly, unwilling to change.

At first, I wondered why he was blowing up the whole issue and whether it
would actually help. If part of the issue is in the level of preparation for
science classes, then the administration is going to be just as unfavorable as
the department. Then I noticed that he's started some kind of teaching-related
company. So, the department told him to change or be fired and he decided he'd
rather do the latter, but as long as he's going out, he might as well try to
get some publicity for his company.

~~~
jongraehl
My read: math teaching @Berkeley is in fact horrible and this offended him. He
was happy to shame the incumbents and refuse to submit to mediocrity.
Naturally he'd prefer to keep his job and reform by example, but his
compensation for being fired is that he can righteously expose the corruption
on evidence of his firing (and knowing he had this leverage is why he was so
uncompromising in pursuing good teaching).

------
ytinifx
I'm 100% on the side of Berkeley's math department here. In my opinion, the
way AC has gone about things reflects upon his personality and why he is
(probably) disliked by members of the math department. Read through what he
calls his "evidence" to support his claims and you will see that there is more
than enough reason to doubt his claims.

All the comments about Berkeley not caring about undergraduate math education
are far from reality. Sure there are a number of professors who don't take
teaching seriously. But there are a large number of them who do, and are very
good at it. Among them are Ogus, Hald, Christ, Evans, and Rezakhanlou, all
named by AC as people having to do with his dismissal.

~~~
caskance
Hald in particular is everything Coward wishes he could be. He does a great
job of teaching undergrad calculus in a way that is engaging while still
meeting expectations of other departments.

------
ForkFed
Yet another anecdotal proof that the idea of elite universities is not
practically useful. I studied math in Germany and the quality as well as the
level of lectures is mostly quite awesome.

------
bobhaigler
I hope they can work it out. It would be a shame to lose someone who loves
teaching and who students appreciate. My 1A prof at Cal said openly (and with
a dash of humor) that he was being forced to lecture and would rather do his
research but that he periodically had to teach a class. I wonder if that was
the accepted culture in the department and Coward broke a bit against the
status quo.

~~~
Simulacra
Mine too!!!! Harbir Lamba at George Mason University called us all spoiled
brat's, and said he hated teaching, and would much rather be doing research.
There was no humor in his voice whatsoever. He really hated being forced to
teach.

------
Simulacra
I found at George Mason University that my best professors were lectures,
adjunct, and those not on a tenure-track. I recall my first calculus professor
loudly proclaiming his disdain for teaching. He told us explicitly that he
would much rather be doing research, he hated teaching, but because he was
tenured, there's absolutely nothing we could do about it. So we could deal
with it or find another class. He was the reason I didn't pursue mathematics
at George Mason University, because I sadly realized that most of the
department had the same feelings.

------
ndesaulniers
This reminded me of my favorite professor who was also "a full-time lecturer".

Just sent him an email and cc'ed my prof. His address it linked from the root
domain:

"Alex, I just read your letter "BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE UC BERKELEY
MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT"
<[http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMath...](http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html>)
linked to from Hacker News
<[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181>](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181>).

While I've never attended UC Berkeley, nor have we met, I was moved by your
letter. It reminded me of one of my favorite professors in college, who was
also "a full-time lecturer," as opposed to a professor that split time between
research and teaching. The quality of teaching from a professor dedicated
entirely on the pursuit of education is unsurpassed. This professor was well
known/beloved and also had classes that would fill up quickly. Not sure if
there was statistically significant evidence in this case, but wouldn't be
surprised at a strong positive correlation between prior students and
subsequent class performance.

Anyways, without hearing from the other side of the lecture, what happened to
you sounds like some shit. Best of luck in your next pursuit. Good people like
you shouldn't have to put up with nonsense bureaucracy like that."

------
azorrap
I applaud Mr. Coward for trying to stand up to the institution that is
motivated by money and not academic performance. An institution that has
blinded themselves to what education is supposed to be all about. Mr. Coward -
if you are reading this: You can't succeed in your effort alone. If students
like you as much as you say they do, you must rally them to your cause. Get
the student council involved. You must get as many of these students and their
parents involved and hopefully several of these parents hold political power
or donate large sums of money to the institution. If you have the hard facts
to support your argument, you must get the media involved as well. Trust me on
this - you must make this bigger then it is and begin to get the higher ups
concerned about not only money, but their reputation. If you do not get the
students involved, you will lose. I was a graduate student at a large,
respected University, and taught every semester for years. I had a great
reputation among the majors who sought me out for their lab TA. However, when
freshmen started coming in less and less prepared but with increased feelings
of entitlement and the thought that there is no need to work hard for a good
grade, my test means for my non majors course started declining. The
institution wanted me to dumb my non majors course down and I resisted telling
them that there are more students coming into this University that just don't
bother working hard and expect to get a passing grade anyway. My means were
fine years before and if anything, my teaching had gotten better and my tests
had gotten slightly easier. I resisted, but I knew that I would never be able
to survive in that environment without tenure. So, I changed my career path. I
would have been a great teacher and I do miss teaching. But the system is
currently designed to stamp out those who do not conform no matter how
successful they are with their students.

------
fernly
I'm a bit puzzled by the statement that he is asking "campus authorities" to
"overrule" his firing. Why would he want to continue working there, or, how
could he expect to be able to work in a department after indicting it in this
fashion? With this document hasn't he pretty thoroughly burned his bridges?

