Jeffrey Elman: Difference between revisions

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Elman died of a heart condition on June 28, 2018, at the age of 70.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-jeffelman-obit-20180629-story.html| title = Famed UC San Diego language expert Jeff Elman dies at 70 - The San Diego Union-Tribune| date = 29 June 2018}}</ref>
Elman died of a heart condition on June 28, 2018, at the age of 70.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-jeffelman-obit-20180629-story.html| title = Famed UC San Diego language expert Jeff Elman dies at 70 - The San Diego Union-Tribune| date = 29 June 2018}}</ref>


In 2009 Elman sent a letter to UCSD sociology professor Richard Biernacki, instructing him not to publish research which was critical of one of his colleagues at UCSD, and of other scholars in the field. Elman's letter suggested that Biernacki's criticism of the UCSD colleague constituted "harassment" and threatened Biernacki with censure, salary reduction or dismissal if he tried to publish his work.<ref>Dylan Riley, 2014, "[http://csx.sagepub.com/content/43/5/627.extract Back to Weber! a review of ''Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry'' by Richard Biernacki]", ''Contemporary Sociology'' 43:5, 627-629</ref><ref name=Sandie>
In 2009 Elman sent a letter to UCSD sociology professor Richard Biernacki, instructing him not to publish research which was critical of one of his colleagues at UCSD, and of other scholars in the field. Elman's letter suggested that Biernacki's criticism of the UCSD colleague constituted "harassment" and threatened Biernacki with censure, salary reduction or dismissal if he tried to publish his work.<ref>Dylan Riley, 2014, "[http://csx.sagepub.com/content/43/5/627.extract Back to Weber! a review of ''Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry'' by Richard Biernacki]", ''Contemporary Sociology'' 43:5, 627-629</ref>
<ref name=Sandie>
{{cite web|url=http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/jun/12/ucsd-prof-wins-battle-against-deans-gag-order-will/|title=UCSD Prof Wins Battle Against Dean's Gag Order, Will Publish Book|work=sandiegoreader.com
{{cite web|url=http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/jun/12/ucsd-prof-wins-battle-against-deans-gag-order-will/|title=UCSD Prof Wins Battle Against Dean's Gag Order, Will Publish Book|work=sandiegoreader.com
}}</ref><ref>
}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web|url=http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2011/may/25/ucsd-faculty-says-professors-academic-freedom-brea/|title=Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?|work=The San Diego Union-Tribune
{{cite web|url=http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2011/may/25/ucsd-faculty-says-professors-academic-freedom-brea/|title=Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?|work=The San Diego Union-Tribune
|date=26 May 2011 }}</ref><ref name="chronicle.com">
|date=26 May 2011 }}</ref>
<ref name="chronicle.com">
{{cite web|url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/uc-san-diego-dean-violated-academic-freedom-by-suppressing-paper-faculty-allege/33408|title=UC-San Diego Dean Violated Academic Freedom by Suppressing Paper, Faculty Allege – The Ticker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education|work=chronicle.com
{{cite web|url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/uc-san-diego-dean-violated-academic-freedom-by-suppressing-paper-faculty-allege/33408|title=UC-San Diego Dean Violated Academic Freedom by Suppressing Paper, Faculty Allege – The Ticker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education|work=chronicle.com
}}</ref> In addition, the letter threatened Biernacki with termination were he to request data from the National Science Foundation.<ref name=Sandie/>
}}</ref> In addition, the letter threatened Biernacki with termination were he to request data from the National Science Foundation.<ref name=Sandie/> The Committee on Academic Freedom of the UCSD Academic Senate initiated an investigation of the letter. In May 2011, after hearing a report from the committee, the UCSD faculty senate expressed "grave concern" about the incident, which it deemed a violation of academic freedom. The committee called on the administration to acknowledge and correct the situation.<ref>Pat Flynn, "[http://www.sandiegounion.com/news/2011/may/25/ucsd-faculty-says-professors-academic-freedom-brea/ Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?]", ''San Diego Union Tribune'', May 25, 2011. Retrieved on 2014-9-27.</ref><ref name="chronicle.com"/>

The Committee on Academic Freedom of the UCSD Academic Senate initiated an investigation of Elman's letter to Biernacki. In their report, the Committee summarized Elman's letter in part as directing the professor "... to cease pursuing a critical re-examination of the other professor’s research and data", including a quote of the relevant section of Elman's letter. Additionally, however, the Committee found that "... the dean’s letter did not prohibit just slander, libel, or personal disputes; the dean’s letter prohibited utterance, research, and publication within the academic field of study."<ref name="CommitteeLetter">[Letter dated May 24, 2011 regarding "Conditions Affecting Academic Freedom at UCSD" from Hall Pashler, Chair, UCSD Committee on Academic Freedom, to Professor Frank Powell, Chair, UCSD Academic Senate] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111223133325/http://senate.ucsd.edu/assembly/1011/CAF05-24-11.pdf |date=2011-12-23 }}</ref> Furthermore, the Committee also reported that lawyers representing the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs had contributed to drafting the letter, and it had been reviewed by the Office of Research Affairs and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Due to these findings, the Committee stated: "We cannot avoid the conclusion that the dean’s letter contains clear and unacceptable violations of core academic freedom rights, violations that were apparently implicitly or explicitly supported by others in the university’s administration at the time."<ref name=CommitteeLetter/>

In May 2011, after hearing the report from the committee, the UCSD faculty senate expressed "grave concern" about the incident, which it deemed a violation of academic freedom. The committee called on the administration to acknowledge and correct the situation.<ref>Pat Flynn, "[http://www.sandiegounion.com/news/2011/may/25/ucsd-faculty-says-professors-academic-freedom-brea/ Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?]", ''San Diego Union Tribune'', May 25, 2011. Retrieved on 2014-9-27.</ref><ref name="chronicle.com"/>


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 19:53, 9 April 2024

Jeffrey Locke Elman (January 22, 1948 – June 28, 2018) was an American psycholinguist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He specialized in the field of neural networks.

