Jan Kemp: Interesting and ultimately sad story

The obituary of Jan Kemp appeared in the New York Times today.

Kemp was an English instructor at the University of Georgia in the 1980s when she called the athletic department on the preferential treatment of football players who did not meet the university's academic standards.

While coordinator of Georgia’s remedial English program, Dr. Kemp was among several faculty members who had complained that officials at Georgia intervened in the fall of 1981 to enable nine football players to pass a remedial English course in which they had received failing grades. The athletes remained eligible to play for Georgia against Pittsburgh in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1982.

Kemp was demoted and then fired. She sued and was eventually reinstated and given a substantial settlement. But she paid a terrible emotional and physical price. She attempted suicide twice.

She retired in 1990 and died last week of Alzheimer's. She was 59.

As an academic, I find this an extremely sad story.

Bees Without Borders: NYT article

An interesting article in the New York Times today describes a couple of Connecticut beekeepers (father and son) who have traveled around the world, teaching people how to become beekeepers. Andrew Cote and his father Norm are passionate about bees and beekeeping and rightly say that introducing beekeeping in certain areas of the world can help the local populations stave off starvation.

Andrew, who has about 200 hives and harvests honey by the ton, even went to Iraq in 2005 and help start colonies in several areas. What he said about beekeeping in Iraq is particularly interesting.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, there were an estimated half a million hives in Iraq. After all those oil field fires and smoke, and this current war, there are about 20,000. Mobility is extremely limited, and beekeepers can’t get colonies to the citrus groves where they’re needed, or to the lush areas in Kurdistan.

Read the entire article:

Gerri Hirshey, Sharing a Taste of Honey, on an International Scale, New York Times, Nov. 28, 2008.