~~~
dnautics
For the pleasure of teaching 400+ students a year who could all benefit from
his instruction?

------
iskander
Ratings from
[http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1835732](http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1835732)
might illuminate some of the back-story. Lots of unhappy reviews in there:

>He went off on so many tangents, nitpicked on random things and when it came
down to it, taught the material rather poorly. I took his class with prior
calculus knowledge so it was alright but for those that never had calc, it
would've been so awful.

>Tries to teach math in a confusing essay format, and marks you down when you
don't use his method correctly. Extremely arrogant and set on proving how his
principles in teaching are the best. Class was very disorganized and grading
until the very end of the course. Avoid taking a class with him if possible.

>Doesn't give homework, doesn't have a syllabus. Exams are a bunch of
meaningless boring calculations. He's a genius but not a good teacher.

>He is a nice person, but not a good teacher. Instead of math, he spends most
of the lecture telling you how to be a good person: he starts with telling you
'not to give up', and then discusses a mathematical problem(which is not
tough) and gets stuck. For the rest the lecture, he will actually show you
what 'not to give up' means.

There are also many positive reviews in there (more than negative ones), but
they often focus on his charisma and dedication:

>Coward is an inspiration- he deeply cares about his students' learning and
believes that you must be infatuated with your education. He really cares for
his students and always asks the class if he's being clear.

> I have never had a Math professor who I truly admire - he changed that. The
> level of interest he takes in the class is unmatched and he really wants his
> students to do well. Rebellious, fun, helpful and unimaginably intellectual.
> Best class at Cal so far.

------
chris_wot
I looked up one of Alexander Coward's lectures here:

[https://vimeo.com/137661254](https://vimeo.com/137661254)

I was really impressed! He started with logic notation to explain the
definition of a limit, which IMO is actually really important... do most
lecturers cover this in an introduction to calculus?

I've heard a lot people complain on this forum that he didn't cover the
material in the way that the math faculty liked. But this doesn't dumb down
the material, this explains it in more detail!

Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe this is covered, but I don't seem to re all it
in any calculus book I've seen. He was also very open about the text-book
industry practice of making minor changes between editions just to sell new
books. Maybe he fell afoul of them there as well.

------
sitkack

        Having a Lecturer teach twice the number of students for 
        half the money and do a fabulous job demolishes that 
        argument, and that is why so many people conspired to make 
        it not so, to mischaracterize my teaching, and do 
        everything in their power to remove me.

