Anti-biotech Professor Who Sued UC Berkeley Finally Gets Tenure!! !!

[fed-up]

Public Pressure sometimes succeeds!!!! Thanks to everyone who called or wrote in support of Ignacio!!

Professor who sued UC Berkeley is getting tenure

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/05/20/state/n135826D67.DTL

An anti-biotech crusader who sued the University of California, Berkeley, claiming he was denied a permanent post because of his opinions, has been offered tenure, his lawyer said Friday.

Biologist Ignacio Chapela had been denied tenure by former Chancellor Robert Berdahl last year following a recommendation by a five-member faculty board. Before that, colleagues in his college had voted 32-1 to recommend tenure....

Chapela was an outspoken opponent of a five-year, $25 million deal Berkeley signed in 1998 with Swiss agriculture giant Novartis to do agricultural biotechnology research....

...In his lawsuit, filed in April, Chapela said he was denied tenure because of that criticism. Chapela, who was born in Mexico, also said he was discriminated against because of his national origin.




A little bit of background on this issue, click for entire article

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/chapela010804.cfm
The San Francisco Chronicle, Volume 50, Issue 18, January 9, 2004
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i18/18a01001.htm

Berkeley Denies Tenure to World Renowned Biotech Critic Ignacio Chapela


The university's decision, which was first reported in the December 11 issue
of the British journal Nature, overruled recommendations for tenure by a
faculty committee in Mr. Chapela's department and by an ad hoc panel of
specialists in his field. A committee of the Academic Senate had recommended
against tenure.


Mr. Chapela and his research became controversial when he published an
article in Nature in November 2001 that said that native corn in Mexico had
been contaminated by material from genetically modified corn. (A 1998 law
had made it illegal to plant transgenic corn in Mexico.)


Six months after the article appeared, and after receiving a number of
letters contesting the research, the journal published an editorial note
saying that "the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the
original paper" and that the editors wanted "to allow our readers to judge
the science for themselves."


Mr. Chapela said at the time that he suspected he was the target of
pro-industry scientists and of the biotechnology industry itself. He had
been a vocal critic of a deal the university made in 1998 with Novartis, a
Swiss-based biotechnology company, in which the company paid Berkeley
$5-million each year for five years in exchange for early review of all
proposed publications and presentations by faculty members whose work the
company supported....


http://www.organicconsumers.org/Corn/032403_ge_corn.cfm

Critic of biotech corn fears UC won't give him tenure
Junior professor fought school's ties with industry
San Francisco Gate
Posted 03/24/2003


In a flap that raises new questions about corporate ties to universities, some academics are wondering whether the junior UC Berkeley professor who has become a leading biotech industry critic can get a fair hearing in a tenure review that has already gone twice as long as usual...

...Critics of university-corporate partnerships made the Novartis deal a poster child for complaints about the erosion of academic independence, and the contract earned Berkeley an unflattering spotlight in a March 2000 Atlantic Monthly article entitled "The Kept University."....

[DemBones DemBones]

1. EXCELLENT!!! The corporate influence on colleges and universities is

quite chilling. A real threat to acadmeic freedom that few are aware of.