This post is by Lizzie
Recent reports of the toxic workplace culture of the Uber-fancy Copenhagen restaurant Noma confused me, initially. I thought we already knew this place and its lead chef, Redzepi, was toxic and it had closed. I eventually figured it out–these were new reports and involved more than reported before—and was surprised to find that Noma in Copenhagen closed but Redzepi came back and was ushering in folks in black SUVs past inflatable mushrooms to dine in LA (and other pop-ups).
This got me thinking of some of the parallels with academia. I think/hope we don’t have quite the level of bullying/abuse described in the recent NY Times investigation but we do seem to have:
- A culture of entree via unpaid internships (volunteering) where you get the worst job.
- A tension between what level of bullying is `part of the process’ versus too much.
- Some media-savvy enough folks who may try to control the narrative.
I somehow have never done a post on how lame I find our ‘volunteer’ culture so I should do that. For now I will just say it’s a great way to reduce equity and has repeatedly been called out in conservation (one of the worst offenders).
For the last one, I turn to the case of Tom Crowther (which also touches on the second point) that has had me wondering for some time: how much media outreach is too much for a lab? As you may or may not know, Tom Crowther was a assistant professor at ETH Zurich who published a series of high profile papers (including perhaps the most famous one suggesting we could nip anthropogenic climate change in the bud by just planting a lot more trees, including in lots of places that don’t have trees for good reason, like the savannas of Southern Africa where the carbon-rich grasslands are actually an excellent carbon sink, let alone a bit of a biodiversity hotspot) and was covered breathlessly in news and related bits of the journals of Science and Nature for his work (ETH went full Lance Armstrong effect on him).
What was less covered, was that recently he did not receive tenure from ETH after a series of bullying and harassment complaints were filed against him. I was fascinated by how little media there was on this and still wondering why. Given how much he was covered in the news, given the movies he was making, this seemed a story worth covering. I have a couple hypotheses for why.
Hypothesis one I am calling `isn’t it all always so confusing?’ It seemed messy (but isn’t that always the case? Hence my hypothesis name). The reports came some time after they reportedly happened, they appeared via a news story, not through formal ETH processes, and a number of lab members said they were very happy in the lab and urged anyone discussing this to stop.
Another (perhaps related) hypothesis, is that Swiss laws seemed to squash part of the story. The first I heard of the reports were from a story ran in Tages Anzeiger about a rising star professor at ETH who had bullied members of his lab. The newspaper had reports from multiple lab members they planned to publish, but were blocked because — apparently (as best I understand) — in Switzerland if you hear something will be published about you, you can try to block it (like a preemptive libel law, I gather). Why the accusers did not just go to a US, UK or some other nationality media outlet I never understood (that would get around the law, no?). Anyway, this all led to the story dripping out, to where everyone seemed to know one of the accusations included Crowther unzipping at a party and accosting one of his lab members with his privates, and it’s all filmed so we don’t have to wonder if this happened (later this was all detailed in the pro-Crowther version of the story in NZZ).
[Can I just take a short moment here to say that I am still confused by the number of colleagues who have said to me any of the following: Oh, but it was probably all in good fun! Can’t people take a prank these days? Maybe ETH should have told him not to do stuff like that; he needed more guidance. But should you really lose your job for this [at a government funded university where you have massive control, support and responsibility]?]
And then my last hypothesis (definitely perhaps related) is that the Crowther lab’s media branch semi-successfully controlled the story. The lab had an entire media branch and ETH found in its report that funds were used “not in accordance with ETH regulations. Specifically, funds were allegedly used for services such as crisis communication, legal advice and marketing.” It others words, he used ETH funds to combat the media reports surrounding the allegations against him. He admits this in the report and “explains that this was part of routine research communications before the recent media crisis caused by the media coverage at the end of August 2024. When the recent media crisis arose, he regarded the crisis communication services as a standard aspect of public relations.”
This last hypothesis has really made wonder how much media is too much media for an academic lab? As a climate change scientist, I have been raised on the dogma that we need to communicate our research. We need to help counter disinformation, get the word out. Fossil fuel companies have been pouring money into the disinformation campaign for as long as they have been accurately forecasting rising temperatures due to their fossil fuels (or pushing us to work on our own personal carbon footprints). Isn’t the massive branch of your lab doing media just taking this to the appropriate level? Or, is the outcome then that you control the media and you control the world? You become a mini-Rupert Murdoch and believe you deserve all that control?
And what happens then? Perhaps there is one more parallel between this story and Redzepi at Noma. Redzepi stepped down from Noma and many funders pulled out. But already wonderings abound about whether he is just lying low, waiting for the `squall’ to break. How long do you have to lay low? Crowther has resurfaced at KAUST University, which has hired him as a professor and has launched a new institute.
There’s an opportunity with post-Redzepi Noma to create something new. There’s also a chance he just comes back and nothing changes. The funders have a role in that outcome, but so do the diners. Do they come back? Or do they perhaps also want something new?
