A Surprising Solution to Address Chronic Pain
Affective Forecasting
Katherine S. van Wormer M.S.S.W., Ph.D.
Amy Bishop and the Trauma of Tenure Denial
The tenure process can be toxic: The Amy Bishop Shootings
Workplace shootings by women are extremely rare and, until now, seemingly non existent. The same is true of shootings by graduate students of their professors who denied them their degrees. Because men are so identified with work and also more prone to violence, they are almost singularly the perpetrators of these kinds of outbursts. But now a woman professor has been arrested for the mass killings of her colleagues on a college campus, and we need to come up with some explanation.
Two elements stand out in this case that can help us make sense of this tragedy. One is the personality factor, and there is a lot about Amy Bishop that is striking and indicative of a propensity for violence. The other factor, which is more meaningful to me personally, is the gripping emotional pain that is often attached to university tenure decisions.
The facts that are emerging about the personal life and behavior of Amy Bishop is that she is a very gifted, extremely hard working woman who has borne the guilt since she was 20 years old of having been her brother's killer. Although the reports coming from police accounts are mixed, the facts of the situation-that three shots were fired are more indicative of deliberate intent than of an accidental firing of the weapon into her brother's chest as was claimed. Another accusation made against this woman was that as a student she sent an explosive device to the home of a professor who was causing her problems. The police questioned her, but no charges were filed. The fact that Bishop was accused twice of inflicting violence is now suddenly of special significance in light of Bishop's reported mass shootings of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
According to one report by a friend, Bishop carried a deep sense of guilt about the death of her brother and planned to make it up by becoming a prominent scientist. This fact is significant for two reasons: (1) she is one who can not be said to be anti-social or psychopathic to the extent that she was haunted by what she had done, and (2), she felt compelled to try to make up for an act that few could live with. Work to her was thereby primary in her life.
Despite the heavy weight of this past, there is every indication that Professor Bishop was achieved success in the classroom and as a scholar. My analysis of her "Rate My Professor" responses indicates that many students were appreciative of her efforts in the classroom and of her brilliance. One student commented that she was destined to win a Nobel Prize. Indeed there is every indication that this Harvard-educated scientist was gifted and innovative in her work. Some of her fellow faculty described her personality as awkward and stated that she did not get along well with people. She saw herself as superior to her colleagues.
Just as the school shootings that have occurred over the past decade have turned our attention to school bullying and the shootings as revenge killings, this slaughter on the college campus should cause us to reflect on the volatile nature of the tenure process itself, a process that sometimes brings out the worst in people on all sides. The tenure process is cruel because there is so much at stake, and the power to decide one's future is invested in one's peers, including one's friends and enemies. Whole departments are often torn apart by tenure decisions that are divided with some voting for and some against. The awarding of tenure means a secure job for life and the freedom to speak one's mind; denial means the end of the road. To appreciate the magnitude of such denial consider the words of Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, as quoted in The Huntsville Times, "The most likely result of being denied tenure in this nonexistent job market is that you will not be able to continue teaching. ... You probably can't get another job."
As one who was denied tenure at a previous university, I would describe the denial of tenure as an end to one's career, to one's livelihood, sense of personal disgrace, loss of home, friendships, and community. Especially if your academic performance has been noteworthy, being denied tenure, in effect, fired by your peers is the ultimate rejection of the person. Uniquely, in academia the fired professor stays on for a "terminal" year, attending faculty meetings with the same people that have struck these final blows. If there are appeal processes going on as was true in my, like Bishop's case, relationships are extremely adversarial.
Another fact about the tenure process is that it comes after five years of apparently successful reviews of one's work. Personal investment in the job and friendships that have developed, therefore, are quite strong. Also consider the fact that academics are usually highly specialized and only qualified for university teaching and research. Because of the stigma of being terminated from an academic job, faculty who do not anticipate receiving tenure typically leave after several years. At this time, they can still get good references and leave without hard feelings. Those who expect to get tenure as I did must endure a grueling process that includes submitting lengthy documents including student evaluations, proof of university service, and research accomplishments. Then behind closed doors, one's tenured colleagues, who often have less qualifications themselves as they were tenured when standards were lower, decide whether or not to accept the candidate to membership.
Although a pacifist, when I heard the news of the shootings, I instinctively grasped the pain that had driven this apparently violence-prone woman to take her revenge. I could imagine how she felt sitting in meetings as her colleagues drew up plans for future teaching assignments. A recent interview with one of the victims confirms that the discussion leading up to the shootings indeed concerned departmental plans for the next year. I can well identify with the rage and sense of rejection that would consume someone whose future was so methodically taken away. In my case, I took my anger out by doing everything I was advised not to do: filing formal complaints, organizing students, and going to the press. Finally, when every avenue was closed, I returned to graduate school and started over in a related discipline.
Given the strong emotions related to tenure denial, one question is why does it lead to homicide so rarely? (I do know of several cases of assault.) Perhaps the reason workplace shootings among faculty are so rare is because academic faculty tend to be well controlled, introverted, and disciplined people. More impulsive types would have been weeded out in the lengthy educational process involved in obtaining a Ph.D. Additionally, the need to obtain excellent student evaluations eliminates many others with personality problems along the way. The only case I could locate of murder over a tenure dispute occurred in 1992 when a male faculty member at Concordia University in Montreal killed four of his colleagues over a tenure dispute. Other somewhat similar situations involved graduate students with academic difficulties who killed their professors.
There is every likelihood that Amy Bishop, if found guilty of these horrific crimes, will face the possibility of the death penalty. She may even be sufficiently suicidal to want to be executed. My hope is that those who decide her fate will take into account the circumstances and try to understand what made her crack.
Evidence exist that Amy Bishop Amy Bishop was academic fraud
Submitted by Just Wondering on February 16, 2010 - 4:54pm
Hello and thank you for your well thought out article. However, I wonder if your opinion would change if you knew that Amy Bishop was more of an academic fraud than a brilliant scientist?
