The Rosie Result

by Graeme Simsion

  Dave’s weight, which was unhealthily high (estimated BMI on our departure from New York: thirty-five), was likely to be impeding recovery. I had encouraged him during our weekly Skype discussions to eat less and devote more time to rehabilitation exercises. His failure to do either seemed to indicate a problem with his mental state. As a member of his psychological support team, I needed to find a remedy.

  4. The Rosie Crucifixion. The name of this problem was Rosie’s idea, derived from a series of novels by Henry Miller. The second word was in fact spelled Rosy, so I would not have made the connection.

  Rosie had been recruited to lead a project on bipolar disorder, commencing with a pilot study. This was the ‘dream job’ that had prompted our relocation. Then, in our first few months back in Australia, Hudson experienced some difficulties with the after-school care program, and Rosie, with the agreement of her manager, Judas, reduced her hours to enable her to collect Hudson from school on three afternoons per week. Her father, Phil, covered the remaining two days.

  Then, when the funding proposal for the main project was being prepared, Judas used Rosie’s part-time status as a reason to replace her as chief investigator.

  ‘No consultation. He just gave my job to Stefan.’

  ‘You’ve been demoted?’

  ‘My permanent position stays the same. But I don’t get to lead the study.’

  ‘So, no management? No committees? No people issues? All those things you’ve been complaining about. Incredible. And you achieved it without having to demonstrate incompetence. We should celebrate.’

  ‘Don, I want to run it.’

  ‘Then we should research alternative after-school programs to enable you to return to full-time work.’

  ‘No. Hudson needs time with one of us. And we know who that has to be.’ We had discussed this before. Being older than Rosie and having worked full-time without breaks, I had a substantially higher income. Rosie’s reduction in hours to care for Hudson again had reinforced a vicious circle.

  I was treating the Rosie Crucifixion as second in importance only to the happiness of our child.

  5. The Hudson Adjustment Problem. Hudson’s reaction to our relocation was predictable. Like me, he had an aversion to changes in routine. It was a rational response to the need to relearn and re-optimise something that was working well, but certain transitions are unavoidable. Hudson found these transitions—notably to child care, pre-school and school—traumatic, and the effects frequently continued beyond the changeover date.

  Several weeks after he began school in New York, his teacher discontinued her practice of walking with the children to meet their parents at the end of the day. Hudson had not memorised the route from classroom to gate, nor made friends with anyone who might have. A wrong turn led to him becoming lost, fortunately within the school grounds, but by the time Rosie gained access and located him, he was extremely distressed.

  It was the first of several incidents of this kind, most of which could have been avoided by giving Hudson notice that he would need to memorise landmarks and turns, but the school seemed to interpret it as deliberate behaviour on his part—‘wandering off’—rather than a predictable consequence of his brain not being equipped with an unconscious track-recording function.

  Rosie had not been able to work in a full-time job until Hudson was ‘settled’ at another elementary school. For some periods her only employment had been making drinks with me in the cocktail bar.

  Hudson had demonstrated a substantial variation in aptitude for schoolwork. Maths: excellent; Sport: terrible. English: outstanding; Handwriting: illegible. Science: ready for more challenge; Art: challenged. At home, he enjoyed reading, to the exclusion of other activities.

  In the adult world, an uneven distribution of abilities is more valuable than mediocrity at everything. It is irrelevant to me whether or not my doctor is adept at hitting a ball with a stick—or finding her way to work without looking at street signs—but I would like her to be as proficient as possible in the practice of medicine. Conversely, at school, being other than unobtrusively average in every area (with the exception of sport) is a distinct disadvantage.

  But in New York, at his new school, Hudson’s teachers and classmates appeared to accept his personal configuration. He had two friends, one male and one female, and interacted successfully with Dave and Sonia’s child, Zina. All seemed to be well, in contrast to my own experience of school in the country town of Shepparton—the worst time of my life.

  In Australia, we had enrolled Hudson at a private school which scored marginally higher than the local public school in my spreadsheet analysis. With its associated secondary school, it had an accelerated mathematics program and claimed to embrace diversity.

  The diversity included females—essential in Rosie’s opinion. ‘I don’t want him regarding women as some other species.’

  I pointed out that I had attended a co-educational public school and had ended up regarding the majority of the human race as another species.

  ‘Maybe, but at least you had a chance to study both genders.’ Hudson enrolled for the fourth term of Year Five. Initially, he appeared to enjoy the academic component. Rosie was concerned that he lacked friends, but I thought it likely that she was using her own ease at establishing social relationships as a benchmark. Hudson’s only complaint was the poor organisation of the after-school program—inconsistent from day to day, with no published timetable. It was this that led to Rosie’s decision to withdraw him from it, and the consequent series of events at work.

  But now, eight months later, with fifty per cent of his final year of primary school completed, we were convinced that something was wrong. His academic results had fallen, and though his report card used ambiguous language, Rosie was certain that it was intended to signal an ‘issue’. We had booked an appointment with his teacher on the twelfth day of the third term.

