The Scientist,current issue, features radical opinions on tenure

Should tenure disappear, instead of profs who question the system?

You know you are living in uncertain time when all the old truths and the old professors are, like, salad. Should tenure lose tenure, The Scientist asks. Plusa, Richard Gallagher on what tenure is good for. A while back, I wrote a piece on the problems with peer review as well.

While I am here, here's Robert Higgs at Lew Rockwell, on the general atmosphere:

Researchers who employ unorthodox methods or theoretical frameworks have great difficulty under modern conditions in getting their findings published in the "best" journals or, at times, in any scientific journal. Scientific innovators or creative eccentrics always strike the great mass of practitioners as nutcases – until their findings become impossible to deny, which often occurs only after one generation's professional ring-masters have died off. Science is an odd undertaking: everybody strives to make the next breakthrough, yet when someone does, he is often greeted as if he were carrying the Ebola virus. Too many people have too much invested in the reigning ideas; for those people an acknowledgment of their own idea's bankruptcy is tantamount to an admission that they have wasted their lives. Often, perhaps to avoid cognitive dissonance, they never admit that their ideas were wrong. Most important, as a rule, in science as elsewhere, to get along, you must go along.

Tenure: A dull dog's idea of heaven?

ID-friendly astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who is appealing his tenure denial at Iowa State to the Iowa State Board of Regents, may have some ammunition in the form of an article in The Scientist by Frank L. Douglas, "Discrimination in Academia", blasting the tenure process.

Gonzalez, the ID-friendly astronomer associated with the Privileged Planet hypothesis, was denied tenure under circumstances that many have seen as viewpoint discrimination. Now, the editor says on behalf of Douglas,

Editor's Note: Frank Douglas resigned from senior positions at MIT earlier this summer, in the wake of the Institute's controversial denial of tenure to James Sherley, who staged a hunger strike in protest in February. In this piece, which will run in the October issue of The Scientist, Douglas describes his reasons for resigning, which go beyond the Sherley case. We're publishing it early online to spark a discussion of diversity on university campuses.

Readers are invited by The Scientist to comment on the case. In his own right, Douglas says,

On June 3, I resigned from faculty and administrative positions at MIT, effective June 30. I did so because I perceived an unconscious discrimination against minorities and because my colleagues and the institute authorities did not act on my recommendations to address these issues. The timing was such that many of my colleagues thought I was resigning over the case of James Sherley, who was denied tenure in 2004 and went on a hunger strike earlier this year in protest. But my decision was based on the complex, insidious nature of discrimination in a university context.

Not to worry, Frank. Lots of people would understand. But here's something really interesting:
A key player in starting the mischief was Nancy Hopkins, about whom I wrote last year,

In an analogous situation, Larry Summers, a key project backer, lost his own presidency last year for nothing more than pointing out that women are not as well adapted to the hard sciences as men.

That fact is massively overdetermined by evidence, but what does evidence matter in the face of a demand to demonstrate a politically correct proposition rather than a factually based one?

Indeed, one phase of Summers' difficulties over his remarks on women in science provides a sobering lesson as to what to expect from the Harvard OoL project.

Biology prof Nancy Hopkins walked out of Summers' talk, proclaiming that his remarks made her sick. Specifically, she told The Globe ,that if she hadn't left, she "would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Now, ... what if a hard science guy announced that challenges from his colleagues cause him to nearly black out or throw up unless he can just walk out on them? Should he be given a demanding chair? For that matter, which of the ID theorists is having a nervous breakdown because of remarks made by the adult toddlers over at the Thumb? People do not have to be tough in order to survive (it often pays better to be nice, actually), but they do have to be tough in order to survive certain types of positions.

I guess American academics need to decide if they want to live on their knees, and if the latter, to kneel to just everyone who gets sick or throws a fit?

(Note: I also wrote a series on peer review, why it often comes to be dominated by mediocrities whose mission in life is to swat down new ideas. A number of proposals for reform are under discussion.)

Updates on "Privileged Planet" astronomer dumped by Iowa State University

If you have been following this controversy, you will know that gifted and productive astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez - best known for the Privileged Planet film narrated by John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in Lord of the Rings) and the subsequent uproar when it was shown at the Smithsonian - has become an unperson at his post at Iowa State University (denied tenure), apparently on account of his sympathy with the idea that there is meaning and purpose in the universe.

Go here and here for previous posts on this developing story.

