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Ignacio Chapela, the UC Berkeley professor whose tenure battle came to symbolize the movement to protect scientific research from corporate interests, withdrew his lawsuit against the school last week, but promised to continue to “expose a deeply damaging miscarriage of the university’s mandate.” 

Chapela sued the UC Regents last spring for wrongfully denying him tenure because of his opposition to the university’s deal with pharmaceutical company Novartis. A month after he filed suit Chapela was granted tenure, but he did not withdraw his suit. 

Chapela said he hoped the suit would expose the mishandling of his tenure case but came to realize, after meeting with his lawyer and supporters for six months, that he must find other means to that end. 

“The claims I made are still valid,” said Chapela in an interview, “but I realized people will get the image that I got what I wanted and am still whining. That’s the opposite of what I wanted, which was to create a chink in the armor of this massive system that is UC.” 

UC Berkeley Counsel Michael Smith said, “We hope the dispute is settled and behind us.” 

Chapela said he will not abandon his efforts to hold the university accountable. In a statement he said, “I look forward to continue challenging, in the best forums that I can find, what I believe is a corrupt and illegitimate takeover of the public university away from its public mandate.”  

Now, however, he faces the world from a new vantage point. 

“My decision to take tenure was my decision to become an insider when I wasn’t,” Chapela said, “And that brings in a whole set of conflicts of interest.” 

“He’s not uncomfortable being out on his own,” said Michael Pollan, a science and food writer who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. “It took a certain strength being in opposition, and in some ways being accepted is harder for him.” 

Chapela, 45, with a cherubic face beneath a shock of gray hair, became a hero to some and an agitator to others when he loudly opposed the College of Natural Resources’ contract with Novartis, a company where he had worked years earlier. He generated international debate on the issue of genetic engineering when he co-authored a controversial article about GMO-tainted native corn in Mexico.  

Chapela sees himself as an outsider, a “mutt,” he said. Born in Mexico City, he received his B.S. from Mexico’s Universidad Autonoma and then completed a doctorate in mycology (the study of fungi) in Wales. Chapela worked for Sandoz Agra, a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Novartis in Switzerland and then for the United States Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. He took his current position at UC Berkeley in 1996. 

“I am not a thoroughbred academic in any possible way,” said Chapela. “I am committed to doing science that has public relevance, and the only way I can do that is if I am heard and seen by the public.” 

Chapela said his new ambition is to create a system of interactive maps that chart the presence of genetically modified organisms (plants which contain genes from other plants or animals, such as herbicide-tolerant soybeans) in crops around the world. Funding the maps will require generating venture capital. 

“I will have to make sure I am not doing the very thing I have been complaining about other people doing,” Chapela said.  

The transgenic maps would document the consequences of genetic engineering, he said. Chapela said he realized that such a project could upset his supporters. If, for example, he identifies transgenic material in organic fields, he could embarrass and anger organic farmers.  

“I could make many people unhappy,” Chapela said. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. That is why I’m tenured, to ask this kind of question.” 

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