have you ever taught and graded a lecture with hundreds of students while working sixty hours a week on a federally funded research project?  He was being paid entirely by the Federal government to do the research, and UAA was basically getting a class taught for free.  Here's how research works:  you get hired by UAA as a research professor.  they don't pay you at all.  you have to go out and get a grant from an organization like the National Science Foundation.  UAA takes the entirety of that grant into their coffers, and pays you a stipend from it, as well as all of your research costs.  the rest of the money (approximately 58%) gets taken by the university for "Facilities and Administrative costs".  He is effectively paying the university to employ him.  On top of that, the NSF expects a product in return for all of that grant money.  That peer reviewed paper is his sole contractual obligation.  the people who actually pay him have no lecture requirement.