why was sean carroll denied tenure

Everyone sort of nods along and puts up with it and waits for the next equation to come on. It would be completely blind to -- you don't get a scholarship just because you're smart. But it doesn't hurt. Also, they were all really busy and tired. I'm not making this up. Sean Payton denies report of concerns with unnamed member of Broncos The problem is not that everyone is a specialist, the problem is that because universities are self-sustaining, the people who get hired are picked by the people who are already faculty members there. There were hints of it. I think, now, as wonderful as Villanova was, and I can rhapsodize about what a great experience I had there, but it's nothing like going to a major, top notch university, again, just because of the other students who are around you. Grant applications and papers get turned down, and . I was never repulsed by the church, nor attracted to it in any way. So, it was to my benefit that I didn't know, really, what the state of the art was. The original typescript is available. I assume this was really a unique opportunity up until this point to really interact with undergraduate students. Carroll, S.B. The actual question you ask is a hard one because I'm not sure. There's a certain gravitational pull that different beliefs have that they fit together nicely. No, you're completely correct. My mom worked as a secretary for U.S. Steel. tell me a little bit about them and where they're from. ", "Is God a good theory? That's not what I do for a living. And it was a . I think that's true in terms of the content of the interview, because you can see someone, and you can interrupt them. I got the dimensional analysis wrong, like the simplest thing in the world. I was really surprised." So, when it came time for my defense, I literally came in -- we were still using transparencies back in those days, overhead projector and transparencies. What you would guess is the universe is expanding, and how fast it's expanding is related to that amount of density of the universe in a very particular way. I actually think the different approaches like Jim Hartle has to teaching general relativity to undergraduates by delaying all the math are not as good as trying to just teach the math but go gently. The thing that I was not able to become clear on for a while was the difference between physics and astrophysics. If everyone is a specialist, they hire more specialists, right? I didn't stress about that. Would I be interested in working on it with him? Steve Weinberg tells me something very different from Michael Turner, who tells me something very different from Paul Steinhardt, who tells me something very different from Alan Guth. And he was intrigued by that, and he went back to his editors. A professor's tenure may be denied for a variety of reasons, some of which are more complex. You really have to make a case. So, they could be rich with handing out duties to their PhD astronomers to watch over students, which is a wonderful thing that a lot people at other departments didn't get. But the fruits of the labors had not come in yet. I was less good of a fit there. So, it's not hard to imagine there are good physical reasons why you shouldn't allow that. But to the extent that you've had this exposure, Harvard and then MIT, and then you were at Santa Barbara, one question with Chicago, and sort of more generally as you're developing your experience in academic physics, when you got to Chicago, was there a particular approach to physics and astronomy that you did not get at either of the previous institutions? Well, you could measure the rate at which the universe was accelerating, and compare that at different eras, and you can parameterize it by what's now called the equation of state parameter w. So, w equaling minus one, for various reasons, means the density of the dark energy is absolutely constant. It's an expense for me because as an effort to get the sound quality good, I give every guest a free microphone. I decided to turn them down, mostly because I thought I could do better. We'll see what comes next for you, and of course, we'll see what comes next in theoretical physics. There are theorists who are sort of very closely connected to the experiments. There was, but it was kind of splintered because of this large number of people. That is, he accept "physical determinism" as totally underlying our behavior (he . But this is a huge metaphysical assumption that underlies this debate and divides us. The modern world, academically, broadly, but also science in particular, physics in particular, is very, very specialized. So, when I was at Chicago, I would often take on summer students, like from elsewhere or from Chicago, to do little research projects with. Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy - Apple So, the paper that I wrote is called The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes. Supervenience is this idea in philosophy that one level depends on another level in a certain way and supervenes on the lower level. Yes, but it's not a very big one. So, just for me, they made up a special system where first author, alphabetical, and then me at the end. But now, I had this goal of explaining away both dark matter and dark energy. Despite the fact that it was hugely surprising, we were all totally ready for it. The paper was on what we called the cosmological constant, which is this idea that empty space itself can have energy and push the universe apart. Two and a half years I've been doing it, and just like with the videos, my style and my presentation has been improving, I hope, over time. On the other hand, I feel like I kind of blew it in terms of, man, that was really an opportunity to get some work done -- to get my actual job done. I can't quite see the full picture, otherwise I would, again, be famous. Before he was denied tenure, Carroll says, he had received informal offers from other universities but had declined them because he was happy where he was . Different people are asking different questions: what do you do? I wrote about supergravity, and two-dimensional Euclidian gravity, and torsion, and a whole bunch of other different things. I mean, Angela Olinto, who is now, or was, the chair of the astronomy department at Chicago, she got tenure while I was there. And there are others who are interested in not necessarily public outreach, but public policy, or activism, or whatever. We've only noticed them through their gravitational impact. Most of the reports, including the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education, mentioned that Sean Carroll, an assistant professor of physics who blogs on Cosmic Variance, also was denied tenure this year. One of the reasons why is she mostly does work in ultra-high energy cosmic rays, which is world class, but she wrote some paper about extra dimensions and how they could be related to ultra-high energy cosmic rays. