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Recent
Stories
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
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The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
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Harry
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CounterPunch
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Maria
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Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
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June 20, 2003
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Meeropol
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Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
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Gary
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Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
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Bush's Lies
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Wendell
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Small Destructions Add Up
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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June
28, 2003
Office (Without Walls)
Hours
Tenure,
Censorship and Biotechnology
By
IGNACIO CHAPELA
We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and unpredictable.
He hesitated to answer, and then said judiciously:
"I think I shall praise
it."
Robert Hass
Beginning at 6 o'clock this morning, as I enter
the final days of my contract as a faculty member at the University
of California at Berkeley, I intend to mark and celebrate them,
by doing what I believe a professor in a public university must
do: to further reason and understanding. For the brief time that
remains of my terminal contract at Berkeley, I shall sit holding
office hours, day and night, outside the doors of California
Hall. This is the building housing the Budget Committee of the
Academic Senate, and the office of the Chancellor, the two arms
of our university governance in charge of my file.
I am saddened by the failure of the administration
and the Academic Senate to resolve in a timely fashion whether
to grant me tenure at Berkeley. I believe that I have contributed
to the mission of the university and my heart and intellect
are also vested in its health and growth. All but one of the
colleagues who witness my everyday teaching and research in the
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management have
repeatedly stated their support for my tenure, and so have a
set of external expert reviewers and the leadership of my College.
To the extent that reason can assess, I do not know of any other
academic information on the case that might suggest that a negative
decision should be reached. Yet as of tonight, well over a year
into the part of the process conducted in secret in California
Hall, no decision has been made, as far as I am aware. I must
therefore conclude that there is another set of criteria that
counterweigh the strength of the case, but that such information
cannot be publically shared. In the face of such lack of transparency
and accountability, I choose to hold office hours in public,
in the open, and in the midst of our beautiful campus. I do so
in celebration of my vocation and my time at Berkeley, and not
in the expectation that such an action will change the course
of the decision process, whatever that might be.
It has been suggested that the extraordinary
delay in reaching a decision on my tenure case without ostensible
reason may be the result of, even retribution for, my advising
our campus, academe, the government and the public against dangerous
liaisons with the biotechnology industry, as well as my concerns
regarding the problems with biotechnology itself. Without doubt,
the uncertainty and reproach implicit in the silence on campus
surrounding my case has had grave consequences for my professional,
public and personal life. But such are the wages of doing work
that has significance for the world, and it will be up to those
sifting through the files of this case to discern the twists
and turns that brought us to this moment, and to pass the judgment
of history on the motives and actions of those involved, within
and beyond our community. It is difficult to blame otherwise
principled individuals for not voicing their best understanding.
Fear is justified when even the president of the country equates
with criminal acts any questioning of the wisdom of deploying
transgenic crops. Against the desire of some to banish critical
thinking from the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, I choose
to sit, openly available for discourse, in the heart of our campus.
At least one person has said that I
should be banned from the academic system, implying that my work
harms the public role of the university as a hothouse for the
agbiotech industry. Indeed I have long stood against the folly
of planting 100 million acres with transgenic crops each year,
without knowing even the simplest consequences of such a massive
intervention in the biosphere. An increasing number of scientists
seem to be reaching the same position. It seems also true that
research in my laboratory has prompted serious public concerns
that the industry would rather not address. An industry on the
crutches of public subsidy for a quarter of a century, an industry
that trembles in the face of the simplest token of precautionary
research, is hardly an industry that deserves to carry the public
trust, much less our best hope for recovery in a flagging economy.
It would seem rational that our university--and the public--should
strive to keep an independent source of advice on the wisdom
of supporting such an industry. Rationality, however, must take
a back seat when the university becomes grafted to a specific
industry. Such has increasingly been the case at Berkeley and
at other universities.
At a time of rampant obscurantism and
irrationality, I am proud of the privilege vested in me by the
public as a professor at Berkeley. In fulfillment of the duty
attached to that privilege, I intend to share the light of rationality
during office hours over the next five days, together with those
who might wish to join me.
Fiat lux.
Ignacio H. Chapela is Assistant Professor (Microbial Ecology)
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at
the University of California at Berkeley.
Logistical details and
contacts:
I will sit in an "office" without
walls. This means that I will most likely not have direct access
to an AC electric wall outlet.
My email address is ichapela@nature.berkeley.edu.
In case of server breakdown, please use ihchapela@yahoo.com--email
responses may be delayed for some hours.
I will foreseeably be in my "office"
24 hours a day (except for short unavoidable breaks) from Thursday
to Monday midnight, circumstances allowing. Three chairs will
accommodate myself and two others in this transparent office.
Bring your own portable chair if you need to. I hope to be able
to offer tea and biscuits, but that is not a promise. These last
days have been on the hot side, but with any luck the natural
"breathing cycle" of the Bay Area will bring fog relief
for at least some of the mornings between Thursday and Monday.
At meal times, I will have space for company, although the seating
may be less than royal, and the menus are still being planned.
Despite President Bush's emphatic demands
this week, the House has yet to pass the BioShield legislation,
and there may be further delays in the Senate. Nevertheless,
I am making efforts to comply with the current spirit on our
campus and across the nation by surrounding my office with protective,
gray, duct tape, for added security. Visitors from Toronto and
elsewhere in the world, please note that I will also have protective
face masks and rubber gloves at hand.
After midnight on Monday, I will be travelling
to the Gen-ecology laboratory in Norway until 22 July. I will
be underway for a week, subsequently available via my alternate
email account: ihchapela@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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