Most elite Indians (primarily savarna white collar urban english medium educated folks like me) land on Western shores convinced that we are just as advanced and developed as these countries as a people. It's just "corruption" in India holding us back. Then reality hits. /1

We see that the West works better on a daily level, but not because of some mythical genetic or societal immunity to this mythical "corruption" villain. Cos there is corruption in Western politics too. They seem to have institutions and systems built over ages to minimize it.

But most Indians who reach these shores are engineer/mba/doctor types. Trained in secondary vocational type disciplines. So our default approach is to find a quick engineering type solution. We have almost zero exposure to sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, etc.

I remember being like that. Engineer-MBA who thought that because my vocabulary and exposition skills were above average and my quant skills were above average, I deserve a seat at the table on any discussion. Be it climate change, public health, efficacy of vaccines, etc.

For anything, I thought I knew the best. Why was this Obama fellow not trying my absolutely brilliant healthcare reform plan that I have posted on a blog with nice tables and graphs and references to IIT and IIM slang? Does he not know I'm from an IIM? <1% acceptance rate!

So much #FactCheckBait being put out by IT Cell today and so many people biting.

What is #FactCheckBait? Fascists putting out tweets or messages with very obvious rebuttal properties. So non-fascists are distracted by rebutting or fact checking them. And the fascists get more name recognition. What have the top sanghi twitter accounts done other than provoke?

Why are so many sanghi bigot handles famous & well followed on Twitter despite having no notable quality other than getting called out by liberals? Cos that's all it takes. If they can fool liberals into QTing or even screenshot-ing them, they become heroes and then are like

Another example of #FactCheckBait. This sanghi wants you to identify them while pointing out the very obvious flaws in their logic. This sanghi is counting on it to improve their visibility. Don't give them that oxygen. Call them out like this, without IDs, if you must.

As pointed out by @bongopondit, peak #FactCheckBait was Ted Cruz saying rejoining the Paris climate agreement was about appeasing Paris not Pittsburgh. He knows it's BS. He's an evil psychopath but not dumb. He wants you to QT him and distract from his insurrection efforts.

Having read @Nidhi's account about the scam, here are a few details about how US academia hiring works, as are relevant to her case. And the perpetrator of the scam is most likely an academic or at least a former academic with connections.

US unis generally follow similar processes when it comes to hiring professors. But the processes depend on your "track". As do the norms, eligibility, timeline, etc. I for example am on a research tenure track. I was Assistant Professor for 7 years before tenure made me Associate

On that track, you need a proper PhD from an accredited university. Then a long process to get hired as an Assistant Prof. Then 6-7 years to prove your credentials, primarily in terms of research. Then less than 10% get tenure and earn the right to be Associate Profs.

But education is more about just research. So unis also have other tracks like Teaching, Industry, Practice. Here, expectations of academic research are minimal to non-existent. If you just wanna teach 95% of the time and you're good at it, you can still get a job!

They have their own identical ranks - Assistant, Associate, (Full) Professor. That they advance through as their careers progress. Based almost entirely on their teaching performance. Not research.
These folks also must have a PhD or at least be working towards a PhD. Typically.