Huntsville, Ala.—The chairman of the biology department at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Gopi K. Podila, had supported the tenure bid of Amy Bishop, the biology professor who has been accused of killing him and two other professors and critically injuring two more.
That’s according to William Setzer, chairman of the university’s chemistry department, who said he had spoken to Mr. Podila directly about Ms. Bishop’s failed tenure bid. Some have speculated that her tenure denial may have been the reason she pulled out a gun one hour into a department meeting Friday afternoon and opened fire on her colleagues.
As for why she had been turned down for tenure, Mr. Setzer said he had heard that her publication record was thin and that she hadn’t secured enough grants. Also, there were concerns about her personality, he said. In meetings, Mr. Setzer remembered, she would go off on “bizarre” rambles about topics not related to tasks at hand — “left-field kind of stuff,” he said.
Sometimes she would mention during meetings that she didn’t get tenure. “She was right upfront about not getting tenure,” he said. “And she didn’t seem, you know, overtly pissed off or anything like that.”
Mr. Setzer is also an adjunct member of the biology department, and he knew Ms. Bishop, though they were not friends. “She was kind of weird,” he said. “I mean, all scientists are weird, right? But she was just kind of weird. She didn’t strike me as psychotic.”
While there were those who supported her tenure and promotion, Mr. Setzer said, he didn’t believe she had any friends in the department.
There was no doubt, however, about her intelligence or pedigree. “She’s pretty smart,” said Mr. Setzer. “That was not a question. There might have been some question about how good of a [principal investigator] and mentor she was. Yeah, she knows her stuff, and she’s a good technical person, but as far as being the boss and running the lab, that was kind of the question.”
Mr. Setzer said he was “mildly surprised” that Ms. Bishop had not received tenure last year. He asked Mr. Podila about it and was told that while the chairman supported her, most of the faculty members in the department did not.
Along with Mr. Podila, two professors — Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson — were killed in the shooting. Another professor in the department, Joseph Leahy, and the department’s secretary, Stephanie Monticciolo, are in critical condition. Yet another professor, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera, was released from the hospital earlier today.
Follow The Ticker through your favorite RSS reader.
46 Responses to Slain Department Head Supported Accused Killer’s Tenure Bid
jffoster - February 14, 2010 at 8:14 am
Last point well taken. There seem to be quite a number of pieces to this tragic story and it might be well to hold off forming “a judgement” as John F Kennedy used to say until those come to light and can be fitted into the puzzle. A couple of general observations: comparing curriculas vitarum of a given person at tenure time with those of older, longer situated, members of the department isn’t always very helpful or reveailing. Criteria have grown over the decades — I saw them tighten over the 6 year period between the time I first entered the professoriate and the time I came up for P&T. But that’s the case in many fields. Admirals may have to evaluate for promotion and command young division and command grade officers who have more qualifications than those same admirals had when they started out. Good admirals, like good professors, realize that you make a department strong by hiring and promoting people better than you. Or at least who are better than you were at the same relative career / vocation chronology. The other thing is that timing of publications is often of some interest to P&T Committees and Deans and Provosts. A run of dry years followed by a flurry of articles in the year one comes up for tenure, all else equal (which they have a habit of not being), arouses concern. Many evaluators prefer to see perhaps fewer publications but in a more steady stream. So it’s very hard on the basis of what has become confirmeed public information to form any kind of nonspeculative appraisal of the U Ala Huntsville case.
frenchfries - February 14, 2010 at 10:24 am
First, the shooting and the tenure have to be decoupled. It is a tragic and irrational response to denial of tenure.Second, based on the time line I can gather (she found out *last spring* that she was denied tenure), the two 2009 papers would not have appeared before her package was sent out for letters. Thus, she had but two papers, one in 2004 and one in 2005 according to WOS. One was with her husband (not a student), and the other was from her work at Harvard. I can’t imagine that UAH tenure standards are this low. I have no idea what her chair saw that the easily accessed publication record does not make plainly obvious. If she was so successful in business, then leaving UAH would have been a good move since it sounds like teaching was not her strong suit either.
