Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows

When Jay Keyser arrived at MIT in 1977 to head theDepartment of Linguistics and
Philosophy, he writes, he "felt like a fishthat had been introduced to water for the first time." At
MIT, acolleague grabbed him by the lapels to discuss dark matter; Noam Chomsky calledhim "boss"
(double SOB spelled backward?); and engaging in conflictresolution made him feel like "a marriage
counselor trying to reconcile aunion between a Jehovah's witness and a vampire."In Mens et Mania,
Keyserrecounts his academic and administrative adventures during a career of morethan thirty years.
Keyserdescribes the administrative side of his MIT life, not only as department headbut also as
Associate Provost and Special Assistant to the Chancellor. Keyserhad to run a department ("budgets
were like horoscopes") andnegotiate student grievances -- from thelegality of showing Deep Throat in
a dormitory to theuproar caused by the arrests of students for antiapartheid demonstrations.Keyser
also describes a visiting Japanese delegation horrified by the disrepairof the linguistics
department offices (Chomsky tells them "Our motto is:Physically shabby. Intellectually first
class."); convincing a studentnot to jump off the roof of the Green Building; and recent attempts to
look atMIT through a corporate lens. And he explains the special faculty-student bondat MIT: the
faculty sees the students as themselves thirty years earlier. Keyser observes that MIT is hard toget
into and even harder to leave, for faculty as well as for students. Writingabout retirement, Keyser
quotes the song Groucho Marx sang in AnimalCrackers as he was leaving a party -- "Hello, I mustbe
going." Students famously say "Tech is hell." Keyser says,"It's been a helluva party." This
entertaining andthought-provoking memoir will make readers glad that Keyser hasn't
quiteleft.