------
raykaye47
I went to Cal and I took Math 1A and I agree that the professors there don't
give a fuck about engaging and motivating you. Math 1A is a weeder class and
is meant to discourage dumb people from the sciences and push them into easier
majors like Communications or PoliSci, etc.

------
stormclad
This helps me understand why someone like Dan Goldston left UC Berkeley to
teach at San Jose State.

------
RUG3Y
Wow, this blows my mind, but it doesn't surprise me. I encountered similar
frustrations while doing an excellent job in the Marine Corps. I've come to
believe that virtually any bureaucratic institution will be weighted this way.

~~~
unoti
Agreed. He's describing an organization where the leaders are not actually
interested in doing a good job. An organization that's not a true meritocracy.
An organization where actually playing the game is more important than doing a
good job.

Heartbreaking as it is, that describes most large organizations, and most
small ones too. If you work at a place where the leadership supports you and
truly wants you to do a good job, where the best people get promoted
regardless of whether they're "playing the game" then you have found a rare
place indeed!

I think that our education system was trying to teach me this all along, and I
failed to learn it until I was in my 40s.

------
tspino
If he's this good sounds like it would make sense to build him an online
platform for offering his classes over the Internet to the world rather than
letting him suffer in that toxic environment. Let's set him free!

------
ezmuller
I'll just be over here waiting on the other side of the story...

~~~
yojo
I have no dog in this fight, but his description lines up with my experience.
I showed up at Cal in 2001 as a nerdy kid super-jazzed about math. I took Math
1A my first semester, and the lectures started with the professor turning his
back to the class and proceeding to write proofs on the board for 90 minutes
in indecipherable handwriting with little to no explanation. People would show
up to class with pillows, no joke.

I got a middling grade (B+), but the experience was so bad it was the last
math class I took. It took me seven years to fully realize my mistake and get
back to working in line with my passions.

Anecdata I know, but at least one case where bad Cal math instruction derailed
a trajectory.

~~~
chris_wot
I would love to have someone secretly record that lecture and put it on
YouTube to shame the lecturer. I'm curious if someone has actually done this?

------
Gatsky
Classic Sayre's Law:

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because
the stakes are so low."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law)

~~~
brianchu
I think the stakes are quite high. _If_ he is truly a superior lecturer, at
stake is the calculus education of over 800 students _per year_ at one of the
top schools in the nation, many of whom will be future scientists and
engineers.

~~~
robwilliams
The stakes are perceived as low because it's not a life-or-death decision and
nobody but math students at a single school care about it.

------
kriro
I wonder if other universities are lining up to land him since he seems to be
an excellent teacher. My guess is that it won't be the case since the problem
is systemic. Hope I'm wrong, good luck to Mr. Coward.

~~~
ytinifx
More likely the opposite. Departments don't like people who generate this much
drama for simply being let go. Why would anyone? This unfairly hurts
Berkeley's reputation.

~~~
misingnoglic
Why is this unfair?

------
chris_wot
He should come back to Sydney!

------
OliverJones
Radical suggestion:

1\. Persuade Dr. Coward to teach at a community college, where his strong
teaching abilities can enable a broad crew of would-be nurses, schoolteachers,
etc., to succeed.

2\. Compel, by petition and other means, the Cal administration to grant
credit for CoCo science and math college courses taught by persons with more
than four years' faculty experience in Ph.D.-granting accredited institutions.

~~~
chmaynard
Did you even read the article?

------
stormclad
This makes more sense why someone like Dan Goldston would leave Berkeley for
San Jose State

