The Northwest Report
March 8, 2011 ***CONTINUALLY UPDATED AS EVENTS UNFOLD***
By Art Robinson © 2011
Art Robinson’s memorable appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC) during his 2010 run for congress:
In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon’s 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.
Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer.
Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.
However, when you take a stand for what’s right, sometimes there is retribution.
On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term “political payback.”
They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.
Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley’s husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua’s apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany’s graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.
Palmer, until recently married to a member of the OSU psychology faculty, is now married to former OSU student Camille Lodwick. They are both faculty members in the nuclear engineering department.
It is also rumored that Higley, a long-time associate of Palmer’s and who is adamant that Bethany leave OSU, may dislike Bethany because of criticism Higley received when department students complained of sexual assault at wild drunken parties of OSU nuclear engineering students during taxpayer-financed trips to scientific meetings. These incidents may have been more likely because Higley had failed to report to OSU authorities an earlier instance of milder sexual harassment against Bethany, probably because Bethany – a brilliant but very mild-mannered, conservative, homeschooled Christian young lady – does not share Higley’s views.
My children and I attempted to counter all these actions against us as they unfolded, but were initially uncertain as to their ultimate intent. All became clear, however, when OSU faculty administrators abruptly took a further and very serious prejudicial action toward Joshua. At that point, OSU Professor of Nuclear Engineering Jack Higginbotham, who was privy to all of the meetings and actions, warned us and came to our defense.
Professor Higginbotham, who also serves as president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of the Oregon NASA Space Science Consortium, has been a member of the OSU faculty for 24 years. He has held many responsible positions in the university and has received numerous professional awards. Moreover, he is very widely admired for the many instances in which he has given special help to students at OSU. This is a man who thinks always of his students and never of himself.
Professor Higginbotham warned us that faculty administrators at OSU were working to make certain that Joshua, his sister Bethany and, if possible, his brother Matthew never receive Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, regardless of their examination, academic and research performance. Professor Higginbotham then reviewed with us the details of the plan to destroy the education of these students and advised me to do anything I could to protect my children.
Since November, a remarkable battle has been raging within OSU. I considered an immediate public exposure of this plot and warned the faculty of this possibility, but instead my family and I decided to try to prevent a scandal at OSU and save the students within the confines of OSU. We fought these unprincipled academics on their own ground and held them off for four months. That effort is, however, now failing, and Joshua and Bethany are both slated for dismissal from the department of nuclear engineering very soon. Also, unless action is taken immediately, Professor Higginbotham’s career will be completely destroyed.
Indeed, in retribution for Professor Higginbotham’s efforts to protect the Robinson students from these unprincipled attacks, he personally has become the target of a campaign of defamation, vilification, persecution, Star-Chamber humiliation and other career-destroying actions orchestrated by Higley and the other people who are attacking us.
Now nearing success is a disgraceful effort to strip Professor Higginbotham of his faculty position and his research grants. His career now potentially in ruins, he is fighting back in hopes of saving himself and the positions of the students and staff who depend upon him at OSU and who may also lose their careers as collateral damage in these astonishing events.
The attack on Professor Higginbotham, if not stopped, may also destroy the graduate work of his student, Matthew Robinson. Matthew (OSU grade point average 3.91) passed up a $57,000 per year offer from the MIT graduate school so he could join his brother and sister at OSU two years ago.
Demonstrating unanimity with the DeFazio cause, both responsible OSU deans and the president of OSU, Edward Ray, have so far failed to halt these dishonorable and illegal actions. Ray, a supporter of DeFazio on the campus, has refused even to meet with me or my son Joshua concerning these events. Knowledgeable observers have concluded that orders for the attacks on the Robinson students are coming from sources far above Ray in the Democrat political machine.
The department of nuclear engineering attracted the Robinson students to OSU during a better day when it was directed by distinguished nuclear engineer José Reyes, who has now moved to NuScale Power. The department was in the hands of a group of very outstanding nuclear engineers. The ranks of these engineers have unfortunately been thinned by retirements and departure to other universities, including Michael Hartman now at the University of Michigan, but still mentoring Joshua. The engineers no longer control the department.
The department is now controlled by ideologues, most of whom do not have Ph.D.s in nuclear engineering. Nepotistic husband-and-wife combinations and new hires of their own graduate students have brought the department under the control of unprincipled people who have enthusiastically participated in the attacks on the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham – attacks that have violated numerous OSU academic rules, several laws and the most basic professional ethics.
Professor Higginbotham, Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson can still be rescued – but only by immediate, intense public pressure.
OSU administrators think they can violate ethical academic standards of professional conduct, break formal OSU rules and regulations, and even violate U.S. laws with impunity because, in any resulting litigation, they would be defended by lawyers from the Oregon Department of Justice, assuring that only students with huge sums of money and many years to invest in litigation can oppose them. The Robinsons do not have those huge sums of money, and, moreover, they want to complete their education – not receive money in exchange for the destruction of their education and opportunities.
If these people succeed, a delighted Peter DeFazio will be able to brag to the voters that the Robinson children were thrown out of Oregon State University. Why else but to favor DeFazio would the OSU administration condone seemingly irrational actions that are potentially so damaging to the reputation of the university? OSU dances to the tune of the Democrat machine, and DeFazio controls that machine.
As things stand today, Jack Higginbotham and his students and staff, along with Joshua Robinson are in immediate danger. Bethany Robinson is slated for dismissal soon after and without the Ph.D. that she has nearly completed. The dismissal of Matthew Robinson may not be far behind. And the danger to Professor Higginbotham’s other students is likewise very high.
Please don’t let this happen!
