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GMW:_Chapela's_denial_of_tenure_ " disgraceful "

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Wed, 7 Jan 2004 11:11:21 GMT

 

 

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Chapela had been unanimously recommended for tenure by his department's tenure

committee.

 

According to a member of that committee, " I've been here 24 years, and my

understanding is that if the department and the ad hoc committee recommend for

tenure, you get tenure " .

 

But not in the case of Ignacio Chapela.

 

The same committee member says the denial of tenure is " disgraceful " . He fears

that powerful researchers who benefited from a deal between Berkeley and GM

giant Novartis had made Mr. Chapela a victim of politics.

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Berkeley Denies Tenure to Ecologist Who Criticized University's Ties to the

Biotechnology Industry

By SHARON WALSH

The Chronicle, Volume 50, Issue 18, January 9, 2004

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i18/18a01001.htm

 

The University of California at Berkeley has denied tenure to Ignacio H.

Chapela, an assistant professor of ecology and an outspoken critic of the

university's ties to the biotechnology industry.

 

The professor and other scientists critical of academic links to corporations

and of genetically modified crops have anxiously awaited the tenure decision for

three years.

 

" My immediate reaction was extreme disappointment in the chancellor, " said Mr.

Chapela, who joined the university's department of environmental science,

policy, and management in the fall of 1995. " I hoped he could see the evidence

and take his role as a leader, " he said of Robert M. Berdahl, the chancellor.

 

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.

 

George A. Strait Jr., assistant vice chancellor for public affairs, said he was

surprised that the news media would be interested in Mr. Chapela's case.

 

" He didn't get tenure, period, " Mr. Strait said. Berkeley's tenure process, he

added, " is among the most strenuous, the most fair, and the toughest in the

country. ... No one person, no one institution, no one group has any undue

influence. "

 

Mr. Chapela's findings, made with a graduate student, David Quist, and reported

in the 2001 article about Mexican maize, were important - and controversial -

for several reasons. First, agricultural companies that have produced

genetically modified plants have said that the engineered material does not

travel from one field to another. Second, Mr. Chapela and Mr. Quist contended

that the transferred genes that appeared in the genetic material of native

Mexican corn were multiplying and hopping around inside the plant's genome,

which could interfere with the normal functioning of other genes.

 

" This opens up the whole question of what happens in the next generation of

transgenics, " he said. " The finding means there is no control ... especially in

plants that are wind pollinated, " like corn.

 

Unanimous Recommendation

 

Mr. Chapela had been unanimously recommended for tenure by his department's

tenure committee. The decision then went to a committee of the Academic Senate,

which appointed the ad hoc group of specialists to give an opinion. The ad hoc

committee, whose membership is normally secret, unanimously said tenure should

be granted, according to Wayne M. Getz, a professor of environmental science who

identified himself as a member of that committee after he found out that Mr.

Chapela was not getting tenure.

 

" I've been here 24 years, and my understanding is that if the department and the

ad hoc committee recommend for tenure, you get tenure, " he said.

 

Mr. Getz wrote a letter to the vice chancellor for academic affairs questioning

the process, and sent copies of the letter to the ad hoc committee members. The

chairman of the ad hoc committee then notified Mr. Getz that the senate's

committee had asked him to reconvene the ad hoc committee to review Mr.

Chapela's research again.

 

At that point, Mr. Getz says, the chairman resigned and disavowed the

committee's report, saying he did not have the expertise to judge Mr. Chapela's

research. The chairman, whose name Mr. Getz declined to reveal, did not tell any

of the members of the committee about his decision at the time, Mr. Getz said.

 

The senate's committee then advised the chancellor to reject Mr. Chapela's

tenure bid which the chancellor did.

 

" I have no direct evidence of anything, " Mr. Chapela said of the chancellor's

decision. " But the crown jewel of Berdahl's chancellorship is a bioengineering

building. "

 

" There's still an enormous amount of animosity against me because of [my

criticism of] Novartis, " Mr. Chapela said. " I cannot help but think that this

influenced the decision " on tenure.

 

Mr. Chapela said the Academic Senate's tenure committee had recognized him as an

excellent teacher, but cited the serious challenges to his research and an

inadequate publications record.

 

Mr. Getz said that the ad hoc panel had carefully considered Mr. Chapela's

research record, but after noting both the Nature controversy and the amount of

research, decided to recommend tenure anyway. " It's clear that plant geneticists

don't contest his findings, but his methods, " he said.

 

" I believe the [Academic Senate] committee was pushing to get a different

outcome " from the ad hoc committee, he said. Mr. Getz is in the same department

as Mr. Chapela, but he is not close to him either personally or professionally,

he said. He called the tenure review's result " disgraceful " and added that he

feared that powerful researchers who benefited from the Novartis deal had made

Mr. Chapela a victim of politics.

 

In June, Mr. Chapela staged his own protest, decrying the length of his tenure

process. He moved a small desk, two chairs, tea, biscuits, and books outside of

California Hall, where the senate's committee meets and where the chancellor has

his office. For five days and nights, he held a vigil to protest the unusually

long time that the university was making him wait for a tenure decision.

 

Now Mr. Chapela says he plans to appeal the decision within the normal

university process. However, he says he also plans to sue the institution: " In

the last few days, I've had a lot of phone calls from attorneys. "

 

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