"Jedi mind games."

One of the many ways that tenured professors are appalling is something that came up with my committee in the very last stage of my dissertation:

Sometimes, they don't keep basic track of the project across interactions, and instead just "shoot from the hip" half-formed and sometimes even ill-grounded thoughts like everything that dribbles out of their lips are these great pearls of wisdom to help you through to dissertation completion, even when the thoughts are simply bizarre or are even moving in a different direction from what they said as recently as a week ago.

And, even if the comments are unfeasible, you can't necessarily interact, since it's not really about the dissertation or the project, but it's about the professors' sense of superiority, though they don't think so since they've absorbed the message of the system so well.

So, even though our culture thinks these people are super smart and super critical, they can actually be appallingly lacking in self-reflection, and so you have to nod or act gingerly, and on top of all that pull "Jedi mind games" to get them to say the dissertation is done.

For example, a prof I know recommended that I send my complete draft out in the required final formatting done to a "T", because the committee would unconsciously react to the official-looking formatting with less feedback.

Tenured professors are just ridiculous, they're so self-absorbed.  They deserve academic freedom, but they don't deserve lifetime jobs, since it results in absolutely absurd behavior like this.

I no longer cry when I hear about universities shutting departments.

Maybe a few nice folks are washed up in their late 40s or even 50s without a good springboard to other careers, but most of them are assholes who deserve to see hard knocks.

This kind of behavior simply wouldn't fly in other sectors, as a friend of mine who's a psychology researcher now going back into academia pointed out.

"You can't keep track of the major direction of a multi-year project?", he was like.  "Give me a break."