Berkeley Professor Moves Office to Lawn 

WILLIAM BRAND / Alameda Times-Star 1jul03

[Background articles]

Biology instructor planted desk outside to protest slow action on his contract extension, tenure application

	Photos by Paul Goettlich

BERKELEY—In what has to be the most unusual protest on the University of California, Berkeley campus in years, an assistant professor up for tenure moved his office to the lawn in front of California Hall last Thursday and has been holding office hours for his students since.

But this is no ordinary tenure battle. Biologist Ignacio Chapela's lunch Monday came from the kitchen of Chez Panisse, at the direction of California cuisine maven Alice Waters. Breakfast was prepared on a tiny backpacking stove by a colleague.

And UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl, whose office is on the second floor of California Hall, walked by and said hello.

Among other research work, Chapela's lab investigates the spread of genetically modified plants into native, non-transgenic stocks, research that has won him many friends in the organic food community, including Waters. Her world-famous restaurant on Shattuck Avenue has been all-organic from the beginning.

A study by Chapela and a co-investigator that found evidence of transgenic corn in seed corn in a remote field in Oaxaca, Mexico, created a furor among biotech scientists, who challenged some of the study's methods. In an unusual move, Nature magazine said it should not have published the study, then published two criticisms and Chapela's response.

That was last year. Since then, other researchers have found evidence through other methods that support Chapela's findings, the assistant professor said Monday.

Chapela's supporters note he was one of several faculty members who strongly objected to a $25 million research pact between Novartis, the multinational biotech business, and UC Berkeley's Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in 1998. The deal collapsed earlier this year, when the successor company to Novartis moved its West Coast research facility to North Carolina.

Supporters and students say his outspoken opposition made him a target for university administrators who welcomed the biotech funds. "Now there's this tenure battle," said molecular and cellular biology doctoral student Jason Delborne, munching a Chez Panisse organic sandwich. "It's absolutely bizarre. At this university, we're supposed to be beyond politics. Clearly, we are not."

Chapela said the camp-out began as a desperation measure. As of 6 a.m. last Thursday, the university had not extended his year-to-year contract and nothing had happened to his tenure application, even though all but one department faculty member supported it.

Monday at midnight was to be the end of his appointment. So he sent out an e-mail early last Thursday, and with student help lugged his books, chairs and files to the campus lawn. At 7 a.m., his department chair, Paul Ludden, informed him he had been granted another year on the faculty—while his tenure application proceeds.

The decision, university Vice Chancellor George Strait said, was sent to Chapela June 19, a week before he started his camp out.

"Well, I found out at 7 a.m. after I was already here," Chapela said.

With a shrug, he said he stayed on the lawn even though his job was no longer terminal. He said late Monday he would stay until midnight, when his appointment would have expired.

His tenure request is now in the campus budget committee—one of nine layers of approval that must be obtained for any tenure decision, Strait said. "Ultimately, it goes to the chancellor's desk. He has to approve it," he said.

source: http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1486~1488296,00.html 1jul03