Judging by the experiences of Robert Grimm and a close confidante, both academe and industry have long given up even trying to conduct their business in an ethical fashion. In this talk, the author will detail some of the most egregious instances of deeply unethical if not outright criminal behavior across their career, will argue that they are representative of elites acting in a deeply irresponsible and self-serving manner, causally tie that misbehavior to the rise of nativist nationalism across the western world, and contrast it all against the civilization-ending threat of climate change. This talk sounds the alarm as much as it identifies our last best hope for survival. It’s up to us!

The discussion and AMA following this talk will be moderated by Emery Berger.

Robert Grimm works at a fintech startup in New York City. Previous industrial positions include Facebook, where he worked on the core Python runtime, and Goldman Sachs, where he worked on the company''s risk and trading platform. Before joining industry in 2013, Robert was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at New York University, researching how to leverage programming language technologies to make complex systems easier to build, maintain and extend. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington at Seattle in 2002. His honors include the Best Paper award at the 6th ACM International Conference on Distributed Event-Based Systems, a Junior Fellowship at NYU’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and an NSF CAREER award.