On Friday night, a doctoral student in the engineering program at Duke University was shot to death in his off-campus apartment (thanks, Zuni123). The parallels of this tragic crime to the LSU murders cannot be ignored; like then, our tip line is the conduit for confusion and frustration over another senseless murder. Via The Raleigh Chronicle:
The victim has been identified as Abhijit Mahato, age 29, a Ph.D. engineering candidate who was from India and was studying in the United States, Duke University officials said on Saturday afternoon.
“He was found by friends who came by the apartment to check on him Friday night,” said Kammie Michaels of the Durham Police Department. Mahato was pronounced dead on the scene when police arrived, say police.
Durham Police said they do not yet have a motive for the shooting. Their investigation is continuing…
Mahato, originally from Tatangar, India, was studying for an engineering doctorate degree focused on computational mechanics at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. He was in his second year in the program, says the school.
Larry Moneta, Duke’s vice president for student affairs, said the university has begun “reaching out” to Mahato’s friends and to his family in India, as well as to Indian and other international students on campus. It is offering counseling services and has begun considering appropriate ways of commemorating Mahato’s life.
One way they didn’t commemorate it was by finding it a happy opportunity to test a school safety feature.
Here’s how the victim’s adviser, Tod Laursen described him:
“He made friends very easily and always had a smile on his face,” Laursen said through Duke University. “Our research team was particularly close to Abhijit. He was very well read in both poetry and literature, and enjoyed conversation with others about what they were reading.”
More about a stolen life:
On his website at Duke, Mahato said his hobbies included reading books, playing chess, and photography.
Before coming to Duke, Mahato worked for two years for the GE Global Research Center in Bangalore, India where he focused on finite element analysis, a computer-simulation technique used in engineering.
Mahato earned his mechanical engineering degree from Jadavpur University in India in 2001 and a master of technology degree from the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur in 2004.
Mahato was very proud of his Indian heritage and seemed to enjoy talking about his hometown.
“My upbringing was in Kolkata; the City of Joy, the city of intellectuals, and much much more,” said Mahato on his website at Duke. “My native language is bengali. We, Bengalis, have a very distinct and rich culture.”
Mahato’s website is here. May his memory be eternal.
This is scary and awful, coming so soon on the heels of the unsolved LSU murders. I wonder whether graduate student stipends have been falling in value in relative terms, pushing graduate students into living in more dangerous areas? I also wonder whether international students on limited budgets wouldn’t be safer at, say, a U. of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign than at an urban campus (not that Duke is urban). Still, maybe that’s reading too much into a couple of events. . . . I’m not trying to stereotype urban areas as unsafe, just pointing out what I take to be the reality that a relative lack of money could lead to fairly unsafe situations for a newcomer.
Some of these universities really need to spend some of their growing endowments to provide more on-campus housing for international students, patrolled by campus police.
The Tabloid of India mentions that he had been extorted by some local hoodlums in the past.
Terrible.
Our thoughts are out to the family and friends.
such sad news 🙁 may he rest in peace. he must have worked so hard to get that far in life and pursue his dream, to have it all taken away in a senseles act. we need to begin a nationwide non-violence movement. i truly hope our new president gets serious about decreasing violence in this country.
See pp. 4-5 of linked report from U. Penn. for some evidence about graduate-stipends/lack of on-campus housing being a problem for international graduate students (admittedly, it’s hardly conclusive–but it is suggestive). Money quote:
“As the table shows, even in those departments that distribute a minimum stipend over 9 months, and even under the assumption that students in those departments will find summer employment with an income that will cover their living expenses over the summer, a typical graduate student’s apartment does not represent affordable housing.”
As a current Duke student, I would be wary of categorizing this tragic murder as a hate crime or a racist attack at this stage.
Of course, it another matter that the Durham Police is being very tight-lipped about this matter and is refusing to release any more details about this.
This week has also seen a tremendous spate of crime including a dozen robberies- including 2 armed robberies tonight. There is a common perception here among the Duke student body that Durham is unsafe for students. Durham and Duke Police is often seen as being more concerned about breaking up parties and citing students for drinking than concentrating on more serious crimes. Duke Lacrosse scandal was a case in point
Fair enough, but who’s done that? This is a straw-man. It’s about economics, and where international graduate students can afford to live, I think.