Link to an article by an attorney that shows Amy Bishop was an academic fraud
I believe this well researched article (not by me!) that present pervasive evidence UAH was on solid ground when Bishop was denied tenure.
I may be out of the loop as to current publication practices but the fact that the woman listed a fictional lab and offered her underage children as co-writers is suspicious.
Reply to Just Wondering
Quote Just Wondering
why I think Bishop's work was geinuine
Submitted by Katherine S. van Wormer M.S.S.W., Ph.D. on February 16, 2010 - 6:34pm
Here is what I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The alleged assailant, a Harvard-trained neurobiologist, had achieved a more-than-respectable record of grants and scholarly publication, including several papers in leading peer-reviewed journals within her field, three of which were published or accepted in 2009. In recent years, she had distinguished herself as one of the inventors of InQ, an incubator for human cell growth. Her teaching, though not stellar, was more than acceptable, at least based on available student evaluations.
I just read the article critically evaluating her work and it does appear she sort of inflated her work. But the fact that she appeared to have worked hard and thought she deserved tenure is what counts--her sense of having been treated unfairly. I think it was her personality that was the reason for the denial.
Reply to Katherine S. van Wormer M.S.S.W., Ph.D.
Quote Katherine S. van Wormer M.S.S.W., Ph.D.
OMG - It just keeps coming, doesn"t it?
Submitted by Anonymous on February 17, 2010 - 12:07pm
In Massachusetts, where I live and which was Amy Bishop's home for most of her life, all sorts of people are coming forward with stories of run-ins with Bishop which indicate serious problems and also, the lack of prosecution of real attacks on others, included an attempted carjacking following the shooting of her brother. Why was she a strong suspect in a pipe bomb case that was never solved? Why was she not prosecuted for hitting another mother in a diner over the woman's prior taking of booster seat for one of her toddlers? Bishop also called the police to stop an ice cream truck for coming to the neighborhood because her own children were, she said, lactose intolerant. The entitlement is fantastic, bizarre. Her parents seem to be rich and influential in the community. Lucky for them she didn't do a Lizzie Borden on them, but given sufficient motivation (not the usual threshold for most of us), she might have done such a thing. Her personality is her best contribution to science. Let us dissect away!
Reply to Anonymous
Quote Anonymous
I think that blog post you've
Submitted by Belinda on February 17, 2010 - 2:02pm
I think that blog post you've linked to is very confused. Bishop's not a fraud, academically. The poster might be an attorney, but knows nothing about academic publishing.
Reply to Belinda
Quote Belinda
Do your underage children write your research papers?
The elephant in the living room that everyone is avoiding is the evidence that Amy Bishop was not qualified for tenure.
Is it common place in academia for people on the tenure track to create fictional labs and claim that their underage children are "employees" and "co-authors" of vanity press published papers?
If that is how the system works and you all are just delighted to accept Bishop's level of incompetence so that you can turn this murderous and violent woman into some kind of martyr, so be it.
Let the record so speak.
I agree. That attorney did a
Submitted by Martin Mendieta on February 18, 2010 - 3:52pm
I agree. That attorney did a wonderful job of uncovering interesting evidence, but she doesn't understand the publication process in science. She noticed that one of Bishop's papers was in vanity-press-type, online-only journal, which is a valid point. However, two other 2009 papers by Bishop were published in a legitimate journal. But because the lawyer found out that this legit journal also has an online presence, she was quick to conlcude that it was also worthless.
The attorney is relatively open-minded and made corrections in her blog based on readers' feedback, but only up to a point. For a long time she insisted that the three papers above were published in a junk journal, and were therefore, evidence of fraud. That's not fraud! Bishop's peers can tell what journal is decent and what journal isn't. You'd think an attorney would know what 'fraud' is...
The attorney then went on to find a conference presentation by Bishop on NO (nitric oxide) as a weapon. When a scientist pointed out to her that the presentation's title was probably meant tongue-in-cheek, she responded very aggressively. A Bishop-type kind of reaction, so to speak.
Reply to Martin Mendieta
Quote Martin Mendieta
Not a fraud at all. The
Submitted by Anonymous on February 21, 2010 - 11:08am
Not a fraud at all. The attorney knows nothing about academic publishing. Bishop is crazy, but the attorney is an academic idiot.
I will not go that far that
Submitted by Anonymous on February 17, 2010 - 5:10pm
I will not go that far that she was an academic fraud, but my impressions are that she could not do her work and publishing without her husband and supprot of certain academic circles outside this university. Therefore she was not a scientist capable of independent work and this university practically did not need her.
If she published with people outside the department and her group and PhD students, then why did not she work with those people with whom she publsihed?
Re: Evidence exist that Amy Bishop Amy Bishop was academic fraud
Submitted by Donquixote5 on February 20, 2010 - 6:47am
The lawyer you cite is a very strange one !
I cite here word for word her own statement:
"I have zero neurobiology or scientific expertise and I can add to that I have zero psychiatry/psychology expertise."
you may wish to check it here:
http://afamilyofshepherds.blogspot.com/2010/02/could-accused-murderer-amy-bishop-have.html?showComment=1266533186268_AIe9_BFMV-uz_vZSEluBAAnLPfU6mZgwBLNvdgxC0q2l_i5pefns1pVUzW6TlI20H8pmasinfh6mRP6ZHnd816d11UDA2lWjtNExpdhT-4tZPwXwVtevULmkJPSKOFaCiBcdfnkZrGQ4tRp5B5xy2KXLDasx8dJVWt4uQ4THyu41kuf83Tr2u7Sq4s6enLWV-VZfBF3GxOlfp0rRSaRNmwg_ihfAEHT5tYeRikXv94j2TLUitf8y95CyA-Td1uZKI6oN742N_3Ql#c4439790150151312195
Moreover, she doesn't seem to be worrying about finding the professional consultant to correctly investigate the case.
My criticism has been estimated by her as a personal attack ...
