I do not understand why UCSD felt it had the right to gag this professor. Was it motivated by politics? Did the administration calculate that the professor wouldn't be able to challenge the decision? How many people has this happened to? Were there others who didn't have the determination to go to court? As the professor said, "If you have to bankrupt yourself to protect your academic freedom, then academic freedom is dead.”
Professor Published After Two-Year Court Battle
Ayan Kusari
The Guardian
UCSD
June 03, 2012
It’s been a long wait for sociology professor Richard Biernacki. After fighting in court for two years — and taking out a second mortgage to fund the attorney fees — Biernacki’s formerly banned manuscript has finally been published. The work, titled Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry, was released for sale by Paul Grave Macmillan publishes next month on July 3.
It has been almost three years since the UCSD Social Sciences department placed a gag order on Biernacki’s manuscript, which is about peer review in the social sciences. The order, written by Dean of Social Sciences Jeff Elman, asked Biernacki to stop “harassing” a colleague within the UCSD Sociology Department whose research methods Biernacki critiqued in his book.
The gag order also stated that Biernacki could be fired if he requested data from the National Science Foundation. In response, Biernacki hired an attorney and took the case to court. After two years of conflict, both in and out of court, the administration retracted its order last June.
Biernacki said that the university administration’s misinterpretation of his work as a personal attack on another faculty member was both a personal and professional setback.
“My salary was kept artificially low, because I wasn’t promoted,” he said. “The recognition that I would have received in my field two years ago did not come my way. I had to pay a steep attorney’s fee to fight the UC legal team in Oakland. Being on a level playing field is costly. If you have to bankrupt yourself to protect your academic freedom, then academic freedom is dead.”
Biernacki’s book states that peer review is frequently less thorough in the social sciences than in the natural sciences. Biernacki argues that this lack of peer review in his field has led to the widespread generation of data that is ambiguously valid and non-replicable. He said that his book was intended to be a methodological critique, not a personal attack.
“All the examples in the book are about problems that come along with trying to interpret the meaning of primary texts,” he said.
One of the book’s chapters appraises the reasoning used by sociologists to classify the statements made in the autobiographies of Nazis. Another chapter critiques sociologists’ attempts to classify book reviews as positive or negative.
“I can see why people feel uncomfortable, because I’m critiquing methods that are so widely used,” he said. “But I’m not exempt. I’m critiquing my own use of these methods as well, because I have used them myself. I think social scientists treat each other with kid gloves, because we’re so unsure of what we’re doing.”
Biernacki said that a written order from the administration was the wrong avenue to use in handling his case.
“If someone had a complaint about my critique, it’s the academic senate they should have gone through,” he said. “We have a faculty-run legal court on campus. We don’t need the administration to get involved.”
Diane Hamann, Director of the UCSD Academic Senate, could not be reached as of press time. Social Sciences Dean Jeff Elman is on sabbatical and could not be reached.
This story is an updated version that had been adjusted to address corrections.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
George Zimmerman’s wife charged with perjury
George Zimmerman’s wife charged with perjury
By KYLE HIGHTOWER
The Associated Press
June 12, 2012
The wife of Trayvon Martin’s shooter was charged with perjury Tuesday, accused of lying when she told a judge that the couple had limited funds during a hearing that resulted in her husband being released on $150,000 bond.
Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was released on $1,000 bond. George Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the teen’s slaying and had been out on the bond after the April 20 hearing. However, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester on June 1 revoked the bond and ordered Zimmerman returned to the Seminole County Jail. Lester in a strongly worded ruling said the Zimmermans lied about how much money they had.
George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara has said the couple was confused and fearful when they misled court officials about how much money they had. A call and email to him on Tuesday weren’t immediately returned.
Records show Shellie Zimmerman in the days before the hearing transferred $74,000 in eight smaller amounts ranging from $7,500 to $9,990, from her husband’s credit union account to hers, according to an arrest affidavit. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s in the days before the bond hearing.
Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband’s account, the affidavit said. The affidavit also said that jail call records show that George Zimmerman instructed her to "pay off all the bills," including an American Express and Sam’s Club card.
A state attorney investigator met with credit union officials and learned that she had transfer control of her husband’s account.
Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said cash transactions in excess of $10,000 usually trigger a reporting requirement by the bank to multiple government agencies — including the IRS.