This is a petition to the Indian Government for taking a more proactive role in this regard-
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?abhijit8&1
As far as the administrative response to this tragedy goes- so far the general student body has only received this email-
“Alert — Shooting Death
A man believed to be a Duke University graduate student was found shot to death at an apartment complex in the 1600 block of Anderson Street, several blocks south of the Duke campus, at approximately 11:30 p.m. Friday. According to Duke Police, the incident is under investigation and more information will be shared as it becomes available. Updates will be posted on http://www.duke.edu/today. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call Durham Crimestoppers at (919) 683-1200 or Duke Police at (919) 684-2444.”
(Along with an update posted on the Duke website and on the student newspaper’s website)
Larry Moneta sent out the following email to a listserv catering primarily to international graduate students –
“To the International community at Duke University:
Let me first express my genuine sorrow for our loss. I know that I speak for many at Duke, including students, faculty and staff, who are stunned and saddened by Abhijit Mahato’s death. Since the time we first learned of this tragedy, we have been offering support and assistance to his many friends, fellow students and co-workers and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. We have also been in touch with his family in India and are honoring their wishes for Abhijit’s remains. It is my understanding that the Hindu community is working on plans for a memorial service and I’m sure that information about that service will be shared as it develops.
At this time, Durham Police continue their investigation into Abhijit’s death and as we have information we can share, we will do so. I’m sorry that I don’t have much information as yet about the circumstances of the death, but we consider this investigation of the highest priority and Duke Police are fully cooperating with Durham Police to resolve the case.
Please do feel free to contact me directly if I can offer support or direction or answer any specific questions you may have about this tragedy. “
As the President of the International Association at Duke, we are continuing to stay in touch with Duke administrators regarding this horrific tragedy. Indian embassy officials are coming down to Duke tomorrow afternoon as well.
8 · rob said
I agree with you. Just wanted to caution against that presumption- considering that has been a valid concern regarding earlier incidents. I apologise for any misconceptions.
OK, good–tell them that they need to put undercover Duke cops monitoring areas where a lot of off-campus Duke students live. You won’t do well with protection from Durham police, because the political economy is such that they will inevitably patrol higher-income neighborhoods more. Duke has a lot of money–make them use it for better personal security of its students!
What a horrible tragedy. My thoughts are with his friends and family. SDM
This is really sad. Beefing up security on campus is a good thing. But how does one go about protecting students who have to live off campus because of lack of funds?
rob you make a good point…”undercover Duke cops monitoring areas where a lot of off-campus Duke students live”. I am not confident that the University Board member will approve it. One thing Indians are good at is thriving, even while the government sleeps. Maybe an organizing effort by the students themselves could be far more effective?
I call copycat! I don’t know if this has anything to do about Jindal being gov., i sure hope not. i am one step away from setting up a “Brown Panthers”….I hope it never gets there…but my blood boils!!!! Small prayer……”Oh God may we please spare the innocent students” …that only being a start!
I am sure this is a targetted attack. Either a copycat or the same group that killed in Baton Rouge. With the anti immigrant rhetoric of Lou Dobbs on the rise…hate crimes were just round the corner.
Terrible tragedy. Was the place where he was found murdered considered a dangerous place?
Latest news.
Durham & Chapel Hill are both extremely unsafe. There’s a large group of poor and often uneducated youths who live in the area and prey on students. More often than not this turns out to be minority on minority crime.
Many of the South Asian born graduate students choose to live near or adjacent to the high-crime areas often for financial reasons. To be fair, sometimes they do this out of ignorance or trying to (understandably) pinch a penny. Duke & UNC never properly report crime data. When I lived in the area I had:
There are some pleasant facets to the RDU area, but there is certainly a vicious seedy underbelly.
My sympathies to the family. I hope this case will get the attention it deserves. Imagine if this was a white blonde female engineering student. It would be on every day on FoxNews with Greta Van Sustern following every nuance.