------
esaym
Does this guy have any video lectures? I'd like to watch and check him out.

~~~
8ig8
An earlier comment has a video link...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372658)

------
daniel-levin
Coward has justifiable grievances with the UCB mathematics department. It must
be extraordinarily depressing to work hard at exposition of lower division
mathematics to a class of otherwise largely unmotivated students, only to be
fired for doing so.

Having said that, I am going to adopt a somewhat contrarian viewpoint. The
math department fired Coward for deliberately and repeatedly subverting their
requests to conform to departmental standards [1]. It is not surprising that
behaving in a fashion that continuously pissed off senior faculty (with the
power to fire or initiate the process of firing) got Coward fired.

Coward's student ratings were consistently high. Based on anecdotes, he sounds
like an instructor I would love to have (he spontaneously derived a formula!).

However, this does not matter because Coward refused to participate in the
system. What I term 'the system' is the set of departmental norms and
standards that exist as they do for _very good reasons_. These reasons might
not be understood by all actors.

My understanding of the state of the system is informed by the following: UCB
is an institution that trains _thousands_ of students in mathematics annually.
They have a large faculty [2]. The numbers of people involved imply that there
is tremendous variation amongst students and instructors - in areas such as
raw aptitude, experience, language proficiency and motivation. The benefits of
systematizing the process of training in a university of Berkeley's size are
manifold. The system has to exist the way it does in order to produce large
numbers of adequately (and usually only adequately) educated people. The
purpose of disallowing faculty from deviating from such standards is to allow
the system to function independently of the people involved in it. There are
many disadvantages to this approach, such as stifling lecturer creativity and
disabling course-level optimisations (like a particular professor's vivid
geometric intuition for something abstract).

I could enumerate the reasons the system exists as it does (at length) but do
not have space here, so here is one example: Using a standard textbook means
that course content is instructor invariant. This makes the level of training
robust to shitty lecturers, who necessarily exist in any sufficiently large
system. It gives students recourse to a standard reference they know is
correct. It decreases the variation in quality of students. This is
particularly important for co-requirements. It is a huge problem when course B
depends on course A and students do not have a firm grip on course A. This
happened to my class: we arrived in applied mathematics 3 with a totally
broken knowledge of multivariable calculus.

Essentially, the system exists as it does to provide a lower bound for the
quality of training. Some people will be incompatible with it. UCB should
probably have been more gentle in their handling of Coward - he was
'suicidally depressed' \- but I say this with the benefit of hindsight.

[1] >> On September 22nd, 2013 he wrote in an email "But I do think it that it
[sic] is very important that you not deviate too far from the department
norms." On November 12th, 2014 he wrote "I hope that, on the basis of our
conversation, you can further adjust to the norms of our department."

[2]
[https://math.berkeley.edu/people/faculty](https://math.berkeley.edu/people/faculty)

[3] One might think that mathematics is mathematics, and any reference
material on a topic will do. I can tell you from experience that this is
false. A complex analysis novitiate trying to sort out what 'holomorphic',
'analytic' and 'complex differentiable' all mean will inevitably run into
equivalent but different definitions.

~~~
chris_wot
If he is teaching mathematics successfully and well yo undergraduate students,
then shouldn't they be the only actors who count? And if he is a staff member,
perhaps they should explain why they require their procedures, even if most
people seem to find them not only ineffective but demotivational?

------
TruePath
Having actually taught (well TAed)in the UC Berkely math department I can say
that generations of both graduate students (who have most of the contact with
students) and professors have struggled to the best of their ability to teach
calculus in an engaging and interesting way to their students. Now research
talent and teaching talent don't always come together but there were plenty of
dedicated and talented teachers. Dr. Coward is basically claiming that he is
so amazingly talented (or that not one of the multitude of intro calc teachers
over the years was competent) that he single handedly does the impossible and
rises head and shoulders above all these other teachers.

Even though he quotes from the letter from the math department disturbingly
selectively I think he gives away what is really going on in that quote:

"They also reveal some significant differences between your practices and what
has been typical in our department [...] I hope and expect that you will be
able to align more with our standards for the remainder of this semester and
during the next academic year."

Surprise surprise, the students like the guy who doesn't make them learn
(those in 16A/B aren't continuing on in a technical field but only take the
course to satisfy requirements and/or because their counselors stress the
importance of having math on your transcript).

