Des Moines Register
05-20-07
Basu: Bias over views or credentials?
By REKHA BASU
REGISTER COLUMNIST
By denying tenure to a controversial professor, Iowa State University joined
league with Darwinians and atheists seeking to blacklist Intelligent Design
proponents, its advocates say.
The university maintains the tenure denial was based on the professor's
teaching, service, scholarly publications and ability to get research funding, and
not his Intelligent Design advocacy. An appeal is under way. Last week, the
Ames Tribune jumped into what's become a national debate, calling on ISU "to
explain more fully the reasons for his denial."
Bias is a serious charge. To demand that a university open its personnel files to
the public requires evidence of something improper, which hasn't been
demonstrated. There are two questions: whether ISU's denial of tenure to
astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez had anything to do with his support
for Intelligent Design, and whether it should have.
On the first, ISU denies it did. Gonzalez himself hasn't publicly said so and
couldn't be reached for this column. But he has previously said he was targeted
by ISU faculty for his pro-Intelligent Design views, and he's partly right.
After it came out in 2005 that he was a leader of that movement, more than 400
faculty members at the state's three public universities signed petitions, without
mentioning Gonzalez by name, saying Intelligent Design shouldn't be
represented as science.
That's certainly stigmatizing, but was it a denial of free speech and academic
freedom? Depends on how you regard Intelligent Design.
That's the theory that some aspects of life can't be fully explained by natural
selection or random mutation but are products of an unidentified force.
Opponents say that can only mean God, and that it's religion masquerading as
science. Proponents say not. A federal judge in 2005 ruled it unconstitutional to
teach it as science in public schools.
John West is an associate director at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a
pro-Intelligent Design organization of which Gonzalez is a senior fellow. West
charged in a release that "Darwinian fundamentalists" and evolution-defenders
are out to deny scientists the freedom "to do scientific research and question the
Darwinian hegemony." He says a campaign to demonize them is costing
Intelligent Design scientists their jobs.
But maybe those "scientists" would be better off teaching religion. West
maintains Gonzalez met required standards for tenure and "exceeds by 350
percent the number of peer-reviewed journal publications required by his
department."
Gonzalez's department chair acknowledges he didn't teach Intelligent Design in
the classroom and had "real scientific publications." So it's conceivable he was
penalized for his personal beliefs. But where's the evidence? The university and
dean of ISU's college of arts and sciences, Mike Whiteford, says the tenure
decision involved six levels of review, with the input of outside scientists,
students and tenured department faculty, and at every level, the recommendation
was against tenure.
In the past 10 years, a third of the 12 tenure applicants in the physics and
astronomy department have been denied. Asked if Gonzalez's Intelligent Design
views were considered, department head Eli Rosenberg replied, "Only to the
extent that they impact his scientific credentials."
One hopes the ISU president's response to the appeal will answer any lingering
questions about bias toward Gonzalez for his personal beliefs. But Intelligent
Design proponents are wrong to equate the exclusion of their theory from the
classroom with academic bias. Professors are entitled to their own beliefs, but
not to teach as science something that is not.
REKHA BASU can be reached at rbasu@dmreg.com or (515) 284-8584.