From: bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor)
Subject: Fraud and extortion at Concordia University (Canada) (part VII)
Organization: /usr/local/lib/news/organization
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 21:00:41 GMT



                                                     EXHIBIT #3.1
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY                          INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

TO:       Dr. Mo. O. M. Osman, Chair, Mechanical Engineering
FROM:     Mike Stefano, Manager, Purchasing Services
DATE:     July 4, 1988

SUBJECT;  AHEARN AND SOPER - DR. FABRIKANT

As the attached letter from Ahearn and Soper states, Dr.
Fabrikant's refusal to pay the bill for the Imagen Image Station
has resulted in Concordia University being put on credit hold. 
Ahearn and Soper will not be honoring service calls affecting at
least 13 Printronix printers we have on contract as well as a
number of other units where service is on an "on call" basis.

There is no valid reason for this bill to be outstanding.  Legal
Counsel has confirmed this.  Dr. Fabrikant's refusal to honor his
commitments to a supplier will now inconvenience several other
faculties and departments.

Both you and Dr. Fancott have been involved in this and while I
appreciate the efforts you both have made in trying to persuade Dr.
Fabrikant to pay the bill, it appears as though ultimately he will
have to be forced.

MS/cb

c.c. Dr. T. Fancott
     Dr. M. N. S. Swamy



AHEARN & SOPER INC.                                  EXHIBIT #3.2

June 29, 1988

Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd., W.,
Montreal, PQ
H3G lM8

ATTENTION;  MR. MIKE STEPHANO, MANAGER OF PURCHASING

          YOUR P.O. # S-58711
          OUR INVOICE #42150
          DATED APRIL 28/88 for $8,401.72

Dear Mr. Stephano:

We regret to have to bring to your attention that payment on our
above referenced invoice is over due.

Our Terms of Sale is strictly Net 30 Days.  Our Company's Policy,
is that if a payable is over 60 days without a justifiable reason
the Customer is put on "CREDIT HOLD" for Goods and Service. 
According to investigations as there is no cause to withhold
payment, Concordia University is now officially on "CREDIT HOLD".

Attached also is our Invoice No.#PI-7 for interest charges for 30
days amounting to $154.16.

We also take this opportunity to thank you for your patronage, and
trust that the payment problem will be finalized next week.

Yours truly,
AHEARN & SOPER INC.

Pat Pickering,
Credit Manager
Encl.
PP/hdp



                                                     EXHIBIT #3.3
AHEARN & SOPER INC.
                             INVOICE

Sold to:                                Shipped to:
245                                     Concordia University
Concordia University                    2100 Bishop
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.            Montreal, PQ
Montreal, PQ                            H3G lM8
H3G lM8
ATTN:  MIKE STEPHANO, MANAGER OF PURCHASING

Our order No.  8-01808
Customer Order No. S58711                        Invoice No. PI-7
                                          Invoice date June 30/88

Description:

WITH REFERENCE TO INVOICE #42150
dated APR. 28/88

INTEREST CHARGES AT 2% for JUNE:                   $154.16



                                                       EXHIBIT #4
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY                          INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

TO:       Dr. M. O. M. Osman, Chair, Mechanical Engineering
FROM:     Mike Stefano, Manager, Purchasing Services
DATE:     June 28, 1988

SUBJECT;  DR. V. I. FABRIKANT

I'm afraid I've had more than enough.  I've answered all of Dr.
Fabrikant's questions, including providing a copy of Quebec's Civil
Code.  Mr. Dufour has explained the situation to him as well, but
there seems to be no end in sight as to what Dr. Fabrikant wants. 
When Ahearn and Soper agreed to install the unit no charge, he
countered with a demand for a one year warranty.  (A & S won't do
that.  The warranty is 90 days).  He told me he would pay the bill
if you told him to.  He then told you he'd pay the bill if the
Rector told him to.  It appears that he will continue to escalate
his demands at every opportunity.

I enclose the latest correspondence and reiterate that I have
ceased to be involved in this order.  I have neither the time nor
the patience to research the law to prove what is a standard,
accepted business practice.

Ahearn and Soper also advised me this morning that they will be
sending a final notice of payment, after which they will be taking
legal action.

MS/cb

c.c.  Mr. J. P. Dufour
      Dr. V. I. Fabrikant
      Dr. T. Fancott



                                                     EXHIBIT #5.1
                   SIR GEORGE WILLIAMS CAMPUS             3 pages

Montreal, October 14, 1991

Dr. M. O. M. Osman
Chairman
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec  H3G lM8
Canada

Re:  Your letter of October 9, 1991 accusing me of illegal
solicitation

     One may argue that the grant received should be spent
according to the submitted budget.  This makes sense when the
amount received equals to the amount requested (as it happened with
my grant from NASA), and it does not make sense when the amount
received is less than half of the amount requested (as it happened
with the FRDP grant).  In this situation every grant recipient has
to think how to make the best use of the money received.  First of
all, I have checked, if there was any Concordia Policy document
regulating allowable expenses for FRDP.  There is none.  In this
situation it is logical to consult similar documents of NSERC and
FCAR as well as Collective Agreement.

