Anonymity: Its strange rewards

I do not usually bother with anonymous posts, but some strike me as interesting.

Take this one on ID-friendly law prof Frank Beckwith's tenure case

Beckwith is not a law professor. He does not have the requisite education to be a law professor. He has no juris doctorate. Therefore, he can only teach at the undergraduate level. And even then, he can only teach the "philosophy of law." Not law itself.

Now, at the time, I wondered why the hoo-haw a person so knowledgeable about the state of law teaching should wish to send me an anonymous post. But people who detract from the reputation of others - particularly those others who may be their superiors in a variety of ways - often resort to anonymity, and very advisedly, if I may say so.

Anyway, I looked into the matter. Here is what I found:

Beckwith is not a law professor. That is true. His appointment is in the department of church-state studies, which offers a PhD, which is a higher degree than a law degree. He has a graduate degree in law—Master of Juridical Studies—not a JD. It is from the Washington University School of Law, St. Louis, a university and law school ranked considerably higher than Baylor University or Baylor Law School. Unlike the requirements for the JD, he was required to write a scholarly dissertation for his degree, which was published as several law review articles and then revised as a book and then reviewed positively in Harvard Law Review. Not bad. His PhD is in philosophy from Fordham University.

So, he is a philosopher with a graduate degree in law with more publications in law reviews than virtually all the law professors in Baylor’s zip code. He is more than qualified to teach in a law school in the areas in which he has expertise, Law and Religion, Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, Bioethics, etc. He’s taught these subjects in programs of higher academic rigor than law schools—PhD programs--and once in a non-ABA law school. Without revealing any names, before receiving tenure from Baylor two weeks ago he was approached by an ABA accredited law school for possible employment. This law school has a much higher average LSAT scores than Baylor and is more difficult to get into.

The person who wrote this knows nothing about law school education and the sorts of profs who teach at such places. For example, Jules Coleman teaches at Yale Law School and he has the same degrees as Beckwith does (a PhD in philosophy and a Master of Studies in Law from Yale; the latter is Yale’s equivalent to what Beckwith earned at Wash. U.). Paul Finkleman, who is know at Albany State Law School, held the Chapman Chair at University of Tulsa. Paul has a PhD in history and did post-doc work at Harvard Law School (but did not earn a degree). Both men are outstanding scholars in the law, though neither has a JD. Former president of Utah State, and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Supreme Court Opinions, Kermit Hall, is in the same boat as the rest including Beckwith. He has a PhD (history) and a MSL (Yale Law School). And before he moved to Utah State, Hall had dual appointments in the law school and the department of history at Indiana University. Hall’s lack of JD didn’t mean much to the folks at Indiana. The same is true of Carol Swain of Vanderbilt Law School: PhD (political science) and a MSL (Yale Law School). Although he doesn’t teach at a law school, Robert P. George is considered one of the greatest legal scholars in America. He is a JD (Harvard Law School) with a DPhil (Oxford). He happens to hold the McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence at Princeton University, which was once held by Woodrow Wilson. Now George doesn’t teach at a law school, but he’s clearly superior to anybody at Baylor in the areas of expertise, his number and quality of publications, and his influence in the academy and the public square.

But I don't think Mr. Anonymous would really care.

I used to get that kind of anonymous letter from old women raising cain about the fact that I dug up my lawn some years ago and planted Rose of Sharon trees, which was considered deviant in some circles. ("She doesn't know anything about gardening, you know ...")

Plus ca change .... In a way, that's kind of comforting. Yeah, plus ca change. And Beckwith still has a job.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Intelligent design and popular culture: Beckwith, Dembski maul Baylor Bears' football chances?

Just to show how crazy it was all getting, by the time Beckwith was finally granted tenure, sportswriter J. V. Holland at cougfan.com put in a slightly confused-sounding piece, "Baylor aiming for Intelligent design on field", implying that the ID controversy (in which Beckwith played a minor role) was costing Baylor its status in American college football. Noting that the Baylor Bears are playing the Washington State Cougars and that the Discovery Institute (ID central) is located in Washington States, he writes,

Once upon a time, the name Baylor conjured images of a giant slayer in the Southwest Conference. In the late 70s and early 80s, Bears All-American Mike Singletary, tenacious on the field and a scholar off it, was the exemplar of all that was good about college football.