  Rosie also suspected that Hudson had feigned illness to avoid school attendance. Several times at home he had exploded in frustration at some obstacle. A problem was brewing, like the general malaise before the full symptoms of an illness appear, and I was waiting for it to declare itself. When it did, it would receive priority over all other matters.

  3

  The phone call signalling an escalation in the Hudson Adjustment Problem came at 10.18 on a Friday morning. At 5 a.m., Rosie had delivered Hudson to the school for a three-day excursion to the snow. He had been sharing information about it for several days and appeared to be excited and well informed.

  I was at home preparing for the Genetics Lecture Outrage disciplinary hearing, scheduled for that afternoon.

  The incident had occurred during the final lecture before the semester break. We had completed the prescribed curriculum with twenty-four minutes remaining and I saw an opportunity to implement a recommendation from a seminar I had been compelled to attend on making lectures more ‘engaging’.

  ‘Any questions?’ I asked. There was a collective gasp, scattered applause and then conversation. It is traditional to encourage questions, but they typically reflect the concerns of one student and are of minimal relevance to the rest of the class. By banning questions, I am able to pack the maximum amount of information into each lecture.

  A student who I guessed was in her early twenties raised her hand.

  ‘Professor Tillman, do you believe that race has a genetic basis?’ She looked to the woman beside her, possibly to confirm that she had phrased the question correctly.

  ‘It’s an interesting topic, but outside the scope of the course and hence the exam.’ I expected that would end the discussion, but, to my surprise, the other members of the class indicated that they would like an answer. It was an interesting topic.

  I began by dealing with my interrogator’s reference to belief, a concept that should be used sparingly in science. In the few minutes that it took me to repeat a practised correction, my subconscious produced a brilliant idea which I was sure would have impressed th
e convenors of the ‘Engaging the Millennial Mind’ seminar.

  Melbourne is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse cities, and the mix of students in the room was consistent with this. Many were studying genetics with the intention of enrolling in Medicine, a popular career choice for migrants and their children as well as international students.

  I advised the class that participation was optional, then summoned to the stage an archetypal physical example of each of the ‘three great races’ as defined in the late nineteenth century: a tall, older woman from Ghana named Beatrice, whom I knew as an aspiring physician; the sole Scandinavian, a heavily built Danish male whose name I did not know; and one of the numerous Chinese students, Hui. Her small stature was in striking contrast to Beatrice’s height and the Danish male’s solidity.

  Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid. I knew that these terms were no longer acceptable. Even as I acknowledged this, the class appeared shocked; I had delivered a powerful lesson on the subjectivity and evolution of classification schemes. The woman who had originally asked the question appeared to be making a video recording of the exercise on her smartphone.

  The three nominated students looked at each other and laughed. I could see why scientists in the past had argued—incorrectly—that they represented distinct subspecies of Homo sapiens.

  The second phase of the demonstration was intended to challenge this simplistic formulation. I directed each of my reference students to a corner of the stage and addressed the class.

  ‘Consider the stage a two-dimensional graph with Beatrice at the origin, consistent with humans originating in Africa. Hui is positioned on the X axis and the male student with the pale skin and blue eyes is on the Y axis.’

  Danish Student interrupted: ‘I’m Arvid. Arvid the Aryan. My great-grandfather would be proud that I was chosen, but that is perhaps not so good.’ There was scattered conversation. The millennials were definitely engaged.

  I continued: ‘I request all students to position themselves on the graph according to physical appearance.’ Again, I remembered to add: ‘Participation is optional.’

  Almost everyone participated. Two of the exceptions were the woman who had asked the original question, now occupied with recording, and her friend. The others mounted the stage and began organising themselves, just as we had done in the ‘line up in order of experience’ exercise that had inspired me. After a few minutes, Beatrice left her place and approached me.

  ‘Professor Tillman, are you sure this is a good idea?’

  ‘You’ve observed some problem?’

  ‘Not for me.’ She laughed and pointed to a small group around Arvid the Aryan. ‘It’s killing me watching those guys arguing about who’s the whitest.’ The discussion among the Indian and Pakistani students was also animated.

  When the positions of the students had stabilised, I began the debriefing, pointing out what was now obvious—that we were dealing not with categories but a spectrum—in fact, multiple spectra. I planned to follow by discussing explanations for the rapid evolution of local physical characteristics that were not directly linked to survival. Then my phone rang.

  During lectures, my phone is programmed to respond to calls only from Rosie’s work number, which by agreed convention, indicates an emergency.

  ‘What the fuck is happening?’ said Rosie.

  This was confusing. ‘You should be telling me what’s happening,’ I said. ‘Presumably an emergency.’

  ‘You’re the emergency. It’s all over Twitter. What are you doing?’

  ‘You’re using Twitter? At work?’

  ‘A friend called me. From Columbia.’

  ‘Someone called you from South America—’

  ‘Columbia University. Where you worked for ten years.’

  ‘Twelve.’

  Now, to add to the confusion, there was a second interruption. Three security personnel entered the lecture theatre. One of them approached me, confirmed my identity and led me out. After that, I was not longer a witness to events, but from the disciplinary-committee summons, together with a visit from Beatrice, I was able to establish what had followed.