Reply to Donquixote5
Quote Donquixote5
Rubbish. Poppycock. She was a
Submitted by Anonymous on August 29, 2011 - 5:10pm
Rubbish. Poppycock. She was a brilliant scientist, Nobel Prize material who as denied tenure by a band of mobbing academics who probably contributed to their own demise, like those at Columbine. You push people too far and they break. Anyone with a brain and a sense of compassion and empathy knows that. Those in Amy's department who did, paid for their Mistakes, as many others do. By the way, the decision to reverse the Mistake in Denying Amy Bishop was not overturned by the University President. I have known other Brilliant Scientists who have had TERRIBLE Tenure committees make terrible Tenure denials, which WERE OVERTURNED after the candidate did what Amy did, appeal and the University President OVERTURNED the WRONGFUL tenure denial. By the way the then tenured Professor, applied to a much higher ranked university, one of top 100 in the World, higher than any university in the state of Alabama, and is now Chairman of the Department at that University and also of Nobel Prize quality, like Amy Bishop. That is why the USA will probably not put Amy Bishop to death. But if they do, then they will join the former Soviet Union in also putting Nobel Prize scientists to death, Hellman, from the Hellman-Feymann theorem in Quantum Mechanics. Hellman's wife was a Jew, so she and her husband fled to Russia to escape the Nazis, only to be accused of being spies by the Russian Communist scientist in Russia, who were well below Hellman in scientific achievements and intellect. They had Hellman tried as a spy and he was executed. Amy was not being executed by here academic colleagues, but she was having her career destroyed by them. Amy's actions prevented anyone else from being so treated by the academic mafia, which exits at many small low rated universities like UAH, UAB, UA, ... Sad but true. Like mobbing stopping in high schools after Columbine, hopefully academic mobbing will stop with the Amy Bishop affair. And hopefully University Presidents will solicit independent international evaluations on disputed tenure decisions, and not leave such decisions to be decided by local academics who have achieved much less, are less internationally renowned and are intellectually, socially, morally and ethically challenged, like those in Russia who had Hellman killed/murdered on their trumped up charges. Academics are as nasty as the Nazis in many cases, and some need to be cleaned up. Whether those who Amy took out were bad or good, will hopefully come out at her trial and subsequent appeals. The Truth sets the world free. But many do not want to the Truth, the Full Truth and Nothing but the Truth from coming out. Would be nice to see the complete CV and academic records and student and international evaluations of not only Amy, but all of those on the tenured committee who voted and how they voted, either for her or against her. Like Bush says, either or against. So did she only take out those who were against her, and for their own gain, and personal reasons. Or were they justified. Show the whole world the complete academics records and the notes taken during the tenure meetings and the subsequent international evaluation from Nobel Prize Laureates, and not the local mafia.
Tenure the end of a life? C'mon. Professors are lame.
No person who has been a grad student and professor can possibly feel a sense of loss when they are denied tenure. There are numerous other ways to make as much money through more fun and more interesting methods. People "say" they only want to teach and work as a professor because that is required for the job interview, but hte realityis that many people would be happy doing other jobs. They would work less for more money. Tenure is only important because Daddy tells you it's important, but if you don't take Dadday's ideas nat face value then it's not important.
Submitted by Ballenger on February 18, 2010 - 12:46pm
Speaking as a university professor, I feel a deep sense of joy and satisfaction in helping my students learn. I truly love to watch a student who started class with little/no knowledge of the subject (and no idea how to start learning it) develop into a knowledgeable, skilled individual in just 15 weeks. Knowing that I helped them learn, and especially knowing that I gave them the tools to be able to *continue* learning after the semester, is the most delightful feeling in the world.
I have spoken with senior faculty members in my department and other departments around campus, and I've been told that feeling never goes away.
Denying someone tenure is the end of that feeling. It *is* devastating.
Reply to Ballenger
Quote Ballenger
End of that feeling?
At least half of the people I know who were denied tenure are still teaching. They simply moved to another institution and tried again. So, certainly, tenure denial doesn't have to be the end of the world. And if your love of teaching young people is so strong, you can always go to a smaller college, even community college or high school to teach.
I couldn't get a tenure-track position, so I got jobs in other research-type institutions. Now I'm in a corporation, but I still have opportunities to teach ("training" it is called), publish, speak at scientific conferences, etc. Denial of tenure at one school doesn't have to be, in fact is not, the end of your teacher career.
Submitted by Ballenger on February 21, 2010 - 2:19pm
I've just begun my teaching career, so I'm still learning about what the future holds as part of the P&T process. I'm glad to hear that tenure is not an all-or-nothing process overall. It would be a shame and disappointment to put in years of effort at a school only to be passed over for tenure. The article seemed to indicate that not getting tenure was The End, Game Over for profs. I'm glad to hear that's not necessarily the case! It certainly reduces my anxiety about the future and lets me concentrate my attentional resources on teaching!
It really is the end of the world
Submitted by Vladimir on March 9, 2010 - 2:44am
As someone who was denied tenure at a major university, and who can't get another academic job because of the stigma, I want to emphasize that it truly is the end of the world. Your comment is deeply offensive and hurtful.
Reply to Vladimir
Quote Vladimir
finding a way out
Submitted by Katherine S. van Wormer M.S.S.W., Ph.D. on March 9, 2010 - 10:57am
Dear Vladmir,
I don't know what your degree is in but if it's in the social and behavioral sciences you might consider doing what I did and getting an MSW and then becoming a social worker and then teaching social work. This is one field that still has job openings. Tenure is much harder to get at a major university, a fact that would be taken into account.
Vladimir's most recent comment
Submitted by donquixote5 on March 9, 2010 - 12:45pm
Dear Vladimir,
... and if you are in the natural/engineering sciences, then try to look around and find something in the industry. The crisis is still there but the job market is slowly resurrecting. Do not be concentrated on the USA - try it in Europe/Japan/South Korea/Singapore.
If you are physicist/chemist/biologist - just click on my nick to get to my ELSEVIER site, then write me an E-mail - we may discuss everything in more detail.