Contact information for the Oregon State University (OSU) Nuclear
Engineering Department:
Phone: 541-737-2343
Fax: 541-737-4678
E-mail: joan.stueve@oregonstate.edu
Mailing address:
116 Radiation Center,
Corvallis, OR 97331-5902
Contact information for the President of OSU:
President Edward (Ed) Ray
Phone: 541-737-4133
Fax: 541-737-3033
E-mail: pres.office@oregonstate.edu
Mailing address:
600 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
Update: (March 14, 2011)
Higley tries to build case for Joshua’s dismissal
From Art Robinson, March 9, 2011
Breaking OSU rules, breaking the law, and exhibiting remarkable unethical conduct, Katherine Higley at OSU is trying to build a bureaucratic excuse for OSU action against Joshua.
Ms. Higley at Oregon State has been implying to the press that Joshua will be dismissed because he has not complied with her demands to form a thesis committee. She is concealing the fact that Joshua already has a thesis committee, with one potential vacancy because Higley’s husband has expressed his desire to resign. She also demands that he get a new research project, even though under the direction of his current thesis committee, he is well along with his PhD work on the research project that they approved long ago.
Higley has no authority to demand that Joshua disband his committee and begin his research work over. Of interest, also, is that Higley’s husband, Instructor Reese, has said that he personally will take over the equipment that Joshua has built and the research that Joshua has conducted, using it for his own professional gain.
In summary, Higley plans to use improper and unethical procedures, to dismiss Joshua and turn over all of his equipment and work in progress to her husband. Reese may hope that Joshua’s work will enable Reese to obtain a better position than mere instructor.
Of course, Higley realizes that after the faculty has seen a professor of great stature at the university, Jack Higginbotham, president of the OSU faculty senate, being attacked by OSU and his career destroyed, because he helped Joshua, they obviously are reticent to help Joshua themselves. The situation is further made worse by false defamatory rumors, that Higley and her retainers are spreading about Joshua at OSU.
Higley’s letter to Joshua and his response are shown below.
Response from Joshua Robinson:
March 6, 2011
Dear Professor Higley,
This letter is in response to yours of January 20, 2011 and February 16, 2011.
I have passed the referenced oral examination and have been passed by the graduate committee.
While I have made an effort to form a new thesis committee in order to accommodate you, I have been unable to do this for reasons not of my making and beyond my control.
Therefore, in accordance with OSU handbook rules, I will continue to rely on and report to my current thesis committee. There is, however, no immediate reason for this committee to act, since it approved my PhD program of research long ago. That research is well along and proceeding satisfactorily along the lines that Dr. Hartman and I designed when it began. I am in regular communication with Dr. Hartman. During the past two months, I have continued to make measurements using the facility I built.
Also, I can personally provide any funding required to complete my PhD work.
Your husband Instructor Reese, has written to Dean Fisk stating that he wishes to withdraw from my thesis committee. I have no objection to his withdrawal, so long as he arranges for a suitable replacement who is acceptable to me. In any case, I expect that a replacement can be found before it is again necessary for my committee to act.
I recognize, of course, that Instructor Reese has been involved in my PhD work, and I will make certain that he and any other entity involved receives appropriate credit when it is published.
I intend to complete my PhD research work at OSU as effectively and expeditiously as possible. I am looking forward to postdoctoral work and already have an informal offer to do so in a prominent national laboratory.
Sincerely yours,
Joshua Robinson
CC Dr. Reese, Dean Adams, Dean Fisk
Update: (March 15, 2011)
Dear Friends,
Thank you for the many emails and phone calls that you have made on behalf of the Robinson students. Your continued inquiries are very helpful to them.
Meanwhile, there is no indication as yet that the OSU faculty administrators who plan to see that the Robinson students are unable to complete their PhD work regardless of their examination, academic, and research performance (the three things that ordinarily govern PhD work) have altered their course. These people are continuing their reprehensible maneuvering – and are attempting to keep their actions from public view.
OSU has widely advertised for many days that they cannot speak about these actions because of student confidentiality. When, however, Joshua Robinson gave waivers of confidentiality to some members of the press, they then changed their tune. When the Oregonian inquired at OSU, OSU replied that Joshua’s waivers were not in an acceptable form. So, the Oregonian asked what form would be acceptable. OSU then answered that there is none. They will not speak with the press about their actions against these students.
These OSU bureaucrats know that they have been caught. Their actions against the Robinson students and against Professor Jack Higginbotham, President of the OSU Faculty Senate who tried to rescue them, cannot be kept secret. Thousands of inquiries have been made by the public and dozens of news organizations are seeking information. OSU bureaucrats think that they can stone wall all of these people. They cannot do so for long.
I have worked in academia both as a faculty member and student adviser and also as a research colleague of academics and students in numerous universities for almost 50 years. I have never before seen or even heard of academic actions so unethical as those being taken against these students and this courageous professor.
For the good of Oregon State University, as well as for the good of the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham, these people must be stopped.
Our family is very grateful to you for your help and encouragement.
Art
Update: (March 18, 2011)
Please help. OSU moves to stop Joshua Robinson’s PhD work
Regardless of OSUs press releases to the contrary, Joshua Robinson is now actively being prevented, by OSU employees, from carrying out his PhD research at OSU.
For his graduate work at OSU, Joshua Robinson, under the guidance of his mentor Dr. Michael Hartman, constructed a prompt gamma neutron activation elemental analyzer that is attached to the OSU nuclear reactor, which serves as its source of neutrons. Joshua won an OSU award for this work. This analyzer has been enthusiastically complemented by scientists at two prominent U.S. research facilities with whom Dr. Hartman and Joshua have collaborated in its use.
Joshua has been making improvements in this apparatus and using it for various analytical purposes in order to complete work for his PhD degree.
