The shooting deaths of three biology professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville this month, allegedly by a colleague who had recently lost an appeal of her tenure denial, seemed to many observers to confirm the worst about faculty workplaces. In conversations on The Chronicle's Web site and elsewhere, people have seized on the killings as evidence that academic life today is a petri dish for madness: The high stress of the tenure process, the pressures to be brilliant at research and teaching, the cloistered environment, the extent to which internal politics affects people's careers—it's a combination that could damage even psychologically healthy people.
Others object that every profession has its own stresses—look at medicine, police work, high finance. And, of course, many people point out that no amount of anguish over a derailed career justifies murder.
What does seem clear is that many aspects of the academic workplace get in the way of recognizing mentally ill employees and offering them the help they need.
"Academic culture really neglects issues of the psychological health of its workers," says David Yamada, a law professor at Suffolk University and founding director of the New Workplace Institute, a nonprofit research center. His particular expertise is bullying.
Less Reaching Out to Faculty Members
While student mental-health awareness and services have improved, especially since the shootings at Virginia Tech, in 2007, Mr. Yamada says most colleges do not have programs designed to promote mental health among faculty members—"maybe because we haven't yet had a poster case for it."
In fact, we have. Though the culprits in high-profile homicides on American campuses have tended to be students, in 1992 an associate professor of mechanical engineering named Valery Fabrikant went on a shooting rampage at Concordia University, in Montreal, that left four people dead. The killer had a long history of abusive and threatening behavior at the university. An independent investigation of what went wrong, known as the "Cowan Report," found that, among other failings, administrators had dodged the problem, treating his misconduct "as an issue of academic quality."
Some things have improved in 18 years. The colleges considered most progressive by mental-health experts offer programs through their human-resources departments that include short-term crisis counseling. But there is less effort to communicate to faculty members than to students the availability of such services or the warning signs of psychological stress.
"Adults are fully capable of seeking counseling services independent of the university system," says Dennis Heitzman, director of the student-focused Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health, at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. "Faculty and staff don't have the same in-your-face kind of information that students get."
The damage that results from ignoring mental health among faculty members is very rarely murder, but it often borders on mayhem. Accounts abound of temper tantrums, distraught assistants, and departments paralyzed by the dysfunction of some key member.
Few Studies of Stress in Academe
Little research exists on the mental and emotional stresses particular to higher education. But a 1987 study of one field that provides a nice control group, psychologists, found that academic psychologists reported significantly more job-related stress than did those in private practice, and that they approached "mildly pathological levels" of "overthoroughness and concerns about colleagues' evaluations."
In fact, according to data from the Standard Insurance Company, which provides employee health-care coverage for more than 1,000 colleges and universities, people in higher education are more likely than those in other sectors to go on disability for psychological reasons. "Seven percent of the claims for other professions we cover are primarily caused by mental or nervous disabilities," says Stanley Kulesa, assistant vice president for benefits, "but for college and university employees it's between 12 and 13 percent."
The problem is that the people in the direst need of help are the least likely to seek it on their own. "The faculty view of themselves is that they are the experts; they have a vested interest in appearing to be in charge," says one former associate dean who dealt with several faculty members suffering from depression or substance abuse.
And colleagues of a troubled person, as distressed as they are by the behavior, may not recognize it as mental illness. Professors can go days or weeks without substantial interactions with one another. Once they do interact, "there's a pretty high tolerance for eccentricity, and the sense that really smart people are often quirky," says David R. Evans, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Buena Vista University, who writes for The Chronicle's On Hiring blog.
"Where's the bright line between nonconformism and madness?" he asks.
Spirited debates, questioning, intellectual pushing—these are hallmarks of academic life. "But there's a difference between that and chest poking, name calling, slamming things down, throwing things across the room," says Cathy Nicholson, director of human resources at the University of Arizona's health-sciences center. "Sometimes people have a hard time distinguishing and don't want to be the one who draws that line in the sand."
Ms. Nicholson says staff members are likelier to report bad behavior than deans or department chairs are. "They're concerned about ruining someone's career," she says.
And the rules for managing faculty behavior are not clear. "Collegiality and collaboration" may be described in a faculty manual as sought-after values, but they are rarely formal criteria for promotion and tenure. There's a reason for that, Mr. Evans says: Historically, "collegial" has too often been code for "just like us."
"Excellent people have been driven out because of cultural differences," he says.
Eccentricity vs. Danger
The question becomes, "What's just someone being themselves, and what's dangerous?" says Darci Thompson, director of Life&Work Connections, a counseling service at Arizona. After shootings left four people dead on her campus in 2002, the university developed a system in which a threat-assessment team made up of people from different divisions of the university can gather quickly if someone expresses serious concern.
"Different people may be used to a different level of behavior," says Ms. Thompson. Including people from outside the department on the team "helps provide a broader picture."
Another problem is that academic administrators rarely have any training as managers, as the "Cowan Report" pointed out. What's more, it said, "the majority of academics who become academic administrators ... are accustomed to work in a milieu where the exercise of authority is considered in bad taste."
Groups like the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Council of Independent Colleges have tried to solve that problem in recent years, offering workshops for department chairs that cover topics like conflict management and dealing with underperforming faculty members.
"This year I anticipate that the conflict-management sessions will touch on the issues raised by Huntsville," says Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges. "Academic life is not what it used to be. The rising tensions of faculty life and what that means for professional development—there should be more attention to that."