cameronuniv - February 14, 2010 at 10:44 am
I was always told that “the tenure decision should not be a surprise”. It seems that many universiites are not communicating this message clearly. Many times, universities do not give a candidate a specific number of publications required to get tenure BEFORE he/she accepts the job. If this message was clear, the faculty member should not be surprised if he/she is not getting tenure. The faculty member needs to know if he/she is a fit with the university. Making tenure a moving target results in anger and bitterness that last permanently even if tenure is granted..The Ph.D. is a moving target in itself. The tenure process doesn’t have to be this way..
zionmassai - February 14, 2010 at 11:47 am
Halley, i think that your comments are racist and repugnant. What if all the victims were not minorities? Then would you seek to link a public policy item to what is otherwise a brutal act by a murderous woman, who apparently killed her WHITE brother in 1986? It would require a person who blames nonwhite achievement on affirmative action as if it, and not their individual determination against the odds that otherwise favor the majority, explains their presence. How many minorities are there in the field of biology. There are all sorts of affirmative action recipients–especially the one with the MAJORITY Quota. It explains how George Bush and Sarah Palin are able to rise from stunning mediocrity. And pray tell, what of the whites who were shot and survived–so far? And how often do minorities get denied tenure every day in institutions where all of the key decision-makers are white, but don’t go out and shoot colleagues. So tell yourself this racist lie; but keep in mind, she killed minorities who supported her–includinh the Chair. And lastly, the colleague who offered the commentary about her mediocrity, apparently was WHITE!
halley - February 14, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Attaboy – play the race card and get it in early. There were three minorities in the dept – all were killed. Deliberate or incidental – that was my question. Most of your post is hysterical and irrelevant. “apparently killed her WHITE brother” – not what the police chief at the time said. “Individual determination against the odds” – stop it, I’m going to cry. “How many minorities are there in the field of biology” – no idea, how many whites in the field of basketball? References to Bush and Palin irrelvent and bizarre. “How often do minorities get denied tenure every day” – no idea, do you? Do you you know how many? “Where all of the key decision-makers are white” – really? Which country is this? As for stating that “nonwhite achievement [is only based] on affirmative action”, those are your words, not mine. This is a tragic incident and the race-baiters and one-trick ponies should desist until the facts are revealed in the trial. Academic Al Sharptons are the last thing UAH needs right now.
zarea - February 14, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Halley,Give me a break! It takes only a racist to observe that Bishop killed three minorities and then go on to state that she probably did because affirmative actions had led her as an otherwise successful academic to be denied tenure. While observing that she killed minorities is correct, it point more squarely on the fact that Bishop might be a racist. This woman had killed her brother in Boston twenty years or so ago and apparently only good family connections had prevented her case to get out. Instead she was allowed to roam free in academia.This case I believe is more related to the pressures of Academia itself and the sort of irrational responses it can bring from different people. Most of us would be pissed off, disapointed, depressed on being denied tenure. But it takes a special state of mind to go on a killing spree and on a vendetta. If the University knew about her criminal past and unstable character, the administration might have prevented this.And Halley, next time that you fall short of being hired or getting tenured, look at your own shortcomings instead of all those black affirmative actions academics who steal your spot. I could easily say, wrongly, that it takes a white person to be particularly weak academically to not get a job and tenure because white professors have so much priviledge already…that would be stupid and unfair of course.
laoshi - February 14, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Jeez I can’t believe y’all are racializing this. The lady is psycho, that’s all.
bioinfres - February 14, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Halley, since you decided to focus on the minority status of those killed, rather than the humanity of all involved in this tragedy, it would be ironic if she killed the very people who supported her tenure bid. At least we now know that the department chair, a minority whom she killed, supported her tenure bid. Bishop’s killing of her brother over twenty years ago after an argument (according to a policeman’s recollections in the Boston Globe) makes me think that she needed help a long time ago but never got the right kind. I feel for her children, the families of the dead and injured, and the Boston policemen now second guessing themselves about whether they made the right decision not to charge her with her brother’s murder.
