Editor,
What could be called the second firing of Richard Berthold raises a big problem for the faculty and for peace-loving people across the state.
First, no one I know believes Provost Dasenbrock's statement that the rejection has nothing to do with Berthold's outspoken views as they emerged in the tragedy of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most people figure the order to block Berthold from teaching again came from higher-up.
If there is some secret basis for the firing, then let it be known - this is a public university, not a private-sector corporation. Or, is it?
This incident reveals to me again who really runs UNM. Under any semblance of academic freedom, Berthold's right to speech would be protected, and we would have none of this debacle. So what is going on?
In my opinion, the answer was revealed in a large, expensive multi-colored flier the provost mailed to UNM College of Arts and Sciences alumni over the summer about needing money.
No less than four times in three paragraphs, the provost praised the collaborative effort by UNM with Sandia National Laboratories and Lockheed Martin to fund and create new science education ideas in the Southwest.
Sandia is the place where mass murder by nuclear weapons is perfected, and Lockheed Martin is the largest and most profitable weapons manufacturer in the world. The blood of many people has flowed to make Lockheed Martin what it is today, and UNM acts as if this is honorable.
As we all know, our state Legislature has cut funding to higher education by a large amount, which has forced UNM to take blood money from the war industries in town.
You can understand why Berthold's frankness is a problem for the war profiteers who control the Pentagon and their supporters who run UNM. It is funny to see the right-wing letters in the Lobo complaining of liberals running higher education when it is locked up tight by the military-industrial complex.
At UNM, we moved closer to the Pentagon when Gov. Richardson handpicked a former Secretary of the Army as UNM president four years ago. President Caldera has said many times that money from war research is good for UNM, and he wants more of it.
Caldera has said war profiteering will trickle down to make us a happy family of students, staff and faculty.
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Taxpayers should be asking why tuition is so high at UNM when so much private money is coming in. It goes to build high tech labs for corporate research, mostly. Why is the Science and Technology Park and the UNM Hospital bleeding the budget dry? Why are all the top administrators able to loot the University for their fat corporate salaries?
Richardson has become a master at selling New Mexico's resources and labor to the global elite at a cut-rate price. He hopes the payback will get him into the White House. It is not in his or Caldera's interest to have free thinkers like Berthold around who can challenge students to think beyond the conventional mold.
Berthold's situation is another message to the rest of the faculty to stay in line or face the unchecked terror of the military-industrial complex in the academy.
Robert Anderson
UNM alumnus