At least incidents like these will send a message to people in India, that America isn’t just a hyped up “baywatch-esque” version of itself. the poor white community around this area has for many years resented furriners encroaching on their land.
Aaahh… white people and women, always the villains, eh, HMF?
Sorry for that tangent. Condolences to the family of this innocent man.
What’s up with these crimes in these southern schools. First it was LSU. Now it’s Duke. And all these schools are located next to poor neighborhoods. Man, that really stinks.
This is very sad.
I don’t know a lot about Durham, but in 2006 relative of mine found racist, anti-semitic, white-supremacist propaganda flyers in her driveway. My family is (ethnically) Jewish.
What’s up with these crimes in these southern schools.
The south is the fountain of truth, justice, peace and goodwill towards all mankind. Nothing bad has ever happened there.
I think this incident and the LSU murders show that colleges definitely need to beef up security at off-campus housing. My sympathies to the family.
7 · Akash Bansal said
That seems to be a serious problems at many universities. Here at Rutgers, which borders a sh*tty part of New Brunswick, both the Rutgers and NB police overreact to student parties. It’s not uncommon to see up to ten police officers storming into a harmless party, dragging out students, and slapping ridiculous fines for noise violations. At the same time, there have been at least 9 armed robberies and more than a few rapes at the hands of local youth and the police haven’t done a thing. I don’t see this crime as being race related; it’s yet another case of crappy campus security.
What an awful story. My heart goes out to his family, to have such hope and promise so senselessly cut down. 🙁
Was the place where he was found murdered considered a dangerous place?
Hi, Durham resident checking in here. People who live outside of Durham are afraid of the whole city. People who live inside Durham, and know better, are still skittish about downtown (which is where Duke’s located). So in answer to your question – yes. Durham has some really nice downtown areas, but IMHO it’s a little bit like Richmond or Washington DC, where you’ll be driving through a well-to-do neighborhood one minute and a terribly poor one the next. I did not go to Duke, and I’ve always wondered what kind of warnings out-of-state and international students receive about the local neighborhoods.
Article on Duke’s bad town-gown relations, which focuses on the lacrosse scandal but gives a more historical perspective if anybody’s interested. Even in the comments section, you can see some of the resentment Duke inspires. The suggestion for Duke to provide its own undercover cops is a good one, because I don’t see the Durham police bending over backwards for Duke anytime soon. It is a tragedy that innocent people like Mr. Mahato have suffered retribution for institutional sins they had no part of.
the poor white community around this area has for many years resented furriners encroaching on their land.
HMF: Durham race relations are pretty fucked up, but your view of them is simplistic. Check out the article I linked above: it’s not as simple as a bunch of angry redneck yokels hating on the brown man (which is not to deny there are people around here who fit that description).
As far as Duke and Durham goes, it’s more a case of rich, white private university antagonizes the hell out of surrounding inner city black population, demolishes local neighborhoods in order to expand, declares itself exempt from Brown vs. Board of Education, etc. etc. This boomerangs back on Duke when Durham, which is roughly 45% black, decides it really doesn’t give a damn about the university’s problems. Throw in the decline of Durham’s once-thriving black middle class, and you’ve set up some very, very ugly racial and economic tensions in the city.
Now we don’t know who killed Mr. Mahato, so I don’t want to leap to any conclusions about what racial tensions (if any) might have been at play. But, this is what I mean by innocent people paying for institutional crimes – the town-gown tensions, and general lack of safety in downtown Durham, have been brewing for a long time. Mr. Mahato had no hand in any of this and it is tragic that he is the one who paid for it.
I am afraid I don’t understand. Doesn’t this happen everyday to other poor brown people living in the same neighborhood? Is there something special about the killing? Was the boy somehow “special” — more special than the other innocent brown people in the neighborhood who are killed? Is it his religion? The others are not Hindu and he is? Is it his nationality? The others are not Indian and he is? Is he worth more because he is of a higher caste? Because he is smarter? Or are the other brown people who are killed in Durham really not innocent at all and he is innocent?