Donquixote5
Different interpretation...
Submitted by anonymuse on February 16, 2010 - 5:05pm
I interpret this another way. She is a privileged white woman from a wealthy family who got away with killing her brother. Her race and gender no doubt helped her escape punishment for trying to harm the Harvard professor she sent a bomb to. She lost her tenure appeal ON REVIEW and couldn't accept it. After a lifetime of entitlement and having her way, hearing 'no' was probably too much for her and she acted in the murderous way she did, killing three innocent people of color.
You'll see her white / female privilege save her from the death penalty as well.
Reply to anonymuse
Quote anonymuse
Submitted by Bebe on February 16, 2010 - 11:43pm
Agree - if this were a white male or black male, he would probably get the death penalty. More questionable if he were a male with children. But a female with 4 children is not going to get the death penalty...for the sake of the children...
Reply to Bebe
Quote Bebe
The children are between 10
The children are between 10 and 18. She will not be able to take care of them soon while in prison.
And what if she got mad at her children? Would she have shot them as well?
Seems interesting to know more about her children - their behavior and performance in the past.
Amy the Gun Obsessed
Submitted by Gail Greaves on April 30, 2018 - 7:19am
I don't see anyone here discussing Amy's ammosexual identity. She has a large number of kids and a full time job, but managed to go to the gun range very frequently to support her addiction to guns. She is clearly an ammosexual and got her thrills firing a deadly weapon. She believed that her gun was her power and her problem solver as are common beliefs among those folks.
Reply to Gail Greaves
Quote Gail Greaves
She's hardly wealthy--her
She's hardly wealthy--her father (who sounds like a depressive himself) was a prof. at Northeastern. Don't believe everything you read in a blog post.
the legal angle?
Submitted by Raymond on July 2, 2016 - 9:58pm
Am I wrong or did Amy sue to get tenure, after the university denied her? Then the court ruled she deserved tenure, but the university used some technicality to overrule the court? What qualifications did the professor have who did get tenure? Was it so obviously less than Amy's that even a judge ruled Amy was more qualified? Why hasn't anyone mentioned the court case?
Reply to Raymond
Quote Raymond
Agree completely with Dr. van
Agree completely with Dr. van Wormer. As a female faculty going up for tenure, and a mother of three, all I hope is that the process of tenure will be modified in the short term. One of my major challenges when I lecture and in my mentoring role is to successfully encourage young female students to pursue a career in academia. It has become clearly obvious to their eyes that the system makes it almost impossible to succeed if one has to juggle family life and competitive science. Being Wonder Woman is something that my parents expected of me, and probably of Dr. Bishop too. I naively believed that it was possible.
Amy Bishop is one of many
Amy Bishop is one of many people who react to real or perceived unfairness by shooting other people
Life isn't fair. Life is hard. Sometimes you face challenges and disappointments. Sometimes people even lose jobs and careers. It's stupid to call that "trauma."
The word trauma is overused. People need to grow up.
Trauma is what the victims of violence feel. The perp can be traumatized, sure, by getting caught and having to explain the trail of destruction that led to capture. Her dissociation at the arrest proves she does not intend to experience the real pain which true insight would force her to feel. She is mentally drugging herself with delusions so as to evade the reality that on balance, her life has been a negative to the world.
RE: Amy Bishop is one of many
Not everybody reacts to unfairness with killing others.
Any killing cannot be ever justified !
But this tragic - and at the same time ugly - story has two definite traits, which must be clearly disentangled:
1. The unspeakable, horrible tragedy of those killed, their families and colleagues. Our thoughts and prayers are with them !
2. The deficiency, inconsistency of the modern academic system, which is essentially built upon "research grants", "tenures", "tenure-tracks", "quota hires" etc.
Those who were never involved into this devastating system may not readily understand what happens in the soul of a scientist - it is not bad, it is quite natural.
What is, however, important - we, the scientists, greatly appreciate your, non-colleagues', good will: your trying to properly understand us !
I'm theoretical biophysicist with 27 years of professional experience and have recently VOLUNTARILY left the official academia, am working in industry and enjoying my research as a nice hobby.
Just before the horrible tragedy at UAH took place, I had posted a blog, where I am trying to analyze the dreadful polarization between the True Scientists, who are fully involved into the very research - and the "academic schmuck", who are busy solely with gaining their own social success at any price ...
Here is the URL address of my blog:
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/9293-globalization-and-scientific-research-trying-catch-black-cats-dark-rooms.html
Finally, I would like to cite word for word a very apt, timely and insightful comment by Victor Vyssotsky:
"As a retired director of research and development in large high-tech corporations, I see the issue not as the collegiality or lack thereof of any particular professional, but rather as the question of what the administration or management does to minimize and correct disruption due to personality differences and clashes. I spent a large fraction of my time for 29 years dealing with the personnel issues that arise with "difficult people", which some of the best scientists are. In rare cases, someone's behavior was so antisocial that I had to remove the person from my payroll. But in the great majority of cases of "difficult people", even including a few who were suffering from clinical psychiatric disorders, as well as a number of people suffering from various addictions, I found that thoughtful counseling of that person and others, sometimes by me and sometimes by psychologists and/or medical professionals, reduced conflict to negligible levels and kept the person productive. It is my belief that most administrators and managers of scientists, in academia, in industry, and in government, do not exercise the skill to do this properly. Doing it requires recognition that scientists, like everyone else, are human beings with flaws, and that to get the best contribution from them requires attention not only to their work and work products, but to their strengths and weaknesses as human beings. In the extreme, I did deal with people who were angry enough to portend violence, including a specific threat to shoot me. In only one of those cases did I find it necessary to remove someone from the payroll; in the others I worked with the individuals to address the causes of their anger, and kept them as productive employees. The Amy Bishop case seems to me a failure on the part of those who should have acted either to help Bishop or to get her off the premises immediately."