On Thursday, March 17, Joshua entered the reactor control room, through which he must pass in order to enter the reactor bay in which his analyzer is located.
When he entered the control room, the reactor operator apologetically (he obviously did not like the orders he had been given) told Joshua that he had been ordered not to allow Joshua to be in the room or pass through the room. He asked Joshua to leave. Joshua has had, in the course of his work, free access to this room for more than four years.
Joshua subsequently talked with Instructor Reese, who is the husband of Kathryn Higley, current department chairperson. Reese is the reactor administrator.
Reese told Joshua that he, Reese, had revoked Joshua’s privilege to pass through the control room and revoked Joshua’s privilege to work in or even be present in the reactor bay where his apparatus is located.
So, Joshua has been forbidden by Reese, to continue work with the apparatus he built for his graduate work or even to be in the room where that apparatus is situated. Joshua built this equipment with his own hands, including engineering drawings, machine shop work, welding, and assembly.
In an earlier meeting on March 4, Reese told Joshua and his brother Noah (PhD Caltech) that he was taking over Joshua’s apparatus and his PhD work in progress.
Reese told them that he had already lined up two graduate students to work under him in this work. Reese also told them that his authority to do this was derived from a letter that his wife, Kathryn Higley, had written to Joshua (a contrived letter that is contrary to OSU rules, contrary to the law, and contrary to professional ethics and which makes demands that Higley knows Joshua cannot meet. See oregonstateoutrage.com for a copy of her letter and Joshua’s reply).
In fact, Joshua’s privilege of unsupervised access to the reactor facility was earned (and passed through background checks, etc.) more than four years ago and is entirely independent of the advisory issue raised in Higley’s letter. Reese is simply arbitrarily misusing his power as administrator without justification against Joshua. Reese can allow Joshua to use this facility. There is no reason not to do so.
Reese also suggested that Joshua might want to take the issue up with David Hamby. Hamby is the third and apparently most senior member of the group of four OSU faculty administrators who have been working to deny the Robinson students the opportunity to finish their PhD work. (Hamby was recently a member of the Corvallis City Council and is a politically active Democrat.) Neither Hamby, Higley, nor Reese are nuclear engineers. They are members of the “health physics” faculty. Joshua is studying nuclear engineering.
So, department chairperson Higley is handing Joshua’s apparatus and all of his work in progress to her husband – work that Reese plans to use for his own professional advancement. Moreover, Reese has issued orders preventing Joshua from continuing his work with his own apparatus. (The apparatus actually belongs to the public. It “belongs” to Joshua in accordance with professional ethics – in that it he is entitled to use it – until he has completed the PhD work for which he built it.)
It is outrageous for the public employees (Hamby, Higley, and Reese) of a taxpayer financed institution in Oregon (OSU) to behave in this way.
Below are the email addresses and phone numbers of Kathryn Higley, Steven Reese, David Hamby – and also the President of OSU.
David M. Hamby, Ph.D.
david.hamby@oregonstate.edu
(541) 737-8682
Kathryn Higley, Ph.D.
Kathryn.Higley@oregonstate.edu
(541) 737-0675
Steven R. Reese, Ph.D.
Steve.Reese@oregonstate.edu
(541) 737-2344
President of OSU, Edward Ray
Ed.Ray@oregonstate.edu
(541) 737-4133
Please let these people know your thoughts about this extraordinary, unethical action.
Joshua very much needs your help.
Thank you,
Art Robinson
Update: (March 24, 1011)
Crunch time: Payback machine grinding GOP candidate’s kids
Posted: March 23, 2011
1:43 am Eastern
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
By David Kupelian
Earlier this month, WND broke the sensational story in which Art Robinson – the noted scientist who challenged Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio for Oregon’s 4th District congressional seat in November – alleged some extraordinarily nasty post-election political retribution was underway against his children.
DeFazio, one of Congress’s most influential leftist progressives, having co-founded and chaired the House Progressive Caucus, won with 54.5 percent of the vote, compared to 43.6 percent for Robinson, a solid Reagan conservative – largely because, during the home stretch, DeFazio and his supporters launched a vicious media smear campaign against Robinson consisting of multiple outrageous lies (“Robinson’s a racist,” “Robinson’s in the pocket of ‘big oil,’” etc. – even, believe it or not, “Robinson wants to irradiate your drinking water.”)
Art Robinson, Ph.D.
Immediately after the election, however, Robinson announced that he would challenge DeFazio again in 2012. And that, according to Robinson, is when the ultraliberal Oregon political machine went into high gear, intending to grind not only Robinson up within those gears – but three of his children as well, all students in the nuclear engineering Ph.D. program at Oregon State University.
Before I explain how, let me quickly tell you about the Robinson kids.
In 1980, after having co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute in Menlo Park, Calif., with Nobel-winner Linus Pauling, Art Robinson founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine with the help of his chemist wife Laurelee. They had six children, which they homeschooled on 350 acres in southern Oregon. But in 1988, Lauralee died suddenly from hemorrhagic pancreatitis, leaving Art with the daunting task of caring for six young children, aged 18 months to 12 years. What did he do?
As I explained in a previous column:
Art restructured their homeschooling curriculum in such a way that his children could, to a considerable extent, teach themselves. He also eventually packaged the curriculum and offered it to the homeschooling world. “The Robinson Curriculum” apparently works pretty well, as today all six of Art’s children either have doctorate degrees or will shortly. One has a chemistry Ph.D., two have doctorates in veterinary medicine and the last three are all in the Oregon State University graduate program working toward their Ph.D.s in nuclear engineering.
Oh, and how’d they pay for all that expensive college and postgraduate schooling – six times? Sales of “The Robinson Curriculum,” which remains very popular among homeschoolers.
Talk about the American can-do spirit!
