More Questions Surround Antonio Calvo's
Suicide And Removal From Princeton
NEW YORK --The mystery surrounding Antonio Calvo’s abrupt removal from Princeton University and subsequent suicide continues.
Calvo, 45, a senior Spanish lecturer at Princeton,took his own life last Tuesday inside his loft-style apartment in Chelsea.
According to a spokeswoman at the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, Calvo stabbed himself to death, with “multiple incised wounds of the neck and upper left extremities.”
Last Friday, three days after he died, Princetonissued a formal statement confirming Calvo's death, indicating that a memorial service would be held the following week.
The statement also said that “Calvo was on leave from Princeton at the time of his death.”
While Calvo was technically on leave when he committed suicide on Tuesday -- it was a leave that had been forced upon him by the university four days prior and not a leave of his own choosing.
According to both close friends and former colleagues, Calvo was apparently asked to arrive at his office at 11 a.m. on the morning of Friday, April 8.
At his office, he was reportedly met by a university-appointed public safety officer who informed him that his contract as longtime lecturer would not be renewed. Calvo was then forcibly removed from the premises, with his keys taken away, in addition to being barred access to his personal Princeton University email account
.
I don't know why people insist on treating this as some sort of a mystery and looking for mysterious causes of what happened. I have seen people fired in this way at several universities where I worked. So I don't have any questions as to why this happened. It happened because a system that exploits lecturers, instructors and adjuncts and then just tosses them out like used Kleenex is wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt may be "normal" that lecturers are let go at the end of a contract, it is definitely not standard procedure that an adjunct is sent packing with two weeks remaining in the term. That, combined with the gag order on his department, make this a very suspicious situation. There is not enough evidence at this point to determine who's at fault.
ReplyDelete1. He was "Director of the Spanish Language Program"? Maybe these things work differently at Princeton, but that certainly sounds like the kind of position where you don't use faculty you intend to only have around "temporarily."
ReplyDelete2. Who cares how the guy dressed? And why does it matter whether the friend was platonic?
3. Lastly, this: "Antonio wasn’t someone who was going to kill himself,” said Aponte-Moreno. “He was full of life, he had all of these wonderful plans for the future.”
Show me someone who "was going to kill him/herself" and who let everybody know beforehand. Sometimes you just get up in the morning and decide "This is it." And you do it.
I concur that something is very fishy about this, although I can't come up with a convenient explanation for what's happened. (Harassment? Because of his platonic woman friend? His elegant dress?) But...ugh. Still. Ugh.
Feels like there might have been cause to let him go mid term. I don't know many universities who cancel a class or have another faculty member take it over before the term is over (other than for medical/family leave).
ReplyDeleteThere's no way to know anything about this other than the university felt compelled to terminate during the semester, knowing all the publicity that it would generate. They must have had a very good reason for doing that, because it's completely out of the ordinary. They literally did not want him on campus for one more second. Whatever he did--or Princeton THINKS he did--is probably pretty bad. One of the things a link mentions is that "a long campaign was launched against him by a group of graduate students and a lecturer from the department". Er, why?
ReplyDeleteThis is probably the first time I've ever pointed out my disagreement with a remark made by Stella, but here it is:
ReplyDelete"They must have had a very good reason for doing that."
An alternative theory is that they didn't have a good reason, and that's why the man killed himself. Injustice happens.
Well, I get that Bubba. That sentence probably should read "They think they had a very good reason for doing that." I'm only asserting that Princeton probably didn't do this lightly.
ReplyDeleteMostly because erasing someone like this is so out of the ordinary and creates such a mess they must have thought it preferable to the alternative--a terminal contract or (if they really did have something on him) "forcing" him to quit.
My read is similar to Stella's (while, yes, Bubba, keeping in mind that injustice does happen in universities, especially though not exclusively to the non-tenured).
ReplyDeleteI'm probably also influenced by the fact that, at least 20 years ago, Princeton was notoriously slow in getting rid of a tenured faculty member who really did need to go (he'd raped a grad student; see http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/10/nyregion/4-scholars-quit-as-sex-incident-splits-princeton.html and read between the lines a bit; if I'm remembering correctly, the professor in question eventually "retired" without emeritus status). At least at that point, the "make no public waves" approach was definitely in vogue, even when there was pretty good evidence that students could be in danger. But things may have changed, and Instructors are definitely more vulnerable than full professors to all sorts of internal politics.