Once you start reaching Sergio Verdu’s age, and particularly with his achievements, your value to the University becomes more geared toward service. How much service can a professor do with an albatross like this hanging around their neck?
It would be nice if Universities were required to register offenders like this so that applicants to programs would be aware of them prior to applying–a sort of Megan’s Law for the professoriate. Naturally they don’t do this because it goes against their interests, but by the same token this is how a lot of issues run out of control within their sports programs as well. If someone did create such a website, I imagine the chilling effects on colleges and universities would be such that they might change their tunes about how these cases are handled. Immediately recent cases like Michigan State’s athletics problem, USC’s Medical School Dean issues, Christian Ott at Caltech come to mind, but I’m sure there must be hundreds if not thousands of others.
Maybe we need a mashup site that’s a cross between RateMyProfessors.com and California’s Megan’s Law site, but which specifically targeted Universities?
Fortunately even given Sergio’s accomplishments and profile, it will probably take forever for web searches for his name to not surface the story within the top couple of links, but this is sad consolation, particularly in a field like Information Theory which is heavily underrepresented already.
Eugene Scott
Jeremy Cherfas