But now, faculty administrators at Oregon State University, which reportedly received $27 million in earmark funding thanks to DeFazio and his fellow Democrats during the last Congress, appear to be in the process of throwing some or all of the three Robinson children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – out of the graduate school where they have invested years in pursuit of doctorates in nuclear engineering.
But wait, you might be wondering, maybe there’s something wrong with these kids. Maybe their grades are no good and they’re just not cutting the mustard. Maybe it’s more complicated than what’s being presented here. Maybe…
Not a chance. After Joshua Robinson, who’s been working for four years on his doctorate, constructed a “prompt neutron activation elemental analyzer” (look it up) and added it to the OSU nuclear reactor, it earned him the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU (see photo), and it has been praised by scientists at two prominent U.S. research facilities.
Well, what about Bethany Robinson, maybe she’s the slouch. Not exactly: Although Bethany, who has invested four years in her doctorate, has an OSU grade point average of an almost perfect 3.89, she has reportedly been told by a faculty member that he’s terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself!
So, the bad apple must be Matthew Robinson. Wrong again. Matthew, with an OSU grade point average of 3.91, passed up a $57,000 per year offer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (that’s where my own father went to school, one of the best in the world) just so he could be with Joshua and Bethany at OSU.
It gets worse. Besides endangering the educations and careers of three of its best students – all named Robinson – OSU is apparently intent on destroying one of its finest professors as well.
OSU Professor of Nuclear Engineering Jack Higginbotham is a real hero in this whole miserable scenario. A fully tenured professor, Higginbotham is president of the OSU Faculty Senate and he is director of the Oregon NASA Space Science Consortium. And yet, after 24 years on the OSU faculty, they want to destroy him too. Why? Because he had the integrity to truly care about his students and to stand up for them in the face of the current plot against them.
Specifically, since the good professor was privy to all of various meetings and actions planned against the Robinson kids, he warned them and their father – and openly defended them.
As Art Robinson tells it, “Professor Higginbotham warned us that faculty administrators at OSU were working to make certain that Joshua, his sister Bethany and, if possible, his brother Matthew never receive Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, regardless of their examination, academic and research performance. Professor Higginbotham then reviewed with us the details of the plan to destroy the education of these students and advised me to do anything I could to protect my children.”
Robinson added: “In retribution for Professor Higginbotham’s efforts to protect the Robinson students from these unprincipled attacks, he personally has become the target of a campaign of defamation, vilification, persecution, Star-Chamber humiliation and other career-destroying actions …”
Unfortunately, the president of Oregon State University, Edward Ray, has not seen fit to stop the unethical and probably illegal goings-on in his nuclear engineering department. Ray reportedly has refused even to meet with Robinson about these events.
Now, all of this is about to come to a head.
Last week, Joshua Robinson tried to enter the OSU reactor bay to work on his project but was reluctantly informed by a reactor operator that he had been barred from entry under orders from Instructor Steven Reese. Reese is married to Professor Kathryn Higley, the department chairwoman who has carried out much of the action against the students and Professor Higginbotham. And next Monday, March 28, the first day of the new school term, Reese is planning on bringing in two students to take over Joshua Robinson’s project. Joshua will remain locked out, unable to complete his Ph.D. project.
Higginbotham, meanwhile, has retained a major Oregon law firm to help him salvage his position and his career.
You may understandably be thinking: I’m sympathetic to the Robinsons – IF all this stuff is true. But how do I know it’s true? So far the story is a big “he said-he said” with no definitive proof. Fair enough. But now, think like a detective or an investigative journalist and evaluate some of the puzzle pieces strewn about:
* How can a student win an award for best Masters’ thesis, only to be disqualified for the exact same project as he progresses toward his doctorate?
* Why would Joshua Robinson, who has had ready access to the university’s nuclear reactor continuously for over four years, where he single-handedly designed, fabricated and assembled his widely praised project, suddenly not be fit to even enter the reactor room?
* Why would a university claim it can’t answer questions from the press about a student due to laws protecting that student’s privacy, but then when the press obtains the required waiver, continue to stonewall?
That’s right. In its March 7 “Statement Regarding Internet Postings By Art Robinson,” OSU’s public relations department declared: “Federal law prohibits institutions of higher education from discussing matters concerning our students with anyone other than the student himself or herself without the express consent of the student involved.”
Fine. The next day WND obtained “express consent of the student involved” in the form of a formal waiver from Joshua Robinson, explicitly permitting the university to talk to us about him and share documents related to his case.
But when presented with Joshua’s release permitting OSU to talk to us, university spokesman Todd Simmons replied to WND editor Art Moore saying the release was “ridiculous” and refused to provide any more information than before we obtained and presented the release.
* Why would rumors be circulating around the department that Joshua failed three oral exams, when he has only taken one oral exam – ever – and passed it handily?
* If all is routine as OSU says, why would a tenured and celebrated nuclear engineering professor, Jack Higginbotham, be on the verge of losing his job and career because he tried to help students avoid being unjustly kicked out, and now be retaining legal counsel to negotiate with the university’s lawyers? Higginbotham wants to talk publicly about the situation, but cannot at this point, on advice of his attorneys.
I’ve personally read over 500 emails sent to Prof. Higginbotham, almost all from Oregonians, including many OSU alumni and some from scientists and science professors – and every one of them is outraged, to put it mildly.
What on earth is Oregon State University doing? This is a fine institution, but some of its administrators are playing a very dangerous game. They are playing with their reputation, with their ability to fund-raise, and with their core academic integrity.
It’s crazy. Saner heads need to prevail at OSU – and quickly.
If you want to help right a terrible wrong that’s about to happen – not just to Art Robinson, his children who are students at OSU, and Professor Higginbotham, but to Oregon State University itself, which is in the process of irreparably harming itself – go to Robinson’s website, www.OregonStateOutrage.com.