This and many other interesting comments from the scientists you may wish to find here:
http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2010/02/amy_bishop_uah_case_what_role.php
Therefore, a significant part of the guilt remains on the UAH administration ! The careful police investigation must determine the exact portion of their guilt.
If you wish to learn who Amy Bishop was in reality, please check the comments by user ZOREAN - she knows Amy Bishop and her family personally - since many years ! Just go here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=57209&o=3&rv=1266665306622&gta=commentslistpos#commentslistpos
To my mind, there must be an open, public discussion about the state of affairs in the modern academy - we must try to prevent the possible avalanche of similar tragedies all over the world !!!
Tenure track is a very
Tenure track is a very stressful proposition, as is indeed a PhD track at any decent university. People who choose to follow that path better be aware of the difficult road ahead.
The problem is that some of the people who choose the academic path are, well, fragile emotionally (and that is putting it mildly).
Should Amy Bishop be executed? Maybe not. I think she is insane and should be put away for life.
But what if if the jury of her peers decides that she should get the needle?
I am pretty OK with that, too. I don't care either way as long as she is neutralized.
I am glad Dr. van Wormer shared her own experiences and feelings so candidly. Designed to protect academic freedom, tenure also allows established academics to control who gets into the club. Interesting point about how the humiliated and rejected professor is supposed to hang around for a year, attending meetings and working with those who rejected him/her. In most workplaces, it is standard practice to get a fired employee off the premises immediately because of the inherent danger of keeping a disgruntled employee around. The good news, Dr. van Wormer, is that there is a whole world out there beyond academia, full of opportunities, many more satisfying. It is hard to recognize at first when so much of your life has been spent with one goal in mind. Joyce Carol Oates believes she would never have become a successful author had she not been denied tenure at the University of Wisconsin. Only part of this piece I can't agree with is the idea of considering all of trauma surrounding tenure as a mitigating factor for mass murder. If we all responded to injustice by shooting, no one would be left standing.
mitigating factor
In no way would I consider her slaughter of fellow faculty members a mitigating factor in their murder. But when it comes to the death penalty, that is different. And we need to understand the psychology here in order to prevent such things happening in the future.
She has used to get away, one
She has used to get away, one thing.
She needs to have it her way, second thing.
She needs to know that she is the best.
There is no guarantee she would not do it in future.
And for her mom, had she been more honest with her daughter and herslef, this could be prevented. But some people from a specific group need to be always protected, go unpunished, be superior.
Her parents could advise her to go councelling, talking, overcoming any ego problems, learning to be just ordinary person, not a genius. Sometimes being ordinary and human is more difficult.
But how could she talk to someone about her brother's murder?
Submitted by Living with borderline on February 16, 2010 - 5:53pm
Can we have some sanity on this topic, please? I am married to a woman who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She hasn't shot me yet but she has done all matter of crazy violence with no end in sight. Meds are helping her curb the violence, but not the underlying problem. To her, feelings equal reality. And the normal boundary lines of acceptable behavior just don't apply when she is on a BPD rage. Her memory of each event is vague. When Amy Bishop said when being pushed into the police car that those people were all alive, I thought "geez, that sure looks like dissociation." I've come to know it well. There are tons of similarities I am seeing to BPD. I'm a corporate attorney, so I can't diagnose that awful woman with a personality disorder. But, hey, why can't you all from the professional world comment on that?
In my professional career, I've had successes and disappointmens. The failures were always where I learned the most. That is how normal people respond to disappointment. They cry, grieve, then get back up and take another swing at the next pitch. It has never occurred to me that I should go shoot a room full of people when I was treated far worse than this woman was treated by the university.
Reply to Living with borderline
Quote Living with borderline
And how will you call the gun
Submitted by Anonymous on February 18, 2010 - 2:30am
And how will you call the gun in her purse days before the incident? Personality disorder?
I will call it simply wishful thinking.
This case shouts "BPD"
Submitted by Spouse of Borderline on February 21, 2010 - 2:39am
I also have a BPD wife. To me, the account of Amy Bishop's life shouts "Borderline Personality Disorder." I have noted that there is a premeditated dimension to my wife's BPD behavior, although more short term that what Dr. Bishop allegedly exhibited. For example looking around for the right thing to throw, or locking the door before going into a rage. I also have the impression that there is almost an addictive dimension to angry and violent outbursts - as if she needs to vent in this unhealthy way. Dr. Bishop's having trained in the firing range in the days before the event, and her apparently having carried the gun to the meeting, stretch the premeditation to a degree that seems unusual, but remember that BPD is not just proneness to mood swings, violence, and vague (selective?) memory afterwards, but is a kind of mindset.
I'm not a psychologist either, but the problem is that if you live with a BPD, you develop a sense for it as well as an awareness of how alone you are with the challenge (in a way, similar to what the BPD feels even if you try to be supportive). Hopefully the case of Dr. Bishop will draw needed attention to this common and hurtful (if not outright dangerous) condition.
Reply to Spouse of Borderline
Quote Spouse of Borderline
I'm surprised that I haven't read comments on various blogs about this possibly being a classic and extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder. Being denied tenore may be a trigger but not the cause of actions. If this is the case, maybe this is rare and not a result of stress, trauma or gun laws.
Could this be a classic and extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder triggered by the denial of tenure?
End of the road? Give me a break!
I completely disagree with Dr vW's assessment of tenure denial. It's not the end of the road! I have a PhD myself and was having a hard time landing a PhD-level job in my field. I know many who were in my position and they resorted to all sort of part-time teaching jobs. From what I've seen, I think that once you are an "adjunct," "lecturer" (in the US sense), or "instructor," you become damaged goods in the tenure-track market. Those colleagues now have no job security, low income, and poor job benefits, not to mention they pack up and move every two years or so.
So, what did I do when I couldn't get a job in my field? I took a master's level job in a related field in which I had training and some experience. (You could say they are related fields, with this other one being more technical). I started in government research, then moved to another non-profit job, then a non-faculty research position in academia, and finally I'm in a corporation for several years now. I think I still have the personality of a scholar, compared to my co-workers in the private sector, but I'm generally happy with my job, which requires that I write manuscripts, present research results at international conferences, etc. I even manage a budget to outsource research to external consultants, many in academia.