Lizzie:
I agree with you about the problems when science and academia are too tied into the news media and related power sources such as the tabloids (Science, Nature, etc.), Ted, Epsteinland, etc.
I just want to answer one question, when you write, “I was fascinated by how little media there was on this and still wondering why.” My answer is . . . there’s a lot of news happening nowadays! Academic disputes may seem big to us, but think of all the other news that’s crowding this out. Also, independent news organizations keep disappearing. Just here in the U.S., we recently lost big chunks of the Washington Post and CBS. So, with more news than ever and fewer organizations reporting it, the result will be that any given story will get less coverage.
I am willing to add that as an additional hypothesis, but then why was there so much media coverage available before when it was all bright shiny stories of how we can save the world? Is there really more space for that (or a bigger machine pushing it)?
I took several months off work when I was about 40 years old, and spent one of those months working for minimum wage on a creek restoration project. I do hope you’ll do a post that explains why that is a bad thing! I’ve always felt pretty good about it, and I still do.
I remember being incensed once (at least twenty-five years ago) when I heard that a labor union here in California was suing to stop skilled workers to volunteer their time and construction equipment at some urban park project. The union was upset that the volunteers were taking jobs that would otherwise have been done (at least potentially) by the city’s union workers. Could be! But it’s also possible, perhaps even likely, that the project wouldn’t have happened at all because it would have been too expensive.
I do think there’s such a thing as exploitation, and that minimum wages exist for a reason, and all that stuff. But I also think people should be allowed to volunteer their time, or to accept a job at far below their free-market wage, if they think there is social good in doing so. And, yes, conservation has a lot of that: society as a whole hasn’t proven willing to pay what it takes to save California Condors or Laysan Albatross etc etc etc at decent wages, but (fortunately, in my view!) there are people who are willing to work at far below normal wages, and sometimes even for free, to do these things.
I’d be very interested in hearing another perspective.
I realize that was all prompted by just one two-sentence paragraph, it is not the main focus of your post. It just kinda leapt out at me.
As for the rest of the post, the whole story is rather horrible and I have no explanation, so I don’t really know what to say.
Hi Phil,
Volunteer work offered because of the social good is of course fantastic.
But here’s a Scandinavian perspective on why unpaid _internships_ are a Bad Thing^tm
Disclaimer: I got my current academic position by first working “unpaid” for 6 months [1]. This can make sense for me individually because I live in a part of the world where 1. I don’t have any family members that are critically dependent on my income (luck), 2. I didn’t depend on savings or family to support me through a degree programme (government here gives a stipend to all students).
But not everyone everywhere has that. A person who has to support their kids or their parents can’t afford to take the offer of an unpaid internship. A person who can’t get support from their family or government or savings can’t afford to take the offer of an unpaid internship. This skews the competition, and it goes against the ethos that everyone deserves equal opportunities. In fact, by accepting that unpaid internship I am part of perpetuating a culture that has the above issues: If no one were willing to take the position as unpaid interns in academia, perhaps people like my employer would offer some paid introductory roles like it is the case in other sectors. For example, mason’s apprentices here are paid a very livable wage (~$23/h), and that is protected by the unions.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine that anything I or my employer or even my employer’s funder do could change that tomorrow. But still I can recognize that even though it was beneficial to me [2], it’s part of an institution that promotes some unequality in opportunities.
[1] Really it was a mandatory part of my degree programme to reach out to someone to do an internship, but that doesn’t change the working relationship between me and my scientific supervisor / employer. Mason’s apprentices are similarly required to do (paid) internships.
[2] It “got my foot in the door” by providing a low-cost situation for my employer to get to know me
Yes, I think this is the kind of thing Lizzie is referring to, too.
This situation is quite possibly very different in Scandinavia, but here in the U.S. the fact that kids of wealthier parents have an easier job pathway is so obvious and commonplace that it hardly needs to be mentioned. Parents can afford to move to a school district with better schools will do so; parents who are still unsatisfied with their kid’s school will send them to private school; if a kid is struggling, wealthier parents will hire a tutor or send them to a special program; children of wealthier parents can go to any college they can get into, while less advantaged kids have to find a school they can afford; and so on. By the time the kid is no longer a kid, and is out there in the job market, there has already been a huge imbalance in opportunity. The fact that a wealthier graduate can afford to take an unpaid internship while someone else can’t is, I agree, unfair. But everything about the system is unfair, starting way back in first grade or even kindergarten.
I do hope Lizzie does a post on this so we can all dig into it a bit more. I think there are contexts in which unpaid or poorly paid positions are fine, and others where they’re not. I haven’t thought about this enough to really know how to think about it. I guess one thing is: if the intern/volunteer is doing work that is worth a lot of money to someone, they ought to be paid for it. If there’s money being made, most of it should go to the people actually doing the work.
Yes, this is the type of thing I was referring to.
I think the question of how you clearly define contexts where volunteering is fine/good/helpful/definitely improving society by creating a mechanism to give without an expectation of monetary return is an interesting problem. And one I have not thought so much about broadly. But I will try to post on what I have thought about soon (my teaching term is ending next week!) so more can reply and help me on that.
