Leslie 'Les' Perelman, an influential figure in college writing assessment; a champion of writing instruction across all subject matters for over three decades at MIT; and a former MIT associate dean for undergraduate education, died on Nov. 12, 2025, at home in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was 77. A Los Angeles native, Perelman attended the University of California at Berkeley, joining in its lively activist years, and in 1980 received his PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After stints at the University of Southern California and Tulane University, he returned to Massachusetts ' to MIT ' in 1987, and stayed for the next 35 years. Perelman became best known for his dogged critique of autograding systems and writing assessments that didn't assess actual college writing. The Boston Globe dubbed him 'The man who killed the SAT essay.' He told NPR that colleges 'spend the first year deprogramming [students] from the five-paragraph essay.' His widow, MIT...
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