The March of the Political Officer

The Political Officer visited my Advanced Genetic Engineering class today, for the third time in six weeks.

That is not his official job title, of course, but an honorarium this particular assistant dean has earned. When he visits your class to “observe”, you and the students had better hope that you stick to the approved topics. This is a bit of a problem for the tele-students.

Tele-students are the pride and joy of the University. Once the telcos were forced to reinstate network neutrality as the price of government laid fiber, some clever bugger in the IT department figured out that we could make money off all the new bandwidth by offering internet based video classes. Doing it through the internet would allow the students to interact in practically real time. Not wanting to be accused of poaching local stundents by other universities, the administration decided to offer this to just overseas students. It has been a huge hit. My AGE class has a row of two-way television screens off to one side, so that the students can see me and the rest of the class. The interaction really is excellent – it is like the students are sitting here in real time and the time difference doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

And I can mute the tele-students. Would that I could do that to all the students.

The program has been a big success in India in particular. All my tele-students are Indian, and I think the number is something like 95% university wide. India is rich, growing, and English speaking. It is also much more democratic than the US, which brings me back to the problem of the political officer. The Indian students can sometimes prove distressingly unwilling to let go of topics that American students know to downplay or soft pedal.

I could never express that sentiment

I can see you smiling; I can feel the amusement radiating through the fiber and washing through the room. “Political Officer. Silly lefty academic with his silly paranoia.” I wish it was paranoia, but it is not. My state has an Academic Bill of Rights. That means anyone can complain that my teaching offends them and is political indoctrination. Topics such as evolution and its affects on our field and the contributions of stem cells to the science have to be dealt with very, very carefully if I want to avoid hassles. The Political Officer is more than willing to hand over a recording of my class to disgruntled students or off campus “student rights” organizations. I have tenure, so I cannot lose my job, but it still an irritant.

More importantly, though, is that I work in a lab and a field that has the potential to do a great deal of harm. The government is well aware of that. The security restrictions on us are, while not overpowering, certainly present, like are a slight smell that you get used to and ignore, until something brings it back to your attention. And Joseph Padilla died in a US Navy prison, having never been tried, and Enrique Martinez is still in one, along with who knows how many other people. The power is there, even if it is not used very much. The government would prefer that only patriots of its definition work with this material. The Political Officer is more than happy to point out where a professor’s definition of patriotism and the government’s differ but even so much as an unguarded comment or slight frown of disapproval.

It is important to investigate such things, the Political Officers swear, because we cannot have terrorist infiltrators gaining access to such dangerous information and materials. Loyalty must be assured.

He didn’t say anything, but he never does. He came in the middle of the class, silently oozing into a chair at the back where he could take careful notes on each participant. I think I handled it well enough. This has become something of a routine. I take a larger role in the discussion, guide it more. Come, follow me, students, away from the discussion of the benefits of fetal stem cells in our engineer, away from the questions of morality and ethics that you will have to grapple with every damn day of your professional career. Ignore the spider in the back; I will lead you out of the web. Maybe next session we can go back to being teacher and students.

Maybe.

Doctor Merek Has Been Killed

Doctor Janice Merek died two days ago in a terrorist attack in Kurdistan. Two nights ago, someone walked into the lobby of her hotel, where she and a few others were apparently sharing drinks at the lobby bar. They were probably celebrating the end of a successful mission. They had brought with them new genetic treatments developed in Europe and the US meant to counter the nasty bugs that are the most deadly legacy of the War of Secession. Children, in particular, have been hard hit by some of them. And these are nasty bugs — the best money could buy, specially designed to turn your immune system against your internal organs. In those with weak immune systems, the young and the very old, I am told that your organs can liquefy in a matter of hours. Dr. Merek’s group had been an unqualified success. The new treatments had more than lived up to their expectations, and the training of the local doctors had been completed. As I type this, people all over Kurdistan are getting the first course of a treatment that will forever eliminate their vulnerability to the bugs from a ten year old war.

And a man walked into her hotel, past the security guards and the bio-sensors, and detonated a small bomb that released a genetically crafted virus into the air. It was a poor virus, garage work of the cheapest, most useless kind. But Dr. Merek was old, and tired from injecting lines of children eighteen hours a day for a week and a half, and standing close to the detonation point. The bug did its job and her and stopped her heart. She was the only casualty, except for the terrorist.

Of course, the government of Kurdistan does not list the Dr. as a victim of terrorism. This was a private killing gone wrong, according to them. There is no terrorism in Kurdistan. There are no Turkmen or Arabs upset at Kurdish independence. There are no Turks or Iranians enraged at Kurdish support for their violent brothers across the borders. The government of the Islamic Republic of Iraq has no interest in keeping Kurdistan destabilized. No, all is love and light and good-fellowship. There is no terrorism, just an unfortunate, though temporary, up tick in violent crime due to the recent world-wide recession. It is a tragedy, and the government of the Republic of Kurdistan sends it most heartfelt condolences for this death that is in no way connected to the terrorism that does not exist.

Dr. Merek was to take over our lab on her return from Kurdistan. She delayed her ascension to the post in order to make one last trip, to see this project through to the end. I only met her once, briefly, during the hiring process. Junior professors are not consulted on personal decisions. But when she was hear, the Doctor made a point of meeting with everyone associated with the lab, including technicians and junior members of the team. She was charming in an old money way, sure of her positions and status and using the surety as a reason to treat everyone as if they where important. She was unusual in that in academia. She was the only candidate for the position to ask to meet with me. The world lost a good person at a time when we can not afford those kinds of losses. Next to that, my regret at not being able to work with her seems small and meaningless.

But I regret it still.