{"id":3055,"date":"2007-02-06T09:15:21","date_gmt":"2007-02-06T09:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/on-strike.html"},"modified":"2007-02-06T09:15:21","modified_gmt":"2007-02-06T09:15:21","slug":"on-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/on-strike.html","title":{"rendered":"On Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIT prof, opponent of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, goes on hunger strike<\/em> to protest his denial of tenure??<\/a><\/p>\n

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A black MIT professor began a hunger strike Monday to protest the university\u2019s decision to deny him tenure – a decision he claims was based on racism. <\/p>\n

James Sherley, 49, a stem cell scientist, said he has tried unsuccessfully for two years to persuade administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to reverse a decision by his department head to reject his bid for tenure. <\/p>\n

In December, Sherley gave MIT officials a deadline of Feb. 5 to reverse the decision. If not, he said he would start a hunger strike outside the office of MIT provost L. Rafael Reif. <\/p>\n

Sherley stuck to his word. After eating two bowls of Chex cereal for breakfast, he stood outside Reif\u2019s office for several hours Monday morning in a peaceful protest, accompanied by about 25 friends and supporters. <\/p>\n

Sherley, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 254 pounds, said he planned to go without food and ingest only water, vitamins and electrolyte supplements until the university acknowledges racism played a role in the decision to deny him tenure. He said he would spend three hours each morning outside Reif\u2019s office, then continue his research work in his lab at MIT in the afternoons. <\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Another faculty group, including linguist Noam Chomsky, has circulated a letter, dated Feb. 1, highlighting flaws in the tenure grievance process and urging MIT to \u201dthoroughly pursue\u201d Sherley\u2019s allegations that he was treated unfairly. The group said it could not judge the academic merits of the tenure decision<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A 2005 interview with Sherley at MercatorNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIT prof, opponent of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, goes on hunger strike to protest his denial of tenure?? A black MIT professor began a hunger strike Monday to protest the university\u2019s decision to deny him tenure – a decision he claims was based on racism. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}