Update: (April 13, 2011)
Alumni Group works to save Robinson Students:
Dear Friends,
A group of prominent Oregon State University alumni are working to save the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham. These include former OSU class officers, former OSU alumni association officers, OSU alumni with engineering degrees, and substantial OSU alumni donors. The core working group includes Kenneth W. Noteboom, William H. Rieckmann, Michal Rieckmann, Jim Schaeffer, Jane S. Schaeffer, and Dave Socolofsky.
Already this alumni group has offered OSU a scholarship and equipment fund to pay for the Robinson students’ PhD work. They have also offered to pay significant legal fees incurred “should the OSU administration pursue a logical, timely, efficient, and least costly method of resolving the issues with minimum harm to the students’ education, Professor Higginbotham, and the reputation of the university.”
These alumni lack one thing – cooperation from OSU. So far, their offers have been ignored by the President of OSU and the faculty administrators involved.
Surely, as this alumni group grows, the OSU Administration will respond.
Art
A Family’s Experience with Oregon State University:
In 1980, scientists Art and Laurelee Robinson moved their growing family to southern Oregon and, with the help of their colleagues, including Nobel Laureate Bruce Merrifield and the discoverer of carbon 14, Martin Kamen, established the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
This Institute today carries out research in physical chemistry, biochemistry, and medicine in continuation of the work that Art (a graduate of Caltech) and Laurelee (a graduate of Seattle Pacific University) did together over a 17-year period during which Art served on the faculty of the University of California at San Diego; as President and Research director of the Linus Pauling Institute, which Robinson and Pauling cofounded in 1973; and as President of their new Oregon Institute.
In 1988, however, Laurelee Robinson died at the age of 43. when their six children Zachary, Noah, Arynne, Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew were ages 12, 10, 8, 6, 6 years and 18 months old, respectively.
Nevertheless, in the subsequent years and with the help of many colleagues and friends, this conservative, home schooled, Christian family thrived and the Institute continued its work.
In addition to their scientific research, the Robinson family is today known for their work on American civil defense; their Robinson home school curriculum, which is used by about 60,000 home schooled students in the U.S; their publication of more than 100 children’s books; their publication of more than 400 recorded performances of the great gospel singer George Beverly Shea; and their publication of the newsletter Access to Energy – a publication that they inherited 19 years ago from scientist Petr Beckman, who founded it 39 years ago. Access to Energy was founded on free market principles, and has been one of the foremost advocates of free enterprise and of nuclear energy for 39 years.
During their university years, the Robinson children excelled in science, with five of them earning BS degrees in chemistry and one in mathematics and three of those degrees being earned in only two years. Subsequently, Zachary and Arynne earned doctorates in veterinary medicine at Iowa State University and Noah earned a PhD in chemistry from Caltech.
When, in 2006, Joshua and Bethany decided to earn PhD degrees, the family’s long interest in nuclear energy and the proximity of Oregon State University’s outstanding graduate program in nuclear engineering were a natural choice. This OSU department was especially interesting to the Robinsons because it was chaired by José Reyes, who, with his colleagues, was laying the foundation for a great resurgence in nuclear power development by means of small, modular, assembly-line produced nuclear power plants.
Reyes’s vision has the potential to make Oregon the center of this new industry, which will probably see the investment of more than $1 trillion in capital during the next decade. Handled properly, this opportunity could cause OSU and the entire state of Oregon to thrive economically more than ever before.
One would have expected OSU to seize this extraordinary opportunity and its nuclear engineering department to become a world center for 21st Century energy production. With Reyes at its head and the outstanding engineers who would have flocked to OSU from all over the world, there is little that these scientists and engineers could not have accomplished.
Unfortunately, another path was taken. When Reyes founded NuScale Power in Corvallis as the corporate entity for this work, OSU distanced itself from this enterprise, except for licensing agreements that will benefit OSU if it succeeds. Reyes himself, deemed by the university to have a “conflict of interest” since he was involved in an industrial activity, was put on leave of absence, and a transfer of control of the OSU nuclear engineering department (formally called the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics) to academics who are not even nuclear engineers was completed.
At present, Professor Kathryn Higley is department chairperson, her husband Instructor Steven Reese is radiation center director, and Professor David Hamby is chairman of the graduate committee – all health physics professionals whose primary interests are other than nuclear energy. Still, the department faculty contains some good nuclear engineers, and an ordinary academic education in this subject is available.
Meanwhile, the Robinson twins, Joshua and Bethany, were thriving. With GPAs of 3.49 and 3.89, high ability, and a strong work ethic, their work was greatly respected and their futures seemed bright. In 2009, they were joined by their younger brother Matthew, who also entered the PhD program in nuclear engineering. Matthew turned down an offer of $57,000 per year from the MIT graduate school in preference for OSU.
Bethany was especially unusual. A brilliant and hard working young woman, she would become one the very few woman PhDs in nuclear engineering in the United States.
The PhD degree is based upon classroom performance, examination performance, and research work – combined in an individual with a high work ethic. In all of these categories, the Robinson students excelled, so their future was bright.
Joshua began research work under Assistant Professor Michael Hartman, and together they developed and built a Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis Facility, a spectrometer that uses the OSU nuclear reactor as a source of neutrons for unique analytical work. Joshua’s building of this machine received an OSU award; and Joshua, still mentored by Hartman, began collaborations in its use with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA, and the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. Joshua now requires about one more year of work with this spectrometer to complete his PhD work.