Even once they've determined that a faculty member has a mental-health problem, many department and division heads think there is little they can do about it. It is illegal to remove someone for simply having a mental illness, and "people don't want to be accused of violating someone's rights," says Mr. Evans, of Buena Vista.
"'Academic freedom' gets thrown around a lot, and people often feel that tenure protects people no matter what," says Arizona's Ms. Nicholson. "That's not true. Tenure doesn't give you the right to act in a way that makes people uneasy."
But Lawrence White, a vice president and general counsel of the University of Delaware, says public colleges in particular should make sure they have strong reasons for expressing the belief that an intervention is necessary. "You incur legal risk if you're engaging in casual supposition," he says.
In 2008 a federal appeals court sided with a public university's decision requiring a tenured art professor, who showed "bullying" behavior, to submit to a psychological evaluation in order to remain employed. (In the case, the practice is now being challenged on different legal grounds.)
Better, says Ms. Nicholson, is to avoid having to give such an ultimatum, by educating people about mental health and informing employees and their managers of available treatment in a supportive, respectful way.
The danger of insisting that the Huntsville killings had nothing to do with academic culture, says Mr. Yamada, of the New Workplace Institute, is that colleges and universities will miss an opportunity to take faculty members' mental health more seriously.
Comments
1. owtandn - February 18, 2010 at 03:07 am
Of all the articles I have read concerning this incident (which occurred at the university where I received my PhD many, many years ago), this sounds exactly the right note. The mentally ill can be found in any and every environment, but academia seems to be behind the curve in dealing with them.
The fact that there is another article on this very site in which an colleague of Dr. Bishop declares that the knew she was "crazy" speaks volumes. What productive actions did this colleague (who "stands by" his assessment, but not so firmly as to reveal his identity) or others to remove this mentally ill person from the university and thus make the university a safer place? According to the article, he "avoided her."
Do our best and brightest really have no more sophisticated means for dealing with the mentally ill than avoiding them?!
2. romola - February 18, 2010 at 05:00 am
"academic life today is a petri dish for madness"
Maybe, but THIS particular case doesn't demonstrate it. This woman's pubs list - still online at UAH - highlights publications (a) co-authored with her unemployed husband, who (b) takes credit for inventing her invention, and (c) lists several other Anderson family members (their children?) as coauthors on a paper published by a definite vanity press. To any hiring committee at my university, this CV would not indicate a stressed but hardworking and original scholar. It would indicate someone trying desperately to make it look as if she is a scholar. It seems as if UAH didn't believe her act.
Therefore, to say that "Amy Bishop's life demonstrates that academia is a petri dish for madness" is not demonstrably true.
Let's stop pitying this fraud and murderer and donate the column inches instead to the actual scientific and pedagogical achievements of her victims.
3. owtandn - February 18, 2010 at 05:29 am
I see nothing in this article indicating that people are pitying Amy Bishop. The question is how to prevent workplace violence and protect the lives of people like Amy Bishop's victims. There is reason to believe that intervening with Bishop rather than ignoring her mental illness might have saved lives. How can this be a bad thing? Why is it that universities are content to follow rather than lead the nation when it comes to addressing workplace violence? Which interventions work? Which don't? What resources can be called into action? What research is needed to answer the unanswered questions? Aren't these the questions we expect universities to address?
4. ajburnett - February 18, 2010 at 06:37 am
It seems that Amy could not deal with reality. How can this be classified as a mental illness?
5. zagros - February 18, 2010 at 07:15 am
We should stop diagnosing Amy Bishop in public. Why is it that every faculty member who goes on a killing spree MUST be mentally ill? We are not professional psychologists. She might just simply be, what we dare never want to seem to conclude, EVIL and thus deserving of receiving lethal injection for her crimes. We just don't know so why speculate on something that allows for a defense of diminished capacity. At the same time, we must recognize the warning signs not only of mental illness but also of the potential to engage in violent behavior whatever the cause and take steps to deal with it. The fact is that not every person who is violent can, OR SHOULD, be treated for mental illness. Some of them need to be locked up for their illegal actions and, if it rises to murder, executed for these crimes. Pleading "mental illness" all the time merely obviates the personal responsibility for our own actions that all of us must to some degree accept for ourselves and our students.
6. romola - February 18, 2010 at 07:27 am
"There is reason to believe that intervening with Bishop rather than ignoring her mental illness might have saved lives."
It seems as if they DID "intervene with Bishop" - about her poor show as a scholar - by denying her tenure. That she was an underperforming scholar is demonstrable; that she was mentally ill is mere speculation. Would it not be fair to the team of scholars that she attacked to stop making unfounded assumptions that there's something they could have done to prevent the attacks on them? ("Set up periodic mental health checks on staff and don't wear miniskirts?")
7. owtandn - February 18, 2010 at 08:00 am
zagros, So is there simply no hope for detecting what you would call evil before it takes lives? Is punishment after the fact our only recourse? It really doesn't matter what whether we call it mental illness or evil. If we are the intelligent scientists we purport to be, we should be able to detect it and to prevent death at its hands.
No one is saying that Amy Bishop is not personally responsible for the actions that she took. Preventing someone from committing a murder isn't the same thing as absolving him or her from the responsibility after the fact. I would ask however that we examine more closely the idea that intervening before the fact might prevent loss of life in the future.