lomalinda - February 14, 2010 at 2:33 pm
My vote for the most ingnorent comment ever made on this site goes to ….. durms…. skottd.Not all the deails of this case are known. Maybe she will talk, maybe she wont, but plesae stop all this nonsense.
tolerantly - February 14, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Totally nuts. You realize she’s Jewish, right? Not exactly a member of a rampaging race-power majority.”Psycho” will do. Also applicable to those who see a racial agenda in the shooting. Has it occurred to any of you that she’s probably not a hotshot marksman and was likely firing wildly? She managed to wing several people at close range.
rgren - February 14, 2010 at 3:17 pm
The ethical question that bothers me is WHY a department head would EVER discuss a promotion and tenure file with someone from another department. Every institution at which I have held a faculty position protect these documents from distribution (except to external referees) and holds the discussions of departmental decisions to be confidential. Votes are recorded without attribution to individuals. If the chemistry department head is an adjunct member of the biology department, he would not likely be on the biology P&T committee. Gossiping about the P&T file of a member of one’s department faculty violates all the ethical norms I have encountered.
bstrauszfamily - February 14, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Obviously, none of us know at this point if affirmative action or sheer bitterness or any number of other things triggered her rampage. The fact that she was a female professor, hired in the sciences department, surrounded by a diverse group of colleagues speaks to the commitment of UAH to diversity and affirmative action did not enter my mind. Still, we don’t know…and I don’t see the harm in people thinking ‘out loud’ as they try to make sense of the senseless. If any of us truly enjoy sharing ideas, we allow people to think through situations without insult.
plattpatty - February 14, 2010 at 3:37 pm
My, this is so academic. I think we should be worried about 2 things primarily: that this woman was able to bring a loaded gun to a facutly meeting and get off what appear to be a full chamber, killing three and wounding another three and then, blithely walk out the building to wait for her husband for a “date night”! I think UAH staff, students and faculty should be panic-stricken. Secondly, as if we need more bad press and misunderstanidng about tenure and faculty conduct–read the reports in mainstream press–tenure equals jobs and security for life and it is nearly, if not totally impossible to terminate someone after they get tenure. Faculty governance and tenure systems are being ridiculed. The danger in this episode is the loss of tenure altogether, then we can all be contingent and work as “at-will” (that would be the will of management, btw) employees. We do need to reexamine the bloated expectations and workload for newer, not yet tenured faculty and we need to look at that in the context of the crisis for contingents, the fiscal chaos of nearly every state and institution of higher education and what we can and should be doing to nurture and mentor our younger colleagues rather than serving as the last bastion of hazing and indentured servitude in our glorious developed nation. This event and the several other recent killings of faculty members, whether by students or colleagues should be an alarm and a call to action to find real solutions to the anxiety and frustration of APT systems. My deepest sympathies to the murdered colleagues.
snwiedmann - February 14, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Excuse me, but how can anyone with a functioning brain think that her actions, the cold-blooded murder of three individuals and the attempted murder of at least three more, be justified by anything?! I don’t care how unfair her tenure denial might or might not be — you hire an attorney and go to court. Nothing excuses what she did.
reddwarf - February 14, 2010 at 3:51 pm
It seems to me that the people who think this has something to do with affirmative action hires have never worked in higher ed or been involved in tenure decisions. Granted, this may not have a link to the shooting, but I have never known “affirmative action” to have anything to do with tenure. I do know that personal conflicts, politics, incompetent committees who do not follow their own guidelines and committees filled with the dregs of the faculty because no one else is willing to do the thankless job DO have a lot to do with tenure decisions and that many times they are NOT based on objective evidence at all times.As was mentioned earlier, if it is a surprise then something wasn’t done right somewhere. Most people who do not receive tenure in my department knew what they were lacking and whether they were making adequate progress or not. This is not always true in other departments. Committees and Administrators point to the disclaimer “good annual evaluations do not mean you are ensured tenure”, but in truth, if you are never told what you are doing wrong or what the targets are, the process is hardly fair.So to sum up: Tenure process unfair? oftten times yes Tenure process racist or effected by “affirmative action – not likely and the only ones who would make a tragedy like this into a platform to bitch about affirmative action are idiots.
