Word: sherley
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...protest stemmed from the idea that MIT denied him tenure because he is black and they are racist. Yet, a few days ago, in a major setback to the struggle against racism, Sherley started eating again, after only 12 days and a weight loss of 20 pounds...
...course Sherley never allowed the hunger to become too unbearable: He was ingesting vitamins, drinking water, and taking electrolyte supplements—essentially, he was on an extreme sort of diet. Quite honestly, he could stand to lose the weight. At 245 pounds and 5 feet 8 inches, his body mass index is, according to several hasty online calculations, about 37.2—far above the healthy level of 18.5-24.9. According to Scientific American, the longest anyone has lived on a hunger strike was 73 days, but that is without vitamins. Death only becomes imminent at a weight...
Fortunately, Sherley realized the futility of his actions long before the end. In his statements he blamed not only the department head who denied him tenure but also the subsequent committees created over the past two years to look into Sherley’s claims. Yet, after an extensive investigation—internal and external, including researchers unaffiliated with the institute, and a signed statement from 20 biological engineering department faculty stating they believed race played no part in the decision—the conclusion was the same: He should not receive tenure...
While no one can ever really know the true motives of the evildoers who continue to deny Sherley tenure, we can speculate on the reasons. Perhaps, for example, it was because he refuses to join in “mainstream” research. Sherley, a stem cell scientist, will not work with anything but adult stem cells while most of his colleagues in the field believe the focus should be on fetal stem cells. Could this have been an issue? Of course not, it was probably all because Sherley is black. (Never mind the fact that Phillip L. Clay, MIT?...
...Sherley claims that his motive was not personal gain but a higher purpose: to highlight MIT’s egregious racism. Yet he claimed he would only end the strike upon being granted tenure—a condition sadly not met. The fact that he then extended his protest to include a campaign against racism only weakened his case...