I make substantially more money than if I had gone to academia. I was also lucky with some passive investments I made, and now my wife and I have enough savings to retire if we wanted to, and we're barely 40. I have an intellectual job that I like, and often I subcontract professors to do research for us: they treat me like a very important client, and I know they don't earn a lot. My job's not paradise, of course. Once I had an unreasonable boss, sometimes I'm discouraged to publish a research paper due to some corporate/commercial/strategic reason, and sometimes I have to deal with policies that I don't completely like, but as I said, I'm generally happy with my job, more so with my income, and especially with the level of my assets.
I know many people who were denied tenure, and it certainly wasn't the end of the road for them! Some move to a lesser college and try for tenure again. I know one professor who was denied tenure twice, but got it in his third institution (not a shabby one, by the way). Others leave for the corporate world and do very well. I even know one ex-professor who was granted tenure, and then quit nonetheless to join a large consulting firm where he was made partner in only a few years.
I apologize for this long comment, but my point is that there is a whole world outside of academia, full of opportunities that you may not even be aware of! Dr. vW's overly sad and dark characterization of tenure denial is simply not correct, in my opinion.
Your experience is not necessarily representative...
Submitted by Enrique on February 17, 2010 - 12:43pm
I take issue with your comment "End of the road? Gimme a break!" While I admire your ability to find meaningful work for yourself after you were not able to get a tenure track position, that is not what the article is talking about. The article is talking about someone who DID land a tenure-track position, and who in her mind (right or wrong) believed had done enough to receive tenure. So, your experience and Amy Bishop's are apples and oranges. Furthermore, even if they were apples to apples, again, not everyone is the same. And so, from a psychological perspective, which is the point of Dr. Van Wormer's article, it is important to understand the emotional triggers that denial of tenure can set-off in individuals. Especially, individuals who already have deep psychological issues as is the case with Amy Bishop. Taking your own experience and generalizing it to others is logically incorrect. You mention you have a PhD, so think back to beginning statistics, one observation is not a statistically significant sample.
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Quote Enrique
Apples to oranges
Enrique: Thank you for commenting on my post. I wasn't comparing myself to Amy Bishop's case, nor to Dr vW. I was addressing a single point made by the author: that tenure denial is the worst that can happen to a person, both at a professional and personal level.
As you know from college math, a single counterexample is needed to refute a flawed theorem. In a sense, that's what I was trying to do. In other words, yes, tenure denial may be the end of the world for some people, but that's only because they choose to take that perspective.
People get fired or passed over for promotions, sometimes unfairly, inside or outside of academia. That's life. People lose their loved ones, even children, to cancer or some horrific accidents. Compared to those true tragedies, losing tenure is a joke! What's more, as some other commenters have noted, as an educated adult, you should know in advance that tenure is hard to get, that not everybody gets it, and that the process is not always 100% fair or even transparent. That's how the game is, and if you choose to play it, then you should be ready to accept the consequences, whatever they are.
I don't totally disagree
It's not the end of the road really but it seems that way at the time, like there's no future. That's the way it was for me, but I found another way. The worst thing is to tell someone as I was told, "This is all for the best."
Workplace Mobbing
Submitted by Keith Labella on February 16, 2010 - 10:50pm
Amy Bishop seemed to have colleagues that disliked her. She openly opposed Dean Davis. It seems she was a ripe candidate for workplace mobbing, a popular antisocial process in the workplace. This process is also called constructive termination and has been written about by scholars including Dr. Kenneth Westhues. Obviously, given political considerations this will likely be ignored. It is noteworthy that she hired a lawyer to dispute the tenure decision. It seems a hostile work environment is a probability for having triggered such a violent response.
Fort Hood is eerily similar. The shooter in that case hired a lawyer to get out of the army. Systematic harassment in the workplace and community-based harassment were cited in that case for two or three days after the incident. There had to be political push-back because an 86 page report on the Fort Hood tragedy neither named Hasan nor his motive.
Perhaps the high profile capital trials will reveal more about these cases. It wasn't until his appeal that the unibomber was revealed to be a CIA MKULTRA experimental victim. These outlier cases are prone to reveal more shocking nuances when subjected to critical scrutiny and investigation (if only the press had the same monomaniacal drive as the FBI, et. al., perhaps we could be confident that democracy would lead to public transparency).
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Quote Keith Labella
You need help!!
Submitted by Wayne W. on February 16, 2010 - 11:17pm
Your apparently very narrow set of life experiences causes you to think that failing to achieve tenure rises to the top of the list of bad, unfair things that can happen to a person.
This is because you still haven't come to terms with your own feelings pertaining to your situation. After some time and therapy, I believe you will have a more realistic view of this bad outcome.
It is not inherently worse than being seriously assaulted or falling victim to a doctor's error, or being laid off because you are old or because your skills are obsolete or because your company failed.
The difference here is that when you seek tenure, you know the odds, you know how unfair it is- essentially you know the ugly rules of the game and you CHOOSE to play. And you are not entitled to win- or throw a tantrum if you lose.
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Quote Wayne W.
It is intense, but...
Submitted by Ted Clayton on February 16, 2010 - 11:46pm
I was pleased to read Dr. Katherine's disclosure that she herself had been denied tenure. It's not just a technical call for her, and that's excellent.
Sure, there is a lot of tightly-focused identity-commitment going on with plenty of those who shoot for tenure. The anguish and shock at rejection, and all the derivative emotional reactions that can play out. However, such an experience is not unique to scholarly types who believe they really are prepared & qualified, and basically are justified in thinking/feeling they are about to succeed ... only to lose.
Harsh? Yes it is. But is it something other human groups won't really have the basis or acuity to fully wrap their head around? Phewey, and worse. "Doctor, heal thyself"
I agree with others: while denial of tenure is certainly a serious human drama, there are too many such scholarly rejections, and way too much similarly-powerful and personally devastating drama going on, without gun play, for "the system" to be the explanation.