I really don’t know why there is so much brown-on-brown killing. I doubt there is much that white folk like President Brodhead can do about it. I do think that playing favorites, by specially protecting some brown people and ignoring other brown people would work. I suspect it would just cause more tribal/ethnic/religious/caste brown-on-brown killing.
I second Rob’s comment about Champaign-Urbana. There are fewer brown people there and therefore less violence and killing. They may be poor in Champaign-Urbana, but they kill at a much lower rate.
28 · Big Bill said
Er, Bill, where did his religion or caste enter into this discussion? The fact remains though, that the victim was South Asian, that this blog is read primarily by South Asians (of both ABD and DBD varieties), and that the subjects of most threads here are related to the South Asian diaspora. So why are you surprised if readers here are shocked by the victim’s death and are discussing it?
I might have missed something, but is there some a priori evidence that suggests that this is a “brown-on-brown” killing?
I think this tragedy at Duke and that at LSU also speaks to the necessity of having a good, rigorous orientation to the overall communities in which new foreign students come to study. I don’t mean just the school-based orientations where people make overarching statements like “don’t go to above/below these streets past 6pm”, but really the history and understanding of what is happening to the community such that parts of it have become high-crime areas due to certain economic factors. Having campuses take more initiative in helping students secure SAFE and affordable housing where there lower crime rates seems imperative. These crimes are awful and horrific; campuses MUST take a greater role in playing a true ‘host’ to students coming from abroad to ensure the students will be safe and their studies unencumbered.
In addition, many great universities are located in very impoverished communities. It should also be a great priority of these institutions to reach out in every way possible to help communities in need– many campuses do this, and still others remain ivory towers. I know this because I currently attend a serious ivory tower located in front of the most populated homeless shelter and just below the major prostitution ring in DC. We do a lot to help impoverished DC residents in general, but we could be doing so much more to help reach out to our immediate surrounding community so that our WHOLE community is safer overall.
I don’t mean to sound callous with my remarks here…
The homicide rate in the USA is roughly 6 per 100,000. I don’t think I will be orders of magnitudes off when I say there are approximately 100,000 students from India ( I vaguely remember seeing 70,000 somewhere a few months back. Not sure if this is total or new arrivals per year). Considering how at least some of them live in high crime neighborhoods, the cases we have encountered over the last year or so is just the statistical reality…
*there are
sorry for the typos above
30 · ylrsings said
this is true…rich private univs spending so much money on their students without being beneficial to the local community at large is going to be big socio-economic problem …privatized education in US and India will have to deal with this problem in future
Are more students being killed these days or do we just have better reporting of it in the desi community because of websites like Sepia?
Bridget Jones said
I also don’t want to sound callous, but why is it the responsibility of the university to provide charity? If anyone should be helping the impoverished neighborhoods, it’s the government. The schools have no obligation to do so. To me it sounds like extortion: “Give us money or we’ll rob your students”
the cases we have encountered over the last year or so is just the statistical reality…
Statistics are usually overwrought by emotion. In 2001, the suicide number exceeded the # of people killed in terrorist acts by nearly 10 times. So technically, in ’01 you were a bigger threat to yourself than al-qaeda was. But politicians weren’t stroking fears of suicide prevention that year were they.
Blacks commit murder at a higher rate than other races.
That’s only per 100,000 of the population, if you look here, you’ll see the rates are very close.
36 · HMF said
not that this is relevant to the discusion, but those rates don’t look close at all. unless you mean the % of offenders being 52 for blacks and 46 for whites, but if you consider that their % of the general pop is 12, 84 repectively, that’s a pretty huge gap…but not nearly as huge as the gender gap.
Such awful news. My heartfelt sympathies to Abhijit’s family.
Guys, whether you are student or otherwise, if you are brown, please be careful.
but those rates don’t look close at all.
closer than the per 100,000 rates.
I wonder if the coroner has established a TOD. These PhD guys are usually working so damn hard, and coming in and out at very odd and late hours, at least according to my experience.
(Elite) Schools and universities being located next to poor neighborhoods is common for many (if not most) “city-based” school — e.g., Rutgers, GW, Brown, UPenn & Columbia (pre-gentrification), Yale, Duke, Berkeley, UChicago, etc., etc. Crime is high both near Duke (in Durham) and UNC (Chapel Hill), although there seem to be relatively better town-gown relations with UNC-CH than with Duke. Oftentimes these antagonistic relationships are driven by universities, themselves.
