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This Alabama shooting -- a multiple affair-- is obviously an all-around tragedy by any measure. I do have a personal insight to offer in this particular academic situation. The "economy" probably figures into this some way -- and I'm convinced that the spike in such lethal things in some other vocational and social frameworks around the country, is often sparked and may even stem primarily by and from the deteriorating "bread and butter" dimension. But, having taught in the college/university setting at various points for many years indeed, I don't need psychic insights to get a handle on this one. Professor Bishop was denied tenure [job security/protection] -- a major blow to any academic faculty person -- and she went over the canyon rim in a departmental faculty meeting. In the spring of '61, my first year of college teaching, I and a great many students of mine were dealing pretty effectively activist-wise with the then situation created at "our" college by the president of Wisconsin State. a National Guard general and, in my view then and now [and that of many others at the time], a John Bircher. He had, among other nefarious things, arbitrarily ended student government and he was a sworn enemy of faculty unionism. [I was the school's lone member of the American Federation of Teachers.] On a March evening, I had dinner with a congenial traveler friend who happened to be research and education director for the [Portland, Oregon based] International Woodworkers of America, the CIO lumber workers union. We visited about many things, including the recent death of Ralph Chaplin [Solidarity Forever] at Tacoma. His own internal situation at IWA was challenging, but he was interested in the college situation in my bailiwick, and apropos of my comments on general faculty fear and intricate political machinations, suggested I read Mary McCarthy's recently emerged novel, The Groves of Academe. I did read that very nicely done examination of wicked faculty interaction at a private college. I wasn't surprised since my artist father -- a trusting soul [probably too trusting] and never a knifeman in any sense, had been wounded a fair number of times at Arizona State [soon to be Northern Arizona University] where he was a long-time professor. In time, as I journeyed through one academic forest after another -- some rather jungle-like -- I saw, and sometimes experienced, things that made Ms McCarthy's tale look tame. The Huntsville tragedy interests me from another perspective. A faculty acquaintance at University of North Dakota, with whom I had a friendly but not close relationship, wanted to leave faculty status for a Deanship and became Assistant Dean in Arts and Sciences at the university. He hoped to replace the syrupy and gracious -- but Machiavellian -- Dean of long-standing, who periodically and publicly announced his forthcoming retirement but invariably backed away. A few years before, when a state referendum overruled a tax increase which would have assisted the often fiscally marginal academic institutions [Business, Law, and Medicine always did well at UND], a great deal of genuinely wicked maneuvering began and increased -- and continued. When my faculty acquaintance became Assistant Dean, he faithfully became the Dean's very dubious "arm." His strength and any sense of loyalty he may have had thinned almost immediately. He did not keep his word on important commitments to some faculty -- not when his boss felt otherwise. When it was clear that the old Dean was still remaining, this man secured a Dean's position in Florida. And then my former acquaintance became Academic Vice-President at Huntsville. That did not, in my opinion, speak well for Huntsville. The years have passed and, somewhat younger than I, this man may have retired by now. But he could still be there and, if so, he would have played a negative role in this tenure denial. In any case, his presence in a top position, now or at least in the recent past, speaks of a very poor institutional ethos. Assimilating all of this, I am somehow not surprised at the spate of shootings yesterday in a departmental meeting. I inherited -- and I'm extremely glad I have -- my Native father's aversion to factionalism and knifespersonship. On the other hand, I do know how to ethically defend myself and those associated with me -- and certainly the Cause. And I always fight. As well as doing many years of full-time social justice field organizing [sometimes involving part-time teaching], I have also, when I've taught full-time, always been involved in organizing "out in the community" -- and, in any community, there are always justice issues. Very importantly, I have always kept my students as my very highest academic priority. And there's something else. I've never really seen myself as a Professor -- not really. Not deep down in. Sooner or later, I'd wind up saying just that to every class I ever taught over these many decades. And the students and I would always grin in mutual appreciation. Keep fighting. Hunter [Hunter Bear] February 13, 2010 Professor Said to Be Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama