Mens Et Mania The MIT Nobody Knows

When Jay Keyser arrived at MIT in 1977 to head the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, he writes, he felt like a fish that had been introduced to water for the first time. At MIT, a colleague grabbed him by the lapels to discuss dark matter; Noam Chomsky called him boss (double SOB spelled backward?); and engaging in conflict resolution made him feel like a marriage counselor trying to reconcile a union between a Jehovah's witness and a vampire. In Mens et Mania, Keyser recounts his academic and administrative adventures during a career of more than thirty years.
Keyser describes the administrative side of his MIT life, not only as department head but also as Associate Provost and Special Assistant to the Chancellor. Keyser had to run a department (budgets were like horoscopes) and negotiate student grievances-from the legality of showing
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