“I saw her at a spring (2009) orientation for the new freshmen,” Seemann said. “She said she was not tenured and she felt like she had been given a raw deal.”</p>
<p>Despite her excellent research ability, Seemann was not surprised she struggled to obtain tenure.</p>
<p>“Amy was kind of hard to get along with,” he said. “I’ve talked to people who said, ‘Wow, she can be really arrogant,’ or be really headstrong. I knew that to be true. But at the same time she was brilliant. She was really one of UAH’s rising research stars. People I know in biological sciences would say, ‘She’s a great researcher, but she’s lousy to work with.’ ”</p>
<p>“At one meeting I was with Amy, she was complaining to a group of us. She said she was denied tenure not because she was a lousy researcher — she’s not, quite the opposite — and not because she didn’t have good classes, she believed she did — I think some might say otherwise — but because she was accused of being arrogant, aloof and superior. And she said, ‘I am.’</p>
<p>“She said, ‘I am arrogant, I am aloof and I am superior in my attitude. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to get along with people.’ ”</p>
<p>Seemann’s recollection of his frequent dealings with Bishop continued the theme.</p>
<p>“During a conversation she and I had at one point, she said she got into an argument with another faculty member who accused her of being arrogant and acting like she was better than him, and she told me, ‘That’s because I was arrogant and I was better than him.’ But that was in the context of a heated argument,” Seemann said.</p>
<p>“I think Amy was a little easy to provoke.”</p>
<p>He said his impression was students tried to avoid taking her classes.</p>
<p>“The comments I heard from students over the last several years was that she was brilliant, but she couldn’t teach and she’s was not personable.”</p>
<p>Seemann suspects Bishop had an unrealistic view of the likelihood of a successful appeal of her tenure denial.</p>
<p>“Amy told me in November that she filed an appeal through the university and had retained an attorney. The appeal was based on her belief that somebody had a personal gripe with her on the tenure committee, and that she asked that the person or persons — there may have been more than one — be removed,” Seemann recalled.</p>
<p>“That request was denied. The appeal went through the appeals process. Amy told me she believed that there was a good chance of the appeal working.”</p>
<p>Despite her expressed hopes, Seemann said tenure denials rarely get reversed.</p>
<p>Seemann stressed he did not know what happened at Friday’s biology faculty meeting before Bishop allegedly began shooting, but he knew the deadline for final decisions on tenure appeals was nearing.</p>
<p>“I do not believe that a faculty would tell one person in front of other people, ‘By the way you’re not getting tenure, clean out your office.’ I can’t imagine that’s what happened. My guess is that Amy probably pushed the issue.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen her do that before, where she would ask a question, someone would say let’s discuss it later, and she would just become more insistent until someone said either just shut up or here it is, and it’s not what you wanted.</p>
<p>“I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m guessing she pushed the issue.”</p>
<p>Seemann said he remains stunned by the shooting.</p>
<p>“Nowhere in any of my discussions with her did I get the idea that she was violent or that she had this inclination to bring a pistol to a meeting,” Seemann said. Behind the most tragic loss in Friday’s shootings — the death of three faculty members and the wounding of three others — is another tragedy, Seemann said.</p>
<p>“It’s not like she would never have another job,” Seemann said. “With the research she did, there are other universities that, if she threw her hat in the air, they’d be lining up to hire her.</p>
<p>“She’s not some random schmuck. She’s Harvard educated. She could have doubled her salary going to these other schools. For whatever reason, she was so ego-invested that not being here was intolerable.”