In 1990, he introduced the simple recurrent neural network (SRNN), also known as the 'Elman network', which is capable of processing sequentially ordered stimuli, and has since become widely used.

Elman's work was highly significant to our understanding of how languages are acquired and also, once acquired, how sentences are comprehended. Sentences in natural languages are composed of sequences of words that are organized in phrases and hierarchical structures. The Elman network provides an important hypothesis for how neural networks—and, by analogy, the human brain—might be doing the learning and processing of such structures.[1]

Early life

Elman attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, then Harvard University, where he graduated in 1969. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.[2]

Career

With Jay McClelland, Elman developed the TRACE model of speech perception in the mid-80s. TRACE remains a highly influential model that has stimulated a large body of empirical research.[2]

In 1990, he introduced the simple recurrent neural network (SRNN; aka 'Elman network'), which is a widely used recurrent neural network that is capable of processing sequentially ordered stimuli.[1] Elman nets are used in a number of fields, including cognitive science, psychology, economics and physics, among many others.

In 1996, he co-authored (with Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark H. Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett), the book Rethinking Innateness,[3] which argues against a strong nativist (innate) view of development.

Elman was an Inaugural Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, and also was its president, from 1999 to 2000. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the New Bulgarian University, and was the 2007 recipient of the David E. Rumelhart Prize for Theoretical Contributions to Cognitive Science.[2] He was founding co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind[4] at UC San Diego, and holds the Chancellor's Associates Endowed Chair. He was Dean of Social Sciences at UCSD from 2008 until June 2014.[5] Elman was also a founding co-director of the UCSD Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, announced March 1, 2018.[6][7]

Elman died of a heart condition on June 28, 2018, at the age of 70.[8]

In 2009 Elman sent a letter to UCSD sociology professor Richard Biernacki, instructing him not to publish research which was critical of one of his colleagues at UCSD, and of other scholars in the field. Elman's letter suggested that Biernacki's criticism of the UCSD colleague constituted "harassment" and threatened Biernacki with censure, salary reduction or dismissal if he tried to publish his work.[9] [10][11] [12] In addition, the letter threatened Biernacki with termination were he to request data from the National Science Foundation.[10]

The Committee on Academic Freedom of the UCSD Academic Senate initiated an investigation of Elman's letter to Biernacki. In their report, the Committee summarized Elman's letter in part as directing the professor "... to cease pursuing a critical re-examination of the other professor’s research and data", including a quote of the relevant section of Elman's letter. Additionally, however, the Committee found that "... the dean’s letter did not prohibit just slander, libel, or personal disputes; the dean’s letter prohibited utterance, research, and publication within the academic field of study."[13] Furthermore, the Committee also reported that lawyers representing the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs had contributed to drafting the letter, and it had been reviewed by the Office of Research Affairs and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Due to these findings, the Committee stated: "We cannot avoid the conclusion that the dean’s letter contains clear and unacceptable violations of core academic freedom rights, violations that were apparently implicitly or explicitly supported by others in the university’s administration at the time."[13]

In May 2011, after hearing the report from the committee, the UCSD faculty senate expressed "grave concern" about the incident, which it deemed a violation of academic freedom. The committee called on the administration to acknowledge and correct the situation.[14][12]

References

  1. ^ a b Jeffrey L. Elman. Finding structure in time. Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages 179-211, 1990
  2. ^ a b c The David E. Rumelhart Prize Archived 2017-12-18 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ^ Elman, Jeffrey; et al. (1996). Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-55030-X.
  4. ^ "Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind". ucsd.edu.
  5. ^ "Campus Notice". ucsd.edu. December 2, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
  6. ^ "Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute – UC San Diego". February 5, 2024. Retrieved February 4, 2024.
  7. ^ "A Campus Hub for Data Science".
  8. ^ "Famed UC San Diego language expert Jeff Elman dies at 70 - The San Diego Union-Tribune". June 29, 2018.
  9. ^ Dylan Riley, 2014, "Back to Weber! a review of Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry by Richard Biernacki", Contemporary Sociology 43:5, 627-629
  10. ^ a b "UCSD Prof Wins Battle Against Dean's Gag Order, Will Publish Book". sandiegoreader.com.
  11. ^ "Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?". The San Diego Union-Tribune. May 26, 2011.
  12. ^ a b "UC-San Diego Dean Violated Academic Freedom by Suppressing Paper, Faculty Allege – The Ticker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education". chronicle.com.
  13. ^ a b [Letter dated May 24, 2011 regarding "Conditions Affecting Academic Freedom at UCSD" from Hall Pashler, Chair, UCSD Committee on Academic Freedom, to Professor Frank Powell, Chair, UCSD Academic Senate] Archived 2011-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ Pat Flynn, "Did UCSD breach professor's academic freedom?", San Diego Union Tribune, May 25, 2011. Retrieved on 2014-9-27.

External links