The truth about the trauma that arises in academia and it's tenure-boards, is that it's more-brutal that some comparable life-experiences, but less so than some others that can be itemized.
No: the explanation resides with Amy Bishop: it would reside with her, even if we didn't have indications that the outline of the explanation has been visible in her, for many years.
Now, Dr. Wormer has another shock to confront: Her role is this context is to dissect Dr. Bishop. The role is not to analyse academia and highlight its inhumanity.
No, the challenge for Dr. Wormer now is to put on the emotional latex gloves and give us a disclosing - if traumatic - psychological anatomy lesson, using the remains of Amy Bishop as lab-material.
I believe you have the right stuff, Katherine, but you flinched. That's cool: it's not a determinative problem. Soldiers wet their pants. Then they reload.
C'mon Katherine - try again. Let's have it - the real thing, this time.
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Quote Ted Clayton
Women don't do this...why?
Submitted by Bebe on February 17, 2010 - 12:00am
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/massachusetts_district_attorne.html
http://media.al.com/breaking/other/policerecords.pdf
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/uah_shooting_survivor_tried_to.html
Actually, the profile seems pretty unusual but simple. Amy got away with murder 24 years ago, lived with guilt, has a superior complex, has anger issues, and doesn't seem to love her kids more than hate who she perceives disagrees with her...
Let's talk about the kids...
Gee, I hate to be the bearer
Gee, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think there is a component here which is lacking in most psychological evaluations and studies of the human personality. It has to do with enablers, the people and the society around the offender. While it seems outside the game here to call her "evil" or "in a state of mortal sin", which is a much earlier way of understanding social behavior, Amy Bishop is also said to have a sense of "guilt" which propelled her to academic accomplishments to make up for loss of her brother.
What I see (based on my own experience) is the effect of years of an inability to deal with envy and rivalry. Perhaps that word "envy", one of the seven deadly sins of the middle ages, has been banned, but partly because of the discrediting of Freud's "penis envy" theory of female development. But look at Amy: she killed her younger brother, born when she was about two. He was a young man of accomplishment (like herself), maybe (she might have feared) more gifted.
But what about her earlier tantrums about having to share her mother with him? Did that happen? And did the mother placate her bad behavior towards him even encouraging it in a way? That's the unscientific picture I get.
Now we see that those frustrating her were made to pay a price: not just the recipient of a pipe bomb, but another mother at an IHOP in Peabody, who had a booster seat for her child that Amy wanted when she walked into the restaurant and tried to take it from her by hitting the other customer. This is infantile behavior!
Her husband seems strangely cowed by her, going along with her to a firing range where he does not bother to ask where she bought her pistol. Why? Because questioning or crossing Amy was a deadly risk.
The tenure process is not what is at fault here. Thousands of people denied tenure go on to productive careers. The notion that you are so specialized you will never work again is false. Even Amy had a company she was involved with. But her skills at adaptation were indeed rudimentary. So maybe in her case she would not have found work again.
Whoever we are, we must seek to understand our stressors and how they affect others. But Amy learned, like some dictators, that forcing others to put up with her bad behavior could work. I shudder to think of how her prison mates will deal with her. I'm afraid they are in for a worse period of incarceration than they expected, until one of them takes down Amy. She's going to the jungle to learn the price of her behavior, and I for one am not impressed with her seeking from her "peers" some sort of "benefit of clergy", where the fact that she has taught and published papers makes her above the common criminal on the "great chain of being".
A beneficial article
This article brings up a lot of good points.
Some commentors here are missing the overall gist. Yes, of course it's wrong to murder anyone, and of course it's normal in life to be rejected and to be fired from a job.
The thing is that the academic world, internally (which is not visible to the outside, not even if you are a bachelors degree college student), is weird and unfair, based on cliques, full of petty struggles for power, and is not always a meritocracy (even though it's supposed to be). These are very smart people who apparently devote their lives to the pursuit of truth and knowledge, who are apparently there to teach, advise, and support students, who have chosen a contemplative life in an ivory tower (and all the sacrifices that go with that) -- but who collectively organize themselves as if they are engaged in a struggle for survival in a starving, diabolical, sell-your-grandmother-for-a-piece-of-meat band of primates duking it out on the edge of some mythical jungle.
In other words, the way academic departments work (on the whole) is really "messed up".
It doesn't have to be this way. It's needlessly abusive. It can be like putting kittens into a dog-fighting pen with pitbulls.
Yes, other areas of life are tough too. People in all walks of life get bullied and fired. People in all walks of life have mental imbalances or personality disorders or murderous intentions. But it's not common in most job fields that one rejection at one institution means that your whole career is over (after many years of often-near-poverty preparation for that career).
In a Psychology Today article/blog about bullying in the workplace (published about a month ago), I described my story of being bullied by one assistant professor and sexually harrassed by another assistant professor when I was a PhD student. They were both in a situation where they only had a year to publish a certain minimum of journal articles or otherwise lose their jobs - and neither one was realistically going to do that. They had problematic personalities and obvious psychological troubles anyway, but the specter of failing soon in such a visible way pushed them to be quite horrid, inflicting emotional and social violence on people who were more vulnerable than they were (PhD students); and indeed physical violence, especially from the more psycho of the two, was not out of the question (a fact which probably contributed to the way that the entire department and school left me and other bullied students from previous years hanging on our own, rather than easily using the school's regulations and national laws to appropriately support us in the way that they should have done).
The emotional, mental, and social violence that is perpetuated in academia is equivalent in some senses to physical violence, just as those sorts of abuse are in any human life situation (child abuse, spouse abuse, workplace bullying, etc.) It causes fear, depression, illness, retreat, suicides, loss of livelihood. Because it's not sensationalistic and visible as a mass-murder, it's not so easy to see for what it is.