This is terrible and disheartening. Heartfelt sympathies to the victim’s fam & friends.
27 · Mary Mary Not Contraryinstitutional sins they had no part of.
the poor white community around this area has for many years resented furriners encroaching on their land.
HMF: Durham race relations are pretty fucked up, but your view of them is simplistic. Check out the article I linked above: it’s not as simple as a bunch of angry redneck yokels hating on the brown man (which is not to deny there are people around here who fit that description).
No, you really think so. So your saying that HMFs Yakub Theory of the White Devil is a bit unrealistic? You mean “Blackie = good, Whitey = bad” is too simplistic?
My guess is that as in the LSU murders the perp was NOT a heavyset White man with a beard driving a pick up truck with a “Send the foreigners home” bumper sticker, a gun rack, a dead dear in the back of the truck, flying a confederate flag who listens to Rush Limbaugh and country music.
Nor is he a BMW driving, rich spoiled lacrosse player.
The statistics are pretty clear, except to a math wiz like HMF. HMF your lack of basic math skills makes me almost doubt that you are Desi at all. I though math ability like spiritual serenity was genetic with Indians. You learn something new every day.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/hmrt.htm
But as I said in a post on the LSU murders, I think there is a class/education level bias here as Mutineers identify more with the grad school demographic than the gas station attendant/cab driver/store owner demographic.
It’s all horrible but if Abhijit Mahato was a gas station attendant/cab driver/store owner killed by typical black robber/murderer it wouldn’t be an issue on SM.
camille (#41) correct generalization, but a couple of schools (GW, since foggy bottom is a pretty nice area and you would have to go further southeast or east to encounter the “bad” areas, and berkeley do not fit); on the other hand you could add stanford to the list. a few years ago similar problems were starting to crop up in charlottesville (robberies predominantly committed by black school kids living on the “other side of the tracks”,– i.e. the housing projects, though these are actually pretty nice one’s–on uva students), but thankfully there are a few grassroots organizations–with memberships from both the student population and local community organizers– in c’ville that try to address these issues, and last i heard the university was starting to do something. but still you have to merely visit the uva campus (the cafeteria is a microcosm of the campus) to realize the starkness of the class divide. service workers are predominantly poor (african-american) residents, while the college kids are mostly rich (and white, given the correlation between wealth and race in this country).
I still don’t see how the universities worsen the existing socioeconomic problem. Most, if not all, provide thousands of jobs for locals, even if they are mostly custodial and dining service related.
As for the race issue… most of these violent crimes occur in inner-city neighborhoods in which I don’t foresee any Mutineers venturing into. In the ‘burbs where I assume most of us live, the guys breaking into your house could be black, white, Latino, or (if immigration from India becomes relaxed) Mumbai’s finest goondas
call me sexist, but i bet a man did this
35 · Johnny Valker said
it is not charity. it is outreach, don’t the very same students try to boost their CV by including social service, community activities and don’t the very same schools give some extra points such factors during admissions ? Handling crime/preventing is govt’s business but socially useful outreach activities is not business of govt alone. why should church involve in charity in the name of religion ? A social organization has to be involved in outreach which can create social capital otherwise there is no difference between walmart and university.
34 · lion said
With proliferation of news media everybody want attention and sensational news.
My guess is that as in the LSU murders the perp was NOT a heavyset White man with a beard driving a pick up truck with a “Send the foreigners home” bumper sticker, a gun rack, a dead dear in the back of the truck, flying a confederate flag who listens to Rush Limbaugh and country music.
oh yes. you rail against blanket statements, conjecture, and lack of data, and I can see how that’s completely consistent with the completely informed, balanced, statistically backed “your guess”
I though math ability like spiritual serenity was genetic with Indians.
It usually fails when we begin to count the number of white racists in our midst, the numbers just go too high.
37 · Manju said
Manju, happy MLK day! 😛
49 · Rahul said
I’m sure Nikita Rau’s celebrating.