Denying her tenure clearly didn't prevent the loss of life or make the problem go away. Were no other measures possible to protect the deceased? How is it that institutions of higher education have such poor means (e.g., let's deny tenure and wait for the problem to go away) for addressing troublesome employees?
Why is it not okay to ask ourselves as a society and as institutions what we can do to prevent workplace violence? There is no implied culpability on the part of victims, but rather the determination to ensure that these are the *last* victims of such a horror.
Romola, you appear to be quoting someone as saying, "Set up periodic mental health checks on staff and don't wear miniskirts?" but I'm afraid I don't get the reference.
8. 22228715 - February 18, 2010 at 08:04 am
Some of the above comments are of an ilk to suggest that the call for action in this article is one step ahead of itself. At least two comments above suggest that perhaps that many in the general public, or in academe, have no way of recognizing mental illness, or perhaps do not believe in it. Mental illness might be dismissed as the inevitable presence of evil, or as a weakness, that I don't have so it must just be that others aren't trying hard enough. Personally, I can't discount the existence of pure evil in people, and I imagine that there could be perfectly mentally healthy people who simply choose to do wrong things. But both seem like fairly weak positions to explain most of human behavior, given the evidence.
As difficult as it might be to provide more services and set up better ways to respond to mental illness in academe, it will be even harder to improve things if a critical mass of people to do not really believe in it.
9. fast_and_bulbous - February 18, 2010 at 08:28 am
You're probably more than (pulling out of behind) 1000 times more likely to die in a car accident on the way to campus than you are by the hand of a colleague.
The last thing we need now is everybody overreacting, sneaking around turning each other in for being potentially dangerous.
Life contains risk, and none of us get out of it alive.
10. xiaomin - February 18, 2010 at 08:59 am
It is important NOT to confuse abusive and violent behaviors with mental illness. Abusive and voilent behaviors are learned habbit patterns, the motivation is to gain power and control, to have things go one's own way using abuse, coersion, etc. People with violent and abusive behaviors patterns need to seek help but they are NOT mentally ill because their motivation is clear and their behavior is very logically from their own point of view.
11. hildavcarpenter - February 18, 2010 at 09:11 am
If the chair believes Dr. Bishop will never be worthy of tenure, the propensity of the department agrees, then, Ms. Bishop is set up for failure. Then the question becomes are the mental health issues hard to recognize, or are they (the peers) simply in denial of their own ability to confront Ms. Bishop with the truth? If I were Ms. Bishop that would be darned frustrating for me to go to work, attempt to get tenure, only to be turned down every time by my peers.
12. owtandn - February 18, 2010 at 09:36 am
I think you're correct, fast_and_bulbous, that an over-reaction to this case could prove to be stifling to academia (or any workplace). But I don't agree that all reactions are over-reactions and we have hardly even begun to explore what reactions might possibly lower the risk of workplace violence at universities without stifling academics. I seriously doubt that we could do any better than incremental change, but I also believe that incremental change, much like the incremental steps we take in advancing science, could make a difference.
We spend a lot of time and money and legislation working to reduce risks (car accidents, medical mistakes, inhaling cigarettes, exploding firecrackers, sheesh the list is long) to ourselves and others. We generally succeed (and sometimes fail) at ranking the relative risks and spending money proportionately. Workplace violence is not a risk that we can simply dismiss out of hand. Pulling numbers out of one's ass and making a simplistic comparison to car accidents is not sufficiently probative.
13. laro1470 - February 18, 2010 at 09:54 am
Zagros is completely correct. She's responsible and should pay the ultimate price.
14. romola - February 18, 2010 at 09:55 am
For the person who suggest that those who don't find it demonstrated that DR Bishop was mentally ill because they "don't believe in mental illness," for some of us it's the opposite. I know plenty of brilliant, productive, caring people with DIAGNOSED mental illnesses, who would NEVER commit murder.
Suggesting, based on no evidence, that a murderer (or a white, female, Phd'd murderer?) may have been mentally ill and sufficiently uncared for by her academic colleagues is a big disservice to those who suffer from mental illness and would never want to kill or harm anyone.
That includes, I'm sure, a lot of lovely people and great scholars who are on the job market right now with evidence of treatment for mental illness in their histories. (At my institution - not in the US - one must disclose such treatment at the start of employment as part of the health check.)
15. mulderink - February 18, 2010 at 09:55 am
Fearful administrators, abetted by spineless faculty, allow some individuals to engage in anger-fueled tirades, bullying, and other forms of dangerous and disrespectful behavior. Often, the tormentors are tenured faculty who are deemed to be "untouchable" and unchangeable. While no one desires workplace violence, more needs to be done to stop the widespread acquiescence to troubling behavior. Stronger policies are needed to protect faculty, staff, and students who are bullied, mobbed, and abused. I write from personal experience. Years ago, all of the untenured faculty in my department, including me, complained to our chair and dean about an abusive senior colleague who routinely lashed out and acted out in angry and inappropriate behavior. When I suggested to the dean that this person needed, at a minimum, anger-management counseling, the dean replied, "I can't do that. He'll explode." Precisely my point. BTW, the dean is retired and the faculty member is still here. . . He may not be an Amy Bishop, but he has made life difficult for many other good people who act professionally and maturely. My hope is that this tragic episode at UAH will encourage higher education insitutions to find better ways of dealing with (i.e., treating) troublesome individuals who should not be entitled to more protection that their potential victims.