     The NSERC document states explicitly that the grant recipient
is not bound neither by the proposal nor by the budget, and may
change one or both freely.  the FCAR document lists the expense for
purchase of time release from teaching duties (degagement
d'enseignement) as an allowable expense (Chapter 2, Art. 47).  I
have been informed that Dr. T. S. Sankar paid to another person
from his grant for teaching the course assigned to Dr. T. S.
Sankar.  You would not believe that Dr. T. S. Sankar could do
something illegal or immoral, would you?  My colleague from Tufts
University regularly uses his grant to purchase release from
teaching duties, and he told me that this was widely used practice
in the US universities.  Our Collective Agreement (Art. 8.16.e)
also declares legal the purchase of release time (course remission)
by Association; (Art. 16.14) makes it legal for any member, with
prior consent of the Chair and the Dean.  My letter of October 2,
1991, did just that:  your consent was requested.  Your response
(Re: above) stating that purchasing the release from teaching
duties "is illegal and not permitted under any circumstances" is
misleading, it contradicts to the facts stated above.  It has to be
officially withdrawn, and an apology is in order.

     In the second paragraph of your letter you write:  "For this
reason, I am requesting you to give ... a detailed Report for your
future teaching goals..." linking this to reappointment procedure. 
Your letter does not give any logical connection between my letter
of October 2 and the reappointment procedure.  During our telephone
conversation, you have told me that my letter proves that I hate
teaching.  This is wrong:  using this logic you should accuse
anyone applying for Steacie (or any other similar) Fellowship,
anyone applying for a sabbatical leave, anyone taking Doctoral
seminar as a teaching load, etc.  The normal logic has always
considered release from teaching duties as an honor, as a
recognition by the university of the importance of someone's
research (or other services).  In my letter of October 2, 1991, I
have asked for such an honor because I strongly believed that I
deserved it.  There was nothing improper in my letter of October 2,
1991, and I still stand behind every word in it.

     One can not be very successful in doing a job which s/he
hates.  I love teaching, and it consistently shows in the students'
evaluations.  The latest DPC evaluation is of the same opinion. 
Here is the relevant quotation:

     DPC of the Department of Mechanical Engineering strongly
recommends to the FPC as well as to the VR Academic that Professor
Fabrikant be awarded the highest possible extra points, as
specified in the Collective Agreement, after comparison with other
engineering and university faculty performances.  The DPC believes
that Professor Fabrikant deserves a final SPS point value of 3.0

I was voted the best teacher back in the USSR, and you may be
assured that the quality of my teaching performance will never
deteriorate.

     Art. 14 of Collective Agreement does not require any "Report
on future teaching goals", but since you have requested it, here it
is.  After 12 years of continuous service, with practically no
vacations, I plan to go on sabbatical leave, during which I intend
to start writing of my third book and continue developing the new
graduate course "Contact Mechanics".  In the more distant future,
two more graduate courses are to be developed.  The first one will
be a course on "Linear Fracture Mechanics", with emphasis on
mathematical apparatus involved, which will be complementary to the
existing course "Fracture".  The second one will be a specialized
course "Mechanics of Rolling Contact", addressed to the needs of
CONCAVE graduate students, with emphasis on rail-wheel and tire-
road interaction.  A laboratory for modelling of these interactions
would be very helpful, but this realization depends on the
availability of funds.  I am of opinion that an upgrading and
updating is needed to the existing course of "Applied Elasticity". 
Right now, it is based on the book by Timoshenko and, therefore, on
the results of that time.  It should be modified by including
recent results in the field, especially, in three-dimensional
elasticity, mixed and mixed-mixed problems, etc.  A similar
upgrading would be recommended to the course on modelling of
physical phenomena, which I would rename "Mathematical Physics",
and which would demonstrate various analogies between
electromagnetics, acoustics, heat transfer, diffusion, fluid
mechanics, etc.  Majority of students think about these disciplines
being very different from one another, and it seems extremely
important to show just how many, sometimes unexpected, similarities
exist.  Some updating is needed to the engineering mathematics
courses, for example, introduction of tensor analysis seems to be
very useful.

     In the field of undergraduate teaching my main concern is that
our methodology have not changed significantly in centuries (the
same chalk and blackboard).  It seems useful to introduce more
"hands-on" science.  For example, in teaching of statics and
dynamics it would be more instructive to have physical models
corresponding to various problems, which students could see and
touch and "play" with it by changing parameters, dimensions,
loading, etc.  Of course, physical models are expensive, so yet
another approach might be useful:  instead of building physical
models, we can use computer graphics to create these models on the
screen, with numerous options to "play" with.  Quite some time ago,
I have created one such computer graphics model for studies of free
and forced vibrations, with damping.  Not only all the parameters
and the initial conditions could be prescribed arbitrarily, but any
of the parameters could be changed interactively in the process of
vibrations.  Nobody was interested in using the model then, so I
dropped it.  I still believe that the approach will prove useful. 
Other interesting ideas might come up in process of discussions
with other faculty members.

     Back in the USSR, my engineering class has had between 30% and
40% of female students, and about 20% of faculty were female. 
Here, the situation is alarmingly abnormal.  I think, that one of
the reasons is the perception that engineering is the "men's club".

We need to change it, and our activity should start not at the
university level but at high school.  We should arrange meetings
with high school students, with participation of female graduate
students, who could tell their own stories to the children and to
convince them that engineering is both interesting and accessible. 
Significant increase in female undergraduate and graduate student
population will inevitably result in increase of the proportion of
female faculty members.

                                        Dr. V. I. Fabrikant

cc:  Dr. R. Sheinin, Vice-Rector, Academic; Dean M. N. S. Swamy;  
     Members.
From: alexa@hpnmdla.sr.hp.com (Alexander Anger)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 01:30:24 GMT
Subject: Re: Murder: for or against?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Rosa, CA