Tenure Granted to Chapela

Controversial UC Berkeley biology professor, Ignacio Chapela (above) was granted tenure (job security at a university) this month after a 3 year struggle.

Chapela was an outspoken critic against a $25 million dollar deal between Novartis, a major multinational pharmaceutical company, and the university. During the negotiations , he accused UC Berkeley of facilitating the profit-driven interests of corporations, rather than the interest of the public and ecology.

Chapela's friction with the power brokers within corporate academia did not end there. In 2001, with his graduate student David Quist, he discovered transgenic contamination from GMO corn to native maize in Oaxaca, Mexico. Their article, published in Nature magazine, was met by a barrage of attacks from the biotechnology industry, including e-mails signed by fictional biologists created by a PR firm that they had hired.

The last blow against Chapela was the refusal of his tenure despite overwhelming support from his department and dean. This approval was overturned by the Budget Committee's decision to deny Chapela’s tenure in June of 2003. As a reaction to this, Chapela moved his office outside of California Hall (the UCB administration building) announcing:

"Beginning at 6 o'clock this morning, as I enter the final days of my contract as a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, I intend to mark and celebrate them, by doing what I believe a professor in a public university must do: to further reason and understanding. For the brief time that remains of my terminal contract at Berkeley, I shall sit holding office hours, day and night, outside the doors of California Hall. This is the building housing the Budget Committee of the Academic Senate, and the office of the Chancellor, the two arms of our university governance in charge of my file."

In the following two years Chapela and his supporters staged many public interventions against corporate academia, including marches within the university, pies thrown at the chancellor, hundreds of global letters of support, three different lawsuits against UCB as well as the production of numerous texts and fliers. During the week of May 16th-21st of this year, Chapela conducted another street level intervention . The event, called "Dreams of Reason," involved daily cycling around the construction site of the new bio engineering building at Berkeley. Chapela confronted the corporatization of the public university and invited members of the public to join him in reflecting on their role in the “transgenic future of the world.”

During the second day of “Dreams of Reason,” Chapela received the surprising news of the tenure decision. The last night of the weeklong event was dramatically transformed to a celebration of the tenure in the ominous shadow of the bioengineering building. Chapela described this victory and the continued effort to serve the public with these words:

"So it is that I will need some time fully to grasp the new situation, to consider what this decision brings as options, and to restructure my personal and professional life around them. Nevertheless, I must admit to a deep concern that the rare privilege of a tenured position in such a university as UC Berkeley may become a muzzle. I am very aware that becoming a vested member in the club of the tenured could cause me to measure my words and thoughts more carefully. I have seen it happen, as I have also watched the glint in the eye of colleagues dim, as they fitted themselves to the academic cloth. But I have also seen the sharpness undulled in those few among our large number who have maintained a critical and uncompromising engagement with the real, an engagement that is the straw in the shoe reminding them of the privilege granted them through tenure by the generosity of the public, and not by pomp and ritual, nor by autocratic decision, nor by presumed birthright.

I know of no other case where the public's role in the conferring of tenure has been more evident. There is no doubt in my mind that I owe this tenure to you, as well as to others beyond yourselves who, without knowing, have been prodigal in support of a place to think and speak freely. I trust that you, and those who will come in your wake, will help me bear the burden of responsibility to public service that tenure in this university entails. No doubt I will need your support now more than ever."