Here are the most recent developments:

- The Iowa State spin doctors have posted a FAQ on the Web site. It practically defines organized dissembling, and should be studied for that reason alone.

- Gonzalez is a fellow of the Discovery Institute and they have been defending him in a series of posts:
Tenure Statistics Contradict Iowa State’s Claim that “many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure” at ISU In fact, few have failed to gain tenure and the number has dropped significantly over the last few years, focusing attention on the fact that ISU refused Gonzalez. Also, the claim that he didn't raise enough money for the department is awkward because that was not one of the standards they were supposed to use. Anyway, some faculty even admit that ID was one of the reasons he was denied tenure. The hilarious part is that if ID really was religion, as so many claim, they would be guilty of religious discrimination. But don't count on anyone there noticing that. Oh, and here for mor departmental anti-ID stuff.

Disco also offers a biosketch of Gonzalez (News flash: He is decidely not a member of the Taliban) and a tour of the kind of scuzz that passes for discussion of the issues raised by intelligent design at popular science blogs. (Note: Get a load of the "angry astronomer", for example.)

- Don't miss The Brites' take on the whole thing. The Brites are an ID-friendly spoof of the entirely serious Darwinist group, The Brights.

- Here's a comment from Gonzalez himself from back in the fall of 2005, when he thought he could just brazen out the stupid attacks of the atheist yay-hoos infesting religion departments.

- Here's a classic in the kind of garbage that Gonzalez has had to defend himself against. (No joke. This guy is apparently taken seriously. 120 faculty signed his anti-intelligent design petition that does not mention Gonzalez but everyone not hiding under a rock for the last five years knew that was who the petition meant to target.)

- I have been somewhat critical of the American Scientific Affiliation of late, because their "ASA list" was a home to all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, attacking most viable Christian positions on life and the universe. However, some of the more responsible members of that list have been - I am very glad to say - outspoken in support of Gonzalez, and disinclined to believe the spin from the "unpersons creation committees" at Iowa State U. (Follow the threads here.) They seem to have begun to notice what the ID theorists have been coping with for years - the concerted efforts of materialists to destroy all non-materialists in academia who have any evidence that might support their view. But I have little faith in the ASA guys. They will not get real. They have recently begun to discuss (poss May 16 and 17) whether they would have signed an amended petition, similar to the one Hector Avalos' used to attack Gonzalez, drafted to their liking. The worst thing I could ever say about any of them is, yes, maybe ...

(I have said this a zillion times: No one cares if you have a PhD in some science and feel like hollering for Jesus. Or feel like a popsicle. Or feel like a dog. The mugging starts when you say, "I have evidence that materialism is not true." For that you will suffer, as many have and do.

If you have evidence, you must be a materialist, for your own safety. If you are not a materialist, you cannot have evidence. That rule is called methodological naturalism, if you must know the fancy terminology. It is a popular way for Christians and other theists to sell out quietly to materialism.)

- Is it possible that many theists/Christians/people who want to judge the evidence for themselves are beginning to wonder about the significance of the fact that it is legitimate to attack Christians and theists generally at American universities? Don't assume too quickly that attacks on them will be considered viewpoint discrimination. Non-materialist viewpoints, supported by evidence, are simply not to be tolerated.

Update! : More background on gifted ID friendly astronomer denied tenure - does it all turn on money or bigotry?

If you are a Christian or theist or anyone who thinks that the universe shows evidence of meaning, purpose, or design, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: You need to think carefully about wasting time, energy, and money in the Western academic system IF, by chance, whatever you are doing undermines materialism.

For links on the original Smithsonian "Privileged Planet" controversy that contributed to making astronomer and astronomy textbook author Gonzalez a identified target of materialist atheists, go here, here, here, and here.

Now, materialism is shot to pieces anyway, and has been ever since quantum mechanics began to be understood. But hordes of tenured mediocrities still compel tax money from the public to defend their dissolving empire, and persecute anyone who threatens it.

Consider the case of Guillermo Gonzalez. He is a young astronomer who was denied tenure at Iowa State University a few weeks ago, in a case that seems to me a classic in determining whether the current Western university system is simply biased against anyone who thinks that the universe is top down instead of bottom up, or otherwise thinks there is meaning in the universe:

"I didn't expect this level of vitriol," he says after hanging up. "This level of intense hostility, just knee-jerk emotional response from people.

Gonzalez, an astronomer who is a Christian, wrote a book and made a film, both called Privileged Planet, arguing the case that Earth is not only unusually favourable to life but unusually favourable to exploration of the universe.