rejani - February 14, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Scientists are supposed to utilize deductive logic to invstigate phenomena aren’t they? How can someone who is part of the scientific community even begin to speculate about a causal connection between affirmative action and this tragically violent act? Anyone has a right to support affirmative action or to be against it, but to make such a prejudicial comment in this forum strikes me as morally not being responsible. First, for your comment to have even a hint of validity, you have to prove that all of the “minority” (your word not mine) professors were somehow affirmative action appointments, and secondly you would have to prove that the professor in question specifically sought out faculty of color to shoot. I respectfully argue that until you can prove those two points, “beyond a reasonable doubt” that you should not not try to tie random acts of violence by mentally deranged people to political causes that you may or may not like especially in a forum meant for academic discussion.
22228715 - February 14, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Point of clarification for the discussion of race… going by photos alone, at least one and perhaps two of the people she shot were likely White (althought granted that they were wounded, not killed). That said, I too was struck by the diversity of race, ethnicty, and gender for a science department in Alabama, but I’m not sure if that is a testament to anything other than my being uninformed about diversity employment in the sciences and/or at universities in Alabama.As for the discussion of tenure… I thnk I probably know at least 4 or 5 people who have been treated at least as unfairly or cruelly in tenure and/or promotion situations (let alone doctoral or job search situations.) None of them shot anyone, to my knowledge. Although the incident naturally raises issues of tenure-track stress, I don’t think one can blame tenure. There must be something else going on.
drcgp - February 14, 2010 at 4:05 pm
rgren — in what fantasy world are you living? While I agree with you that this behavior is not only reprehensible, but unethical. The gossip mill is alive and well in academe. Very little is truly confidential. It is appalling, but it is reality. you are truly fortunate to have worked in the places you have. You are fortunate to have worked in the places you have, but most of us are not that lucky.
optimysticynic - February 14, 2010 at 4:31 pm
A different take, although in agreement with those emphasizing Dr. Bishop’s ill health: our culture has become reluctant to point to signs of abnormal behavior, unusual thought, or characteristic interpersonal styles as evidence of mental illness (recall the Ft. Hood shooting). [How many students, faculty, and empolyees have been passed to another position to institution or emplpyer to avoid conflict at home? I don't know the number, but it would be a valuable study.] Another victim in this, and for which our over-zealous acceptance of all behavior and conflict avoidance are partially to blame, is Dr. Bishop herself. I’m betting that early psychiatric intervention could have saved all these lives. I know, I know, hindsight is perfect. I’m in the academy; I understand that we are all “weird”. However, some weird deserves attention and care, not ostracism and behiond closed doors criticism.
kyle43 - February 14, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Folks, really, drop racism stuff. She was attempting to shoot EVERYONE in the office. She had the gun pointed at the head of a white female when she was out of bullets. As she proceeded to reload, this white female went under the table and pushed her out of the room and the others that were not shot then assisted this person in blocking the door with a table. Those she shot first were closest to her, that is why they were shot, not because of their racial or ethnic status. Seriously, this is a tragedy, our campus does not need you creating rumors or gossip, you have no idea what you are tallking about.
margrethelauber - February 14, 2010 at 4:40 pm
cameronuniv “Making tenure a moving target results in anger and bitterness that last permanently even if tenure is granted…”plattpatty “…what we can and should be doing to nurture and mentor our younger colleagues rather than serving as the last bastion of hazing and indentured servitude…”Amen! The P&T process is too often and easily abused and corrupted. The end effect undermines the very idea of tenure and relegates it to the theater of the absurd for those in academe and, worse, those apart from this ostensibly respected system.
optimysticynic - February 14, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Not to worry; another 10-15 years and there will be no tenure. That should solve everything…
newlytenuredprof - February 14, 2010 at 4:56 pm
True that!