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, teaching in both the . So, I was sweet-talked into publishing it without any plans to do it. But it's not what I do research on. So many ideas I want to get on paper. Was something like a Princeton or a Harvard, was that even on your radar as an 18 year old? But the dream, the goal is that they will realize they should have been focused on it once I write the paper. When I did move to Caltech circa 2006, and I did this conscious reflection on what I wanted to do for a living, writing popular books was one of the things that I wanted to do, and I had not done it to that point. Maybe it'll be a fundamental discovery that'll compel you to jump back in with two feet. Bob Geroch was there also, but he wasn't very active in research at the time. Just get to know people. That includes me. I don't interact with it that strongly personally. Some have a big effect on you, some you can put aside. The one exception -- it took me a long time, because I'm very, very slow to catch on to things. I wrote a blog post that has become somewhat infamous, called How to Get Tenure at a Major Research University. I was surprised when people, years later, told me everyone reads that, because the attitude that I took in that blog post was -- and it reflects things I tell my students -- I was intentionally harsh on the process of getting tenure. One of them was a joke because one of them was a Xerox copy of my quantum field theory final exam that Sidney Coleman had graded and really given me a hard time. I'm trying to remember -- when I got there, on the senior faculty, there was George, and there was Bill Press, and I'm honestly not sure there was anyone else -- I'm trying to think -- which is just ridiculous for the largest number -- there were a few research professor level people. No, no. We made a new prediction for the microwave background, which was very interesting. It was not a very strict Catholic school. Sean Carroll's new book argues quantum physics leads to many worlds You know, high risk, high gain kinds of things that are looking for these kinds of things. What was your thesis research on? They succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. I want the podcast to be enjoyable to people who don't care about theoretical physics. People know who you are. I thought and think -- I think it's true that they and I had a similar picture of who I would be namely bringing those groups together, serving as a bridge between all those groups. The actual job requirements -- a big part of it, the part that I take most seriously, and care most about -- is advising graduate students. The space of possibilities is the biggest space that we human beings can contemplate. But it's worked pretty well for me. More than just valid. I did various things. The theorists said, well, you just haven't looked hard enough. It's challenging. Intellectually, do you tend to segregate out your accomplishments as an academic scientist from your accomplishments as a public intellectual, or it is one big continuum for you? Almost none of my friends have this qualm. But there's an enormous influence put on your view of reality by all of these pre-existing propositions that you think are probably true. More than one. And I do think that within the specific field of theoretical physics, the thing that I think I understand that my colleagues don't is the importance of the foundations of quantum mechanics to understanding quantum gravity. but academe is treacherous. I'm never going to stop writing papers in physics journals, philosophy journals, whatever. How do you land on theoretical physics and cosmology and things like that in the library? There was, as you know, because you listened to my recent podcast, there's a hint of a possibility of a suggestion in the CMB data that there is what is called cosmological birefringence. Thank goodness. That's not by itself bad. These were not the exciting go-go days that you might -- well, we had some both before and after. Did you have a strong curriculum in math and science in high school? Then, a short time later, John Brockman, who is her husband and also in the agency, emails me out of the blue and says, "Hey, you should write a book." Honestly, the thought of me not getting tenure just didn't occur to me, really. Interview with a Physicist: Sean Carroll | Physics Forums What if inflation had happened at different speeds and different directions? Do you see the enterprise of writing popular books as essentially in the same category but a different medium as the other ways that you interact with the broader public, giving lectures, doing podcasts? That's the opposite. In other words, if you were an experimental condensed matter physicist, is there any planet where it would be feasible that you would be talking about democracy and atheism and all the other things you've talked about? We did not give them nearly enough time to catch their breath and synthesize things. Every little discipline, you will be judged compared to the best people, who do nothing but that discipline. So, I think it can't be overemphasized the extent to which the hard detailed work of theoretical physics is done with pencil and paper, and equations, and pictures, little drawings and so forth, but the ideas come from hanging out with people. But part of the utopia that we don't live in, that I would like to live in, would be people who are trying to make intellectual contributions [should] be judged on the contributions and less on the format in which they were presented. I want to say the variety of people, and just in exactly the same way that academic institutions sort of narrow down to the single most successful strategy -- having strong departments and letting people specialize in them -- popular media tries to reach the largest possible audience. So, I got talk to a lot of wonderful people who are not faculty members at different places. If they do, then I'd like to think I will jump back into it. I was unburdened by knowing how impressive he was. And a lot of it is like, What is beyond the model that we now know? Sean, given the vastly large audience that you reach, however we define those numbers, is there a particular demographic that gives you the most satisfaction in terms of being able to reach a particular kind of person, an age group, however you might define it, that gives you the greatest satisfaction that you're introducing real science into a life that might not ever think about these things? [37] Again, I just worked with other postdocs. Why is that? I got two postdoc offers, one at Cambridge and one at Santa Barbara. CalTech could and should have converted this to a tenured position for someone like Sean Carroll . And that got some attention also. The particle theory group was very heavily stringy. So, I got really, really strong letters of recommendation. I have group meetings with them, and we write papers together, and I take that very seriously. I really wanted to move that forward. But I'm classified as a physicist. : Saturday 22 March 2014 2:30:00 am", "How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine", "Sean Carroll Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship", "Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast Sean Carroll", "Sean Carroll Bridges Spacetime between Science, Hollywood and the Public | American Association for the Advancement of Science", "Meet the professor who helped put the science into Avengers: Endgame", "Sean Carroll the physicist who taught the Avengers all about time", "Sean Carroll Talks School Science and Time Travel", "Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time", "3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang", "Science and Religion Can't Be Reconciled: Why I won't take money from the Templeton Foundation", "Science & God: Will Biology, Astronomy, Physics Rule Out Existence Of Deity? If you're positively curved, you become more and more positively curved, and eventually you re-collapse.