Gonzalez argued his case only on the evidence from astronomy and did not require anyone to believe in a religion:

People have strong convictions that you can't bring God into science. But I don't bring God into science. I've looked out at nature and discovered this pattern, based on empirical evidence. . . . It obviously calls for a different explanation."

Now, in general, he should have been well accepted by the astronomy community, and generally he was.

Here is what I have been able to determine:

- He was published in leading journals. His work is mentioned in a vast array at NASA, Google, and Google Scholar. Also, this targeted search.

- Gonzalez won't (and daren't) comment on why he was denied tenure but believes he has met the requirements, under which scholars are evaluated: "primarily on evidence of scholarship in the faculty member's teaching, research/creative activities, and/or extension/professional practice."

In addition to that criteria, Gonzalez's department of astronomy and physics sets a benchmark for tenure candidates to author at least 15 peer-reviewed journal articles of quality. Gonzalez said he submitted 68, of which 25 have been written since he arrived at ISU in 2001.

Yet he was one of only three of 66 faculty who were denied tenure.

- Informal sources tell me that he has been considered a "good" or "excellent" teacher and research adviser.

- It is well known that Hector Avalos, a religion prof who professes himself a secular humanist, and is faculty adviser to students who profess the same, has tried to stir up the faculty and community against Gonzalez via a petition signed by 120 faculty members (not one whom was in Gonzalez's department) - on account of Gonzalez's personal interest in an intelligent design hypothesis as an explanation for his findings. It is widely assumed that the university president Geoffroy's denial of tenure is based on pressure from this group, but it could actually be due as much to money issues. Read on.

Even people who are not sympathetic to the intelligent design guys have been expressing incredulity at the failure of Gonzalez's tenure case, not that Gonzalez is by any means the first or the only person this sort of thing has happened to. All non-materialists who might actually make a difference are at risk in the current environment.

The denial of tenure is being contested, of course, and science or engineering profs can sign a letter protesting it, if they wish.

But what about the, ah, money issue?

Ah yes, the money issue. Sure enough, I received a note from someone from another university in a different discipline who hoped to explain the situation to me:

Ms. O'Leary:

There is really only one relevant question about Gonzalez's tenure. Does he have a major research grant? If he does, then it is truly unusual for him to be denied tenure. If he does not, then it it would be unusual for him to be awarded it. If he has, say, a single investigator NSF grant, then he has a real grievance. If not, well...

As a professor in the physical sciences, I've occasionally protested the extent to which our tenure decisions are dictated by funding, but there is a strong argument for the current system: you get tenure for excellence in research, and research costs money. You can't sustain a research program without major funding. Universities can't afford to keep faculty who can't pay their way.

See, for example, this post by a pro-evolution astronomer who posts
at scienceblogs.com.

Gerard S. Harbison
Professor of Chemistry
University of Nebraska at Lincoln

Thanks much for your frankness, Dr. Harbison! Amazingly, I am not the teenage ingenue that I appear in my photo and bio. I have heard informally that external grants are worth ten times a peer-reviewed paper and one hundred times a high rating by students.

Remember that, all you students who pay rising tuition costs! Yes! You pay all that to be one one-hundredth as important as a mere fatter whack of cash.

And all you alumni who are annually shaken down for the great quests of intellectual attainment (in an assumed climate of intellectual freedom). Ask yourself: If the university is indeed such a business enterprise as Dr. Harbison suggests, so that talented young academics are dumped for fundamentally the same reasons as an investment firm would dump an underperforming stock broker, why on earth does the university fundraise on the charity market at all? Why aren't profs required to take courses in public relations, sales, and marketing, and write the Securities exams? Then they can raise their own darn money and do what they please with it!

Gonzalez has apparently brought in only a bit of research money, not a huge whack. (Unless you count the fact that The Privileged Planet was written under a Templeton grant, administered by the university. If the U did not skim some of it for their admin cost, it is their own tough luck and no discredit to Gonzalez. The rest of us can't do all their thinking for them, can we?)

Not too surprising that Gonzalez did not attract wads of cash, I should think, since he argues that there is NOT a whole string of planets we can move into after we wreck this one. My guess is, if Gonzalez was arguing for a string of winner planets, he would have at least some potential investors. Goodness knows, some people even pay to have a star named after them.