By SARAH WHEATON and SHAILA DEWAN NYT Three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were shot to death, and three other people were seriously wounded at a biology faculty meeting on Friday afternoon, university officials said. The Associated Press reported that a biology professor, identified as Amy Bishop, was charged with murder. According to a faculty member, the professor had applied for tenure, been turned down, and appealed the decision. She learned on Friday that she had been denied once again. The newspaper identified Dr. Bishop as a Harvard-educated neuroscientist. According to a 2006 profile in the newspaper, Dr. Bishop invented a portable cell growth incubator with her husband, Jim Anderson. Police officials said that Mr. Anderson was being detained, but they did not call him a suspect. Photographs of a suspect being led from the scene by the police appeared to match images of Dr. Bishop on academic and technology Web sites. Dr. Bishop had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure, said a business associate who met her at a business technology open house at the end of January and asked not to be named because of the close-knit nature of the science community in Huntsville. "She began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair," the associate said, referring to a conversation in which she blamed specific colleagues for her problems. "She seemed to be one of these persons who was just very open with her feelings," he said. "A very smart, intense person who had a variety of opinions on issues." The shooting occurred in the Shelby Center at the university around 4 p.m., officials said. Few students were in the building, and none were involved in the shooting, said Ray Garner, a university spokesman. Officials said the dead were all biology professors, G. K. Podila, the department's chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two other biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, as well as a professor's assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo, are at Huntsville Hospital in conditions ranging from stable to critical. Officials said the suspect was detained outside of the building "without incident." The police said a weapon had not been recovered. Andrew Ols, a senior at the university, said he had been in a biology lab in the Shelby Center less than five minutes before the shooting began. "Now that we realize that it was a faculty person that committed the crime, no students were injured and no students were targeted or anything like that, there's more shock than there is fear," he said. The shooting came just a week after a middle school student near Huntsville shot and killed a classmate. "This is a very safe campus," Mr. Garner said. "It's not unlike what we experienced a week ago. This town is not accustomed to shootings and having multiple dead." Nick Zivkovic, a senior, was filling his gas tank around 4 p.m. after finishing a lab in the Shelby Center. "Next thing I know, 40 to 50 police cars are flying by," he said. Back at the building, emergency vehicles created an "ocean of lights" as police with SWAT gear and automatic weapons stormed into the building. A registered first responder, Mr. Zivkovic passed out blankets and tried to comfort the evacuated students who were trembling and mumbling in the parking lot. "You just try to hand them some hot chocolate," he said. The university was put on lockdown "almost instantaneously," said Trent Willis, chief of staff to Mayor Tommy Battle. But some students complained on Twitter and to reporters that they did not receive the university's alert until hours after the shooting. "The U-Alert was triggered late because the people involved in activating that system were involved in responding to the shooting," said Charles Gailes, chief of the university police, at a news conference. "We're going to stop, we're going to sit down, we're going to review what happened," Mr. Gailes said. "All of these actions are going to be learning points, and we're going to be better for this." Erin Johnson, a sophomore, told The Huntsville Times that a biology faculty meeting was under way when she heard screams coming from the room. According to the 2006 profile, Dr. Bishop and her husband tired of using old-fashioned petri dishes for cell incubation and designed a sealed, self-contained mobile cell incubation system. The system was described as reducing many of the problems with cultivating tissues in the fragile environment of the petri dish. The system was later marketed by Prodigy Biosystems, which raised $1.2 million in capital financing after winning third place in an Alabama technology competition. Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm For Black History Month, five of our many Southern civil rights history links: [Each page has several pieces] http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm http://hunterbear.org/Woolworth%20Sitin%20Jackson.htm http://hunterbear.org/most_sweeping_anti.htm http://hunterbear.org/first.htm http://hunterbear.org/NORTH%20CAROLINA_OUR%20SUCCESSFUL%20BLACK%20BELT%20MOVEMENT.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
