Leslie “Les” Perelman, a prominent figure in college writing assessment and a champion of writing instruction, died on November 12, 2025, at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, at the age of 77.
A native of Los Angeles, Perelman attended the University of California at Berkeley and later received his PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1980.
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Perelman spent 35 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he became known for his critique of autograding systems and writing assessments that didn’t accurately evaluate college writing.
The Boston Globe dubbed him “The man who killed the SAT essay,” and he told NPR that colleges often spend the first year “deprogramming” students from the five-paragraph essay.
Perelman’s widow, Elizabeth Garrels, an MIT Professor Emerita, recalled an incident where Perelman, who was practically blind without his glasses, stood at one end of a room and “graded” essays held up for him on the other side, consistently guessing the correct grade.
Perelman was demonstrating how automatic scorers often reward form over substance, and he had a knack for mirroring their grading systems.
Critique of Autograding Systems
Perelman’s critique of autograding systems was not limited to the SAT essay; he also targeted commercial autograders, which he believed gave top marks to nonsense essays generated by his BABEL (Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language) Generator.
In a 2020 paper, Perelman documented the BABEL Generator, which output nonsensical essays that commercial autograders nevertheless gave high grades.
He saved some of his most systematic criticism for the defenders of autograders in academia, including a widely-touted paper by the University of Akron that claimed autograders performed as well as human graders.
Perelman discovered that he could ace autograded tests even when his essays included non-factual gibberish and typographical errors.
Example of a Nonsensical Essay
One example of a nonsensical essay that Perelman created included the statement: “Teaching assistants are paid an excessive amount of money. The average teaching assistant makes six times as much money as college presidents.”
Despite the obvious errors, the essay received a high grade from the autograder.
Legacy at MIT
Within MIT, Perelman’s legacy was his push to embed writing instruction into the entire curriculum, not just as standalone expository writing subjects or writing exams.
Supported by a $325,000 National Science Foundation grant, Perelman convinced MIT to hire writing instructors who were also subject matter experts, often with STEM PhDs.
These instructors collaborated with departments to integrate writing instruction into existing curricula and new subjects, eventually becoming the Writing Across the Curriculum program (now known as Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication) with a staff of over 30 instructors.
Perelman’s successor, Suzanne Lane, said it took him almost 15 years to build out the infrastructure, which started with proving to others the unevenness of writing instruction at MIT.
Alumni surveys showed that while MIT alumni excelled in technical skills, they often struggled with communication skills, which were essential for their careers.
This led Perelman and others to push for a new undergraduate communication requirement, which was eventually approved and implemented in 2001.
Today, there are nearly 300 subjects that count toward the requirement, from class 1.013 (Senior Civil and Environmental Engineering Design) to 24.918 (Workshop in Linguistic Research).
Perelman’s colleagues and friends remember him as a brilliant and gracious individual who was always ready to engage in academic debates and offer sustenance and friendship.
Nancy Sommers, a Harvard University professor who worked on undergraduate writing assessment, said Perelman had a “Talmudic way of asking questions” and was always willing to challenge his peers.
Donations in Perelman’s name can be made to UNICEF’s work supporting children in Ukraine, the Lexington Refugee Assistance Program, Doctors Without Borders, and the Ash Grove Movie Finishing Fund.
Perelman is survived by his widow, Elizabeth Garrels, and will be remembered for his tireless advocacy for writing education and his critique of autograding systems.