There is a curious sidebar to the Moriarity lawsuit. In an article about the one-year anniversary of the shootings, Jay Reeves of Associated Press wrote:
Public universities seem perpetually strapped for cash, and Moriarity said the loss of valuable research performed by Bishop and the shooting victims has reduced outside research grants coming into UAH. That's expected to improve as new teachers are hired.
Those words indicate that Bishop was a productive researcher whose work helped keep the department afloat. Other news reports have indicated the same thing. If that's the case, why was Bishop being fired? I worked in the University of Alabama System for 19 years, and I know that in academia, a denial of tenure is equivalent to being terminated. I also know that research productivity usually is the No. 1 criteria for awarding tenure.
Moriarity is suing Bishop, but she also seems to be admitting that Bishop was a valuable researcher, one whose productivity has been missed. So why again was Bishop denied tenure? That's a question that University of Alabama officials surely do not want the public pondering for very long
Am I suggesting that Amy Bishop was justified in shooting people? Of course not. Am I suggesting that she probably had good reason to be pretty darned angry. Yes. Is it stressful to be thrown out of your job during the Bush recession for dubious, or thoroughly illegitimate, reasons? It sure as heck is.
I know what it's like to have clod-headed and ethically challenged administrators ruin your career at the University of Alabama; I'm experiencing it at this very moment. UA officials at the Birmingham campus (UAB) created an environment that caused me to be unlawfully terminated after 19 years on the job. I suspect a similar dysfunctional environment was in place on the Huntsville campus. And I hope the victims and their families hold officials accountable for fostering an environment that led to tragedy. You can rest assured that the university hierarchy will do everything in its power to hide how badly the Amy Bishop tenure case was butchered.
It's not just my opinion that the University of Alabama currently is run by a bunch of crooks and fraudsters. Paul Bryant Jr., a member of the Board of Trustees, was owner of Alabama Reassurance, a company that was implicated in a $15-million fraud scheme. That case resulted in a 15-year prison sentence for a Pennsylvania man named Allen W. Stewart, and Justice Department officials had given the OK to pursue an investigation of Bryant's company. The Bryant investigation, however, mysteriously was called off, and Alabama Re eventually was liquidated. Bryant is the son of Hall of Fame football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, and it apparently helps to have family connections when federal investigators come knocking.
We have written numerous times about massive health-care fraud on the UAB campus, and the university settled a federal whistleblower lawsuit in 2005. A forensic accountant estimated the actual fraud at $400 million to $600 million, but the Bush DOJ let the university off with a penalty of $3.4 million, less than one percent of the likely fraud.
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