jtwil5 - February 14, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Obviously, skottd and Halley have absolutely no clue as to how tenure works. Her case was appealled and denied–by the APT committee/Dean/Provost, etc. So it was more than just the affirmative action tenured/less valuable faculty of color that played a role in her denial. She didn’t go in a shoot the Dean. Even if her department as a whole voted against her, if her record was clearly that she was, as Halley put it “a productive white faculty member”, then you can’t tell me that the higher ups wouldn’t have overturned the department’s vote if she was that wonderful. Plus, the minorities that may or may not have voted for her would not have been (in numbers alone) enough to block her. Thus, most of her white colleagues must have voted against her too. For the record, she probably doesn’t even know who voted for her and who didn’t! Obviously not since she shot the chair who DID support her! And just to be accurate, she also shot 2 white people too. One white colleague (who may or may not have voted for her) and one white staff member (who definitely didn’t vote) were also shot. Also, one of the people of color (i.e., affirmative action colleague) she shot was another assistant professor who also didn’t vote. So before you pull the affirmative action card, you should know your facts! Race may have been a motivator for her, but CRAZY definitely was! Attempting to judge her record to determine whether or not she was tenure worthy is a slippery slope. Every school is different and don’t underestimate the role of a poor economy. Also, Halley only looked at her publishing record (no comment from me about that) but other factors that may have played an important role are grants, teaching, service, relationships with colleagues (e.g., citizenship), mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, etc. The other aspect that folks have left out of this discussion is that her going off the deep end may be driven by money as well. She invented a product with her husband that was in the process of being mass produced (maybe patented? I don’t know exactly where she was in the process). Her not getting tenure would have complicated the financial aspect of this because techincally UAH would own the product or have rights to the product. One suggestion has been put forth that she was unhappy at the possibility of her department would have benefitted from her work, while not voting for her for tenure. What I would hope is that we would ALL feel deep sorry for the victims (yes they are victims!)regardless of their color.
amistad - February 14, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Halley and Scottd:Let me add my voice to the outrage expressed by others at your shockingly racist, unscientific, and barely implicit suggestion — unsupported by a shred of evidence — that the three Biology professors deserved to die because they were affirmative action hires persecuting a talented white person. Please remember that if you never land a tenure-track job, it will probably be because you are just not very good at what you do, rather than because some member of the “minority” stole your job. Stop using affirmative action as a whipping boy to excuse your own failures — or to justify the murderous actions of a clearly deranged individual, whose ability to shoot on target may well be comparable to the ability of Halley and Scottd to make rational judgments.
11332462 - February 14, 2010 at 5:45 pm
In the era of blogging, sadly, any significant event brings out of the woodwork folks who use that event as a vessel into which they pour their pet antagonisms — be they about race, or tenure, or what have you. It doesn’t matter that we know VERY little about what actually happened. Indeed, many of those posting don’t really want to know the facts, because that would interfere with their opportunity to beat the dead horses that shape their view of the world. Can’t we wait till we know a bit more before we reduce this tragic event to a narrative that reveals more about one’s fears than about the event itself?
lilybart1 - February 14, 2010 at 6:21 pm
I only comment to add my voice to those who identified Halley’s comments as racist and the “earliest” at “playing the race card.” My prayers are with those killed and their families and colleagues.
drhypersonic - February 14, 2010 at 6:36 pm
God above, people, let’s put the race issue back in the bottle! She killed human beings seeking to improve our world by working in one of the most noble environments society has established: a university campus. The real issues we should all be focusing on here are: [1] why was the shooting of her brother seemingly not investigated thoroughly? [2] was she required to fully explain the shooting, and was a background investigation undertaken at the time of her hiring? [3] why wasn’t her apparently increasingly disturbing behavior not the subject of some investigation within the university? Accepting, as one faculy member did, that “all scientists are weird” is hardly a reasonable, let alone acceptable, excuse. We do not need to be seeking some sort of understanding, rationalization, or, dare it be said, an “excuse” for what is a crime: the callous and obviously pre-planned murder of defenseless people in a meeting.
jeriley - February 14, 2010 at 10:06 pm
“She was kind of weird”? This comment was repeated by the individual interviewed for the article. That strikes me as pretty inarticulate coming from a professor and Department Chair. Sounds more like the comment of a high-schooler.
lperkins50 - February 14, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Hally and skottd statements are profoundly racist. Thank God they aren’t my colleauges.
