A Duke professor's Dec. 6 response to three Pakistani students has raised eyebrows across the University, a strong response from the administration and an apology from the professor.
Michael Reedy, professor of cell biology, had received e-mails from three students at Aga Khan University in Pakistan who were inquiring about summer electives at Duke. He responded with an e-mail questioning their veracity and admonishing their culture as one that harbors terrorism.
"It is not worth our trouble to try to determine if you are a well-disguised terrorist or a real learning-motivated medical student," Reedy wrote in the original e-mail. "You may well be innocent, but some of your neighbors are as potentially lethal as anthrax or HIV, and must be protected against."
A handful of Duke alumni, who learned of the e-mail through friends in Pakistan, complained to Reedy and University administrators. Reedy, who had initially defended his first e-mail in subsequent e-mails to the students, apologized for his responses Dec. 10, in another message to the students. He explained that their e-mails hit a sore spot and that in a more paranoid moment he had expressed his "anger and frustration with the extremism and deceptiveness of the terrorists."
"I am unhappy with myself and ashamed of my words," he wrote.
"I am ashamed by the brutality of my angry words in my initial message to you, and ashamed of my poor rationalizations for this in the later messages. It seems now that I figuratively threw a handful of stones in your face and told you to stay home and clean out the sewers."
Reedy said that his initial e-mail to the Pakistani students was a projection of his frustration with the tragedy of Sept. 11, as well as a warning to the students who Reedy said did not seem to understand the "climate of concern and suspicion" that they would face in the United States.
"The emotions that came out of September 11 started overwhelming me, because I haven't been able to reconcile some of the things about it," Reedy said. "I haven't been able to figure how do you deal with the world-how do you take your hopes of peace and address people like those suicide attackers? It just baffled me."
Six days after learning of the incident, Dr. Sandy Williams, dean of the School of Medicine, sent the students another apology, stressing that the University is committed to ethnic and cultural diversity.
"I have learned of... the intemperate and inappropriate response that you received from Professor Michael Reedy in your quest for information," Williams wrote. "Professor Reedy's initial response to you does not represent the views of Duke University or of Duke University Medical School."
The e-mail circulated widely on the listservs of several student political and cultural organizations over winter break. Many students expressed surprise and outrage that such statements could come from a well-regarded professor at a prestigious university.
"I can only hope that his apology was sincere and that his opinion has changed since those that were originally expressed in the e-mail," said senior Lala Qadir, president of the Muslim Student Association. "This has really been a learning experience. I hope that it can continue to be one for him as well."
Harold Erickson, acting chair of cell biology, said in a December interview that the e-mail was not characteristic of Reedy and that he counseled the professor to apologize.
"My first reaction was I thought he was crazy," Erickson said. "He was wrong. I actually sent him an e-mail saying I thought this was a very over-handed and wrong response.... This is the only crazy thing I've seen him do."
Reedy, who is not in charge of admitting students to the program, nevertheless offered his help to the three students to identify labs and gather funds for possible research opportunities at Duke.
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