At the University of Alabama at Huntsville this afternoon, biology professor Amy Bishop apparently opened fire at a meeting at which she was told that she would not be granted tenure. Three of her colleagues were killed, including the chair of her department, and three more were wounded.
Bloggers started weighing in on the meaning of the incident almost immediately, of course, as they always do. And as always, their posts said much more about them than about the incident itself.
The Blog Prof took a tack that I suspect we’re going to be seeing a lot of at academic blogs — blaming the stressfulness of the tenure process. There’s already been plenty of gun control posting too, of course, both pro and con.
But it’s the right wing that has burst from the gate biggest and hardest … and weirdest.
At the anti-feminist site antimisandry.com, one poster suggests that women rarely commit this kind of violence because they don’t need to — “the law sides with [women] irrespective of facts and evidence,” he says, so they’re never driven to murder.
Even that, though, pales in comparison to this weirdo, who calls the alleged shooter an “Ivy League bitchess” and an “affirmative actioned flooz[y].” Oh, and a Maoist.
Morning Update | Someone got around to checking Bishop’s reviews at Rate My Professor, and discovered that one student characterized her as a “liberal.” Now the conservative blogosphere is lighting up with posts like this one calling Bishop a “Harvard-trained Left-wing Professor.”

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February 13, 2010 at 1:43 am
Janet
It’s interesting that those people have theories for why a woman would commit a workplace shooting, especially given their glaring inaccuracies. I have read some really crazy stuff about the UAH shooting, an it is just pathetic. I’ve seen some people blame it on her being a liberal. Yeah, ’cause conservatives haven’t been known to go into a place ordinarily considered safe, i.e. a school or maybe a church, and kill people. That’s never happened.
February 13, 2010 at 10:08 am
Rod Serling
If a male serial shooter is described as ‘going postal’, are female serial shooters now to be referred to as ‘going academic’?