
John Maeda, Former MIT Media Lab Director, At Odds With RISD Faculty - bdon
http://www.nataliailyin.net/blog.htm?post=778404
======
dotBen
If there was anyone in the industry who could justifiably identify as a hacker
_AND_ a painter (<http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html>) it's John Maeda. I'm a
proud owner of some of his art work.

I don't know the ins and outs of what has been going on with Maeda at RISD but
when I heard he was going to become President there I was very confused as to
why he would want such an administrative orientated role.

It's the classic example of taking a skilled craftsman, visionary ideas
person, guru programmer, etc and putting them in a manager's role. They no
longer can ply their craft nor are they necessarily the best person to
actually perform that management/administrative function.

Granted _he_ chose to take the role but I'm left wondering whether it was out
of ego or a feeling a need to pursue career progression.

~~~
blasdel
There's also Maciej Ceglowski:
<http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm>

~~~
maddalab
Not certain why I cannot up vote the published link, but I really liked it. I
never enjoyed or like the hackers and painters essay, seemed very empty and I
certain could not relate to it any way. Even accounting for confirmation bias,
this post was interesting.

~~~
vamsee
I upvoted for you :)

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ThomPete
So a bunch of print artists are upset that Maeda is turning their world upside
down?

Why am I not surprised.

Since the OP seem so happy to worship the past here is a quote from
Kirkegaard:

"People want progress, but fear change"

For those of you who don't know who Maeda is, perhaps you know two of his
students. Casey Raes and Ben Fry who created the <http://www.processing.org>
framework.

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temphn
_... Besides the provost, the director of the Museum, the director of
Communications, the director of Financial Aid, the director of Alumni and
Career Services, the director of Continuing Education, the director of
Institutional Research, the director of the Office of Public Engagement, the
director of the Writing Center, the vice president of Finance and
Administration, and key members of Student Development, Human Resources,
Financial Aid, Student Life, Museum staff, and Public Safety were all gone by
March 2011._

Sweet Jesus, universities are so ridiculously top heavy. There is going to be
a tremendous collapse when the tuition bubble pops and all the government
money goes away.

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replicatorblog
I'm a RISD alum and totally back the changes that Maeda is trying to make. You
have a hotbed of amazing creative talent and a bunch of faculty who fear
change and will not evolve to meet the needs of the market.

As an example, I am looking to hire 10 people, all of which could come from 1
department at RISD. Even though there post graduation placement rate is pretty
low, it took several months of me chasing him down via email/phone to get a
meeting and this is one of the more commercially oriented programs.

In a market where there is a lack of great UI designers RISD should be taking
a lead positon, but it is stuck in decades past.

~~~
Nat0
I do not know much about RISD, but this seems to be a common problem at most
art schools/departments.

I had to teach myself everything about UI design while I was working on my
degree in visual communications. None of my professors thought it was
different enough than print design to warrant additional attention, or they
were just afraid to say that they didn't know.

~~~
_delirium
At the previous school I was at, trying to find some sort of synergy between
the CS department's game-design program, and anything in the art department,
also ran into some of those problems, more from faculty/department disinterest
than student disinterest. There were actually quite a few students who were
3dsMax or Illustrator wizards, learned on their own time, but the art
departments didn't see that sort of thing as in their scope at all.

Although to be fair CS departments sometimes get those complaints as well. We
want to teach people fundamentals of computer science, but what a lot of other
departments _really_ wish we'd teach is practical programming/script-slinging,
often in languages that none of our courses focus on (Fortran, Matlab, Perl).

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microarchitect
Maeda's response is here: [http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/03/11/risds-
president-john-ma...](http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/03/11/risds-president-
john-maeda-responds-to-no-confidence-vote/).

A (somewhat) balanced set of opinions from current RISD students is over here:
[http://www.golocalprov.com/news/risd-president-comes-
under-f...](http://www.golocalprov.com/news/risd-president-comes-under-fire/).

~~~
vampirical
Thanks for the additional context, definitely helps paint a better picture of
the situation.

The money quote for me was this: _Maeda has been President of the University
since 2008, when he took over the position from Roger Mandle — the longest-
serving president in the school's history — who stepped down after receiving a
vote of no confidence from RISD department heads in 2007. Mandle, like Maeda,
came under fire by faculty members after proposing significant changes to the
structure of the traditional RISD curriculum and accompanying financial
decisions._

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sliverstorm
The sheer venom in the comments directed towards this guy is astounding.

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psawaya
Maeda has an inspiring blurb on his MIT site that feels oddly relevant:
<http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/posts/ih_teyou.html>

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hexis
In the last 30 years, has the president of any university introduced
significant changes that the faculty supported?

