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On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Congressman Adam Schiff recently referred to Robert Kennedy\u2019s writings on the rarity of moral courage. My husband demonstrated moral courage when, as director of a microscopy imaging center at a public university, he observed, proved and reported scientific fraud in the Vice President for Research\u2019s laboratory. \u00a0The Vice President was also a professor in my husband\u2019s academic department. Two investigative committees corroborated my husband\u2019s report. \u00a0The Vice President denied responsibility and blamed a junior associate. Despite the university\u2019s mandate to educate the next generation and its commitment to scientific research, university administrators showed no respect for the truth. They destroyed my husband\u2019s career while covering up for the Vice President just as they had when others complained of his sexual and scientific misconduct. Although administration removed him as Vice President as a consequence of my husband\u2019s report, they created a Vice Deanship for him in the medical school and allowed him a state funded sabbatical leading to his ordination as a pastor. \u00a0As Vice Dean, he became my husband\u2019s part-time supervisor and waged a brutal campaign against him.<\/p>\n
Criminals attacked our property. \u00a0I received threatening letters about my husband. \u00a0Though the university ignored us, county police did not and suggested we establish a permanent record through the courts requiring lawyers we hired using our modest savings and remortgaging our home. The university, hoping we would just dry up, petitioned for successive hearing delays further straining our limited resources. \u00a0At depositions, the attorney general representing the university defamed my husband making me feel like a stranger in the state that has been my family\u2019s home for generations.<\/p>\n
Throughout the litigation process, my husband worked: running the microscopy center that he had created, improving and teaching his department\u2019s most problematic courses, conducting his experiments and publishing the results. \u00a0He found himself alone in a hostile environment with colleagues \u00a0unwilling to test the limits of their tenure or first amendment rights in his defense. \u00a0 The \u00a0departmental chair took from my husband the tools of his trade. \u00a0He reduced his lab, commandeered his microscopes, centrifuges and bridge funding while refusing to support his new grant applications. After decades of stress and a stalled career, we settled two lawsuits at our overwhelmed attorney\u2019s strong recommendation. \u00a0Despite decisive wins which compensated our lawyer and extended my husband\u2019s contract, post litigation, my husband\u2019s chair fired him due to alleged budgetary restraints. Everyone else in his department stayed: the lightly worked tenured professors, the secretaries (and their secretaries), the handymen, computer technicians and, ironically, the professor who committed the fraud. The 1500-acre campus proved too small to accommodate my husband elsewhere.<\/p>\n
My husband taught well and his scientific work can be easily reproduced. \u00a0His inventions still generate revenue for the university. \u00a0He provided a fair and logical presence on university committees. He edited two prestigious volumes in cell biology. \u00a0In recognition and with the backup of outside reviews, the appointment promotion and tenure committee (an independent body) promoted my husband to full professor after he was fired and a few months before he surrendered his lab, courses and responsibilities. \u00a0His promotion came without the tenure that would have saved his job.<\/p>\n
The protracted battle that we won at least in name, left my husband unemployed, impoverished and isolated. \u00a0He suffered a heart attack and developed terminal cancer that took his life. \u00a0He fought for his career and his family but also for the greater good since advances from scientific research (on which we depend and that which we support with tax dollars) emanate from truth, not lies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"