Submission + - MIT professor begins hunger strike
An anonymous reader writes: MIT provost L. Rafael Reif sent a campus-wide email on Jan 29 defending the school's treatment of James L. Sherley, the African-American stem cell scientist who has vowed to go on a hunger strike today (Feb. 5) unless the university says he was denied tenure because of racism. MIT has yet to recover from last summer's controversy over the treatment of a female candidate, who eventually turned down an offer after reporting hostile treatment from tenured faculty member and Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa.