Discovery Institute, WA
07-11-07
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez Appeals Tenure Denial to Iowa Board of
Regents
Pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is appealing his
denial of tenure at Iowa State University to the Iowa State Board of Regents.
Dr. Gonzalez's first appeal was rejected by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy on
May 31. On June 19, Gonzalez filed notice with the ISU President's office that he
would make a further appeal to the Board of Regents. Gonzalez's current appeal
will play out over the next couple of months as the record in the case is
forwarded by the university to the Board of Regents and both Gonzalez and the
university file their written arguments in the case. If Gonzalez's denial of tenure is
not overturned, he will be out of a job at the end of the 2007-08 academic year.
An outstanding scientist and scholar, Gonzalez has had his scientific work
featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American. He is coauthor of a major college astronomy textbook published last year by Cambridge
University Press. But he has been viciously attacked by Darwinists and various
atheists for co-authoring with Jay Richards The Privileged Planet, which makes a
scientific argument for the intelligent design of the universe based on the
empirical evidence from physics and astronomy. It should be noted Gonzalez's
book does not discuss the evidence for design in biology, and thus it does not
deal with Darwin's theory of evolution. That hasn't spared Gonzalez from
persecution.
Gonzalez was denied tenure despite the fact that he has published 68 peerreviewed scientific articles, exceeding by 350% his own department's stated
standard for demonstrating the research "excellence" needed for tenure.
Moreover, Gonzalez's articles published since 2001 (the year he arrived at ISU)
have the highest normalized citation count among all of the astronomers in his
department according to the authoritative NASA/Smithsonian Astrophysics Data
System. Gonzalez also has the second highest normalized number of
publications among all the astronomers in his department.
Incredibly, ISU's President Geoffroy denied tenure to Gonzalez while approving
91% of those applying for tenure this year. Geoffroy also promoted to full
professor one of Gonzalez's chief persecutors at ISU, atheist religion professor
Hector Avaloz, who believes that the Bible is worse than Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Geoffroy, it seems, has a very perverse view of academic freedom.
The Gonzalez affair is one of the most outrageous examples of academic
discrimination and abuse targeting scholars who are supportive of intelligent
design. ISU's spin-machine has tried to create the impression that the denial of
tenure to Gonzalez isn't about intelligent design, but the day after ISU's president
announced his rejection of Gonzalez's first appeal, a member of ISU's
Department of Physics and Astronomy published an article in the Des Moines
Register openly admitting that Gonzalez's support for intelligent design was the
only reason he voted against tenure for Gonzalez. Two other members of the
department have acknowledged that Gonzalez's intelligent design views played a
role in their deliberations, and still other members of the department have been
tied to national statements condemning intelligent design. In short, the claim that
ID had nothing to do with Gonzalez's tenure denial at ISU is preposterous. This is
a clear case of discrimination against an outstanding scientist based on his
support of intelligent design. Let's hope that members of the Iowa State Board of
Regents are more supportive of academic freedom than the faculty and
administrators at ISU.
While Gonzalez continues his tenure appeal, Discovery Institute has filed multiple
public records requests with ISU in order document in detail what actually
happened to Gonzalez. You can expect a significant amount of additional
information to come out about the Gonzalez case in coming weeks and months.