Rampage (19 page)

Arrogant, Haughty Behaviour

In 1982, through mutual friends in Brooklyn, Fabrikant met and married a fellow Slav, Maya Tyker, with whom he would father two children. In his new role as research assistant professor, he was teaching a probability and statistics class, even though he had failed to provide his mandatory three letters of reference. On the surface, Fabrikant’s life was improving, yet his aggressive behaviour only worsened. Students and co-workers alike were taken aback by his constant aggression. One female student even came forward with allegations that he had violently raped her, dislocating her shoulder in the process. Terrified of him, she persuaded the ombudsperson not to disclose the information. The matter was never pursued any further.

In early 1983, Fabrikant began attending a non-credit French class, but took an immediate dislike to the instructor. He routinely disrupted the class to complain about her smoking, teaching methods, and manner of speaking the language. So rude and frequent were his interruptions that the instructor warned her supervisor that she would quit unless action was taken. Fabrikant was subsequently informed, both verbally and in writing, that he could no longer attend the class. Predictably, he showed up anyway, read the supervisor’s note aloud, ripped it to pieces, and sat through the lesson in open defiance. When an official higher up on Concordia’s food chain issued a warning, he complied, insisting that the university give him $1,000 to pay for classes at another institution. After months of hemming and hawing, the administration finally refused.

Fabrikant was incensed. His arrogance was now beginning to affect his professional capacity for upward mobility. Dr. Sankar recommended that Fabrikant be given the position of research associate professor, but the vice-rector academic, John Daniel, expressed grave concerns. Seemingly oblivious to his colleague’s severe emotional problems, Sankar wrote to Daniel in protest, citing Fabrikant’s “truly outstanding” publication history: “I was always under the impression that we took decisions on promotions, reappointments and salary … increases purely on the basis of scholarly achievements and academic excellence rather than on the individual’s behaviour.… I hope my understanding is still valid.”
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With the promise of a major breakthrough impending, Daniel acquiesced, and the insidious Dr. Fabrikant scuttled up the ranks once more.

When the university’s mechanical engineering program invented CONCAVE — the Concordia Computer-Aided Vehicle Engineering Centre — in 1985, Fabrikant was hired on as a research associate professor at $30,000 per year under the direction of Tom Sankar’s brother, Sheshadri. Secure in his employment for the first time, Fabrikant now included only his own name on his papers unless he deemed that someone else had made a significant academic contribution.

Two years later, Tom Sankar was no longer the chair of the mechanical engineering department owing to some “discrepancies” in his bookkeeping. Nevertheless, he retained a position as professor at the university. When, in 1988, Fabrikant’s position at CONCAVE came up for review, he was confident that his eight years of service to the university would be rewarded. Contrary to his expectations, Fabrikant learned from Sheshadri Sankar that the university would be renewing his contract for one more year, after which he would be made redundant. The forty-eight-year-old father of two was utterly devastated. Fabrikant decided he had been let go simply because he had ceased including his colleagues’ names on his publications. In order to prove this, he clandestinely tape-recorded conversations with fellow academics, including Tom Sankar himself. Fabrikant demanded details of the scientific contribution the former chair had made to their co-authored paper,
On the Method of Fabrikant, Sankar and Swamy.
Sankar answered that they had “discussed” some of the ideas in the publication.

“Discussion is not a contribution,” Fabrikant replied. “Contribution is contribution.” He then asserted that Sankar had made no contribution to thirty-three additional essays, and asked Sankar whether he agreed. Rather than address the question directly, Sankar claimed that he had never requested that his name appear on any of the writings, saying that Fabrikant had listed him as a co-author of his own volition. These secretly taped discussions were merely the first battle in the Belarusian’s one-man war against the department. Behind closed doors, school administrators desperately discussed ways to deal with the hostile force that had infiltrated their mechanical engineering department, and even solicited a psychiatrist for guidance. In the meantime, Sheshadri Sankar attempted to placate Fabrikant by granting him a contract to work at CONCAVE for another two years. It was the wrong move. The more they submitted to his bullying, the more Fabrikant saw intimidation and manipulation as weapons to be employed whenever he didn’t get his way. Worse, now the university was stuck with him until 1990, and he was hell-bent on seeking tenure. Rather than being mollified, Fabrikant escalated the nature of his verbal threats from legal action to violence.

