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Comment by queuebert | Hacker News Reader

As a faculty member and PhD advisor, let me offer my reading between the lines. The student and advisor did not get along already. The student went to China and found a girlfriend. The lockdown separated them. Hormones flared, exacerbating what was probably already a tense situation.

The student was increasingly a problem (note the screaming at the advisor mentioned in TFA). The advisor decided that it was no longer worth the effort to maintain the unofficial relationship and broke the promise of supporting the student's future re-enrollment. Dealing with unprofessional students sucks. It's very hard to "fire" grad students for unproductivity or workplace issues, unless they are egregious. In this situation the advisor had a convenient out and took it.

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Well I got my PhD, so let me read between your lines ([1]).

Faculty have little fiefdoms and they expect students to live on salaries bellow minimum wage. If the advisor is sub-par (i.e. the university made a mistake hiring them) it's incredibly difficult to change advisors without poisoning the relationship with other faculty members.

Dealing with sub-par professors sucks. Some are not too bright. Others sexually harass the female students. All are protected by the moat the university builds around them.

[1] I'll admit it's a bit weird to see a professor that I'm assuming given the forum, is in a tech field "read between the lines" instead of engaging the facts.

You're entirely correct. Academia is broken is so many ways. A lot of my colleagues are wastes of space and some are indeed harmful. I don't think I'm a great advisor either. No one teaches us how to advise students.

My take is based entirely on facts of the article interpreted through an advisor's lens rather than that of a journalist trying to get clicks.

The fact that the advisor in the OP changed their stories multiple times indicates duplicity. Your inability to see that, coupled with an abrupt allegation against the journalist suggests self-deception

> a journalist trying to get clicks

Now you've also fabricated something about the journalist, their motive and character. Do you have any factual basis for that? What do you know about the journalist?

You know what, I owe you an apology for this:

"[1] I'll admit it's a bit weird to see a professor that I'm assuming given the forum, is in a tech field "read between the lines" instead of engaging the facts."

I'll keep it up in my comment because I despise it when ppl scrub clean what they wrote.

Either way, sorry for making it personal.

HN is the best people. Thanks for the apology and no hard feelings here.

And I'm sorry if you had some bad experiences in grad school. Some of us, at least, are trying to be better.

> let me offer my reading between the lines

But the rest is entirely fabricated and ignores the clear statements of the advisor themself, which is that they didn't want to offend China and would for that reason terminate the relationship.

> the advisor had a convenient out and took it

How is it a convenient out? 'CCP pressure' doesn't sound like a convenient reason. The advisor could have pulled the 'you're no long enrolled' trick at any time.

There was no CCP pressure. Only a Chinese Phd student in Canada who forwarded the supposedly racist meme to the advisor.

You don't know that, and that's not how the advisor portrayed it.

Your take is not supported by any of the evidence. The email exchanges (as seen by the newspaper) show a friendly relationship up until the tweets.

Quote from the article: "The professor went on to explain that the relationship of trust had already been strained, because Gerber had «lost his temper» during a conversation a year earlier, and had told her that he no longer wanted to continue his doctorate at St. Gallen in any form, and no longer needed her as a doctoral supervisor."

I'd trust an email record over he-said / she-said claims.

"Losing temper" is quite vague; and evidently, it didn't warrant terminating the relationship until the tweets happened.

Let's not pretend the timing was a coincidence. The relationship was clearly terminated because of the tweets, which has nothing to do with the professor.

Thats not evidence. That is just a claim made by the professor, which is denied by the former student and which, according the the article, is not reflected in the tone of the emails exchanged at this time, either.

Isn't eye-witness testimony considered evidence? Maybe the professor is lying, true. But also professional emails tend to be more cordial than in-person conversations. In terms of motives, the student has more motive to lie than the professor, since the professor has nothing at stake.

The student has factual evidence, the emails.

> Isn't eye-witness testimony considered evidence?

C'mon.

The nice tone of the professor’s emails (after the run-in) could be also proof of her goodwill. While student showed his lack of self control on twitter.

This is just a different aspect of the same facts.

> The nice tone of the professor’s emails (after the run-in) could be also proof of her goodwill.

What was nice about it?

> student showed his lack of self control on twitter

I don't see a lack of control on Twitter. The student wasn't talking to the professor, and there is nothing inappropriate about their Twitter comments as reported, beyond the cartoon which IIRC the advisor didn't cite.

That was after the fact, with no evidence, after Gerber had contested the separation. The emails contemporaneous with the events clearly show differently.

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