Still thinking about Marilee Jones. A lot. I’ve been reading lots of good commentary on the situation (some of the best to which I’ve posted links, right column)
Our world, most especially the academic part of it, is still astonished at (and extremely resistant to) the idea that anyone can be so good at something without a degree. Even in cases when they can produce two pages of (verifiable) publications and achievements.
We can huff and puff all we want to about how a degree is a useful standardized measure of dependability or capability. Or whatever. We may even be right, most of the time. But all our noise flies out the window when we have an exception right in front of us, proof in hand, and we turn the other way. That is the point at which our myth is exposed. We don’t care about the “dependability and capability” after all – our true fealty is to the degree!
Most of human chauvinism, of course, is based on self-interest, e.g.: I worked hard on my own degree, and I need it to mean something. I don’t WANT people without degrees to be as qualified as I am. (Personally? I also permanently damaged my career in order to hand-raise my children, and thus don’t WANT the children of working parents to be as wonderful and well-adjusted as mine are!)
Life is about exceptions, though. And ah, confession is good for the soul. 
I don’t know Marilee Jones personally of course, but any accusation that she was a greedy “opportunist” I dismiss out of hand. We all are all of us that, and in this country it’s considered a virtue.
However, I do agree with other commentators that much depends upon whether she is a pathological liar. I strongly suspect she is not. I believe, instead, that much of the great good that she has contributed came from an interior acknowledgement of her own mistake. As penance for it, even. I think she has been truly sorry for much of the last 28 years.
I also think it is absolutely wrong, even in the slightest degree, to look backwards now and recast her whole working history in light of this new information (that she had no degree. And that she lied.) To do so is fraudulent on our part, and only exposes our own grave disingenuity and chauvinism:
“She didn’t have a degree, so turns out she doesn’t know what she is talking about.”
“She lied, so therefore can say nothing to us at all about how to tell the truth.”
Garbage.
One of the things Marilee wrote about (and yes, we’re on first name basis now) was the importance of integrity. In a book she co-authored last fall, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, she writes:
Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners. But just remember that ‘what goes around come around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.
This is what I tell my kids, too. But reading those words now makes me ache. Just listen to her confession, her fear, even her contrition. Thing is? People who cheat quite often do get away with it, and people who don’t cheat quite often get shafted. Sometimes, unfortunately, ‘virtue has to be its own reward.’ And often a pretty damned shabby one, at that.
Moreover, it’s just cheap for those who “have” to admonish those who “haven’t” for being greedy and ungrateful.
I’ve been hanging around the academy for over 20 years now. Guys, academics do really ugly things, all of the time. (as humans do in general, I imagine.) They plagarize. Have terrible, exploitative affairs. Torpedo the careers of each other’s Ph.D students out of sheer spite.
And yes, quite often, they lie.
According to the New York Times article on the subject of Marilee Jones’ “resignation”, Phillip L. Clay, M.I.T.’s chancellor declared:
There are some mistakes people can make for which ‘I’m sorry’ can be accepted, but this is one of those matters where the lack of integrity is sufficient all by itself. This is a very sad situation for her and for the institution. We have obviously placed a lot of trust in her.
(The aptly-academic Latin to respond with here would be ”res ipsa loquitur“)
Dr. Clay is probably correct that there is no conceivable way that MIT or any other university could re-absorb Marilee Jones back into its ranks, but “integrity” has very little to do with it. Jones is now a public embarrassment to them and worse, an irreducible iconoclast. (as in, literally: “a breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration. a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.”)
She’s gotta go.
In a fair world, though? Half the rest of ‘em would go with her.
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Related Posts:
MIT really blew it
Marilee Jones joke
How to (Almost) get Marilee
Coming Out: I’m a closet academical