  In summary, the Twitter posts portrayed me as an advocate for the exact theories of race that I was seeking to debunk, as well as for discrimination, eugenics and public humiliation.

  All members of the class were offered counselling and one lodged a formal complaint. The social-media exposure prompted three opinion pieces in the press, misrepresenting the facts and arguing that my behaviour was representative of a general malaise. This was new to me: I was accustomed to criticism for being unusual rather than typical. Only one journalist contacted me, and the article he wrote seemed accurate and balanced. Unfortunately, he was, in Rosie’s words, a ‘right-wing nut job’ and his views on unrelated matters meant he would have zero credibility with the university.

  My defence occupied sixty-two pages, and Rosie insisted that I summarise it.

  ‘This is the summary.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re saying that you were using a creative teaching approach to present a scientific argument to a scientifically literate audience, who were not required to participate, and, had you not been interrupted, your conclusions would have been not only in line with current scientific thinking but with progressive philosophical and political views. Is that basically it?’

  ‘You’re a genius. Incredible conciseness. It’s true and completely exonerates me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it. These things aren’t decided by whether the science is right.’

  I was allowed to bring a ‘support person’ to my hearing and had an offer from an unexpected source—the former Dean of Science, Professor Charlotte Lawrence, who was now the head of administration at another university.

  Professor Lawrence and I had argued—clashed—on numerous occasions, almost always over conflicts between personal and scientific integrity (me) and the university’s public image (her). However, she was an expert in academic administration and would have a high degree of credibility. I was amazed that she would want to have anything to do with me.

  Her assessment of the situation was consistent with Rosie’s. The university would not only be concerned with establishing the truth.

  ‘Whatever the finding, they’re worried that any future funding proposal with your name on it will attract the wrong kind of attention.’ Professor Lawrence did not need to elaborate. In the academic world, the ability to attract funding ranks above all other qualities.

  She recommended I solicit personal references. ‘And not just from straight white males.’

  ‘Why are gender and sexual orientation relevant? The accusation is of racism.’

  ‘Don, don’t make me argue with you on this or I might change my mind about helping. You’re a straight, white, middle-aged male who’s spent his life in top western universities. You’re the definition of privilege.’

  A few days later, we met again, and my news was not good. David Borenstein, my former dean, had emailed to say that nobody from Columbia would be providing references. When it comes to racism, there’s no room for fine distinctions: we can’t be seen to offer anything but unequivocal condemnation. Had this happened at Columbia, I would have had no option but to terminate your employment, despite my longstanding admiration for you professionally and personally.

  David’s email only increased my perplexity about Professor Lawrence’s willingness to defend me. Her explanation was remarkably similar to the newspaper article that had supported me, including the phrases ‘professional offence-takers’, ‘outrage industry’ and ‘identity politics’. It appeared that she was also a right-wing nut job. I pointed this out.

  ‘Don,’ she said, ‘we’ve known each other a long time. You’re not always the most tactful or sensitive person, but I’ve never doubted your integrity and decency. I’m still a scientist and academic, and I don’t ever want academics to be afraid to think and speak freely on questions of science.’

  Ro
sie was impressed that Professor Lawrence was involved.

  ‘I’m guessing that before Charlotte said all those nice things about academic freedom, she gave you a serve. A dressing-down.’

  ‘I’m familiar with both colloquialisms. But no, there was no “bollocking”.’

  ‘Fuck, Don. She’s gay, isn’t she?’

  ‘Presumably. Her partner is female. Why?’

  ‘Because I’m a woman, and all my life I’ve had to deal with stuff: discrimination, attitudes, something in the paper or on TV or a billboard, little things that are too small to complain about without looking petty, but they add up. They make life not as good as it should be, every day, and you can’t do anything about it. It’s worse now I’m a mother as well—the way people talk to me when I’m with Hudson, and at work…not just Judas—everyone makes it part of my identity in a way they don’t do with Stefan, who’s got a four-year-old. I figure it’d be worse again if I was a lesbian.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest any race was inferior or superior. Which is the underlying definition—’

  ‘Don, you’re not listening. Imagine you’re one of those students in your class from…it doesn’t matter…India. Or with Indian parents. Every day, you’re forced to be conscious of the colour of your skin and what it means. People ask, “Where are you from?” when it’s got nothing to do with anything. You do something good, or something bad, and the fact that you’re Indian gets brought into it. Maybe you’re studying to be a doctor, and after all your work, someone whose life you’re saving is going to prefer you were white. And you’ll know it.’ Rosie stopped and laughed. ‘Okay, maybe you wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that I caused suffering to students by reminding them of something that is…annoying to them?’

  ‘I’m saying you added to their load. They go to class to learn about Huntington’s disease and suddenly the lecturer’s getting them to declare their race. If you don’t play, you’ll stand out. I know when you went on that course, they lined you up in order of experience, but that’s not the same as doing it according to something that’s problematic. Imagine if…I can’t think of an example.’