In support of Gabor Lukacs

In support of Gabor Lukacs

[Gavin Seal]

Dear colleagues and friends,

A number of members of the categories e-list will already be aware that
Gabor Lukacs and the mathematics department at the University of
Manitoba are involved in a dispute with the university administration
over matters of academic standards and even academic freedom. Since
Gabor is an active member of our community, we thought you might be
interested in a petition we are planning to send to the university early
in December. The text of the petition may be read at

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=10YZB9O_W3ljWqxte41VtU2qWQmepkx4yqwDaKq2pdifnHRA7ncE-qbSh8Lap&hl=en&authkey=CNT8_MsO

or alternatively downloaded from

http://25a8.ch/upload/ProtestUofM.pdf

Further information about this incident may be found at

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Campus+torn+dispute+over/3767102/story.html
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/tag/gabor-lukacs/
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/court-battle-over-phd-106366028.html
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/letters\_to\_the\_editor/disabled-by-exam-stress-letter-of-the-day-106674068.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/03/man-exam-anxiety-lukacs.html
http://profmondo.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/it-doesnt-add-up/

If you are interested in signing this petition, please email

gavin.seal@epfl.ch

with your name, position, affiliation and e-mail as you want them to
appear. The deadline for signing this has been set to Tuesday, 23rd
November.

Regards,

Gavin Seal and Robert Seely


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: In support of Gabor Lukacs

[Vaughan Pratt]

Can't say I'm a big fan of bureaucratic hurdles.  The goal in our
department is to produce credible researchers.  To do a good job on this
requires a certain investment of time on the part of the adviser.  If
the student is inadequately prepared the adviser's time is wasted,
therefore we set academic hurdles, not bureaucratic ones, for the
purpose of bringing the student up to speed before spending too much of
the adviser's time on what should have been accomplished in courses and
independent study.

What concerns me in this case is the proportion of discussion devoted to
bureaucratic hurdles vs. research accomplishments.  I would be more
comfortable with it the other way round.

Vaughan


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]