Come to think of it, here's a business op for Gonzalez's U: Just think what your official astronomers could charge for naming a planet after some airhead! The last time applications were being taken for getting any planet at all named - habitable or otherwise - applications were restricted to gods/goddesses with lots of eager worshippers (Venus, Mars, etc.). But with so many new, uninhabitable exoplanets available, the vulgar, moneyed mob can at last be given its (sigh!) chance (Planet Shirley, Planet Babs, Planet Ethel, etc., here we COME!!! ... )

Oh, ... you don't like that? You have ... standards?

So let's see, ... not bringing in a whack of cash need not be a slam dunk against an astronomer? Goodness knows, astronomy is thousands of years old, and I never ever heard of anyone going into it for the money. Gonzalez himself has noted,

"People who are into astronomy get into it very early," he says. "It's such a beautiful science. A lot of people have a deep sense of the infinite and the grandness of the universe."

In fact, Dr. Harbison's benchmark is not a formal requirement, I am told, or even a major one - only one of many possible inducements to grant tenure. Indeed, some would argue that writing many successful papers without bringing in a lot of money might better argue for the seriousness of an academic vocation than writing a ton of stuff that attracts funding (stock prospectuses, for example). I've asked to see the guidelines, having been informed that they stress peer-reviewed publications, of which Gonzalez has quite a few.

Of course, ... but what about those infamous "informal" "actual" requirements that people talk about?

As I explained recently to a friend, here is a way to understand actual vs. official requirements in many private workplaces:

OFFICIAL CRITERIA: knows business, gets stuff done on time, honest, loyal, preferred by clients

ACTUAL CRITERIA: our sort of person, willing to lie for boss [re deadlines], would lie on witness stand, destroys evidence when asked, willing to sleep with key clients …

Actual criteria that cannot be stated as official criteria are typically unworthy and almost always legally untenable.

A lawyer friend suggests looking at Dr. Harbison's criterion like this:

The criterion this person raises is one directed to the financial health of the institution. I agree that an institution may be wise to be concerned about funding, but the real question is: do those people who make the tenure decision have that concern as part of their portfolio? Do they sit around thinking, How can we strengthen the financial health of our institution today? Not everyone in an institution is charged with thinking about all the issues necessary and important to the institution's survival. Sometimes they are specifically supposed NOT to - for example, newspaper editors are not supposed to think about specific advertisers when deciding which stories to run. If Staples is a major advertiser, the editor is not supposed to squelch a story about misconduct by Staples (I pick Staples because there was a scandal involving the Staples Center in LA and the LA Times a few years ago).

I've spent all my life in media, and would definitely say that editorial independence from advertisers* is critical to healthy functioning of media - we are only supposed to rent the space, not our souls. I should think the same applies to a university.

Anyway, aren't universities required to abide by normal standards of fair dealing? They get public funds, don't they? Can they really enforce "actual criteria" (= too embarrassing to state in writing, or no way of avoiding legal blowback), as a convenient way of getting rid of someone, over against "official criteria" in writing?

I first met Gonzalez in Washington on June 24, 2005, the morning after the Smithsonian showing of the film, Privileged Planet, based on his book with philosopher Jay Richards, of the same name. I was swilling coffee in a hotel cafe when he introduced me to his charming wife of only thirty days ... What a brave woman she was, I thought, marrying a man who is to be a target of materialists everywhere! But, as a woman of character would do exactly that, he has at least the happiness of knowing that his wife is a woman of character.

(*Note: On that very subject, please know I have nothing to do with the ads that appear on the Post-Darwinist. Google chooses them by some divination known to its wizards. I sometimes get a cent or two if people click on them. They are not the reason for this space and could never influence anything that appears here because I have no idea what the wizards are going to try to sell you next. Feel free to tell me if you find a given ad offensive, but understand that I didn't solicit it and it will disappear within minutes, probably.)

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away and is still blowing up, read By Design or by Chance?.

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.

Baylor's Francis Beckwith: Granted tenure!

In a development that is certain to reduce the cost of being pro-life, sympathetic to ID, or skeptical of the materialist establishment, law prof Francis Beckwith has been granted tenure after a long, heated struggle with political correctness and clan politics. He learned the good news on Friday afternoon.

Actually, Beckwith's main offence was TWS - teaching while smart. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is nothing wrong with having non-materialist opinions, as long as you are a pleasant Jesus-hollering dum dum, who cannot challenge materialists on their own turf with contrary evidence and convincing arguments. It's when they have to take you seriously that you can expect trouble.

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.

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.

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.