Lessons from Sacto
Critic of biotech industry uses direct action to push for long-delayed tenure decision

IGNACIO CHAPELA ATTENDED the Sacramento protests to carry the debate on biotechnology into the public arena. Returning to the UC Berkeley campus, where he teaches, Chapela brought the same activist tactics to his nearly two-year-old application for tenure status.

With Chapela's contract set to expire at the end of June and his future at Berkeley uncertain, the silence coming from the university administration suggested the decision might be about more than his merits in academia, that it might be about his lightning-rod role on the issue of genetically modified organisms.

Early in the morning June 26, Chapela arranged his office furniture in the shade of a larch tree across from California Hall, in plain view of the chancellor's office, to mark the last days of his contract.

He draped a Mexican poncho along the retaining wall behind Bancroft Library and set up three chairs for guests, a small counter and bookshelf for essential supplies (food and water, reading material, and duct tape), and a modest sleeping pad where he would reside for the next four nights.

"In the face of such lack of transparency and accountability, I choose to hold office hours in public, in the open, and in the midst of our beautiful campus," Chapela wrote in a letter inviting friends and colleagues to support him.

Chapela's case for tenure is strong. He is a respected microbial ecologist, serves as scientific director at a research facility in Oaxaca, Mexico, and is a leading expert on biodiversity. So it caused little surprise when his department approved his application last May with near unanimous support from faculty and forwarded it on for final review.

Andrew Gutierrez, a senior faculty member with Chapela in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, described him to us as "the true meaning and essence of a professor." He even dresses the part: polo shirts, earth-tone khakis, straw safari hat.

But Chapela has run afoul of more industry-friendly Berkeley faculty members and has been a constant and outspoken critic of the biotechnology industry.

Five years ago, as chair of the College of Natural Resources' executive committee, he led the opposition to a $25 million agreement with biotech giant Novartis. (That contentious deal went through, but it runs out this year, with no plans for renewal.) Then two years ago Chapela coauthored an article in the journal Nature that rattled proponents of genetically modified organisms and invigorated detractors.

Gutierrez said Chapela distinguishes himself among current Berkeley scientists because of how he takes his research into the public forum. "Most of my colleagues take on intellectually interesting issues but run for cover from controversy," Gutierrez said.

Now Gutierrez, one of the most senior members of the Berkeley tenured faculty, wants to know why Chapela's case for tenure has come to this. The review process that usually concludes in a matter of months has already exceeded one year.

"They have all the information. They know about the support Ignacio has. They [even] know the root of the controversy," Gutierrez said. "If this [public demonstration] hurts Ignacio's tenure case, then they are judging on the wrong criteria."

Shortly after Chapela opened his outdoor office June 26, he was told that his contract was extended for one year but that extension has no bearing on his ongoing tenure case.

Assistant vice-chancellor George Strait told us the Academic Senate budget committee is undergoing an independent review of Chapela's application and that the timeline and the factors that go into its decision must remain strictly confidential.

"There is an endpoint to this process," Strait said. "When it is, I don't know."

Matthew Hirsch