Nowadays you mention Baylor and you're more likely to get a blank stare or a reference to Charles Darwin rolling over in his grave.

Indeed, on the gridiron, the Bears of the last decade could have used a heavy infusion of intelligent design. They’ve gone 10 straight seasons without a winning record. Last year’s 5-6 showing marked the first time in eight campaigns they won more than three games.

An infusion of intelligent design indeed. Some of us would think that Baylor had better not leave the development of its football team to evolution. But it shows how much the notion of ID has become embedded in popular culture that Dembski, Beckwith and such are supposed to be somehow linked to the Bears' recent woes. How many rpm's did you say Darwin was doing down there?

ID-friendly law prof: Tenure hangs in balance

Recall Frank Beckwith, that gifted prof at Baylor, who specializes in church-state issues, who was mysteriously denied tenure recently?

Beckwith appealed, was turned down again* - by a narrower margin, it is said - and a decision is expected shortly. What's come out since the first denial is that his former department chair, who is believed to have undermined Beckwith's tenure chances, recently resigned amid allegations that he plagiarized the work of Ronald Numbers , a well-known American scholar, best known for his studies of creationism.

As World's Mark Bergin notes,

Beckwith is among academia's foremost pro-life advocates and has written articles supporting the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. The tenure committee accused him of inappropriately focusing on such areas of expertise in his courses on church-state relations. In his appeal of tenure denial, Beckwith responded that "because these ethical issues are central to the most important and disputed questions in church-state studies today, it seems to me to be not only permissible, but obligatory, for a professor in this area of study to address these issues."

Well, um, yes. Anyone in the news business knows that stories about abortion or intelligent design lead over the mast. Should Beckwith have asked students to wade through tomes on interstate trucking rules instead? How about "Proper venting for turnips in transit - a federal or state responsibility?" or "Bovine-produced methane gas in re current environment regulations"?

The tenure committee further charged Beckwith with assigning only his published works for a class on religion and society. In fact, Beckwith's writings amounted to only 15 percent of the course's required reading.

Given that Beckwith has authored a fair whack of stuff on the subjects in question, it's surprising he didn't assign more of his own.

Bergin also notes that the chair was friends with the Dawsons, a powerful Texas clan. Seems the church-state center at Baylor, where Beckwith worked as associate director, was named after granddaddy Dawson, and the clan notables think that grandaddy would not have seen eye to eye with Beckwith. As a result, a whole heap of Dawsons has been campaigning against Beckwith for years, making Baylor sound like Hayseed U.


The whole story leaves me wondering why Beckwith even wants tenure at Baylor. But maybe if he gets it, he can help them recover the original vision to be a "Protestant Notre Dame."

Some have wondered whether Beckwith’s association with the Discovery Institute and with ID mathematician Bill Dembski, whose ill-fated Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor, was holding conferences on intelligent design issues a few years ago, cooked his goose. Beckwith has defended the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design in publicly funded schools (but that's not the same thing as thinking it is a good idea). But sources I trusted said no, it was mainly because he is pro life.

More generally, controversy has dogged Beckwith throughout his career, not because he is especially flamboyant but principally because he is a talented cultural conservative. Baylor is a Baptist university desperately seeking acceptance in a liberal environment; the last thing it needs is a prof who comes up with good arguments for cultural conservatism.

When the decision to deny tenure was first announced in March, a Baylor student lamented:

When I first heard the news I experienced for the first time what is known as cognitive dissonance. I couldn't hold the two ideas in my mind. Professor Beckwith. Denied tenure. It was impossible to believe. There were people who told me it could happen, but I discounted the notion. After all, even political enemies have consciences, right? They have some commitment to integrity, don't they?

No clear reason that makes any sense ever emerged for denying Beckwith tenure, though a lack of "collegiality" was mooted. The "collegiality" claim has become notorious, actually, as a way of getting rid of people who do not march in lockstep.

(Studying Beckwith’s case, I get the impression that it’s okay at Baylor to yay-hoo for Jesus as long as you make a fool of yourself and no one takes you seriously. Well, we’ll see.)

*Beckwith has written me to say, "The University Tenure Committee only recommends to the Provost. So, technically, I was not "turned down again."

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.