An institutional setting that involves an overwhelming and unfair bureaucracy, that encourages jealousies, backstabbing and personal vendettas, and that gives the individual few choices (survive, leave, or die)... where, if leaving is the only option, the individual is seen to be disgraced and cannot continue in his/her field anywhere else... this IS an unusual and inhumane system.
That is no excuse for evil behavior, for violence on the part of the individual. But it's a good recipe for pushing people towards pathology and desperate, crazed actions.
The assistant professor bully said to me, "I'm doing this [unfair and illegal behavior that killed my career when I was 36] because I am your friend." Hmm. The administrative dean said to me, "You deserve so much better than this place." Hmm.
It's shameful and stupid that some of our smartest people allow themselves to perpetuate this kind of medieval, life-destroying system. We would have many more great teachers and researchers if the system were different. It dissuades so many people from even going down the road of being an academic (if they twig onto the problems in the system before they get too involved in it).
Sure, maybe the military has to be run this way. Maybe a prison has to be run this way. But a venerable Profession of well-behaved, high-minded, idealistic people should not be run this way.
Who makes this acadeic
Submitted by carmen on February 17, 2010 - 12:30pm
Who makes this acadeic system?
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Quote carmen
Yes! I call them "primates" too!
Submitted by Karl Spaulding on February 17, 2010 - 3:02pm
There are many good points in these comments, but the one I'm responding to really caught my fancy. I'm only a nondegree grad student, with no desire whatsoever to get more than my BA in Criminology, but in 2002 I had a front row seat in how "the academy" really works. It angered me and my anger has not abated one whit. I've only learned how to deal with it better.
Here is a link to my OSU Lantern article giving the general story:
http://www.thelantern.com/2.1346/unjust-decision-cuts-self-defense-course-1.86004
The fact that such vastly inaccurate information from an "observer" who never observed us (and who profitted from her "expert" testimony by being hired as one of the new instructors) could serve as "oversight" completely colored my view of so-called "higher education." Since then, I've kept my eyes open for more garbage from what I've termed the "Pathological Administrative Subculture." It ain't hard to find. Here's another link to a letter I sent to the Columbus Dispatch that they buried in their web-only comments:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2009/03/09/webletters.html?sid=101
Look for "OSU's dorm policy." Essentially, two PROVOSTS can't put out a credible literature review! "Studies show..." anytime someone says that, your first question should be, "WHAT STUDIES?" As far as I know, I was the only one who asked.
Since I'm sort of off topic, let me wind this up. After reading Philip Zimbardo's book "The Lucifer Effect" which puts forth his "bad barrel" theory (as opposed to the occasional "bad apple" for describing how social circumstances involving ordinary good people can go wrong, as at Abu Ghraib Prison), I'm thinking it applies just as well to bureaucracies, and does not need to involve conspicious ugliness.
In the Amy Bishop case, it may very well be that the administrators who dealt with her were completely ignorant of how to diffuse or effectively deal with a potentially dangerous person who could "snap." (Or appear to "just" snap.)
In self-defense, PREVENTION provides the "biggest bang for the buck." Any course which does not cover the "pre fight" is not a very good one. Likewise, those in academia who think they are above violence need to wake up and understand the many ways in which certain folks can turn violent. In my case, it seemed like some of the admin's responses were CALCULATED to get me to become violent! Fortunately, I'm not.
But...I am a writer. :)
Whoever wrote the comment I'm responding to, please let me know where your other posting is regarding your experience with "bullying." I'd like to read it. I may also like to talk to you so feel free to contact me via my school address at the end of my Lantern piece.
As for Amy Biship, she now has the known violent past which makes her a much more logical person to have done what she did. On the other hand, while the "bombing suspect" part fits, it may still wind up to be a coincidence in which neither her nor her hubby were involved. Perhaps more evidence on that will now surface.
Two more links for anyone who doesn't believe it's easy to find out how screwed up "the Ivory Tower" is involve Dr. Michael Swango and a recent Legionnaire's case, both from OSU:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/swango/index_1.html
OSU admins ignored all the suspicions some nurses had about the nice intern.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/02/13/OSU_settles.ART_ART_02-13-10_B2_RLGJ38F.html
"Mrs. Morris' complaint says that nurses and other staff members on the ninth floor knew that the water could contain the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' but had been instructed not to tell patients to not drink the water." (from the article)
Hmmm. OSU knew the drinking water harbored a large risk of a deadly bacterium, but didn't want to unduly alarm the public for some reason. How sweet of them!
My point in these two is this: "Image" is much more important to many administrators than "truth." I see it constantly, and as the above poster said near the end of his/her post, "... a venerable Profession of well-behaved, high-minded, idealistic people should not be run this way."
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Must've clicked the wrong "reply" button...
My comments to "A beneficial article" are after the next comment. Somehow they wound up there.
I'm genuinely sorry that you were bullied and sexually harrassed by your professors. But to equate "emotional, mental, and social violence" in academia with actual physical or sexual violence is ridiculous and offensive. I agree that those types of violence can have the same negative effects on an individual, depending on their severity, but not to the same degree as physical or sexual violence. If you have ever been raped or assaulted, trust me, it's much worse.
It seems like the point many posters on here are missing is that academia is an elite, highly paid, mostly white enclave that is extremely competitive and high pressure because of the money, influence, recognition, and most importantly, STATUS that is bestowed upon a successful academic. To enter this arena, as several people here have mentioned, is a CHOICE.
This is hugely different than being put into a situation that is not of your choosing, like poverty, rape, violence, disability, etc. that could truly be called "unusual and inhumane."
I would save your pity for truly disadvantaged workers, like those at slaughterhouses. It's a criminally low-paying, low-status, high-pressure job, and if you're one of the many unlucky ones to lose a body part, you're fired, with no available recourse. That is truly a profession where the motto is "survive, leave, or die."
I don't think most academics have any memory of what the real world is like.
Page 1 (current)
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5 Things People Get Wrong About Self-Care
The Difference Between Narcissism and Confidence
An Unusual Way to Manage Overeating Triggers