Darwin strikes back: Making academic freedom sound scary

This article, "States push academic freedom bills" by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is hidden behind a paywall:

Politicians in five U.S. states are pushing bills to enable educators to teach alternatives to evolution by protecting their "right" to discuss with students the idea of intelligent design.

The sneer quotes around "right" mean that you should probably not bother paying to read the article. But here are the first two lines:

If creationism is a mutating virus, as many educators believe, then its latest guise is legislation to protect "academic freedom."

Academic freedom, it turns out, means freedom to assent to the party line, without being needlessly distressed by discussing the possibility that the party line might need revision or might not be the best interpretation of current evidence - or might just be plain wrong.