Bethany, on the basis of her outstanding undergraduate record, received an excellent OSU fellowship. She, too, wanted do her PhD work under Hartman, who had directed her first experiences in research as she carried out calculations for the OSU reactor refueling project. Professor Todd Palmer, however, told Bethany that it would not look good for her and her brother to have the same advisor and also that he would give her a mathematical calculation problem that could be used for both her MS and PhD degrees, so she could finish her PhD more quickly. He also repeatedly told her that she was his best student.
Since Bethany likes and is very skilled in mathematical work and she wanted to complete her PhD as soon as possible, she accepted Palmer’s offer.
When Matthew later arrived, he began research work under Professor Jack Higginbotham, who, in addition to being a 24-year veteran of the OSU faculty, is President of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of the Oregon Space Grant Consortium, a large OSU NASA program. Matthew’s research under Professor Higginbotham involves conceptual and design work involving the use of nuclear propulsion for unmanned exploration vehicles in far outer space.
Unknown to Joshua, Bethany, Matthew, and Professor Higginbotham, however, their idyllic situation at OSU was soon to become instead an unprecedented academic nightmare.
The first slight sign of trouble brushed gently against Joshua one afternoon when he was walking through the entryway of the department radiation center. As he passed, a man who had been looking over the student photos on the front hall wall said to the secretary, “I understand that Art Robinson has kids in this department.” She replied, “Why yes, there is Joshua Robinson now.” Joshua smiled, but the man returned his smile instead with an unfriendly stare and then stalked out of the building.
More seriously, even though Bethany was doing excellent work for Palmer, he was directing her research work down many dead ends. He was also giving her many substantial things to do that, contrary to ordinary academic practice, he said could not be included in her graduate thesis. Moreover, he also used her to do many personal chores for him.
Palmer was, however, in the process of divorcing his wife who is a faculty member of another OSU department and then marrying medical physics Assistant Professor Camille Lodwick. Bethany attributed the difficulties to Palmer’s personal troubles and just worked harder. Later, Palmer and Lodwick purchased the Bombs Away Café and Bar across the street from OSU, which caused an additional distraction.
At one point, Palmer’s misdirection halted the work for 8 months, and Bethany became very concerned. Contrary to their agreement, Palmer, who is a long time associate of department chairwoman Kathryn Higley, was not allowing Bethany to write up her ongoing work as an MS thesis, which would permit Bethany to take her PhD qualifying exams. On several occasions, as the months and then years passed, Palmer promised to do this, but then each time broke his promise. Bethany’s solution was to just keep working and let her work speak for itself. Yet, time dragged on, while Palmer completely broke the promises he had originally made to Bethany.
In addition, the Robinsons are conservative Christian home schooled students. Some members of the OSU faculty value this background, but it is quite different from that favored by many other OSU faculty and administrators. So, while most people were apparently friendly to the Robinsons, some viewed them differently.
While these things were disappointing, the students’ prospects still seemed bright. The arrival of Joshua and his wife Fama’s third little boy and Matthew’s appearance at OSU and his subsequent GPA of 3.91 buoyed everyone’s spirits.
There was, however, a large looming shadow over these three students in the person of their father, Art Robinson. Art deliberately had essentially no contact with OSU during these years, in order to avoid any inference that he was involved in their educations, but his professional activities elsewhere were inadvertently creating a very serious problem for Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew.
Art Robinson is best known in science for his pioneering biochemical research work on the amide molecular clocks that are built into almost all protein molecules, work that has been brilliantly extended by his son Noah Robinson. In addition, Art is known for originating and carrying out much of the original work in the field of metabolic profiling, which is now a large part of the discipline known as “metabolomics.” This work involves the quantitative measurement of human health and disease by means of the quantitative analysis of biochemical patterns that are imprinted in the amounts of thousands of metabolic substances that can be measured in human breath, blood, urine, and tissues.
Art has, however, occasionally turned partially aside from his research work to do things with political implications.
First of these diversions was when Art, Laurelee, and Art’s teacher and then colleague Linus Pauling founded a research institute together that became known as the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Menlo Park, California. Art was the President and Research Director of that institute. The institute was founded to carry out basic research and applied medical research entirely independently from tax-based funding, which often prevents scientists from pursuing promising studies that are not approved by the government. Pauling and Robinson found that their work together on preventive medicine was hampered in this way, so they both resigned their university positions and built an institute entirely independent of government funding.
The Pauling Institute was very controversial, and it became even more controversial when Pauling and Robinson ended their 15 years of work together (during which they co-published many research papers ranging from nuclear physics to nutrition) in a disagreement over the effects of nutrition on the growth rate of cancer. Now located on the OSU campus, the Pauling Institute still has one administrator who played a counterproductive role in the Pauling-Robinson disagreement, so Art’s reputation in that OSU department has suffered accordingly.
Second, during the Cold War, Art and Laurelee worked with the Reagan Administration to build political and public support for civil defense. They built an 8,000 member national organization devoted to this goal, and worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Senate in this undertaking, which had then as it has today important humanitarian and political implications. When Laurelee died, FEMA memorialized her in its annual report, which was an indication of the national value of this work.
This project, however, earned Art the ire of left-wing organizations such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility, which argued that civil defense protection for Americans should not be built because it would allegedly lead Americans, knowing that they had some physical protection, to be more prone to start a nuclear war. As a result of this, Art is not liked by those liberal academics who favored the anti-civil defense view.
Third, and far more controversial, is Art’s work, in collaboration with his sons Zachary and Noah and scientists at Harvard and Rockefeller University, in opposition on scientific grounds to the use of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming as a driver of public energy policy. In the course of this work, the Robinsons circulated a petition urging the U.S. Congress not to make public policy on the basis of this scientifically flawed hypothesis – a petition that has been signed by more than 32,000 Americans with university degrees in physical science, including more than 9,000 PhDs.
