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Last night Brit Hume highlighted the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure battle during the “Grapevine” segment of his nightly news show on the Fox News channel. You can watch the segment online here.
Nature recently carried a glowing review of “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” which uses strong language to attack ID: “Judgment Day gracefully avoids ridiculing intelligent design for the pseudo-intellectual fundamentalist fig-leaf that it is.” Rather than make any attacks against the reviewer, Adam Rutherford, I’ll just let Mr. Rutherford speak for himself: “were I in a position to offer Guillermo Gonzalez tenure, I would deny it for the precise reason that his, yes, religious views about purpose in the universe explicitly mean he is a crap scientist.” (emphasis added) Rutherford continues: Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied a physics post by his university. Quite right: you cannot believe in ID and call yourself a scientist. So farewell, I hope, to the scientific Read More ›
According to KOB News in New Mexico, the Rio Rancho School District has “rescind[ed]” its “intelligent design policy,” which allegedly “allow[s] alternative theories of evolution to be discussed in public school science classes.” But according to my understanding of the district’s Science Education Policy 401 (revised April, 2006), it says absolutely nothing about teaching intelligent design. In fact, if board members rescinded this policy, then they rescinded a policy that protected against indoctrinating students in religious or philosophical viewpoints, encouraged sensitivity towards the controversy caused by teaching about origins, and required “objective science education, without religious or philosophical bias, that upholds the highest standards of empirical science.” Only a Darwinist would rescind a policy like this. To my knowledge, here Read More ›
The top two news pieces for local CBS and Fox affiliates in Des Moines are about the press conference yesterday at which it was revealed the extensive lengths ISU faculty and administration went to cover up the hostile work environment and blatant viewpoint discrimination directed against ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. Fox News affiliate channel 17 click hereCBS News affiliate channel 8 click here (Note, these links may die. If you go to the video page for each channel you should be able to scroll down and find the news reports.)
Tenure votes at the earliest levels are made by a faculty member’s department, and they typically set the tone for whether that faculty member will ultimately receive tenure. Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez was first denied tenure by his Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU) in November 2006, and he soon thereafter received a letter from the Eli Rosenberg, Department Chair, asserting that intelligent design (ID) played only a minor role in tenure deliberations. As Dr. Rosenberg stated: “Your co-authorship of ‘The Privileged Planet’ and related activity was raised by several of the external and internal letter writers and discussed briefly in the faculty meetings where your promotion was under consideration.” Tenure notification letter from Dr. Rosenberg to Read More ›
Public document requests under Iowa’s Open Records Act have obtained revealing correspondence of key faculty members within ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Various e-mails show that Dr. Gonzalez’s department was concerned about the “embarrassment” that intelligent design (ID) caused the department’s reputation and unconcerned about protecting his academic freedom–despite the fact that ISU’s faculty handbook claims that “[a]cademic freedom is the foundation of the university.” Uncritical bias against ID on the part of ISU physicists and astronomers that voted on his tenure, and unreflective ridicule of Gonzalez’s position on ID come out repeatedly. The faculty considered releasing a statement condemning ID in hopes that it would send a message to Dr. Gonzalez that he was unwelcome at ISU, but Read More ›
ISU’s tenure process and official explanation in the Gonzalez case exposed as a sham.
Des Moines, IA — Iowa State University faculty plotted to deny tenure to a distinguished astronomer, as revealed in private emails written by faculty and administrators at ISU.
Discovery Institute is making public a record of secret emails exchanged among faculty at Iowa State University about noted ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. The emails demonstrate that a campaign was organized and conducted against Gonzalez by his colleagues, with the intent to deny him tenure because of views he holds on the intelligent design (ID) of the universe, expressed in his 2004 book The Privileged Planet. In spite of his distinguished publishing career, Gonzalez was denied tenure by ISU in the spring of 2007.
Faculty involved in the tenure decision were well aware of Gonzalez’s support for ID. More than one year before his tenure evaluation was scheduled, one ISU professor wrote an e-mail that left no doubt that Gonzalez’s tenure application would never receive a fair evaluation.
“He will be up for tenure next year,” wrote the professor. “And if he keeps up, it might be a hard sell to the department.”
Contrary to his public statements, and those of ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, the chairman of ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Eli Rosenberg, stated in Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure dossier that Dr. Gonzalez’s support for intelligent design “disqualifies him from serving as a science educator.”
Click to download ID Was the Issue After All (including e-mail quotes)
Click to download Backgrounder on Guillermo Gonzalez Story
Click to download Q&A on Guillermo Gonzalez Story
“Dr. Rosenberg misled Dr. Gonzalez, the public, and the media when he said that ID barely played a role in the decision,” said Casey Luskin, Discovery Institute’s attorney for public policy and legal affairs. “In fact, a third of his own statement in the tenure dossier focused on Gonzalez’s views on intelligent design, where he instructed faculty that support for ID as science should be a litmus test for denying tenure to Dr. Gonzalez.”
ISU faculty have claimed that ID was not discussed as often as other subjects during the tenure deliberations, but that “is only because at secret and inappropriate tenure deliberations held via e-mail a year before the official process started, they decided that they wanted Gonzalez out of ISU because he supported intelligent design,” said Luskin.
Gonzalez’s colleagues privately deliberated via e-mails about his tenure and collaborated to express their intolerance toward him by asserting that ID is “intellectually vacuous,” and “more than just vacuous,” and that “embalming is more of a science” than ID.
They also wrote that Gonzalez should be lumped with “idiots” and “religious nutcases.” They mocked Gonzalez’s ID work, saying they would study it “[u]nder medication.”
His own department members drafted–and nearly released–a petition against ID with the avowed purpose “to discredit” Gonzalez and “give Gonzalez a clear sign that his ID efforts will not be considered as science by the faculty.”
Read More ›Documents show Gonzalez was denied fair tenure process by hostile colleagues who plotted behind his back, suppressed evidence, and then misled the public. Click Here To See a PDF Version of this Document with Citations Included. Executive Summary.Internal e-mails and other documents obtained under the Iowa Open Records Act contradict public claims by Iowa State University (ISU) that denial of tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was unrelated to his writing on the theory of intelligent design. According to these documents: The bottom line according to these documents is that Dr. Gonzalez’s rights to academic freedom, free speech, and a fair tenure process were trampled on by colleagues who were driven by ideological zeal when they should have made an impartial Read More ›
The Des Moines Register has run a story that starts to reveal the real reasons Iowa State University has denied tenure to one of its most productive astronomy faculty members, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, and yes, it turns out to be a case of discrimination based on Gonzalez’s views that the origin of the universe shows scientifically detectable signs of design.But The DMR story is just the tip of the iceberg. A press conference Monday will reveal more of the suppressed email traffic that shows the climate of viewpoint suppression at Iowa State that led to denial of tenure for Dr. Gonzalez. In important addition, it will unveil the high level cover-up that tried to prevent the public from learning the Read More ›
I got two calls last night about Dr. John West’s presentation at the University of Minnesota on Darwinism’s fathership of eugenics. It appears that the scholarly and well-delivered lecture, derived from the new West book, Darwin Day in America, was successful in influencing the thinking of a largely skeptical audience. (The dyspeptic and ad hominem blogger/biologist Dr. P.Z. Myers was there and brought a Darwinist claque. West generously introduced him and acknowledged him as Minnesota’s Richard Dawkins, which is about right.)
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