Fuckin_Joe

📢📢 SOME OF YOU ARE EXTREMELY CONFUSED Let’s clear up some false beliefs about the Kristin Knouse vs David Sabatini case that are still floating out there. By Kristin Knouse’s own admission— At the time the sexual relationship began, he was NOT her advisor. NOT her professor. NOT her boss. NOT on her PhD committee. NOT in her lab. She was NOT his postdoc. She was NOT his employee. She had ALREADY GRADUATED from MIT’s PhD program. She had her own lab. She was a COWORKER. They were both Principal Investigators at Whitehead. He had no professional authority over her. He was not even her mentor when the relationship began. It was only after the relationship began that SHE REQUESTED that he be her mentor. That is totally 100% on her. So if anything, we can accuse Kristin Knouse of manipulating and coercing Sabatini into a relationship so that she could then request him as her mentor and get whatever benefits that would bring. See how this works? Except there weren’t even any real professional benefits to that mentorship other than friendly insights and support. Mentors at the Whitehead lab were just informal positions with no power or authority: akin to being someone’s “big sis” in a sorority or something like that. What’s happened is that Knouse and her supporters are intentionally distorting the reality here and are using the public’s ignorance about academia to push a false narrative. It’s true that Knouse did not receive her MD from Harvard until the relationship began, but that had NOTHING to do with Sabatini, who was not affiliated with Harvard. She had already received her PhD from MIT. Also, while it is true that Sabatini AND Knouse broke Whitehead’s rule barring relationships involving Principal Investigators— That rule was NOT instituted until well AFTER the relationship began, and Knouse broke that rule too and should have been punished as Sabatini was. Newsflash: she wasn’t. Also, the punishment should have been a slap on the wrist if anything. The whole reason such a rule was not even put into place until then was because such relationships were considered normal and no big deal prior to MeToo hysteria. Until then, it was understood and accepted that people often date and even fall in love at work, especially in the academic world. REMEMBER that some of those who sat in judgment of Sabatini and STILL HAVE THEIR JOBS were guilty of similar or even more egregious relationships. Erin O’Shea—President of the Howard Hughes Institute who fired Sabatini from HHI—was MARRIED TO HER OWN GRAD STUDENT! I wonder when that relationship started hmm🤔🤔🤔 What you have here with Sabatini is two coworkers who dated, she wanted a commitment, he didn’t, she decided to “Weinstein him out of there,” in her words in a text at the time. END OF. @kochinstitute @ragoninstitute @InterSystems @KochFoundations you cool with this injustice that you are supporting at MIT??? @BillAckman @SciGuardians @kevinnbass fyi