“I know how people get what they want,” he once told Catherine MacKenzie, the executive assistant to rector Patrick Kenniff. “They shoot a lot of people.” She informed the university’s conflict resolution specialist, Grendon Haines, who spoke with Fabrikant on several occasions. Fabrikant indicated that he owned a gun and was planning to take Kenniff hostage and shoot several people, including the hated Sankar brothers. Soon after, Fabrikant was put under private surveillance, while bodyguards were stationed around the Kenniff home. When consulted by the university, psychiatrist Warren Steiner advised them that Fabrikant’s behaviour was clearly indicative of a personality disorder. Steiner admonished Concordia to inform Fabrikant in writing that he had gone too far and required professional help. Furthermore, the professor’s campaign of intimidation could no longer be tolerated. Fabrikant never received the letter; rather, they rewarded his aggression with salary increases, and by the end of December 1989 he was earning $54,430 annually. He began looking into the possibility of obtaining a tenure-track position. While visiting the department chair, Sam Osman, Fabrikant positioned his fingers as if firing a gun and explained that if he did not get on the tenure track he might choose to deal with it “the American way.” Osman assured him he would do his best. He was so used to Fabrikant’s grandstanding that he took these threats with a grain of salt.

In February of the following year, a committee for the mechanical engineering department reviewed Fabrikant’s many publications, student evaluations, grant records, and supervision of graduate students, and recommended that he be promoted to the position of research associate professor. Letters of support for his work poured in from mechanical elasticity experts, claiming he was among the world’s top ten researchers in the field. Despite the department’s unanimous approval, the administration shot down Fabrikant’s promotion because the rank of research associate professor did not formally exist. It didn’t help that Rose Sheinin, Concordia’s newly appointed vice-rector academic, had been threatened by Fabrikant a month earlier. Nevertheless, in September, Osman submitted Fabrikant’s name for one of three new tenure-track positions, which the committee approved. He was now an associate professor on a two-year probation. There was no mention of his habitual antagonism.

Unsurprisingly, by 1991 Fabrikant was back to his old habits. Some co-workers installed panic buttons in their offices and secured the doors with extra deadbolts. Rose Sheinin was chilled one night to hear his voice on her home answer machine warning, “You know who I am and you know what is going to happen.” Unlike other faculty members, however, Sheinin was not about to bow to Fabrikant’s will. She consulted Concordia’s legal counsel to learn about the process of firing a non-tenured professor, and learned that if his actions continued after two clearly worded written warnings, he could be dismissed. Sheinin had also met with Dr. Steiner, who reiterated that Fabrikant suffered from a personality disorder and needed to be shown boundaries. Steiner added that Fabrikant’s aggressive behaviour would continue because it had worked in his favour, though he doubted the professor would resort to violence. Rose Sheinin did what no other staff member had dared to do: she wrote Valery Fabrikant a letter of condemnation:

      [T]he frequency of [your] telephone calls, the tone which you use, your warnings that you intend to tape record … conversations, etc., are totally unacceptable. The veiled threats conveyed through my staff and through Grendon Haines must stop immediately [or] I will be left with no alternative than to seek protection through the University’s policies concerning discipline.
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Fabrikant replied with a half-hearted apology through Grendon Haines, denouncing his own behaviour. Sheinin wasn’t so easily fooled. From now on, she informed the senior faculty of the mechanical engineering department, they were to keep records of Fabrikant’s unruliness. Furthermore, she asked them to drop their tenure-track recommendation. Amazingly, they refused to comply with her wishes. Osman suggested that giving Fabrikant a tenure-track position would “bring out the best in him.”

A memo from Sheinin arrived on rector Patrick Kenniff’s desk on November 16, 1990, stating:

      [Though] all members of faculty were adamant that Dr. Fabrikant was an asset … none of them wanted to work with or near him.… Whatever problems we have been presented with by Dr. Fabrikant will continue.… My gut feelings tell me that he should not be taken onto the full-time faculty.
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Kenniff didn’t listen, and Sheinin explained that if they hired Fabrikant he was their problem. When she reluctantly drafted his two-year contract for $59,677 annually, Sheinin included a rider stating that Fabrikant would have to wait three years before being considered for tenure. In the autumn of 1991 there would be a review to see if the contract should be extended.

