Tenure

The longer I spend in grad school, the more frustrated I get with all the political maneuvering and bureaucratic red tape. For example, last week one of the older male faculty members in our department made an inappropriate comment to one of my labmates about her not wanting to eat too much because she's looking a bit "husky". Now, mind you, this girl is anything but, probably in the best shape of anyone in lab, so this comment couldn't be more misplaced, but regardless, it's bound to hurt. Not to mention the fact that comments like those are what often lead to eating disorders and a decreased self-confidence, but that's a rant for another time. Yet this professor felt it necessary and appropriate to say something.

So the question is what do we do. Turns out this same faculty member has made comments to multiple labmates (past and present) before about the way they look, has hit on multiple females before (even slapping one's rear end at one point), and has been approached by superiors about it repeatedly. In fact, he was canned from the dean's office and no longer allowed to have female employees because of a sexual harassment complaint of an ex grad student. So why is he still employed by Emory?

Unfortunately, there's something in the academic world called tenure. For faculty, it's job security earned by hard work early in your career. In laymen's terms, it means the University can't fire you for much of anything. While I understand the faculty concerns, it seems to me that there needs to be more lenient definitions of what is actually grounds for termination. It's likely that Charles Nemeroff, the ex chair of Psychiatry who is currently under investigation for not disclosing money he got from pharmaceutical companies that directly conflicted with his research, will have a similar fate. Unless he's actually prosecuted and imprisoned, it's unlikely that Emory will do anything other than shuffle him around.

Tenure is why it is ridiculously hard to get rid of bad teachers at every grade level. While designed to protect/reward teachers for good work, it seems to be abused at every step along the way. Most schools would rather avoid the hassle, leaving those who are directly influenced by certain faculty's behavior to deal with the consequences.

Bodies... and capitalism

Some friends recently suggested a trip to Bodies... The Exhibition, currently showing in Atlanta. Now, I remembered hearing something about this a while back, but decided to do my own investigation. The quote from wikipedia perhaps puts it best:

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo concluded his investigation of Premier, finding "The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China. Despite repeated denials, we now know that Premier itself cannot demonstrate the circumstances that led to the death of the individuals. Nor is Premier able to establish that these people consented to their remains being used in this manner. Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern.

They have much more listed under criticisms of this particular exhibit (check out this one from npr), and you can check out any of the links for yourself.

Now, I believe strongly that to live in a capitalist society, people have to be willing to vote with their dollars, and not support financially what is against their morals. Yes, to be fair, no one knows exactly where the bodies came from, only that they were "unclaimed". Yet to me, even if one of the bodies was obtained in an immoral fashion, that is too much. I don't know, perhaps this issue strikes me more than it does most, but there seems something inherently wrong with disrespecting those who have died. I mean, even in times of war the remains of fallen soldiers were often returned to the enemy for a proper burial. The least we, as consumers, can do is require that consent is actually given to those whose bodies have been picked apart and put on display to be gawked at by thousands.

Not to get too high on my horse, as a scientist, I believe there is definite good that can come out of educating the public on human anatomy and physiology. Yet, we as a society should have boundaries on what we accept on scientific and educational merit. After all, not too long ago gross ethical violations were committed by Nazi doctors on unwilling Jewish prisoners, US doctors in the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, etc in the name of science and medicine.

From the debate last night

Think the Obama/Biden ticket is weak on Israel? think again... the below is from the vice presidential debate last night, and I must say, Biden's remarks are damn comforting...

BIDEN: Gwen, no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend to Israel than Joe Biden. I would have never, ever joined this ticket were I not absolutely sure Barack Obama shared my passion.

But you asked a question about whether or not this administration's policy had made sense or something to that effect. It has been an abject failure, this administration's policy.

In fairness to Secretary Rice, she's trying to turn it around now in the seventh or eighth year.

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

The fact of the matter is, the policy of this administration has been an abject failure.

And speaking of freedom being on the march, the only thing on the march is Iran. It's closer to a bomb. Its proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip with Hamas.

We will change this policy with thoughtful, real, live diplomacy that understands that you must back Israel in letting them negotiate, support their negotiation, and stand with them, not insist on policies like this administration has.

For the rest of the transcript, go here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/index.html