16. speterfreund - February 18, 2010 at 10:00 am
Making help available is one thing; making sure that faculty or staff seek help mandatory, another entirely. Colleges and universities are increasingly drawing on the resources of employee assistance programs (EAPs) to deal with the various emotional, physical, and financial issues that affect faculty and staff, and are not covered by other providers such as HMOs and credit unions. But the biggest obstacle in making productive use of such programs is employee denial that a problem exists. Unless there is some way to tie a mandatory referral procedure to the annual review process or some other occasion for assessment, there will be no way to ensure that tragedies like last Friday's do not happen again. And any mandatory referral procedure will most likely be tested in court. One way to avoid this last outcome is to involve the EAP, through its affiliation with HR, in the annual review process for the express purpose of looking for danger signals and, when appropriate, issuing a referral.
17. dsmontag - February 18, 2010 at 10:25 am
It's important to remember that the only person who has ever done what Amy Biship did is Amy Bishop. To to use this incident to frame a conversation about mental health among faculty is really sensational, in my opinion. Consider this paragraph:
"The damage that results from ignoring mental health among faculty members is very rarely murder, but it often borders on mayhem. Accounts abound of temper tantrums, distraught assistants, and departments paralyzed by the dysfunction of some key member."
So "temper tantrums, distraught assistants, and departments paralyzed by dysfunction" is considered "mayhem"? Sure, that doesn't sound like fun, and those kinds of situations need to be corrected, but mayhem? This sentence suggests that these behaviors are a mere step away from murder.
18. kloos - February 18, 2010 at 10:47 am
Then there is a bunch of idiots acadamics accross USA, incompetent, without the least minimum of phsicology knowledge but also envious, jelous and a lot more, procreating such situations that can become a concentration campus for the one involved....
19. valery_fabrikant - February 18, 2010 at 11:08 am
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20. glassdarkly - February 18, 2010 at 11:27 am
Whoa.
21. johntoradze - February 18, 2010 at 11:51 am
Fact checking on certain posters:
I have examined Amy Bishop's CV http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/amy_bishop_resource_file_her_c.html and I don't find a problematic publication record. There is one recent 2006 publication in Bentham's "Current Medicinal Chemisty" and another 2005 in Elsevier's "Toxicology" neither of which are "vanity press". Two manuscripts in progress. One article in 2007 that I haven't read in the Proceedings of the IEEE which appears to be educational, but this publication is highly respected. Her record is just fine, and the IEEE article indicates that she is interested in teaching.
Valery Fabrikant's story is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Fabrikant He used to have his own web page, which I read some years back and corresponded a couple of times by email. I was curious about this guy at the time since he had come up on joking references. On his web page he highly recommended taking up arms against a sea of troubles to others. He said that he has never regretted the murders because, which is at least honesty.
I came to cut him a little slack after those letters, in part because he was from Russia, I've spent a lot of time there, and I know many Russians that have problems here in North America. Russian culture is more confrontational in style at a personal level. And Russian intonation of normal speech sounds to the North American ear like a gangster. The combination can be problematic, when the Russian is just expecting equal heat back. Instead they get what in Russia would be thought shrinking-violet behavior.
I have had immigrant colleagues who seek me out because they know they can yell and argue with me about something, even throw erasers and bang on the table and I'll understand it's not personal, it's just style. It's kind of fun actually. But my American colleagues think a couple of these guys are having temper tantrums or are just crazy, which drives them nuts.
The USSR was also a place of official conspiracies against people, and everyone has relatives who disappeared or were murdered. Paranoia is a completely sensible way to be. So I cut Valery a bit of slack for that. I'll note that Valery at least shot the people who were after him, and they were in fact, although I don't think he should have shot them, it makes some sense. Many of us "have a little list, they never will be missed". Amy shot the people who weren't after her, that were supporting her in fact.
Although very few people know it, when I am dealing with a difficult problem, particularly in math, I deliberately "throw a tantrum" throwing things at the wall, that sort of thing. It gets me up, helps me concentrat, and there are famous mathematicians that were brawlers. I do it in secret for the most part because it upsets many people. One of the reasons I have liked a few Russian colleagues because they can get into it with me.
Some of the worst people I have met on campus have been smooth talking snakes. Give me a screamer who lets you know where he or she stands any day. I'd rather have someone take a poke at me, and we can have a dustup (without guns) that clears the air. All this pussyfooting around playing passive-aggressive games? Give me a straight up aggressive or pirate any day.
Hmm. Maybe I should be a dean?
22. robintahir2 - February 18, 2010 at 11:58 am
I think it is important to point out that Amy Bishop's research accomplishments are not impressive for anyone who have been a professor for 7 years at UAH (plus 10 years of postdoc + scientist experience at Harvard, and plus PhD years at Harvard) - she is 45 years old. She will not get tenure at any of the research-intensive universities in US. I feel obligated to write this comment, as some media are potraying as if Bishop is a spectacular researchers who were mistreated and denied tenure due to politics (or other unfair reasons). Her accomplishments and productivities are poor, and her tenure denial is her own failure and fault (not others'). She should just thank UAH and her department colleagues for the 7 years of work opportunities (at UAH), and then she can pursue her other career as novel writer. Some people were born to be great and serious professors, and some others were born to be great in different professions.
