There is the possibility that Amy Bishop has been taking antidepressants since the death of her brother over 20 years ago.

The Physicians Desk Reference states that SSRI antidepressants and all antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, abnormal thinking, paranoia, hostility, etc.  These side effects can also appear during withdrawal. Also, these adverse reactions are not listed as Rare but are listed as either Frequent or Infrequent.

Go to www.SSRIstories.com where there are over 3,600 cases, with the full media article available, involving bizarre murders, suicides, school shootings/incidents  [53 of these] and murder-suicides - all of which involve SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc, . The media article usually tells which SSRI antidepressant the perpetrator was taking or had been using

Race? Why would it be about race? This lefty moonbat loved Obama. This murderer was obsessed with Obama.

"A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children - the youngest a third-grade boy - was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting."

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100215oddball_protrait_emerges_suspects_family_pals_offer_clues/srvc=home&position=0

I can't help but recall a similar massacre in my home town of Iowa City in 1991. A physics graduate student murdered three professors, a fellow grad student, and a university administrator because his dissertation didn't win the department's top prize. But in that case, the murder was a Chinese immigrant, so the coverage of course focused on the murderer's nationality and culture rather than academic stress.

Once again, you have a great eye for challenging the received wisdom of the media narrative.

David Byrne - "The Moment of Conception":

Blame my school and blame my parents
And the genes that I inherit
Blame it on my older sister for showing me her dirty pictures
Blame the TV and the movies
Blame the lawyers and the juries

I hope YOU do not get tenure.  Not only are you trying to make this a story about "racial purge" (which is dispicable of you), but you clearly seem to think that you are somehow more clever than everyone else.

Not only is tenure on its way out (thankfully, after far too long) but those in higher education (yes, ALL professors and department heads) who weild their tenure like a weapon are to be partly blamed for the growing sense of frustration with the whole tenure process.

Tenure is NOT about academic freedom. Tenure is about POWER. When academics lord their presumed power over their students, their colleagues and their schools, they are NOT shouting about academic freedom and job security. The power of tenure is used to crush graduate students, to defend lazy work habits and crap science, and to cause a stale stench to fill the halls of academe.

TENURE NEEDS TO GO. And this is one reason: You.  Look at this crap article you have written where your REAL intent is to try to say, "Look at me! I'm up for tenure and I'm fine."  I hope you don't get it -- especially if this is the quality of your writing and thinking.

You seem to want to make this about "racial purge" when it is merely about being flipping crazy. The woman was nuts. That's aside from her tenure woes.

Tenure sucks. Everyone knows it and no one can do anything about it. It turns normally nice people (like junior professors in my department) into blithering idiots who kowtow to any and all stupid demands of their department. In short, tenure turns nice people into assholes.

TENURE NEEDS TO GO IN AMERICA. GET OVER YOURSELF AND WORK FOR YOUR JOB ALWAYS, not just for 3 years during some review process.  I'm surprised more people don't blast their way out of messed up meetings where colleagues (who stand to gain) belittle and disregard work.

"Oh, we can't do that...we're up for tenure", is a disgusting refrain and it needs to end. Tenuring professors halts advances in science, not the opposite.  There is plenty of "academic freedom" (and freedom in general) in the U.S. that we do not need to give shitty professors and mean people any more job security than the rest of us.

Tenure turns people into jerks, it stops progress, it provides a "stupid shield" where people are allowed to be lazy and mean.  More universities have been getting rid of tenure lately (over decades) and that is a GOOD THING.

TENURE NEEDS TO GO! KILL TENURE, NOT PEOPLE.

Congratulations to you on nearing completion of your tenure track, however there are a few facts and observations that I would like to point out:

1. Not all disciplines are alike, even within such a diverse and broad heading of arts and sciences. How you can speak for the tenure obligations of all disciplines across all institutions is beyond me. It smacks of the intellectual hubris commonly found in academe.

2. While this is a blog and not an actual piece of journalism, you may be forgiven for rendering your judgement on stories that, not only appear in respected journals, but have to go through a more rigorous process than merely recording personal meanderings. However, it does nothing to establish yourself as impartial.

3. Since there has been a push within most institutions for ethnic diversity (affirmative action notwithstanding), it might be common to find a plethora of people of diverse racial backgrounds within any given academic department. It may be that their bad luck just happened to be that they happened to be there.

4. As far as what thoughts cross a sane's person mind or not, last I checked, the jury was still out on that one. I will state, however, that certain evolutionary psychologists (like David Buss from UT Austin) might take exception with your rather narrow criteria for sanity.

In conclusion, Dr. Cleveland, I will venture that your tone and your quick judgement, both to all of the facts surrounding this case (which is still under investigation), as well as the moral failings and defects of Mrs. Bishop, whom you may or may not know personally but who, in our judicial system, is still innocent of any pending charges, bespeak the continuation of the very same arrogance that gave rise to the tradition of tenure in the first place. I am not familiar with your work or any of your academic publications, but I would hope, for the sake of the most basic academic standards of competence, is more wholly thought out than what you have written in this blog.

Good luck to you, sir!

• Job security in general and the tenure process in particular certainly are stressful and, like any major stressor, people respond differently. Even “normal” people respond within a wide range of behaviors.

• “…Inside Higher Ed fautously links to an old article about faculty who have minor breakdowns after being turned down for tenure, as if one could compare a shouting incident or a distarught person climbing up an ivy trellis with cold-blooded murder.” Certainly those reactions can be compared. They’re simply varying degrees of breakdown.

• “The general thrust of the coverage is that the tenure process is so painful and stressful that an otherwise normal person might snap and become violent.” You’ve backed yourself into a corner by having to define normal. Aside from that, how can we say it absolutely could not happen to an “otherwise normal person”? Simply because it’s not common? Simply because neither you nor your colleagues have had the urge?