If this isn't suggestive enough consider his statistics: his classes have 400+
students enrolled but the supposedly equivalent class taught by a faculty
member only has 100. If he isn't cherry picking an 8am lecture (in which case
we should be even more distrustful) this difference is so drastic as to be
extremely suspicious. My experience TAing these very courses was that students
were quite willing to put up with a bad lecturer (or poor TA in my case) to
have a nicer schedule (leave earlier, avoid trudging back and forth etc..) but
they were very cogniscent of even minor differences in supposed ease of
grading and subject matter.

Besides, anyone who rights an open letter like this while supposedly appealing
a deciscion is an ass who would be a nightmare to work with. Even if you
(unwisely) believe he was unjustly terminated delibrately impugning the
motives and integrity of the people he supposedly wishes to remain colleagues
with is just a super asshole move.

I've met great teachers who were very dedicated to improving mathematics
education. Every one of them avoided self-aggrandizement and did their best to
share their approaches and experience with other educators. The mathematics
department at UC Berkeley would be ecstatic if someone figured out how to
teach intro calc content in a way that invigorated the students. Hell, it's
almost a holy grail their as generation after generation of grad students (and
professors) burn themselves out against students whose experiences in
highschool have created an instinctive dislike of mathematics and the
unshakable belief that math is about formulas and procedures (meaning they
instinctively panic if a problem requires creativity...which is sadly what
makes math interesting and fun).

\---

Look, I have big issues with the way UC Berkeley (and most other universities)
teach intro calculus courses. It's the 21st century and no one is served by
forcing uninterested students to learn computational techniques by _rote_ any
computer mathematics system can easily accomplish. Either you are going to go
into a technical discipline where having a conceptually grasp of integrals
matters or you can just blindly plug them into a computer.

So give up making students memorize the various tests for series convergence,
tricks for integrating etc.. Hell give up teaching computations at all in
16A/B. Slow it way the hell down and just do basic qualitative reasoning about
functions, derivatives and integrals, e.g., focus on things like if we know
the derivative is positive here what does that tell us about the function.

However, that choice to abandon the established curriculum is rightly
something that needs to be handled by the department as a whole. Indeed, I
suspect it would have long since been adopted if other courses (like intro
econ...yet again not really for econ majors) didn't assume students had these
tools. Changing the math curriculum in this way would first require other
subjects change theirs...something that won't go over well and would take
time.

~~~
DanBC
> Surprise surprise, the students like the guy who doesn't make them learn

His students go on to do other courses. Those students do better in those
courses than the students of his colleagues. Do you disagree with that?

~~~
ytinifx
Statistically insignificantly better. As tested by the chair of one of the top
statistics departments in the country. Yet AC is convinced all these people
are out to destroy his life. He is hired as a lecturer as part of an
experiment to see if lecturers can teach calculus more effectively than
permanent faculty. Statistics shows he isn't significantly better. Add to that
the fact that he's disliked by the math department for personality issues, and
there's really no reason to keep him.

~~~
argonaut
Sure. But you do realize that means he teaches _at least as well_ as anyone
else in the department, if not better. And he's beloved by his students (as
evidenced by the evaluations).

So would you rather have a professor that teaches on par with the department
and has strong rapport with his students, or a professor that teaches on par
with the department and does not have strong rapport with his students?

------
ngoldbaum
More rotten news from Berkeley. Just this week, it was revealed that the
university administration decided a warning was sufficient punishment after a
Title IX investigation revealed Prof. Geoff Marcy participated in a decade of
abusive and harassing behavior.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/science/astronomer-
apologi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/science/astronomer-apologizes-
for-behavior.html)

~~~
comrh
> In June, the university concluded that Dr. Marcy had engaged in
> inappropriate behavior with students, including groping them, kissing them
> and touching or massaging them.

Very gross.

------
hugh4
I'm not sure if "complaining about getting fired" counts as "whistleblowing".

