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Former Practical Homeschooling columnist's children under siege

UPDATE Monday, March 28: Today is the day OSU plans to let two other students take over Joshua Robinson's project. OSU continues to stonewall.

Latest story here on WorldNetDaily:

Crunch time: Payback machine grinding GOP candidate's kids
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=278481

And here's a Big Government story, with some more background on why Dr. Robinson is such a threat to OSU's position on "climate change."

Higher-order Bullying: Challenge the Rulers, Risk Your Children?
http://biggovernment.com/jorient/2011/03/28/higher-order-bullying-challenge-the-rulers-risk-your-children/

And here's a VERY interesting article about how OSU's director of their Oregon Climate Change Research Institute sent an email to his faculty colleagues dissing Art Robinson after his primary win. Mote was apparently brought in as a replacement for the previous head of Oregon Climate Services, who refuted Mote's claims about snowpack decline - not what Oregon's "green" governor wanted to hear. This doesn't exactly lend credence to OSU's claim to be free of political influence. Story (published on June 6, 2010, long before the current situation with the Robinson kids developed) is here:

More Political Climate Science
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11875


UPDATE Saturday, March 19: Joshua Robinson has been barred from access to, or working with, the apparatus he "built with his own hands."

Oregon State University stonewalls, keeps saying Art Robinson's claims are false and that they "can't discuss specifics" of why that might be so, even though Joshua has given releases to OSU authorizing the university to release information about his case.

Full story here on WorldNetDaily:

GOP candidate says son suffering political payback
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=276841


Yesterday (Monday, March 7, 2011) I was shocked to read a story on WorldNetDaily which reported that THREE of Dr. Arthur Robinson's children were on the verge of being tossed out of their Oregon State University graduate school programs, and their research and projects taken by others.

The way it works, if a grad school expels you late into your PhD studies, you basically lose years of your life. It's not like the undergraduate college years, where often everything except the last year of a program is transferable elsewhere.

And if the work, software, and hardware you built is simply taken over by others, you basically have to start from scratch anyway. Not to mention the very serious hit to your reputation, which will follow you lifelong.

So why would three students from the same family be facing removal from their grad school studies -- all at the same institution and all at once?

The story (which you will find at the end of this article) suggests a plausible connection to Dr. Robinson's attempt to win a congressional seat presently held by Democrat Peter DeFazio.

A follow-up story (which you also can read at the end of this article) states that the university - which reportedly received $27 million in earmark funding from DeFazio and his Democratic colleagues during Congress's last session - simply denies all allegations.

WorldNetDaily also published a poll, to see what visitors thought of the situation.

And it's that poll - and the comments left in the polling area - that has me writing this.

Although the votes in the poll are vastly supportive of the Robinson children, a few of the commenters seemed skeptical and willing to believe the university.

For those, I would like to share some details about the academic careers of the Robinson's older children.

From an article we published about them in a 2008 issue of Practical Homeschooling:

  • Zachary, age 31, holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Oregon State University and a M.S. in Chemistry and D.V.M. (doctorate in veterinary medicine) from Iowa State University (ISU). He currently works part-time on OISM [Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine, the Robinson's in-house research facility) research as well as in veterinarian practice.

  • Noah, age 29, holds a BS in Chemistry from Southern Oregon University (SOU) and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Caltech. He is employed full-time by OISM.

  • Arynne, age 28, has a BS in Chemistry from Bethel College and is now in her third year of work towards a DVM at ISU...

  • Zachary, Noah, and Matthew all skipped two years of college, entering as juniors and requiring only two years to complete their Bachelors degrees. Noah completed his PhD at Caltech in three years (it normally takes five years or more).

Note that Matthew is one of the three Robinson children whose grad career is reportedly being squelched.

All the older Robinson children sailed through graduate school. Matthew in particular repeated his older brothers' amazing feat of earning a Bachelors degree (in Chemistry at Southern Oregon University) in only 2 years.

Given their previous academic success, and coming from a family that has never known anything BUT academic success, what are the odds that, as they reach the end of their respective grad-school careers, in a university highly beholden to Dr. Robinson's political opponent, ALL THREE of the younger Robinson children would suddenly demonstrate such extreme incompetence that they needed to be dropped from their programs?

Through years of working with him, I have always found Dr. Robinson to be a complete straight shooter. My daughter, Magda, spent a month on the Robinson farm a year and a half ago, and she can also testify to the brilliance, competence, and trustworthiness of all the Robinson children. So you can probably guess who I believe.

Here is the complete 2008 Practical Homeschooling article (written in connection with our highest award being given to a curriculum partly written by the Robinson children):
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/oregon-institute-science-medicine.html

And here's an old American Spectator story from the year 2001, providing yet more background on Art, his kids, and their achievements:
http://www.independentscientist.com

Here are the original WorldNetDaily stories:

Democrats attack Republican candidate's children (this has contact info for those who wish to protest):
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=271753

University denies attack on GOP candidate's children
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=272269

Please contact the OSU engineering department and university president, using the contact info at the end of the first WND article. And if you Twitter about this, please use the #Robinsonchildren hashtag. Thank you.

Mary Pride
Publisher, Practical Homeschooling Magazine and Homeschool World

          
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