Black and white, gray and in between: What color is the media?

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?