I'm not necessarily inclined to take this guy's side of the dispute just
because I read it first.

~~~
greenyoda
I think this goes far beyond complaining about getting fired, and delves into
the pernicious attitudes of the department's faculty. For example:

 _" Given the success I am having with students, one might think that the
Mathematics Department leadership would be expressing curiosity about how I am
achieving that success. Instead, Craig Evans [the interim chair of the
department] in early 2014 asked me 'If you had a job at McDonalds and came
along with all these new ideas, how long do you think you'd carry on working
there?' The fact that the now Interim Chair of the UC Berkeley Mathematics
Department should compare undergraduate education to fast food reveals
everything you need to know about how students are regarded by the leading
clique of men at the helm of the Mathematics Department of the number one
public university in the world."_

Should faculty be punished for having new ideas about teaching (which happen
to be successful[1], and well-liked by students)?

[1] _" My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the
sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was
0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with
another instructor."_

~~~
TruePath
Should departments have standards they expect their lecturers to enforce?

People would actively welcome new approaches to teaching math. It's fucking
frustrating not getting through to your students or having them dislike the
course. Most of the faculty has tenure and the focus is largely (but not
entirely) on research. THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE ARE THREATENED BY HIS SUCCESS IS
ABSURD.

He is succeeding in the truly obvious way. Lowering standards and making it
easy for students to ace his class without the skills the university has
deemed necessary.

If he was really so deeply gifted at teaching he could have just used the same
final exam as another faculty member and taught his students that material.
Why doesn't he?

~~~
YokoZar
I'm not sure you read the article correctly. He was asked to make his tests
easier, and his students performed better in subsequent classes taught by
different professors.

------
hackaflocka
"Here is an email I wrote to my students in the Fall of 2013 that went viral,
and was read by more than 1 million people."

That's a very strong statement for a mathematician to make. I wonder how he
can prove that 1 million people "read" it.

------
principal0
This is ludicrous - I was taught by Professor Ogus, and he had an excellent
grasp of didactic techniques. He dedicated a large amount of time to having me
come in during office hours so I could do a mock lecture before it was
actually delivered, and I could compare notes when he delivered his. Yes, he
was exacting and demanding, but it made me a better student.

The fact that a lecturer with low standards happens to be popular with
students is irrelevant. The math department has a large presence on campus
because it is the best in the world. My advisor was Robin Hartshorne, and I
took advantage of courses with a Fields medalist. That sort of department has
standards that it enforces because it demands quality, not coddling.

This is all underlined by the fact that the lecturer in question states he has
a breakdown of some sort due to the stress of the position. We're to take this
seriously? I feel for the man, but it clearly indicates that the criticisms
might be divorced from reality.

If you're too weak to excel in an environment filled with the world's top
researchers, and where you are responsible for your own achievement, then find
another school where they let prop comics teach math and spoon feed you.

~~~
chris_wot
I'm still learning mathematics. I'm in fact largely teaching myself. I can
assure you, though, that a Fields medalist is not required to teach me
Differential Calculus (Math1A). In fact, I'd prefer it if they didn't.

~~~
principal0
Likely you don't care because you have no intention of pursuing mathematics in
a research capacity at any point. However part of the experience for those who
care more about math than an easy "A" is ensuring you have access to amazing
role models early on. People who take an interest in you, and spend some of
their incredibly valuable time shepherding you through a unique, beautiful
field.

Where is your sense of wonder, or your desire to know these exceptional people
while observing how they think? How myopic. If you're at Berkeley, you're
wasting your time being bitter and hopefully you'll transfer. That isn't a
personal criticism, so much as recognizing that a top research university
isn't for everyone, and the unique resources and access it provides should be
given great weight or you shouldn't be using them.

Professor Ogus cared, as did almost all of my professors. I was amazed I could
take classes and spend time with people who are shaping our understanding of
mathematics. It's the same shock you have when you go to the SFMoMA and
realize that some of the greatest post-Impressionist works in the world are
sitting entirely unprotected in front of you. It impacted me, it impacted the
way I think, and I will always value what they did for me. An adjunct simply
can't provide that experience, and if you're just looking to pass Math 1A go
to a community college for those credits. If you want to make a mark and know
some of the brightest minds of our age, go to Berkeley.