I don’t think people shouldn’t be allowed to volunteer their time, I am all for volunteering. I think it is more a question of whether labs (especially ones claiming to care so much about equity and diversity) should build their structure around volunteers (and it’s a slippery slope to say your work is so morally important that it deserves volunteers).
I will hope to explain more later in a post and then you can tell me if you’re swayed at all.
But no matter what, I think you should feel good about your time on the creek restoration!
“(including perhaps the most famous one suggesting we could nip anthropogenic climate change in the bud by just planting a lot more trees, including in lots of places that don’t have trees for good reason, like the savannas of Southern Africa where the carbon-rich grasslands are actually an excellent carbon sink, let alone a bit of a biodiversity hotspot)”
Could you point us to the paper in question and maybe also to a good criticism?
Not knowing any details, it sounds to me that Crowther was celebrated at the time for bringing supposedly good news that everybody liked to hear (we can solve the climate crisis by planting trees – who wouldn’t like that?). At the time, climate action was still publicly viewed positively and there was some optimism, both of which have completely disappeared because most of the media – and this seems to me the far bigger issue than what you are writing about – have become propaganda instruments of the tech and fossil fuel oligarchy who urgently need to burn down the planet for whatever short term profits they think they can squeeze out of it, and the idea that anything at all could be done about this is considered politically impossible.
Sure, here’s the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aax0848 and the technical comments: https://www.science.org/toc/science/366/6463 (scroll down), which are oddly hard to find from the original article.
I did a stint as an intern when I was a teenager, living on starvation wages for 3 months in NYC. I get that my employer, who had the pick of the pool, wanted to survey as many prospects as possible, but in retrospect they should have paid more. Toward the end I was contributing real value to them.
Anyway, to the main point. I have a different perspective on abuse in academia which relates to a piece I published last year on clientelism. Academia is profoundly clientelist, in which senior profs are the patrons and juniors/grad students are the clients. At its best it’s a more or less defensible gift exchange relationship, but all such arrangements are subject to being degraded. How much ask is too much? How much pressure is too much? The root problem is the structural power imbalance. It’s inevitable in an academic setting but still dangerous. When I read about Larry Summers scheming to exchange sex with a grad student for a bit more career promotion, I thought this was an extension of a “normal” exchange that had become grotesque due to the apparent lack of scruples on Summers’ part — but if you were to model it, it wouldn’t look too different from more legit exchanges, which is why LM offered it up to Epstein as perfectly normal.
Isn’t it the case that a lot of ambitious young chefs put up with horrors in the kitchens of the elite, not only to get “trained” but also/especially for the recommendations that can open doors?
“I was fascinated by how little media there was on this and still wondering why”
I think your hypotheses are all good, but I’d add another one: the structure of press reporting. I don’t know Switzerland, but in the US, if somebody breaks the story, it’s usually the student newspaper or the local city newspaper. In particular, everything depends on one or two 20-thing year old journalists and their editors, and it can be very trend driven. It could well be the case that the story didn’t get reported heavily because, I dunno, the local soccer team had a great match.
The language barrier might be an issue too. If you are based in the US, reporting in German and French is harder to track down (i.e. doesn’t show up in a naive google news search).
I will add that if ETH took the time to write a 25 page report that went public and then fired the guy, he probably deserved to be fired.
Yeah, we’ve seen this with a lot of stories in the U.S. lately too. Student newspapers or tiny independent outlets are among the few organizations that regularly do serious reporting. And they have limited resources.
Agreed. I was also wondering how much it just coming out in Swiss German outlets was part of the problem. And to Andrew’s point above (https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/31/black-and-white-gray-and-in-between-what-color-is-the-media/#comment-2412702) that I pushed back on a little—his hypothesis fits with the existing data if independent new outlets are dissolving so quickly that there was just significantly more media to cover Crowther 4-6 years ago versus 1-2 years ago, which is amazingly depressing.
Looking at some publicly available information, what I gather is that the people who complained about Crowther didn’t *want* to go public. At least I haven’t seen any hint that they did. They complained internally and there was an internal process that led to his suspension and then in his contract being terminated. The media reported what there was to report. A redacted ETH report is publicly available (https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/associates/services/News/service-news/2025/04/250425/250425_Report_Clarifications_Final_redacted.pdf).
I generally look at the media critically, but I’m not sure what you think they did wrong in this case?
Swiss media law does have the extraordinary feature that somebody can get a judicial order against publishing allegedly defamatory material *before* publication (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superprovisorische_Verf%C3%BCgung). But I don’t think this is what happened here. I didn’t find any hint that he took legal steps against the media or against the complainants.
I am not sure you read the Tages Anzeiger or NZZ information (or other information not linked here); maybe you do not consider it publicly available since it is behind a paywall.
I see, I overlooked the Tagi-article from 2023. My mistake. So there was an initial court order against publishing the complaints against Crowther.
Anyway, he did get his contract revoked and the media did publish the story.