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  1.        It was a long walk from space 132A of garage N to the entrance of the Chemistry building. 
  2. My faculty parking privileges had  lapsed years ago and I had to take my chances with the great
  3. unwashed.  I had offered to drop my granddaughter off at the door and join her there, but she
  4. would not hear of it.  It was a fine brisk winter's day, with not a cloud in the sky and we both
  5. enjoyed the walk.  Lisa, my 22-year old granddaughter, had just been admitted to the doctoral
  6. program in Chemistry at Queenstown University and I had promised to show her around.the
  7. campus where I had spent so many frustrated years of my life.  When Lisa earlier asked  my
  8. opinion of Queenstown University, I had been noncommittal, saying only that I didn't want to
  9. bias her.  This was true enough, although I had to struggle to keep a straight face as I said it.
  10. I had not set foot on the campus for a dozen years and found there had been remarkably little
  11. change in the parts I remembered best, including the Chemistry building.  The most conspicuous
  12. changes were in the people, especially the students.  I had left a campus whose student body had
  13. been almost entirely white. I returned to one where white was rivaled by off-white, yellow, and
  14. brown and where a not unknown headgear was the turban.  
  15.     Lisa had been quite voluble as we walked from the garage, but she now fell silent as we entered
  16. the elevator.  
  17.     "Is this the building where the tragedy happened?"
  18.     "Yes."
  19.     A very tall and beige-colored man sharing the elevator with us, who appeared to be a Sikh, 
  20. half-smiled briefly, not at us, but to himself.
  21.     "Can I see his lab?"
  22.     "If you insist, but there won't be much to see.  Three different people have been in there since."
  23.     They had indeed.  Even when I was there, it had been known as the unlucky lab, since no one 
  24. occupying it had ever been known to receive tenure.
  25.     We got off on the sixth floor and made a short visit to room 633.  The only people there were
  26. two harried-looking graduate students, who seemed preoccupied; we left after a few minutes and
  27. resumed our trip to the eighth floor,  where the departmental offices were located.  This part of
  28. the building had not changed much, except that some paneling had been added here and there. I
  29. could not resist sticking my head in the door of the conference room, which I remembered so
  30. well.  It still contained the oval table and about two dozen swivel chairs, about half of which were
  31. occupied.  Some kind of meeting was going on.  A dozen faces turned toward me questioningly,
  32. none of which I recognized.  Twelve years is long enough to allow a substantial turnover, even
  33. without the special circumstances affecting this department.  I smiled politely and withdrew.
  34.     "What was it all about?"
  35.     "It stemmed from an institution called promotion and tenure.  Every new faculty member who
  36. began as an assistant professor, the lowest level, had to serve a probationary period of six years.
  37. On the seventh year, he might apply for permanent status, or tenure, and promotion to associate
  38. professor.  The decision was made by those members of the departmental faculty who already
  39. possessed tenure and had to be confirmed by the departmental chairman and the higher
  40. administration of the university."
  41.     "Once he had tenure, was he secure for life?"
  42.     "Yes.  He could not be fired except for cause.  Occasionally, a tenured professor would let
  43. himself go to pot, allowing his productivity to lapse until he became deadwood.  However, this
  44. was rare.  Apathy is not among the characteristic vices of scientists, or of academic people in
  45. general.  As you can imagine, getting tenure was crucial for a young scientist." 
  46.     Today this was of course a thing of the past.  The institution of tenure had lapsed everywhere,
  47. even at conservative colleges like Queenstown, being replaced by contracts whose terms were
  48. negotiable.  The sad events at Queenstown may well have been a factor in this transition.  Was
  49. this a change for the better?  One could argue either way.  While it had come to be widely
  50. recognized that tenure really existed to protect the faculty member from departmental infighting,
  51. rather than political reprisals by the administration, there remained the solid fact that it also
  52. compelled the department to have a hard critical look at the candidate at least once.
  53.     "What are the characteristic vices of academic people?"
  54.     "Vanity, selfishness, mean-spiritedness, compulsiveness, suspicion, especially for scientists, and
  55. the better they are, the more likely they possess these traits. Of course there are many honorable
  56. exceptions."
  57.     "You're one."
  58.     To which I said nothing at all.  Little did she know.  We were silent for a while and I was alone
  59. with my own thoughts, which were drawn relentlessly by the past.  That year had been unusual, in
  60. that there were two obligatory promotion and tenure decisions.  Also, an unexpected cutback
  61. in operating expenses meant that, regardless of the decision, only one candidate could expect to
  62. obtain permanent status.   
  63.     The two candidates could not have been more different.  Michael Fleming was a good
  64. approximation to everyone's ideal for a son-in-law.  He was handsome in a virile way,  with an
  65. alert and commanding presence, as well as a good family man with three beautiful children.  In his
  66. interaction with colleagues, he was unfailingly courteous, friendly and helpful.  He did not share
  67. the typical shortcomings of scientist and, in fact, seemed, at least externally, to have no vices at
  68. all.  He did not make enemies and was universally popular with students and faculty alike.  The
  69. latter was no mean feat, as Queenstown, like all institutions of higher learning, had many
  70. frustrated and spiteful individuals.
  71.     What was the catch?  It was certainly not in teaching, where his performance was generally
  72. regarded as outstanding.  Only in the area of research was it possible to entertain some
  73. reservations.  Everyone agreed that his work was flawless, but not very exciting, and most of his
  74. publications were in obscure specialty journals.  Perhaps for this reason he had never been
  75. awarded a research grant from an external agency.  
  76.     The other candidate, James Adella, could not have been more different.  He might have been a
  77. negative image corresponding to Fleming's positive.  The two shared only first rate academic
  78. credentials, both being products of elite graduate schools.  Where Fleming was warm and
  79. outgoing, Adella was cold and totally self-centered.  He was unmarried and had no personal
  80. friends, a condition with which he seemed to be entirely satisfied.  It is not unusual to find
  81. scientists so submerged in their work that they ignore the ordinary human interactions, but Adella
  82. was clearly in a class by himself.  In the five years he had been at Queensburg, no one could recall
  83. a friendly word or gesture.
  84.     But this was not all.  He tended to be savagely critical of the work of others.                              
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