bluewillow - February 15, 2010 at 12:55 am
Why is it racist to put forward a theory about a possible motive for murder? I’m sure no one is trying to justify the murder but only to make some sense of it. Most likely Amy Bishop is insane but there must have been something that set her off. She wasn’t shooting random strangers. It is natural to look for some sort of motive in a situation such as this.
zionmassai - February 15, 2010 at 7:12 am
I am thankful to see that the overwhelming majority of people who have responded to this tragedy have seen it for what it is: A sad, sad event that will likely send shock waves through the academy and make people think twice about how to treat colleagues. I was dumbfounded by the suggestion that the race of the victims vis a vis affirmative action was a causal variable in explaining their deaths. University of Alabama has obviously come a long way since the days of George Wallace, but there are a few people here that want to blame the victims for being WHAT they were rather than WHO they were. It may be just a coincidence that the dead were all faculty of Color. What Halley and bluewillow and others of their ilk are inclined to do the next time a woman is raped on campus, it to speculate whether the men’s motives can be better understood if we consider Affirmative Action allowed her into the institution. After all, they are probably UNAWARE that Affirmative Action’s CHIEF beneficiaries are WHITE WOMEN like Dr. Bishop.
malcolmx - February 15, 2010 at 8:53 am
There is nothing that can justify this cowardly act. There are no excuses for gunning down innocent people. So stop making excuses for this degenerate woman. Yes, life is hard, there are bumps along the road, get up and move on. Huntsville is not exactly Harvard. You can get another job, move down the pecking order. There are institutions that will tenure you with one article. She killed three human beings who happened to be minorities. This was tragic but lets stop trying to find excuses for her actions. This was the moral equivalent of a drive by shooting in the hood by a rival street gang.
willismg - February 15, 2010 at 9:10 am
#32, How do you know that they aren’t your colleagues? Or that some of your colleagues don’t share such views in the anonymity of their minds and souls. Quite frankly, much of the commentary on this event sickens me and reinforces my decision not to have become an academic.
mvann - February 15, 2010 at 9:31 am
Seems to me there should be some discussion about gun control in this comment stream. How sad that the major focus in on the racism speculations.
derdoc1 - February 15, 2010 at 11:27 am
This is true academe, thus far 37 comments and no one having a clue as to what actually happened. You will pardon me if I save my own judgment until after the trial.
new_theologian - February 15, 2010 at 11:32 am
I think there was only one other commenter here willing to suggest that we look at Ms. Bishop’s photograph. Faces can say an awful lot, and it’s clear that this woman was unbalanced. I taught in a visiting position for two years at a school that was very excited to hire a permanant replacement for the position I was filling. I moved on to my current position, and this new faculty member moved in to my old office. She didn’t complete the year. She threw tantums behind her locked office door, and was eventually escorted from her classroom to a safety zone after throwing a book bag at a student. This was not Ms. Bishop, and not her institution. I’m just saying that academic search committees sometimes decide that the best candidate for the job is someone with a personality disorder.
bhilson - February 15, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Metal detectors, millimeter-wave body scans, and remote Voigt-Kampff assays. . . that’ll fix everything. Can’t wait to see the look in the Chair’s eyes when we faculty start talking “tangentially” at the next meeting (a practically guaranteed outcome!). I am fascinated with the suggestion by one of our “colleagues” here that we can actually see into this tragically depraved woman’s mind/soul/motive by looking at her photograph. Not even The Mentalist can pull that one off. As far as being a professor (or an academic) goes, considering how hard most of us work for such meager compensation, and to put up with all the institutional politics, then to be made to beg for scraps of Tenure, could it not be said we ALL suffer from some form of personality disorder?
