High crimes inside ivory towers

What is going on with our society and what is going on with our schools? I maybe exaggerate the situation here, but these days high-school-shooting events are so frequent they hardly count as breaking news anymore. And believe it or not, after each of these episodes we always ponder the same question: What happen to our students?

This morning, however, I wonder what happen to our professors? Today’s headline news is a nationwide hunt for University of Georgia professor George Zinkhan. Zinkhan is the Coca-Cola Company Professor at the Department of Marketing and Distribution of Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

According to a news report from the Associated Press, the 57-year-old George Zinkhan is suspected of shooting his ex-wife and two other men to death outside a theater near campus. ”Zinkhan argued with at least one of the victims prior to the shooting, then walked away before returning with at least two different guns and opening fire. Each victim was shot multiple times. After the shootings, the man described as an introverted, respected marketing professor dropped his children off with a next-door neighbor and vanished in his red Jeep.” Since then he remained at large, as “he wasn’t in his home or office and hadn’t used his credit or ATM cards.”

When I clicked the homepage of the University of Georgia, there is even a UGA alert about the off-campus shooting.

I am still absorbing the shock of this sad news. The school told the media, “Zinkhan, who has a doctorate from the University of Michigan, … had no disciplinary problems. Before joining the school in the 1990s, he held academic positions at the universities of Houston and Pittsburgh.”

This is where I get confused. The guy has tenure –which literally means he can never be fired unless there is a severe misconduct (of course, murder definitely counts!); he is a chair-professor –the top of an academic position a faculty could achieve; and he is the editor of one of the top marketing journals (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science). Do I need to mention that the faculty members at business schools also tend to be paid much more than other schools (say, Liberal Arts)? Unlike many ordinary people in America who struggle with job opportunities and security in this economic downturn, this guy has everything — job, fame, and wealth. Yet such a horrendous crime he did ended up on the headline news of this country.

In 2006, just three years ago, Rafael Robb, a well-known (and also tenured) economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania killed his wife. Now the 58-year-old earned himself a spot at Wikipedia and a sentence of five to 10 years in prison for bludgeoning his wife to death. The rumors are, the professor — specializing in game theories — even tried to fake a crime scene, which was detected easily by the police later. At that point, I thought this is just an isolated incidence.

These events now seem to be so puzzling to me. Schools, especially those of higher educations, long carry the ivory tower image. It is a place where knowledge is expanded and passed on, and research is advanced to understand the new unknowns. It is almost automatically assumed that only the best, the brightest and the most morally-qualified individuals in our society are able to teach and research at these academic institutes.

But since when we begin to worry about our safety in places like schools? Sure, people could attribute the college campus shooting to the stress that a college student may have to put up with, but a well-established professor of a business school goes on a killing spree? I dare not to speculate the cause here, but unlike these struggling untenured assistant professors, these people are so accomplished; it would be very hard to convince me that the stress and depression are the main cause for them.