Prominent members of the OSU Atmospheric Sciences division, which has a program that depends upon the human-caused global warming hypothesis for financial support, are, therefore, not pleased with Art Robinson’s activities, which have played a significant role in this national debate.
Fourth, however, and dwarfing the first three controversial activities, Art and his family decided to oppose 12-term incumbent Democrat Peter DeFazio, who is very popular among OSU faculty and administrators, in the Oregon District 4 Congressional campaign in 2010. Art garnered 44% of the vote in this first try, including majority votes in the rural counties of District 4, and came closer to defeating DeFazio than has anyone else in previous elections. Art has announced that he will run for this congressional position again in 2012.
During the campaign, Phil Mote in the atmospheric sciences division used the OSU email system to lobby against Art; David Hamby and Kathryn Higley had DeFazio in for a VIP visit to the nuclear engineering department (even though DeFazio is a virulent opponent of nuclear energy); and OSU President Ray staged a publicized visit on the campus with DeFazio shortly before the election and refused to meet with Robinson. This is perhaps unsurprising, since DeFazio and the other Oregon Democrat congressmen sent a reported $27 million in earmark funding to OSU during the last legislative cycle, and Robinson opposes all earmark funding.
The university is not supposed to be used for the purpose of supporting political candidates, but Robinson ignored this obvious support for DeFazio by OSU. He simply stayed away from OSU and campaigned in the surrounding county. Most OSU employees and many students live in District 4, although OSU itself is not in the district.
Nevertheless, politics is politics, and, in his desperation to keep his congressional seat, DeFazio, in a million dollar media blitz, painted Art as a nutcase who plans to promote racism; put radioactive waste in Oregon drinking water; end social security payments; close the public schools; help Wall Street destroy Oregon jobs, end all taxation of energy company executives; receives campaign funds from money launderers and drug dealers; and lives in a “survivalist compound” on social security.
While these ridiculous false claims proved mostly a source of amusement to voters who were well informed, they didn’t improve Art Robinson’s already diminished image on the OSU campus.
Yet, Art’s reputation and the antics of his opponent should not have affected the academic situation of Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew, whose course work, examination, and research performance in their PhD programs was exemplary. Unfortunately, they apparently did.
It is very likely that, had Art not run against DeFazio and then announced that he would run against him again, the Robinson students would all eventually have received PhD degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, without unusual difficulty.
Immediately after the November 2 election results were known and partially based on unprincipled administrative maneuvers that began during the campaign, actions were taken to prevent the Robinson students from receiving PhD degrees from OSU regardless of their academic, examination, and research performance.
The first moves involved a written and then oral PhD qualifying examination to be taken by Joshua Robinson. Professor David Hamby, a former Corvallis City Council member who made no secret of his strong political opposition to Art Robinson, took control of the written examination, even though OSU catalogue rules precluded him from doing so. Hamby then improperly rigged the examination process.
Nevertheless, Joshua scored a conditional pass on the written exam, requiring an oral exam to clear the condition. When an attempt to prevent the oral exam failed, Hamby and Kathryn Higley then attempted to rig the oral exam by changing the composition of the exam committee – removing nuclear engineer Jack Higginbotham and replacing him with health physics Assistant Professor Abi Farsoni, a former Hamby student who is in the unfortunate position that he depends upon Hamby for all aspects of his professional status.
This too failed. Joshua ultimately easily passed the oral exam.
The exam rigging did, however, cause an explosion in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics. Professor Jack Higginbotham, with 24 years of experience at OSU and privy to not only these actions but other shenanigans directed toward the Robinson students had seen enough. First, he complained to Kathryn Higley, who responded by ordering him not to speak to Art Robinson.
Ignoring her orders, Professor Higginbotham told Joshua and then Art Robinson details of the maneuvers by a few faculty administrators within the department, which were intended to see that Joshua and then Bethany never received PhDs from OSU, with Matthew likely to follow.
The result was an immediate attack by these same people on Professor Higginbotham whose career, regardless of the fact that he has been a distinguished member of the OSU faculty for 24 years, is President of the OSU Faculty Senate, and is director of a large NASA program at OSU, now hangs by a thread, with attorneys that Professor Higginbotham has personally hired trying to protect his salary and save as much as possible of his career. This attack was solely the result of Professor Higginbotham’s efforts to help the Robinson students.
Subject since then to unethical persecution, from a Star Chamber humiliation before the department faculty to an ongoing effort to fire him from the department, Professor Higginbotham has not wavered from his principled actions on behalf of the Robinson students and has, as a result, put his entire career at risk.
Meanwhile, Professor Higley and her husband, Instructor Reese, moved on to a new scheme intended to prevent Joshua from finishing his PhD work. Joshua’s mentor was Assistant Professor Michael Hartman, under whose direction Joshua had built the neutron spectrometer now attached to the OSU nuclear reactor. When, however, Hartman moved to the University of Michigan, he continued to mentor Joshua, while Instructor Reese, department chairperson Higley’s husband, was listed as Joshua’s nominal OSU advisor in order to satisfy university rules.
Reese now issued orders, without Joshua’s knowledge, barring Joshua from access to the reactor bay in which his equipment is located. Appearing one day for work, Joshua was informed by the reactor control operator that he had orders not to permit Joshua to enter the room where his spectrometer is located. Those orders remain in effect today, so Joshua’s experimental work necessary to completing his PhD thesis has been stopped.
Instructor Reese also terminated Joshua’s funding, even though Reese had agreed to fund Joshua through the end of his PhD work in return for experiments that Joshua carried out for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. OSU was paid by PNNL for this work, which Joshua completed.
Reese’s wife, Professor Higley, in support of these actions and in her capacity as department chairperson, sent Joshua two letters ordering him to form an entirely new graduate committee and to propose an entirely new graduate research program, thus abandoning his previous three years of effort.
