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Fabrikant wrote Dean Swamy pointing out that just seven months earlier the same members of the same committee had awarded him the highest merit increase of anyone in the department. How could things have changed so much? Poor behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated, he said, and dared anyone who thought his behaviour was detrimental to file a complaint.
Every large organization has an institutional memory. Files of one kind or another allow one to chart the sequence of events, the decision-making process, and the accumulation of behaviours; they provide a “paper trail.” At universities, a faculty member’s “official” — i.e. most complete — file is maintained in the dean’s office. All relevant matters pertaining to that faculty member are contained there. In the case of Fabrikant, even if no one had bothered lodging complaints about each particular threat or disruption, one might reasonably expect to find a pattern: documentation of the French class episode; his quarrel with the purchasing department; the fact that Security had been asked to follow him; and the stern letter from Sheinin. They simply weren’t there. And the contents of his official file should have been available to the Faculty Personnel Committee. As for his departmental dossier, Osman later admitted to editing out unfavourable material — a poor course evaluation, for example — to help Fabrikant gain advancement.
In late November, the faculty personnel committee, who’d been reading favourable reports about Fabrikant for years, suddenly found themselves confronted with a litany of vague complaints about him and a recommendation that he not be renewed. The committee was understandably bewildered, and in the absence of hard evidence, voted unanimously to overrule the mechanical-engineering department. The meeting was chaired by Dean Swamy. The committee gave Fabrikant a one-year renewal subject to four conditions. He was to teach advanced courses in mechanical engineering, take on more graduate students, and conform to the research goals of the department and to its curriculum development.
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ith his own chair and department turning against him, Fabrikant’s moods and behaviour began swinging more and more wildly. In early February 1992, he escalated things yet again, this time by resorting to electronic mail; he began transmitting memos and correspondence within Concordia itself, complaining that the faculty association wasn’t supporting him in his fight with the university. When Sheinin informed him that he was misusing the university’s communications system, Fabrikant replied that there was no rule saying he couldn’t use it. He expanded his e-mail campaign, to include all his grievances and charges, and began deluging mystified academics everywhere. Among the dozens of supporting documents he sent out were transcripts of the conversations he’d taped, but he now added allegations of financial fraud and conflict of interest on the part of his colleagues. “I am no longer afraid of anything or anybody,” his e-mail declared. “We all have to die one day. Whenever I die, I shall die an honest person ... . I cannot fight all the crooks in the world, but I shall not rest until the bogus scientists in this university are exposed” Fabrikant again dared people at Concordia to sue him.
He wrote to members of Concordia’s Board of Governors, charging Sheshadri Sankar with misappropriation of authorship and being in a conflict of interest with respect to a research contract between Transport Canada and CONCAVE. “Rector knows about this,” he stated flatly, “but prefers to cover it up.” Rose Sheinin was asked by the Board of Governors to investigate the allegations and several weeks later, she presented a cautiously-worded report to the Board stating that the “activities of all Concordia faculty members involved in the project were and are, as far as I can determine, entirely correct and within the current ethos” — i.e. conform to the way things are normally done at Concordia. She dismissed the misappropriation-of-authorship question.
But Sheinin had been expressing concern about the “ethos” at Concordia since her arrival. And one of the things that had concerned her was the lack of a policy regarding the proper handling of research and contract funds. Her investigation could only have been cursory, considering its incompleteness and the remarkably short time it took. Fabrikant accused Sheinin of a coverup. “You found no evidence to support my allegations [against Sheshadri Sankar] because you did not want to find the evidence.” He criticized her for not having contacted him during her investigation and sent her additional material to corroborate his charges. She dismissed the evidence, saying it contained nothing new.
Dr. Fabrikant's Solution, continued >
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