items tagged with intelligent design

Life off-line has kept us away from the intertubes for most of this week, and a long holiday weekend plus more life will keep us away for a good chunk of the next few days.  However, here's a few links gleaned for your reading to hold you over until we resume our regular posting schedule:

• An article in IHE demonstrates the tensions that surround the exhibition of controversial displays in campus common areas.
  
• Panda's Thumb keeps you up to date on the latest happenings surrounding the so-called "academic" freedom for creationists campaign.  The good news - creationist "academic" freedom bills are dead or dying in Florida, Missouri, Alabama, and South Carolina.  The bad news - this same bill is moving in Louisiana.
• Speaking of the creationist "academic" freedom bill in Louisiana, this piece describes important (for reasons of pedagogy) differences in academic freedom between the K-12 and college levels and makes the point that this legislation could also shoehorn in other decidedly non-academic perspectives into the educational system.
• Finally, we've made references to the restrictions that corporate-sponsored research can place on academic freedom.  This is becoming painfully apparent at Virginia Commonwealth University, where scholars working on research sponsored by tobacco giant Philip Morris, USA are prevented from publishing their results - or even talking about their work - without prior permission from the corporation.

There's a lot I could say about the "academic freedom" controversy manufactured by intelligent design proponents - especially with regards to their new Ben Stein fronted spiel Expelled! - but I don't think it would be nearly as concise as this little snippet from The Bad Idea Blog:

Ok, but didn't you guys used to claim that you had, you know, some good scientific arguments? I mean, you still say you do, but it seems almost as if you're so embarrassed by them yourselves that you can't do more than occasionally reference them in criticism free venues before quickly moving on to apparently deeper and serious matters like calling everyone Hitler and claiming to celebrate academic freedom without apparently understanding what the "academic" part means or requires. 

A few thoughts regarding the Louisiana Ouachita School District's brand new policy designed to deal with "controversies" surrounding topics such as, what else, evolution.  The new long-winded policy bares the title, "Resolution on Teacher Academic Freedom to Teach Scientific Evidence Regarding Controversial Scientific Subjects."  Anti-evolution groups love this resolution, especially since it carries on the tradition of hijacking a noble idea, in this case academic freedom, to disguise their anti-science, pro-intelligent design agenda.

While much of the resolution seems rather innocuous, several parts are worrisome.  For example:  "[I]t is legitimate for school districts to pass curricular policies for such purposes as [...] to disclaim any intent to impose an orthodoxy of belief on students.  An "orthodoxy of belief."  Let's leave belief, faith, and other similar ways of thinking to philosophy or theology.  Science is not about whether one believes in evolution or gravity or any other sound scientific theory.  While every fact and theory should be closely examined and reviewed, it makes about as much sense to spend inordinate amounts of time questioning central tenets of evolution in a high school science class (where time is valuable) as it would to seriously question the theory of gravity. 

Last week we reported on the controversy surrounding astronomy professor and intelligent design proponent Guillermo Gonzalez being denied tenure at Iowa State.  The matter has been commented on in significant portions of the blogosphere (for a sampling of posts, with some thoughtful commentary, click here), despite the relative lack of information or context.  The Chronicle of Higher Ed. weighs in today (sub. req'd), and while certainly not resolving the controversy, it does show that the case of Dr. Gonzalez's tenure review is far more complex than simply meeting "publish-or-perish" requirements and ideological bias.

Alabama's students have dodged a bullet - the 2009 Alabama legislative session ended last Friday and HB 300, the so-called academic freedom bill, never made it out of committee.  If you'll recall, these "academic freedom" bills have been pushed by the Discovery Institute in order to wedge non-scientific doctrines about the origins of life into the science curriculum.  The latest permutation of these bills - as seen in Alabama and Iowa - have tried to push this bizarre definition of academic freedom beyond the traditional K-12 target and on to higher education.

If you're interested in the Discovery Institute's box score for its 2009 efforts (where I believe the phrase "oh fer" is applicable), check out this post at the Sensuous Curmudgeon's pad.