A aterrorizante história do aluno de PhD

Não deve ser muito bom frequentar uma universidade pensando que um de seus colegas pode ser o rapaz da aterrorizante história contada por Theodore Dalrymple no City Journal:

Murder Most Academic

A British Ph.D. candidate puts “homicide studies” into practice.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE

In some modern societies—and certainly Britain is one of them—satire is prophecy. This makes effective satire difficult because reality so soon catches up with it. Satire is also dangerous and perhaps even irresponsible, for no idea is too absurd, it seems, for our political masters and bureaucratic elite to take seriously and put into practice—at public expense, of course, never their own.

Sometimes reality is far in advance of satire when it comes to absurdity. The results, however, are not always funny. If a satirist had come up with the idea of a violent criminal who had spent time in an asylum being admitted by a university to its doctoral program in “homicide studies,” thereafter turning into a serial killer, that satirist would have been denounced for poor taste. But this is precisely what a British university did recently. A man with a long history of criminal violence became a serial killer while working on a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Bradford, the subject of his thesis being the methods of homicide used in the city during the nineteenth century. He himself used methods more reminiscent of the fourteenth.
Stephen Griffiths is 40. He has never worked and has always lived at taxpayers’ expense. At 17, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for cutting the throat (not fatally) of a supermarket security guard who tried to arrest him for shoplifting. In prison, doctors reported, Griffiths had a “preoccupation with murder—particularly multiple murder.” They diagnosed him as a violent psychopath; that is, he had an intractable personality development that made him likely to commit new violent offenses.

E olha que coisa mais interessante: o assassino NUNCA trabalhou na vida e foi sustentado por programas sociais do Estado que são custeados, você sabe, pelos pagadores de impostos. Isso significa que as vítimas pagaram para ser mortas.

Outro dado interessante? O moço foi aceito num programa de PhD de uma universidade mesmo com uma ficha corrida criminal extensa. Aceitá-lo faz parte de alguma programa de ressocialização mesmo com os diagnósticos provando a psicopatia violenta? Provavelmente, a universidade desconhecia tal informação. Eu mesmo nunca passei pela estranha experiência de ser solicitado a entregar um exame de sanidade mental ao fazer a inscrição nas universidades onde estudei. Mas acho que vou começar a fazê-lo só para ter a chance de perguntar sobre a saúde mental dos futuros eventuais colegas. E professores.

E eu sugiro que quando se você que me lê decidir iniciar o doutorado pergunte aos seus colegas, logo no início das aulas, se alguém foi preso. Se foi o caso de roubo, furto, drogas, fique tranquilo. Mas é bom checar se o colega em questão é dado a faltar com a verdade.