Congressman's shooting and relationship (if any) to current political situation

It has been a while.  I didn't know if I would ever come back to this blog.  I have not received any emails or contacts so I assume no one has been reading.  I made an effort to reach out to other people who have been denied tenure and while I am grateful for the few replies and comments I did receive, it appears that this it just not the platform for doing this.

But, I have a blog set up.  And it is pseudo-anonymized.  I'm sure that anyone who really wanted to find out my identity could but really, is it that important?  Perhaps a more real issue is how I personally feel about anonymous content on the web.  In general I'm against it.  But I felt that in this case there was value to be gained, because tenure denial is such an enormous stigma, people who've been through it often never speak of it again.


Again, I have this blog set up.  So I might post occasionally if things cross my mind that I find myself wanting to write about.  Since the tenure-denial thing seems to be pretty much dead material now, I might post on other topics too.

Which brings me to the shootings this weekend, of whom the primary target apparently was Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, but there were many other victims as well.  This event, and the political discussion around it, reminds me of the Amy Bishop story.   Again, the same issues are being laboriously batted back and forth, in this case in the setting the current left-right political wars.  And it surprises me how dense people are sometimes.  Especially, right now, those on the left for, first, jumping too fast to try to make political gain out of this, and second, not being careful enough in their attacks.

We've been over this again and again.  No reasonable person would EVER seriously think that something like Sarah Palin's crosshairs led directly to this shooting.  Of COURSE NOT!  (Yes, I'm yelling).  Those of you on the right with your aggrieved victim poses I can see you all now.  Or hear you, in advance, because I have listened to thousands of hours of right wing political talk radio.

BUT, to completely deny that the underlying rightwing political attacks had NO bearing, that is insane.  What the left needs to attack, at a time like this, is not the event itself (the killings) but the things that the right is still now currently saying.  They do say that we (the left) are borderline traitors, that we hate America, that our main aim is for bad things to happen to this country.  They do say that we are implicitly murderers for supporting abortion.  They do say that we are Godless and work to destroy Christianity.   You need only turn on the radio to hear these things.

Those are the things that should be attacked at a time like this.

In fact, the best option, in terms or political warfare, at a time like this, is to publicly very scrupulously absolve the right from any direct, immediate blame.  That kind of position, in the long run, gains you traction, especially since they would never do the same thing on their side.  But, I still have a hard time convincing my liberal friends of this.

Following the UAH shooting story

Again, I am putting links on my delicious page as the story develops.  See
http://delicious.com/deadprofessor/UAH_shooting .

It has come out that apparently she shot her brother when she was younger,
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/professor_accus.html?
though apparently that was clearly an accident.

The most depressing thing about this is that now the press is downplaying the tenure denial aspect of it as a possible main motive for the murders, presumably led by Fox News's odious story:

From Fox News, here is their lead-in at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585682,00.html
Motive in Question as Professor Faces Murder Charge in Alabama Campus Shooting
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — There "may never be a clear answer" as to why a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville allegedlyvshot and killed three colleagues and wounded thre others, campus police said Saturday in a news conference.

If you read this article in detail, you see they have a few new interviews, but absolutely NO evidence of a motive other than the denial.

University of Alabama shooting

See the NY Times article today, Professor Is Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama.  This is an amazing and horrific case where a tenure denial has (apparently) led to violent retribution by the one who was denied.  We don't know all the facts yet but the Times says that she was denied tenure recently and she went to a faculty meeting with a gun and killed and injured several people, all other faculty members.

I want to post about this more later, but as someone who is trying to reach out to others who have been denied tenure, let me just make clear--while I am interested in the issues this will raise related to tenure denials, this was an absolutely bloody and uncalled for murder.  I have no sympathy for the perpetrator.  My guess is that since this is a clear cut case with several witnesses, it was clearly premeditated, and is in the south, she will be executed.

One of the frustrating things about the NY Times article is that it does NOT mention the denial first as the possible spark for the killings.  Instead it discusses the "pressure cooker" of biotech startups.

I am assembling links related to this story on my delicious site, see http://delicious.com/deadprofessor/UAH_shooting.  Now I notice that the LA Times is saying one of the victims was a staff member.

I will be very interested to see just how random her victims were.  Was she in there to get revenge on certain people?  Or was she also just randomly killing people?

As I said, this is clearly a crazy act by a crazy person, but in both of my denials I'd be lying if I didn't say that I did have thoughts like this.  In my case (and I suspect in most cases) they ran more to the just plain suicide bent.  But I hope this case does raise some discussion about this important issue.  A tenure denial was once described by someone on sci.research.careers as like having a nuclear bomb descend on your house.  It does feel like that.  It is like everything you worked for has been destroyed.  And not by something out of your control, like being layed off or having a business fail.  This is a long, reasoned judgement by your peers and they have decided you need to be out.