Moreover, when Joshua and Noah met with Instructor Reese, he informed them that he was bringing in two graduate students to take over Joshua’s apparatus and research work. In effect, Higley handed all of Joshua’s work in progress and his apparatus to her husband, for his own professional use.
Meanwhile, a vicious campaign of defamation has been spread in the department falsely accusing Joshua of all sorts of things and even attempting to associate him with the perceived transgressions of his father as falsely painted by DeFazio, including the outrageous claim that Joshua is a racist.
Joshua, like Professor Higginbotham, is now represented by an attorney. While Joshua could easily win a lawsuit against OSU, that is not presently his goal. He came to OSU to earn a PhD, not to win a lawsuit. The attorney is attempting to convince OSU to stop these actions, which are obviously intended to prevent the award of Joshua’s PhD.
Meanwhile, even worse actions were taken against Bethany Robinson.
Immediately after the election, Bethany was informed by email by Professor Palmer that he was taking away the research project that she has worked on for more than three years. This would mean that Bethany would never receive a PhD from OSU, regardless of her almost five years of excellent work.
Palmer stated that he was taking this action because Bethany had worked on her dad’s political campaign instead of carrying out the calculation projects that he had given her to do. In fact, Bethany had not only worked on those projects, but had completed every one of them. For this reason, she had worked very little on the campaign. Confronted by this, Professor Palmer backed off, but not for long.
Subsequently, he sent Bethany a sequence of three letters all containing a demand and deadlines. He threatened that, if she did not comply with the deadlines, he would withdraw as her advisor, leaving her with no graduate degree whatever and five years of lost efforts. Palmer made it clear, in several communications, that he would try to prevent her from using any of her work with him in a graduate thesis if he withdrew.
In these letters, Palmer demanded that she choose (before the deadline) between two alternatives, an ME degree based only on her course work, with no credit whatever for her research, or an MS degree based on all of her research and composed in such a way that none of that work would count toward a PhD. If she wanted a PhD, she would need to essentially start over. He also advised her to drop the courses that she was then taking because those courses would only be of value to a PhD degree.
In these letters, Palmer also set a deadline for the submission of her MS thesis that was so short that it would be impossible for Bethany to comply, thereby forcing her to take an ME degree, which would automatically remove her from the graduate school.
Bethany, therefore, engaged the same attorney as Joshua, who replied to Palmer’s last, 24-hour emailed threat. As a consequence, Bethany is now in limbo, not taking her courses and still, in a highly demoralized state, inching forward with her research.
Bethany has been told by Palmer’s department faculty friends that, if she does not comply with his demands, she will be dismissed from OSU with no graduate degree whatever. She also has been told that Joshua is to be dismissed, so that there is certainly no hope for her in resistance.
It is not surprising that this talented, hard working student who formerly was on track to become a PhD in nuclear engineering is confused and emotionally exhausted. Her family is alarmed and very worried about her. Palmer’s goal has been to demoralize Bethany and, by means of threats, to force her to give up her dream of a PhD – a graduate degree that she has almost earned.
From the time of Professor Higginbotham’s warning in early December and extending to early March, Art Robinson abandoned his previous policy of noninvolvement in his children’s educations at OSU and worked to advise them and to act within OSU and out of public view in an effort to stop these unprincipled actions.
Two weeks before the end of the winter term, however, Art learned conclusively that these efforts had failed.
First, Art learned of Instructor Reese’s statement to Joshua and Noah that he was bringing in two other students to take over Joshua’s apparatus and research.
Second, Art learned that Dr. Hartman, who had been wonderfully supportive of Joshua throughout this ordeal, had, after visiting the department and presumably speaking with Hamby, Higley, and Reese, entirely changed his opinion and spoken to Joshua very pessimistically about his professional future.
Third, Art learned that Professor Higginbotham, on a visit to Washington, D.C. in connection with the NASA program he directs, had been asked by officials there about the continuation of the program in view of his likely dismissal. To inform a scientist’s funding agency about such a possibility is very damaging to his relations with the agency, so this indicated that Professor Higginbotham’s dismissal, too, was imminent.
There was only one defensive action that Art Robinson could still take. He could inform the public about these antics by public employees at OSU, in the hopes that they would intervene.
Art met with Dean Adams at OSU and asked one final time that Hamby, Higley, Reese, and Palmer be required to cease their prejudicial actions and allow Professor Higginbotham, Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew (who was now at risk because Professor Higginbotham is his thesis professor) to resume their ordinary professional activities at OSU under the usual OSU rules and without extraordinary impediments. The Dean agreed to ask his superiors. He presumably did this, but to no avail.
So, Art wrote a summary article about this affair, which was published on the Internet. He then sent links to the article to his email list. The result has been thousands of public inquiries to OSU, inquiries to OSU by many responsible organizations, and efforts by OSU alumni to induce OSU officials to act. So far, all of these efforts have been stonewalled by OSU President Ray and the people who work for him.
One alumni group has even offered fellowships to the three students to complete their PhDs and has also offered to pay all legal costs involved in a meeting between OSU attorneys, Professor Higginbotham’s attorneys, and Joshua and Bethany’s attorneys to negotiate an end to this problem. These alumni have also been stonewalled, with no response from President Ray, Professor Higley, or other OSU officials.
There has been no abatement of the unprincipled actions against Joshua, Bethany, and Professor Higginbotham at OSU. As things currently stand, regardless of the best efforts of many people, the Robinson students are unable to complete their PhD work and Professor Higginbotham’s career is on the verge of ruin – solely because he took action to try to save these students and risked his own career in the process.
Art Robinson
April 10, 2011
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