06.09d Murders as Professors; Manchester's Paul Agutter. . On September 28, 2003 I commented that a professor who was a despicable murderer in the distant past was not thereby disqualified from teaching unrelated subjects. A much harder case is this one, described in Worl d magazine:

The University of Manchester now has Paul Agutter, an ethics professor who actually tried to poison his wife.
The Reuters news service reports that the British school has hired the convicted criminal to teach a course titled "Therapeutic Cloning: Ethics and Science." Mr. Agutter served seven years in jail for attempted murder after he tried to poison his wife's drink with nightshade in 1994. He was dubbed the "Safeway poisoner" because he tried to cover up his crime by poisoning drinks in a Safeway store.
Medical ethics lecturer Piers Benn of Imperial College London defended the hire: "I can't see any logical contradiction between being able to think about ethical questions and being able to do rather criminal acts." Mr. Agutter may also teach a class on evolution.

Here we have the opposite extreme. Three years out of jail after a mild sentence for a serious crime, an instructor is teaching ethics. It's possible he could teach it well, but he seems so miserably to have failed in this subject in his own life-- or to have adopted a stance on it hostile to the public interest-- that he should not be hired. Shame on you, Manchester.

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