new_theologian - February 15, 2010 at 2:02 pm
O.K. The photo was probably not taken until after the killing spree, so it may not be the best evidence of Bishop’s appearance in the months and years leading up to the event. But there are measurable, perceptible indicators of various sorts of psychopathologies (and I’m using the term broadly). Most human beings have a basic intuition about this stuff, and it is why we have the urge to “look him in the eye” to determine whether or not we should believe or trust the person before us. One does learn, with exposure to certain particularly volatile personalities, to see it right away. In any event, she “accidentally” killed her brother, and she “allegedly” tried to blow up one of her professors, all before she was hired at her current post. How likely is it that she didn’t show any signs that she just might start shooting people some day? Either we’re not paying attention to the people around us, or we’ve just managed to convince ourselves that the warning signs we’re seeing are just eccentricities.As for gun control, I’m not convinced that would help. I’m sure the institution has a policy against carrying firearms on campus, let alone shooting people with them; and I’m pretty sure there are already laws on the books restricting the use of firearms by time, place, and manner. This was not a legal use of a firearm, so I’m not sure any further gun laws would be obeyed by this particular person.
new_theologian - February 15, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Oh, one more thing. Do we ALL suffer from some sort of personality disorder? That depends what we mean by “personality disorder.” Theologians have spoken for centuries about the disordered will, concupiscence, and the “fomes”. But these tendencies toward disordered love or disordered value, toward sin, which marks all our lives in spite of our best efforts and constant moral progress–this “fallenness”–is not the same thing as what psychologists mean by “personality disorder.” The latter involves, ultimately, an inability to enter fully into the dynamism of interpersonal giving and receiving that we call authentic “love.” I know that psychology grades these on a continuum, but if we imagine the point at which a psychologist or psychiatrist would become deeply concerned about the prognosis of a particular person, that’s something rather different from the inner struggles we all face to become good, loving people, in spite of our failings.
new_theologian - February 15, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Well, O.K. I’m not inclined to perceive a racist motive either, but what if there was one? We generally think that mass murder is a bad thing, and that racism is also a bad thing. Would it be so incongruous that a person who would do one bad thing would be motivated to do it by another bad thing? To the extent that one is a racist, one is a bad person. To the extent that one commits murder, one is a bad person. Bad people do bad things. The problem with some of these comments is that they dissociate the act from the agent. Evil just seems to “happen,” and the person who performs the evil isn’t taken to task. Rather, the rest of us who didn’t intervene are to blame. I’m not saying that intervention might not have prevented this event, but maybe that intervention would have been to continue investigations earlier in her life when she shot her brother, or when authorities failed to find any alternate suspects in the mail-bomb incident.
rjtsai - February 15, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Department should have given her advice on her research and publication record before the last minute. Some school won’t say anything and simply terminated one at the last minute. This is totally irresponsible. My days as an administrator, I always told the less productive faculty (via Dept heads)to speed up before their time came. Many of them improved and got tenure. Of course, some of them would just find somewhere else. No matter what, Ms. Bishop exhibited a very bad example.
new_theologian - February 15, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Ah, this just in on the suggestion about gun control. Recall my previous suspicion that her use of the firearm was illegal (killing her colleagues and all), and that she would likely not have paid due respect to other firearms regulations? Well, from foxnews: “Police say the gun she’s accused of using in the Alabama shooting wasn’t registered, and investigators don’t know how or where she got it.” There it is: another gun crime that wouldn’t have been prevented by more gun laws. Law’s don’t really prevent crimes. They punish them.
lthornton - February 16, 2010 at 10:54 am
Shouldn’t you geniuses be working on a publication or something…maybe even teach a class?
thompsoncm - February 16, 2010 at 11:40 am
A few years ago, a highly respected UM professor explained how this was a periodical that was highly associated with scholarly excellence. He was also under the impression that only the best and the brightest in the field of higher academia responded and subscribed to it. After reading some of these comments, I can only say, WOW (in regards to his impression and the comments)! I’ve got to forward this to him as I am sure that he’ll be quite surprised by its content and by the mindset of some of his fellow scholars. Thank you as this forum has afforded me the opportunity to see how intelligent and enlightened some of you truly are. Keep up the good work as I plan to pass my new found knowledge to those who are deemed as being less fortunate than us. Wow…”When you educate a fool, what remains is merely an educated fool.” Please, continue on…
gtolsen - February 17, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Nary a coment about if she was a good professor in teaching, oh, that’s right, students aren’t important any more in higher ed…..research, publication are, but students are such a nuisance anyways….I hear that frequently from professors….