23. rightwingprofessor - February 18, 2010 at 12:22 pm
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24. goxewu - February 18, 2010 at 01:01 pm
1. Why did Amy Bishop [OK, allegedly] gun down her colleagues? 2. Because she's mentally ill. How do we know she's mentally ill? Because she gunned down her colleagues. Why did she gun down her colleagues? Because she's mentally ill. How do we know she's mentally ill? Because she gunned down her colleagues...and so on, ad infinitum, in the ongoing Medicalization of Practically Everything. Perhaps when the American Psychiatric Association issues DSM-V, something called Academics' Exculpatory Syndrome will be included, and all of us can get treatment.
2. All this mentoring and monitoring stuff: Can you imagine the indignation, the tirades, the formal complaints, the lawsuits, even violent reactions when faculty start suggesting to other faculty who don't consider themselves mentally ill that they are, indeed, mentally ill and should get treatment for it. If you can't, think of an irrational, bullying, tangent-prone, the-world-is-against-me colleague (you're certain to have at least one), and suggest to him or her that he or she get treatment for his or her "mental illness." And be so kind as to post the reaction on this thread.
3. "Set up periodic mental health checkups." Has anybody here ever read anything about Soviet psychiatry? Seen or read "One Flew the Cuckoo's Nest"? "The Snake Pit"? "1984"? "Catch-22"? The idea of faculty making flu-shot-like appointments to sit down with a therapist who'll check to see that their eccentricities are merely that and not mental illness is...I can't decide between supremely tragic or supremely comic.
4. Academics' maddening inclination to exculpate the person in favor of blaming something larger and more abstract (the tenure system, the impersonal institution, "pressures," etc.) is what drives people to advocate legalizing "concealed/carry" on campuses. Of course, had that been the case in Huntsville, you might have had by now several double murders (Packer #1, who conveniently happens to be carrying a gun at the moment, blows away antagonist and is quickly blown away by Packer #2) instead of just one triple murder. (And I did say "academics' maddening inclination"; it's persons of a common attitude, not some abstract force.
25. tolerantly - February 18, 2010 at 01:28 pm
owtandn writes: "What productive actions did this colleague (who "stands by" his assessment, but not so firmly as to reveal his identity) or others to remove this mentally ill person from the university and thus make the university a safer place? According to the article, he "avoided her."
Do our best and brightest really have no more sophisticated means for dealing with the mentally ill than avoiding them?!"
No, they do not, and the colleague did all that he sensibly could have done. What do you think would have happened if he'd waged some campaign insisting that she was bonkers?
Seriously, you remind me of people who blame the spouses after a parent tries to kill the kids. In many instances there's absolutely nothing, under the law, that the spouse could have done, including divorce, to keep the kids safe. We do not have legal safeguards from people who seem to be nuts but have not been demonstrably dangerous. This is the issue we have danced around in multiple campus killings over the last decade, and that's because of the resistance of the mental-health community & advocates for the mentally ill to admitting that yes, sometimes people who are nuts are also dangerous, especially when you put them under pressure and expect them to respond like people who are not nuts.
The one I feel for most in this instance is the husband, who will undoubtably be subjected to "But didn't you *know*? Why didn't you stop her?" interrogations by people who will not want to understand that there's little to nothing he could've done, even if he had seen danger.
26. laughin_otter - February 18, 2010 at 02:44 pm
This discussion reminds me of the blind men and the elephant. One gets hold of the tail and thinks it's the whole elephant; another, the ear; another, a toenail, and so on.
In 2010, cannot we do better than to pull out the old hackneyed labels, and instead look clear-eyed at the individual and the situation that led to this tragedy? For reference, read (or reread) R. D. Laing's "The Politics of Experience."
I absolutely can see how the pressures of an academic career and workplace would drive someone crazy. It's a well-known fact that modern life does that to undeserving, unsuspecting people, and more so as cyberspace daily replaces the face-to-face, human social ties that bind us.
I've almost been there recently, when a clique of classmates in my trade-school writing course appealed to the dean to get my course scrapped and me fired. One student went so far as to secretly tape record a conference with me about a slam comment she made in connection with an assignment. Did the dean in question support me? Not in my opinion. Rather, he stood me up when we were supposed to meet together with that student.
Since that time I have apparently been stigmatized by two deans and a mentor teacher, and have been watched closely since last fall to see if the students' opinion of me improved. (Never mind that I had a great relationship with students in my other sections and that the clique was generally shunned by their classmates.) I have been scrutinized for my "classroom management" and told to back off on my focus for the course (as if the course I had developed and taught successfully for 5 straight years at other institutions were not enough), leading to my being denied the next term's contract.
I'm an adjunct, and I know the rules of the game. But the shoddiness! I have been pressured to accede to students' whining about the pace of the course, how much paper I used for handouts, homework. I have been urged to scrap my pedagogy in favor of developing edutainment activities. I have been counseled to abandon process and go for the instant gratification of quick-and-dirty assignments--in-class activities, mind you, as homework obstructs their extracurricular activities. Students have been quizzed by other faculty about my classroom protocols and I have been challenged to my face by the so-called "learning center" staff as to my standards & expectations. The fact that each instructor teaches as that instructor sees it seems an unknown at this and probably not a few "institutions of higher education."
