The Man Who Shocked the World by Thomas Blass

Author:Thomas Blass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Looking back on her years as Milgram’s research assistant, Judith Waters, now a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, doesn’t think he was any more authoritarian than anyone else would have been in his position.

Just as there was a wide consensus about Milgram’s off-putting, domineering, and prima donna-ish ways, Milgram’s superior intellect was acknowledged by virtually everyone in the department, even among those who were not necessarily fond of him. The force of his intellect made him a formidable presence, despite his diminutive size of 5’7”. John Sabini provided an especially distinctive perspective on Milgram’s intellect:He was a genius. By which, one means he was possessed; I mean you never knew—he never knew—what direction his creativity would take. So he wrote music and he made board games and films. . . .

He was utterly unconventional in the way he thought about things, and insisted that you be. So he would call me in, sort of monthly, when I was looking for a job, and explain to me things like, the most important relationship you’ll ever form in your professional career is with your secretary. And you would laugh, and he would say, no, no, I’m serious. It’s far more important than graduate students, colleagues or post-docs. Your secretary is the person who will determine whether you will have a productive career or not. . . . And any suggestion that you might have that, well, maybe your colleagues are important, would be taken by Stanley as a sign of near-conventionality in the way your mind worked, that you were not penetrating to the actual facts. And that was, I think, what was relentlessly Stanley, was this . . . dispensing with mythology and false belief and jargon, and all sorts of clutter that kept you from seeing the actual facts clearly.

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