Democrats Attack Republican Candidate's Children

By Art Robinson

In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon's 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.

Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer.

Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.

However, when you take a stand for what's right, sometimes there is retribution.

On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term "political payback."

They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.

Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley's husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua's apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany's graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.

Palmer, until recently married to a member of the OSU psychology faculty, is now married to former OSU student Camille Lodwick. They are both faculty members in the nuclear engineering department.

It is also rumored that Higley, a long-time associate of Palmer's and who is adamant that Bethany leave OSU, may dislike Bethany because of criticism Higley received when department students complained of sexual assault at wild drunken parties of OSU nuclear engineering students during taxpayer-financed trips to scientific meetings. These incidents may have been more likely because Higley had failed to report to OSU authorities an earlier instance of milder sexual harassment against Bethany, probably because Bethany – a brilliant but very mild-mannered, conservative, homeschooled Christian young lady – does not share Higley's views.

My children and I attempted to counter all these actions against us as they unfolded, but were initially uncertain as to their ultimate intent. All became clear, however, when OSU faculty administrators abruptly took a further and very serious prejudicial action toward Joshua. At that point, OSU Professor of Nuclear Engineering Jack Higginbotham, who was privy to all of the meetings and actions, warned us and came to our defense.

Professor Higginbotham, who also serves as president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of the Oregon NASA Space Science Consortium, has been a member of the OSU faculty for 24 years. He has held many responsible positions in the university and has received numerous professional awards. Moreover, he is very widely admired for the many instances in which he has given special help to students at OSU. This is a man who thinks always of his students and never of himself.

Professor Higginbotham warned us that faculty administrators at OSU were working to make certain that Joshua, his sister Bethany and, if possible, his brother Matthew never receive Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, regardless of their examination, academic and research performance. Professor Higginbotham then reviewed with us the details of the plan to destroy the education of these students and advised me to do anything I could to protect my children.

Since November, a remarkable battle has been raging within OSU. I considered an immediate public exposure of this plot and warned the faculty of this possibility, but instead my family and I decided to try to prevent a scandal at OSU and save the students within the confines of OSU. We fought these unprincipled academics on their own ground and held them off for four months. That effort is, however, now failing, and Joshua and Bethany are both slated for dismissal from the department of nuclear engineering very soon. Also, unless action is taken immediately, Professor Higginbotham's career will be completely destroyed.

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