Tenure can bring out the crazies

2010_2_14 Tenure can bring on the crazies
In read in the New York Times this morning about Professor Amy Bishop of the University of Alabama in Huntsville going around the bend after not getting tenure at the school. I am sure many instructors have fantasized about doing what she did, Billy Liar-like, while up for tenure, but she took it all the way by pulling a gun during a Departmental meeting, killing three of her colleagues and sending three others to the hospital in serious condition. In the process of checking her background the police found out she had shot to death her 18 year old brother 24 years ago, and she was let go because it was called an accident when it may not have been. And. strangely, when they asked for the file on that case they were told it had disappeared.
By all accounts Amy Bishop was Harvard-trained and brilliant but left a lot to be desired as an instructor. She never made eye contact with students and taught by reading the text book to the class. There had been many complaints about her teaching. On the other hand she was innovative in the lab and had come up with a method that was said to soon replace the use of petri dish in research. She and her husband, also a member in the Biology Dept at Huntsville, had started a business to market her invention. It seemed she had plenty of reason to live, and in addition to her husband, she had three kids at home. Yet she cancelled all that in a moment of ultimate pique, throwing all caution to the wind, and could now face the death penalty in Alabama. One wonders what kind of mind would make such a crazy decision. But apparently, what goes around comes around. Her madness had a history.
The year I left academe I was up for tenure at UNLV. Before there was any formal start to the process two Deans I had been playing basketball with on Sunday mornings for 5 years took me to a bar in Las Vegas called THE JUNGLE CLUB to give me “the bad news.” It was so dark inside the place it took me several minutes to adjust my vision. There was something Darwinian about being told I would never get tenure at the school in THE JUNGLE CLUB. What was I, a performing ape that didn’t make the cut? I knew what the reason would be: my political activism on campus and in town. The administration was especially displeased with the fact I had brought the teacher’s union to campus. However, none of this made any real difference to me as I had long ago decided to drop out of teaching. The decision was, as they say, academic. Also, my wife was already in negotiations to teach in Tucson at the University of Arizona. But after being given the official word by the two Deans, who were friends of mine, I at least had the satisfaction of quitting before they had a chance to deny me tenure. Life is made up of these small triumphs over anger and adversity.