~~~
chris_wot
No, that's not it. My reasoning is very simple - in all likelihood an
extremely advanced mathematician will be incredibly bored by very simple
mathematics, and not want to spend much time explaining it clearly.

Unless they are that rare commodity - the extraordinarily talented
mathematician who can remember what it was like to struggle with the basics
and who is able to keep the teaching of concepts simple enough it doesn't go
over the head of the class, or go too fast - then I would prefer to be taught
by someone who cares about imparting the basics of mathematics in an
understandable and reasonably paced way.

I've been to lectures where a clearly brilliant mathematician was teaching
basic maths, and it nearly turned me off maths. You speak of killing wonder:
well, there you have it.

(P.S. I'm an Australian who will never get the opportunity to go to Berkeley,
and I'm definitely not bitter! If I was doing highly advanced math, then in
that case I'd want a Fields medallist teaching me!)

------
stonogo
Keep in mind how you would handle this situation if you managed a large and
well-established dev team with procedures and policies you worked hard on and
are proud of.

It is not enough for a team member to be fantastic in a solo role. I'd be more
interested in hearing from other faculty than I would from the students, who
don't much experience actually working with Coward.

~~~
mckiddy
His entire job was teaching students, so I don't give a rat's ass about what
the rest of the faculty thinks if the students like him and perform well.

~~~
jannotti
Right. I was skeptical in first few paragraphs, since students' teaching
assessments do have their flaws. But if there was a statistically significant
improvement in his students performance in later classes, then the man's doing
his job.

Yes, there could still be confounding factors. He is seen as an enjoyable
lecturer, and students who care about their classes enough to select the
better lecturer might be better students. But still.

If you want to continue the analogy to software engineering, the modules he's
producing are students, and they are meeting their specifications (later
performance) quite well.

------
VanillaSwirl
Unpopular opinion, but I think he's being overly dramatic.

"My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the
sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was
0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with
another instructor."

0.17. Not even a whole point.

Student evaluations don't really count since those are highly subjective.
Students tend to hastily mark whatever they want on them because they want to
get the evaluations over with as soon as possible. If a professor is somewhat
amicable and invests a moderate level of effort into his/her teaching, then
it's not hard to score at least a 6 on average on these evaluations (as
students would mark either 6 or 7 in such a case).

Anyway, his performance as a lecturer is irrelevant to his argument. There are
three criteria that junior faculty are assessed against in order to become
tenured at UC Berkeley (or, otherwise, dismissed): teaching quality,
reputation and research. Funny how he left out the last bit. He hasn't
published anything since 2013.

And the university is probably firing him to hire another professor at a
cheaper salary in order to save money, contrary to his belief that the
university is firing him because of disagreements with his teaching
philosophy. Universities tend to do this to professors who don't have much
research potential and don't teach specialized, upper division courses. The UC
system is crippled financially, so departments are more inclined to carry out
dismissals of non-tenured professors who don't publish much and who solely
teach lower division courses. Non-tenured professors can be fired at will.
That's just another day in the life of academia.

The part about the micro-managing harasser and treatment of women, staff and
lecturers is definitely worrisome, though. But we need to be careful about
believing in these implications absolutely because of Coward's state of mind
at the moment. He has already blown the quality of his teaching out of
proportion.

~~~
jathak
He isn't employed as a research professor. He's employed as a lecturer.
Berkeley does have a lecturer position with security of employment (commonly
called lecturer SOE or teaching professor). These positions are evaluated on
teaching rather than research. I don't know how common it is in other
departments, but I know the EECS department employs several teaching
professors (which means many classes, especially 61A and 61B, are taught by
professors whose primary job is teaching).

~~~
Ar-Curunir
The math department here traditionally doesn't hire long-term lecturers, as
mentioned in one of the email chains Coward attached.

~~~
chris_wot
That's a pretty poor reflection on the math department!