Rather than being made redundant, Fabrikant was given a merit increase in spring 1991 to reflect the quality of his research and teaching. Never satisfied, he promptly requested a four-month paid leave from Sam Osman so that he could pursue a $4,500-per-month fellowship in France. Predictably, he was denied. By July, Fabrikant claimed to have been offered a $10,000 grant from NASA to work on a project, and told Sheshadri Sankar that he would like to abandon CONCAVE for the time being. Apparently, contracts and laws were meaningless unless they worked to his benefit. An example of the latter occurred in October, when Fabrikant wrote Osman asking if he could buy his way out of being a teacher with his $7,000 research grant. Osman was aghast: both university and federal regulations expressly forbade it. He called Fabrikant and explained.

“Are you trying to scare me?” the voice on the other end of the phone croaked. “I am not scared. I wrote a letter and I want a written reply.” Incensed, Osman did reply to him in writing, curtly stating that such requests were illegal. Furthermore, he demanded Fabrikant submit him a detailed report outlining his plans for teaching. Instead, Fabrikant insisted on an apology, claiming that Tom Sankar had allegedly purchased a leave from his teaching duties. He also flaunted his merit award as if it were indestructible armour, announcing that he would be spending his next year on sabbatical. Osman began to suspect there was something fishy about this enigmatic Belarusian, and requested proof of Fabrikant’s academic qualifications.

“How can a scientist like YOU, ask a scientist like ME for proof of my credentials?” came Fabrikant’s seething reply. The mechanical engineering department finally decided that enough was enough. Sixteen senior members assembled on October 25 and enthusiastically passed a motion for both the university and department to take action against Fabrikant. When, days later, they reconvened to discuss Fabrikant’s history of hostility and whether it should affect the extension of his contract, they discovered him snooping outside the conference room, and had him removed by security guards. Considering his bizarre personal conduct and growing disinterest in working with the students, they voted against renewing his contract. They had finally done the right thing, but now Fabrikant’s potential for violence hung over them like a guillotine.

Grandiose Sense of Self-Importance

So deep-rooted were the fears of Fabrikant’s retaliation that members of the committee held an emergency meeting with an intervention team on November 1 to discuss prevention. Eventually they concluded that a professor’s “capacity to teach and carry out research activities” did not outweigh his interpersonal conduct, and the bellicose Belarusian should be suspended immediately from his position using emergency measures. This recommendation was not acted upon. Later that day, Fabrikant entered a university senate meeting carrying an artist’s portfolio under his arm. Remembering his threat to “solve things the American way,” associate vice-rector Catherine MacKenzie became concerned that the portfolio could be concealing a gun. She quietly ordered security to call the authorities, and sat down next to Fabrikant to conduct the meeting. Officers from the Montreal police arrived to search him, only to discover he was unarmed. Fabrikant smiled. He played head games like Kasparov played chess.

Having learned about the plot to oust him from Concordia, Fabrikant wrote a letter to the dean, Srikanta Swamy, asking how his situation could have changed so drastically in seven months. Had he not been awarded the highest merit increase in the department? If his behaviour was so nefarious, why had nobody filed a formal complaint? Swamy had no answer for him.

The most baffling aspect of the Fabrikant affair was the lack of any record of his improprieties: the alleged rape, his harassment of the French instructor, his countless run-ins with the faculty and administration — nothing, zip, zero. This information should have been stored in the dean’s office, but Swamy and the Faculty Personnel Committee found no paper trail whatsoever. Understandably, when faculty members began recounting the history of Valery Fabrikant’s unruliness in November 1991 and asked for the non-renewal of his contract, the committee was completely taken aback. Without evidence of his poor conduct, Swamy and the committee voted against the department’s recommendations, and renewed Fabrikant’s contract for an extra year on four conditions: 1) he would teach advanced classes in mechanical engineering; 2) he would supervise more graduate students; 3) his research must fall in line with the goals of the department; and 4) he would conform to the predetermined course of the curriculum development.