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[UPDATED] The Real George Zinkhan: "Cold, Calculating and Manipulative"
Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 12:23 am
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| From Zinkhan's UGA profile page |
UPDATE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Zinkhan's body has been found. As I suspected, he committed suicide and may have done so shortly after ditching his SUV.
ORIGINAL POST
A source with firsthand knowledge of George Zinkhan's troubled transition from the University of Houston to the University of Georgia filled in some information gaps about the fugitive professor's past indiscretions. The story is one of entitlement and ass-covering at the upper levels of major university administrations. It may be a serious indictment of the way some institutions of higher learning deal with troubled professors.
Professional concerns dictated that my source remain anonymous.
George M. Zinkhan III allegedly confronted his estranged wife, attorney Marie E. Bruce, outside a community theater in Athens on April 25. Witnesses say he opened fire on Bruce and two others, Tom Tanner and Ben Teague, killing all three.
Zinkhan left the scene and took his children to a neighbor. Then he vanished. Police have recovered his red SUV, passport and several other personal effects. Otherwise there has been no sign of the 6'3" professor since the 25th.
Many interviews in Athens and Atlanta publications betrayed surprise and dismay on the part of those who thought they knew Zinkhan, giving the impression that he was a friendly but withdrawn, perhaps scattered person who just snapped, perhaps under the strain of a marriage going sour.
I was contacted by others who felt there was more to the story, and I covered those allegations here: "George Zinkhan's Troubled Past."
The real story behind Zinkhan's transition from Texas to Georgia as told by my new source may give further lie to the benign portrait found in some Georgia publications after Zinkhan fled Athens that sunny Saturday in April, leaving bloodshed and heartbreak in his wake.
According to my source, George Zinkhan is still "running around because people without power either got squashed or were too afraid to say anything, and people who had power were more into preserving the hierarchy than doing the right thing. And now 3 people are dead."
The same person said that when Zinkhan left Houston in 1994 there was a federal lawsuit against him and the University there. It was apparently settled out of court.
The lawsuit was over Zinkhan's persistent, sexual harassment of fellow UH faculty members and grad students and the university's alleged failure to address that behavior. My source said that when the allegations first came to light, "some administrators were supportive, questioned ZInkhan's mental state (and that was 15 years ago), vowed to protect the victims, and so on." But that didn't last. Eventually, according to this person, the university tried to trivialize the allegations and may have even retaliated against the victims, essentially defending Zinkhan and portraying the plaintiffs as "the crazy ones."
Zinkhan's former colleague continued, saying that he "carried on a variety of non-professional relationships with untenured female professors and graduate students while he was at UH" and married to his first wife, Lydia Stoiadin.
The tipster addressed the Atlanta newspaper's initial portrait of Zinkhan as a private man: "A better word is secretive. Males interviewed said he never lost his temper. An alternative description is that he is cold, calculating and manipulative. Guns are not a recent interest of his."
I asked this person if the university system - specifically in Texas but also perhaps in Georgia - had enabled George Zinkhan's past bad behavior. The response was unequivocal:
Absolutely. As a tenured full professor, he was worth a lot to the university; he was one of the most well known professors in the business schools and was editor of Journal of Advertising at the time. Those are big feathers in the cap of a university trying to improve its reputation. Initially when the situation blew up, [those accusing Zinkhan of harassment] received wonderful reassurances. The notion that violence could be lurking and guns an interest of Zinkhan's was made known to them. (Which is why, when I heard he'd murdered 3 people on an NPR newscast, I was horrified, but not at all shocked that he was capable of such a thing [...]) Then it was like a switch flipped and they turned on [ZInkhan's accusers]. I assumed it was pressure from above.
I followed up by asking if university administrations had helped George Zinkhan hone a sense of entitlement. My source responded:
I wouldn't say entitlement, but I'm unaware of any negative consequences that he suffered. He was very brazen. He had a great deal of power, he only had one serious intellectual rival at his level in the marketing department. He had a lot of control over the doctoral program. Tens of thousands of dollars must have been spent to essentially defend him. How damaging could that possibly be to his ego?
The source went on to address descriptions in True Crime Report blog posts and comments from readers of Zinkhan's personality:
The description about him being controlling seems apt from what I heard and observed [...] My gut reaction is that he didn't kill himself [...] [Remorse] didn't seem to loom large in his personality. If he continued developing inappropriate relationships that included a huge power imbalance at UGA, I wouldn't be surprised. He did have a knack for getting to know doctoral students, and not just at UH. [...] I was aware of him having a relationship of some sort (bad poetry at a minimum, probably sexual) with a grad student [from] another school. Can't remember her name or affiliation...
In an e-mail, my anonymous correspondent singled out a comment made on the most recent blog post about Zinkhan. The following comment was posted by "mkg prof too" on May 8, 2009:
GZ was not the only professor at UH that hit on female doctoral students during the 1980's and 1990's. It was very common and there were NO reprimands. I agree with anonymous that the protection of predators by the good ole boy network needs to stop. When will universities take notice and do the right thing? The sexual pursuit of female doctoral students by (some) male faculty is common as dirt, especially if the student is attractive. Many male academics were nerds growing up and now have the chance to exploit their power over female junior faculty and students, and some of them are predators. And administrators too often let it pass or look the other way.
I have no direct knowledge about his dealings at UGA, except what an honest colleague of mine, formerly at UGA, has told me. Some faculty at Terry called GZ "lover boy." As soon as he got there he had a very open affair with one of the departmental staff members and consistently harrassed other women. The marketing faculty at UGA knew about this and many thought it was scandalous. But he was powerful--a chaired professor, and at one time the department chair. Both UH and UGA are to blame in this circumstance for not doing the right thing soon enough. After the shooting, the president of UGA was quoted as saying that GZ was a "respected" faculty member. This suggests that the president is either uninformed or dishonest. While no one would have predicted a triple murder, the fact is that GZ engaged in exploitative behavior toward woman for years, with little apparent cost or consequence. If he had been given a hard pushback early on, things might have turned out differently. We'll never know.
Source: "If UH had acted properly, maybe he would never have made it to UGA or another academic institution."
Athens-Clarke County police are still searching for George Zinkhan. They have issued sketches showing how Zinkhan might look without his beard or any hair at all. A "crime stoppers" reward of $1000 is being offered for information that might lead to Zinkhan's whereabouts. My own guess at the moment disagrees with the primary source for this post - I would be surprised if he was found alive. Suicide is not always an act of remorse or depression; for someone like George Zinkhan, it might be a final act of control. However, my source did pose this intriguing question: "Has anyone considered that he might have an accomplice?"
Tags: Ben Teague, George M. Zinkhan III, Marie E. Bruce, Terry College of Business, Tom Tanner, Town and Gown, triple homicide, UGA, University of Georgia
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