"If Mrs. Zimmerman intentionally structured the financial transactions in a manner to keep the offense under $10,000, not only may she have committed perjury in the state case, but she also may have run afoul of several federal statutes and could face serious federal criminal charges," Neiman wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
By KYLE HIGHTOWER
The Associated Press
June 12, 2012
The wife of Trayvon Martin’s shooter was charged with perjury Tuesday, accused of lying when she told a judge that the couple had limited funds during a hearing that resulted in her husband being released on $150,000 bond.
Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was released on $1,000 bond. George Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the teen’s slaying and had been out on the bond after the April 20 hearing. However, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester on June 1 revoked the bond and ordered Zimmerman returned to the Seminole County Jail. Lester in a strongly worded ruling said the Zimmermans lied about how much money they had.
George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara has said the couple was confused and fearful when they misled court officials about how much money they had. A call and email to him on Tuesday weren’t immediately returned.
Records show Shellie Zimmerman in the days before the hearing transferred $74,000 in eight smaller amounts ranging from $7,500 to $9,990, from her husband’s credit union account to hers, according to an arrest affidavit. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s in the days before the bond hearing.
Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband’s account, the affidavit said. The affidavit also said that jail call records show that George Zimmerman instructed her to "pay off all the bills," including an American Express and Sam’s Club card.
A state attorney investigator met with credit union officials and learned that she had transfer control of her husband’s account.
Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said cash transactions in excess of $10,000 usually trigger a reporting requirement by the bank to multiple government agencies — including the IRS.
"If Mrs. Zimmerman intentionally structured the financial transactions in a manner to keep the offense under $10,000, not only may she have committed perjury in the state case, but she also may have run afoul of several federal statutes and could face serious federal criminal charges," Neiman wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Bandwagon fads in teaching
Bandwagon fads in teaching
Washington Post
June 9, 2012
Personal opinion by Joan Reinthaler, Washington:
Educational theories go in and out of style with some regularity. Open classrooms were all the rage for a time, and some years later schools found themselves repartitioning those noisy spaces.
Diane Ravitch, a respected educational policy advocate, reversed her own thinking about the No Child Left Behind law. We’ve been through the wars of phonics vs. whole word in teaching reading and constructivism vs. direct instruction in teaching math.
I read about Fairfax County’s effort to fire teacher Violet Nichols [“Determining if teachers make the grade,” front page, June 4] for not jumping on a particular bandwagon, while that same day’s Education page in the Metro section [“The flip side of classroom learning”] featured a teacher who has decided to “flip” her calculus class (a current vogue in which students learn lessons at home and do homework in class) — the impression being that if everyone did this, they might teach better.
I have no idea whether Ms. Nichols is a good teacher or not, and I assume that flipping is working for the Bullis School, covered in the Metro story. But for an administrator or a school system (or the press) to judge a teacher on whether she latches onto some favored bandwagon is to ignore the most important aspects of effective teaching: the individual and her art. Using such a sledgehammer approach may make judgments easier to defend, but it is inimical to good education.
Washington Post
June 9, 2012
Personal opinion by Joan Reinthaler, Washington:
Educational theories go in and out of style with some regularity. Open classrooms were all the rage for a time, and some years later schools found themselves repartitioning those noisy spaces.
Diane Ravitch, a respected educational policy advocate, reversed her own thinking about the No Child Left Behind law. We’ve been through the wars of phonics vs. whole word in teaching reading and constructivism vs. direct instruction in teaching math.
I read about Fairfax County’s effort to fire teacher Violet Nichols [“Determining if teachers make the grade,” front page, June 4] for not jumping on a particular bandwagon, while that same day’s Education page in the Metro section [“The flip side of classroom learning”] featured a teacher who has decided to “flip” her calculus class (a current vogue in which students learn lessons at home and do homework in class) — the impression being that if everyone did this, they might teach better.
I have no idea whether Ms. Nichols is a good teacher or not, and I assume that flipping is working for the Bullis School, covered in the Metro story. But for an administrator or a school system (or the press) to judge a teacher on whether she latches onto some favored bandwagon is to ignore the most important aspects of effective teaching: the individual and her art. Using such a sledgehammer approach may make judgments easier to defend, but it is inimical to good education.
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