• I feel the race of those she killed is irrelevant, and, trust me, the question is “exotic” enough for the press to explore (given America’s race obsession); I merely think they found no basis for the question (especially seeing as how she respected Obama) so they’re focusing on tenure instead.

Egads! I see where all the nutballs are coming from. Cleveland, you've been linked by vdare.com. Vdare is a blog/forum where xenophobes and white-supremacists frolic. It was founded by Peter Brimelow, a former editor at the National Review until Buckley purged the staff xenophobes in the late 90s. He gained fame for his bestselling anti-immigrant screed, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, which is especially amusing because Brimelow is himself an immigrant from the UK. VDare originated the "War Against Christmas" that became such an obsession to the good folks of FOX News.

Brimelow is also known for his mesmerizing hipster hairdo...

That department effed with the wrong person that time.  Amy was a pretty good shot.  I appears she hit all in the head!  Bullseye!

1. The additional aspect of the shooting taking place in a region historically known for its intense racism makes the racial/ethnic aspects newsworthy. While the accused shooter was not Southern, the school is located in a part of the country where brooding resentments over affirmative action and ultimately desegregation remain part of the cultural landscape. The election of a black president has only intensified those tensions.

2. Clearly the context is not the only aspect of this event any more than the woman's mental health status. But all of these factors must be considered if we truly wish to understand this event rather than simply come to a quick - but largely erroneous - judgment for purposes of blame.

3. Having watched a number of tenure processes, I can relate to the pressures but also to the politics often involved. The former is enough to make one hostile, the latter enough to make one paranoid. If this woman's history is any indication, her manner of resolving conflict involves violence. But having the entire future of one's life dismantled by a tenure committee could be enough to tip anyone across the line toward aggession if not violence under these circumstances. Note, I do not blame the department or the university here, but I can readily see how this could occur.

4. The hostility of the comments here regarding tenure and university faculty generally is precisely the reason tenure exists. While laziness is clearly alive and well in higher education, like any other profession, it is as much the exception to the rule here as it is anywhere else. That people begin with presumptions that teachers of all stripes are lazy, incompetent, et al means that we do our work in an adversarial context of suspicion and often hostility. That's why tenure exists - to protect educators from the largely irrational, generally uncritical negativity of the public. Add to that the political aspects - both in terms of personal ambition and concerns for security as well as the ideological dimension - of administrators, and the need for tenure is readily apparent to anyone willing to see it.

For the record, I am an instructor at a public mega-university. I have no protection of tenure. I am ata best ambivalent about the rigors of a tenure track pursuit and the potential protection attainment of tenure would provide.

The race card is always dealt in situations in attempt to answer the impossible. Millions and millions of tax dollars are at stake every year in attempts to understand criminals, or the criminally insane. While I do not believe Amy Bishop can use a defense of incompetent by reasons of insanity, she does not have a decent head on her shoulders.  The University of Alabama, Huntsville has a making of 32% minorities in the year 2007. With a great number of minorities on campus the probability of randomly firing would be around 1 in 3, if Amy Bishop was to shoot six bullets she would approximately hit two in six minorities. With that being said, the race card should be thrown into the muck.

The underlying “cause” to this is dead money, the idea that a person needs a reason to kill is lacking in the knowledge of what actually happens in the justice system.  A criminal act, in order to be prosecuted must have two things, mens rea, and actus rea; you must have the guilty mind, and commit a guilty act. Amy Bishop was on tilt, she was carrying a gun before receiving the verdict of being denied tenure.  Amy Bishop was going all in with nothing.

 You say “it never even crosses a healthy person’s mind” and killing never does, because criminals can hold a good bluff.

The race card is always dealt in situations in attempt to answer the impossible. Millions and millions of tax dollars are at stake every year in attempts to understand criminals, or the criminally insane. While I do not believe Amy Bishop can use a defense of incompetent by reasons of insanity, she does not have a decent head on her shoulders.  The University of Alabama, Huntsville has a making of 32% minorities in the year 2007. With a great number of minorities on campus the probability of randomly firing would be around 1 in 3, if Amy Bishop was to shoot six bullets she would approximately hit two in six minorities. With that being said, the race card should be thrown into the muck.

The underlying “cause” to this is dead money, the idea that a person needs a reason to kill is lacking in the knowledge of what actually happens in the justice system.  A criminal act, in order to be prosecuted must have two things, mens rea, and actus rea; you must have the guilty mind, and commit a guilty act. Amy Bishop was on tilt, she was carrying a gun before receiving the verdict of being denied tenure.  Amy Bishop was going all in with nothing.

 You say “it never even crosses a healthy person’s mind” and killing never does, because criminals can hold a good bluff.

The race card is always dealt in situations in attempt to answer the impossible. Millions and millions of tax dollars are at stake every year in attempts to understand criminals, or the criminally insane. While I do not believe Amy Bishop can use a defense of incompetent by reasons of insanity, she does not have a decent head on her shoulders.  The University of Alabama, Huntsville has a making of 32% minorities in the year 2007. With a great number of minorities on campus the probability of randomly firing would be around 1 in 3, if Amy Bishop was to shoot six bullets she would approximately hit two in six minorities. With that being said, the race card should be thrown into the muck.

The underlying “cause” to this is dead money, the idea that a person needs a reason to kill is lacking in the knowledge of what actually happens in the justice system.  A criminal act, in order to be prosecuted must have two things, mens rea, and actus rea; you must have the guilty mind, and commit a guilty act. Amy Bishop was on tilt, she was carrying a gun before receiving the verdict of being denied tenure.  Amy Bishop was going all in with nothing.

 You say “it never even crosses a healthy person’s mind” and killing never does, because criminals can hold a good bluff.