All this has seriously eroded my self-confidence, engendering a kind of paranoia about and ultimately, my ability to care about the quality of my work. I now doubt my ability to continue in my career, for which I trained extensively and for which I now owe over $150,000 in student loans. And I have ALWAYS been a very conscientious, imaginative, thorough instructor. Yet even though the campus is "concerned" about student "happiness"--to serve the goal of ultimate retention--the fact of low faculty morale seems to be a complete puzzle.
Why do we not look at an acting-out like this as basically a gesture of complete despair? What, other than despair, would lead a person to take such a drastic action that would inevitably mean the end of everything that person once held dear?
Who knows but that denial of tenure was merely the tip of the iceberg? Who knows but that age discrimination played a role? Maybe she wasn't considered "popular" among the students? What avenues might she have sought out for redress--and maybe she did seek them out--even in her obviously deteriorating frame of mind?
Academic faculties, for all their exposure and presumably belief in humanistic ideals, can be some of the most craven bullies on the planet. Academicians would be well advised to cast off their holier-than-thou mantle and to look in the mirror each day, as they straighten themselves to go to work, and say: "What can I do today to promote collegiality and fair play among my peers?"
27. hmprescott63 - February 18, 2010 at 03:09 pm
Tolerantly, you had me until the end of the third paragraph, which to me seems pretty intolerant of mentally ill persons and their advocates. There are plenty of dangerous people who aren't mentally ill.
28. martisco - February 18, 2010 at 03:54 pm
"We do not have legal safeguards from people who seem to be nuts but have not been demonstrably dangerous."
Actually, we do. There were plenty of legal safeguards in place back in 1986 when she killed her brother (and was not promptly questioned or charged) and when she assaulted a woman in a restaurant years later (for which it was recommended she undergo anger management therapy). For whatever reason, law enforcement and the justice system chose to minimize this woman's behavior. Was it her family's social status (and later her status as a white professor with certain academic credentials) that was the reason? We'll probably never know.
29. malcolmx - February 18, 2010 at 05:27 pm
Great article but there are some really bad people in administration who go out of their way to mess over people. I have seen it happen too many times. Vice Presidents, Presidents, deans screwing over people and then hiding their dirty deeds behind legal counsel. The classic mantra is we cannot comment on pending litigation.
30. timebandit - February 18, 2010 at 05:39 pm
I'm no legal scholar, but I think that comments above fail to recognize the key distinctions between legal categories, namely "premeditated," "temporary insanity" and "insanity." Let's remember that those temporary insanity incidents are not only unpredictable, but are often considered for people without a history of mental illness.
Disagree if you will, but I would go so far as to say that someone who has had long term treatment of their mental problems may have better coping resources, such as when chronically depressed friends check themselves into a ward for 3 days if feeling they are at suicide risk. Rage is different from depression, but you get my point.
31. milner - February 18, 2010 at 08:29 pm
Is she mentally ill? The only thing I have read was that she went off on tangents. Was she depressed? manic? have delusions or hallucinations? None of these things have been mentioned and she may well NOT be mentally ill. Why do we blame mental illness when someone does something horrific?
32. cheminot - February 18, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Dear moderator,
Please remove racist comments by johntoradze (#21). There are many Russian scholars in the US who will find outrageous his characterization of Russia as a place where "paranoia is a completely sensible way to be." It is a shame that such an ignorance about Russia still informs the opinion of a reader of CHE. The worst kind of racism, really.
33. octoprof - February 19, 2010 at 12:08 am
Tolerantly said "We do not have legal safeguards from people who seem to be nuts but have not been demonstrably dangerous."
This is particularly true in Alabama, which is a patient's rights state. Therefore, no matter how bizarre the behavior, nothing can really be done (i.e. forced) until the person is proven to be a danger to others (i.e. has hurt others).
This varies by state but is particularly in the patient's favor in Alabama.
34. udippel - February 19, 2010 at 05:49 am
What, if we look at it from a different angle? Once upon a time, the university professor was tenured, considered weird, and what want you! These days, (s)he needs to be a salesman, marketing manager, attract millions of external funding, publish a handful of indexed journal papers annually. That's not a very healthy and holistic stress. Most of all, not exactly one that delivers what the public might be thinking it did: academic excellence. There is plenty of stress, but definitively no more time for such luxuries!
Actually, it is simply sad. This is not meant to defend a murderess in any way, though.
35. tolerantly - February 19, 2010 at 07:59 am
hmprescott63 writes: "Tolerantly, you had me until the end of the third paragraph, which to me seems pretty intolerant of mentally ill persons and their advocates. There are plenty of dangerous people who aren't mentally ill."
Unfortunately, this is exactly where the problem lies. The minute anyone says anything suggesting that a mentally ill person might be dangerous, advocates come out alleging intolerance and defending the rights of the mentally ill. Which, in general, is a good thing. Except when you're dealing with someone whom anyone with a reasonable internal sounding board, or experience with crazies, would want to stay away from.
I'd guess the prof who pegged her as crazy right away had some pretty good experience with crazies and knew what he was talking about; students were also aware that something was not right with the lady, and I'd guess that many others could've said the same thing but were too prudent to do so. You'll notice that the "she's crazy" prof's remarks were going to be used in an EEOC suit.
36. hmprescott63 - February 19, 2010 at 09:01 am
@Milner -- thanks for supporting my point.
@octoprof -- thank God that Alabama and other states respect patients' rights. Aren't we entitled to the same due process as anyone else?
@tolerantly -- since the person who pegged Bishop as "crazy" has not been identified we have no idea whether s/he has any experience with other persons with mental illness.
37. getwell - February 19, 2010 at 11:55 am
Murder is murder - no matter one's mental capacity, idealogy, religion, or political view.
Taking INNOCENT human lives because you are angry about something is not okay for any reason.
Sad that we humans can't seem to agree on that one simple fundamental truth:(
38. cichacech - February 19, 2010 at 01:08 pm
Doesn't the intense academic pressure that could "psychologically damage even healthy people" strongly suggest that perhaps the entire "academic profession" should be examined under a critical light and reevaluated? Is it really good for progress and our students to have a bunch of messed up (pseudo)intellectuals doing research and teaching? Having survived B.S. and Ph.D. Chemistry programs in the 1980s at a top North American university, my experience supports a reevaluation of how the system functions and why it is there.
39. johntoradze - February 19, 2010 at 01:21 pm
I second that cichacech. It is very screwed up, and getting more corrupt every year.
40. cheri28 - February 19, 2010 at 03:09 pm
"What productive actions did this colleague (who "stands by" his assessment, but not so firmly as to reveal his identity)"
Due to the fact that her husband Jim Anderson was investigated for sending a pipe bomb to a wrongly perceived enemy of Amy Bishop, I'd say that man is brilliant for not recealing his name.
41. navydad - February 19, 2010 at 03:26 pm
I am a professional psychologist (clinical) and reading this discussion is discouraging. Let's start with "mental illness," which presumably means that the "mentally ill" person qualifies for an Axis I or Axis II DSM "diagnosis." Someone diagnosed with "schizophrenia, disorganized type," (untreated) would be recognized as mentally ill by most people and it is likely that a specific organic etiology for the disorder will be identified at some point. Someone diagnosed as "narcissistic personality disorder" is considered "mentally ill" in the DSM sense, but would not be described by most people as mentally ill. In fact many narcissistic people are quite sane and successful. You wouldn't want to marry one, though. The DSM is a seriously flawed system with basic conceptual problems and most people's conceptions of mental illness are an even bigger conceptual mess than the DSM. I don't know what diagnosis Bishop qualifies for and neither do you, but there is a good chance it isn't one that clearly fits in the category of "illness" (e.g., schizophrenia, severe OCD).
I also get discouraged when I hear calls for "psychological evaluations" of people who seem "crazy" to their colleagues. The thought of trying to evaluate some assistant professor whose behavior has caused concerns among colleagues and who has been mandated to be evaluated makes me want to throw up my hands and head to the beach. And the idea that such evaluations could accurately predict violent behavior is pure fantasy.
The sad reality is that Bishop's crimes and others like them can't be prevented in a relatively free and open society.
Here's another take on Bishop's crimes: a bullying bitch goes off and attacks people she feels have wronged her. Maybe that's all we need to know here. If she were a poor lowlife going after her husband's mistresses the story would appear in a three inch story on the inside pages of the local newspaper and would promptly be forgotten.
42. rambo - February 19, 2010 at 04:18 pm
it is easy to identify staff, students and faculty members who are deaf (hearing aid, sign language), blind, wheelchair users. Harder for mental health. It is illegal under the ADA to ask "whether are you disabled?" because there are no affirmative action requirements and no medical exams allowed under it is for the whole groups of employees....
43. tribble24 - February 19, 2010 at 06:06 pm
In the words of Ms Bishop's attorney: "She gets at issue with people that she doesn't need to and obsesses on it," Miller said. "She won't shake it off, and it's really (things of) no great consequence."
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/amy_bishop_lawyer_roy_miller_h.html
Call it what you will, paranoid schizophrenia, etc, but this is likely what the unnamed faculty member sensed when he proclaimed her 'crazy' and subsequently hid from her. I call it normal intuition and plain old common sense on his part to have done so.
44. russerican - February 20, 2010 at 05:26 am
First, I'd like to point out the interesting comment left by the wise psychologist. My future profession (I'm currently a graduate student conducting research) is nowhere in the realm of psychology; it is engineering. With that being said, I think I have a fairly good concept and understanding of facts, proper delivery of facts, and misrepresentation of facts. When medical anomalies such as the "restless leg syndrome" start surfacing and being accepted into society as legitimate "illnesses" is about the time I start questioning the profession. My understanding is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that most medical illnesses are diagnosed based on symptoms; this may have been an accurate diagnosis during medieval times when weighing as much as a chicken suggested you were a witch. However, in present times, a preposterous number of illness have been invented, but based on what? Theories. Our world is slowly degenerating into a virtual reality mathematical model that has lost all sense of reality in the realm of "technical terminology." All these mental illnesses, abnormalities, etc. have been dreamt up for two sole purposes: fame and fortune. And they all rely on a misunderstood concept of normality. Let me get technical for a brief moment and define the word normal (I'll Google the word, since that seems to be the norm). Normal - "being approximately average or within certain limits in e.g. intelligence and development; "a perfectly normal child"; "of normal intelligence"; "the most normal person I've ever met." The average do not exist in the world of academia. Average is a function of perception which is a function of society (as mentioned above by the person with the Russian friend). To make this simple, average is a useless word unless the pool of which the average is taken is clearly defined; in my opinion, that should be all cultures that exist in this world. As you can see, that is quite impossible to imagine, nonetheless, define. Based on this sole fact, and the fact that I'm human, you're human, and we know what it is to be human, I suggest the following: every person is different and the way they react to stress, culture, confrontation, criticism, loud noises, etc. is different. Shit happens; Accept it, learn to understand it, and move on. Most of the time, people only intensify a situation because of their unutterable ignorance and self-centered world view and inability to just open their eyes and assess a situation for what it is.
