Jason Locasale, PhD

I left a successful academic career in STEM after publishing 200+ papers. I believed in science and truth but learned the system valued optics over integrity, conformity over courage. In academia, bureaucracy replaced discovery, egos replaced expertise, and silence replaced…

Imagine the harsh punishment after anonymous students claim they were "traumatized" and "gaslit" by a professor's lecture on an "unsafe" topic like the French Revolution or biology.

Universities are not companies that go out of business if they fail. They, especially the elite ones connected to hospitals, receive massive taxpayer funding, price-fixed student cash flows, and tax exempt hospital revenue (c.f. @DutchRojas) regardless of their outcomes.…

Tenure was meaningless in my own experience. I still have tenure I think just doesn’t mean anything.

Thanks for shining a light on this, Jason. Mad respect. I’m actually optimistic, because the world is changing faster than academia can keep up. Best case, more people start to recognize the perverse incentives and reclaim their agency. As potential gets increasingly atomized,…

Tenure protections are rock solid, until the administration needs them to be otherwise.

University Tenure At the elite university where I worked, tenure was sold as a guarantee. During recruitment, I was told it was a lifetime appointment, that my salary was protected, and that tenure came with rights like free speech and due process. Some claims were verbal others…

The truest and most replicable statement on X today.

University due process: anonymous reports, secret deliberations, and a verdict before you’re even told there’s a case.

Universities love social justice, until it involves due process for their faculty and students.

Under pressure, institutions reveal priorities. Universities aren't cutting administration, they are cutting science.

Okay, so everyone is dispensable except administrators, got it.

I don't know.

I had related thoughts when I was younger.

One of the saddest and most pathetic things in research; Instead of working as a group to solve the problems that are causing suffering, everyone is hiding their work because the system is set up to encourage this. If someone does come along and steals any part of it, you feel…

Academia isn’t the corporate world. Companies compete. Universities get subsidies, protection, and the moral high ground.

The institutions didn’t fall all at once. They drifted, almost imperceptibly, from a mission rooted in knowledge, discovery, and excellence to one increasingly focused on branding, activism, and image management. Then the pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd’s death…

Writing grants taught me more about performance art than science.

Academia taught me a lot. Institutions can be cruel but maybe worse is how many people inside cheer them on. "When we take joy in someone’s destruction, we don’t just lose our values. We lose ourselves." well said.

Faculty know the rules: – Don’t defend the wrong person – Don’t criticize the institution – Don’t speak unless it is ‘aligned’ In academia, silence is strategic.