Many of the above comments are simple, logical, and I would guess are spot on. I don't know why (and I will admit I am guilty of this, I'm only human) but we, people, tend to make things overly complicated when in fact, they are so simple. Emotions are a powerful thing and everyone's expression of them is different. If you don't believe me, please, visit Russia, or find a Russian friend, and you will very quickly come to that conclusion (I use Russia as an example because I'm fully aware of the radical differences and the cultural shock that I have experienced the times I visited my ancestors there).
45. kloos - February 20, 2010 at 06:49 am
I have never met on such forums as these so many pchicopatic cretins as here.
46. seekerone - February 20, 2010 at 11:01 am
kloos... poor kloos... you haven't a kloo. You don't recognize all your freedoms, my friend. For example: you are free to not read the forums. Considering your other posts it is clear you are not happy with your current university. You are free to find other employment. Heck - you are free to leave the US for that matter. Consider all your freedoms and options. You don't have to be an angry little person for the rest of your life.
47. kloos - February 20, 2010 at 06:07 pm
@navydad
Thanks for your wise and to the point comments on the issue, I hope the rest of 'commentators'
will be able to assimilate your explanations on the matter before posting some more discouraging and stupids comments. Yes, you have said all.
48. oldcommprof - February 21, 2010 at 01:26 pm
Kloos, please either edit your comments before you post them or learn English before posting so that we can figure out what you're trying to say.
49. applefitch - February 21, 2010 at 01:34 pm
I predict a precipitous rise in universities granting tenure.
Seriously, enough with the psychobabble! The irony here is that the conditions that allowed this violent act to happen in the first place are what also provide the template we impulsively use to explain it away. Our propensity to Medicalize behavior to the nth degree is itself in need of a DSM code.
We're loath to confront bad behavior as bad behavior directly, so we classify it as an abstract category thus diffusing the responsibility of such acts away from the individual perpetrator. This also allows us to ignore bad behavior a such because we've identified it as a "condition" of which the individual is now a victim. We do this with our kids as a matter of course as well - I prefer the nomenclature "brat" myself.
So we blame ourselves (actually, everyone but ourselves) for not recognizing the "signs and symptoms" of such an identifiable condition. But then that's precisely the game being played here, an infinite loop giving us permission to not confront individual bad behavior directly and, in the end, collectivizing the responsibility when such tragedies take place. And therein lies the irony, worthy of Greek tragedy.
50. russerican - February 22, 2010 at 12:59 am
First, thank you Mr. navydad, I accept the generous compliment, and do hope that other posters (incorrect usage but I can guarantee most readers 'understood') will be enlightened. Replying to the last comment (the only one that attempts to counter my argument, and fails, though possibly unknowingly), I would like the chance to dissect your "infinite" loop argument. First off, I do believe that you may need to reassess the conditions under which an ironic event occurs. If the case was such, that the cause or "conditions" provided the proof or "template" in arriving at a conclusion, then it would not be possible for irony to exist. What you describe is the logical and expected process and thus is not an irony. In fact, if that were the case, this inconclusive debacle of misconceptions, retaliations, and debauchery would not have seen the light of day. Secondly, by defining the accused as a perpetrator, you have committed (interesting, I was not aware commit in the past tense had an additional 't', I thought it was commited) the crime of presupposition. An a-priori judgement in this respect is not only incorrect, but is a perfect example of the conundrum we are attempting to evaluate. Third, oxymorons do very little to support your argument. Third, collectivizing is not a word.
51. applefitch - February 22, 2010 at 02:26 am
First, thank you russerican for your counterpoint (is counterpoint suppose to be hyphenated? I've always thought not but forgive me if I'm mistaken. I'll check and get back to you in the next couple of days, one way or another but it is an interesting proposition to consider). In any event, I do wish to reply to your rejoinder, if only to demonstrate, in the spirit of Kant's synthetic a priori of course, that judgments are not merely limited in any necessary or non-intuitive sense to analytic statements alone, but also and perhaps more importantly and with all due respect, which is important given the gravity of the present set of circumstances in which we find ourselves, are applicable regardless of one's point of departure (note: I refrained from using the more common usage of this phrase for want of a better, or should I say more pleasing, rhetorical device, which would in due time help the reader's discernment regarding illustrative metaphors). First, let me say that while you may find the details of my argument objectionable (although, I find it unassailable from a normative perspective) I can assure you that I have given serious thought to these matters from both, and by both I mean each side, an astute academic perspective and from a lay perspective, although I have no formal training in the latter. Fourthly, the absurdity of misconceiving the antecedent conditions of what is most certainly a solid and irrefutable modus ponens contradicts your first statement in light of the extraordinary presuppositional intentions that you have withdrawn from this particular quagmire for which no amount of gerrymandering can consume. Secondly, onomatopoeia is most certainly a word.