Bob Park touched on this as well this week. He also pointed out what I find to be even more bizarre… that Frank Tipler has major issues!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler
His intro books are still my favorite though…afterall, Tipler=Quality.

Yeesh, there’s been lots of speculation on whether merely having a blog, even a high-class, intelligently written one, can be enough to scuttle your chances of getting tenure. For example that possibility came up when Daniel Drezner didn’t get tenure at U of Chicago – and he’s in International Relations.

Apparently tenure starts when you apply for tenure – if you’re a Christian.

After all, the complaint seems to be that Gonzalez is not already being accorded the benefits of tenure, as far as being shielded from punishment for where one’s intellectual pursuits end up.

The one thing that I’d add is that for institutions that take tax dollars (which is all state universities and, I guess, pretty much all private research universities too, at least), they can make these decisions in the way that they do so long as voting taxpayers agree. If voters decide that constraints on the tenure process should be applied, then so long as those constraints are legal and institutional, those institutions have to wear it and smile or do without that money.

JoAnne, referring to a 29 September 2005 Panda’s Thumb web post by Tara Smith, said that Gonzalez “… gave invited lectures at other academic institutions, billed as an ISU professor, promoting Intelligent Design. …”.

That Panda’s Thumb post said in part “… his book was funded by the Templeton foundation on a cosmology and fine-tuning grant …”.

JoAnne also said “… Gonzalez claims that … Intelligent Design … is a private belief and he wrote the book on his own time …”.

Three questions I have are:

1 – Did Gonzalez use his ISU affiliation to get his Templeton grant ?

2 – Was Gonzalez’s Templeton grant paid directly to Gonzalez, or through ISU (that is, did ISU administration get its overhead cut of the grant) ?

3 – Is Templeton-funded Intelligent Design stuff at ISU really very different from Templeton-funded Landscape stuff at Stanford, in light of this excerpt from a 2005 templeton.org/humble_approach-initiative/ web page:
“… Stanford’s Leonard Susskind coined the term “stringy landscape” … It seems undeniable that the possibility of a multiplicity of different universes raises deep scientific, philosophical, and theological questions. … Under the aegis of the John Templeton Foundation, sixteen researchers from several disciplines have again come together at Stanford to explore the difficult and interlocking questions …”
?

Tony Smith

twaters -

Not sure which “intro” books you’re referring to. But Paul Tipler (not Frank) is the author of the excellent and widely used introductory physics texts.

Another thing to bear in mind is that in a tenure decision, the committee needs to ask how the potential faculty member will represent the University in academia. If the tenure-track candidate is a creationist and the University both knows it and gives that person tenure, then the University — quite rightly — will be a laughing stock, its reputation damaged. While this sort of setup can be abused (what if the person applying has some against-the-mainstream theory that turns out to be correct?) it is clearly the right thing to consider when it comes to creationism.

My understanding is that ID is not, in fact, anti-scientific because science does not, in its theory, posit anything opposed to that thesis.

ID is anti-scientific because (a) it was designed (yes, ID itself was designed) to undermine science education (cf: Wedge document), and (b) because its proponents go around saying that all of the evidence that exists for evolution isn’t really evidence for that, and thus undermines the whole way science works.

If you read ID at face value, it’s vacuous. It’s proposing a “default answer” when no other answer exists. It’s not science at all, and the orthogonality would seem to indicate that it’s anti-science. However, taking ID at face value means being taken in by ID proponents. Proponents of ID claim that no other scientific answer exists even when one does, and claim that their non-scientific default answer is science. The fact that it’s positioned by its proponents– such as Gonzalez– as an alternative to the knowledge of science is what makes it anti-science.

-Rob

I don’t see how making the unobserved leap of faith to ID is really too much different from making the unobserved leap of faith to the landscape…

Does anybody really have faith in the landscape?

The landscape is an idea that is taken seriously because it is a natural outgrowth of hints and indications about the fundamental nature of physics on the most basic level. You can’t have some of the things that are well-grounded ideas about the fundamental nature of reality without having the landscape along with it.

It’s really quite a different thing.

-Rob

…even me, by the way. I did have an HST grant at one point, but that one grant (which is two years gone by now) isn’t enough to get me tenure.

(And I haven’t been turned down for tenure yet, but enough about that is elsewhere.)

I meant the fact that the grant is from a faith-based organization & not, e.g., NASA or DOE..that’s the hypocrisy…

Rob,

I don’t think the intent quite matters. If I designed some theory to undermine, for example, relativity and it turns out that it cannot, in fact undermine it because it is fully consistent with it, then it’s difficult to say that the theory is anti-relativity. I might be anti-relativity, but that’s a different matter altogether. There isn’t a necessary relevant intersection between ID and science to make ID anti-science–unless we want to hold that interpretations of mathematic theory are always at risk of being anti-science, then I’d agree but a vast amount of science would become anti-science, devaluing the currency of the term.

The vacuity objection is also a non-issue: sure, it’s scientifically vacuous, but that’s because it’s not science. That does not, however, make ID as a basic claim anti-science. You might easily argue that Dembski, et al. are anti-science and I would agree, but you can’t plausibly charge that ID is. It’s just not the right sort of proposition to begin with.

Moreover, if you think about it, you probably agree with this: you’ve probably argued that ID shouldn’t be taught in science because it is everywhere consistent with it and therefore unfalsifiable by any method of scientific inquiry. If that’s the case, then it can’t be anti-science: every ID claim is consistent with every scientific claim and the reasonable de minimis condition for some proposition P being anti-science as (P –> ~S). Since that’s not the case with ID, it’s not anti-science.

Well, regardless of the politics of the ISU decision, Gonzalez, with this sort of hyped controversy, can easily be given a chair at Regent University, or one of the others that are currently using their fattened-calf endowments to buy credibility. And it would not be a disservice to science for him to accept such a position, in that his astronomical knowledge and authority would be most useful for providing a better, more informed, education to the students.

Tony Smith:

You raise valid questions in my view. I have no idea how the Templeton grants work, but it would be interesting to know if ISU took a chunck out for overhead. That would indicate implicit support on their part for this line of “research.”

As for your third point, Is Templeton-funded Intelligent Design stuff at ISU really very different from Templeton-funded Landscape stuff at Stanford? Well, I have problems with this stuff as well… And with this question, you have touched precisely on the situation ISU is in. You seem to imply (although perhaps I am misunderstanding your point and your point was broader) that because I am affiliated with Stanford I might support or accept or perhaps even participate in the Templeton funded Landscape stuff. Perhaps you are thinking that stuff affects the reputation of all high energy theorists at Stanford (or all HEP theorists everywhere)? Whereas in reality, as a phenomenologist at SLAC, I am literally (in many senses) miles away from that stuff and have essentially no interaction with the campus string theorists. So, I am not connected to that stuff at all, yet because I am at Stanford you ask the question and I feel I must defend myself….see the pickle ISU is in?

“science” is what is taking place when we say “what is going on here?” and the reply is “I dont know.” So, the next step is “lets find out…” Enter: “Science.” When we jump to “Oh, it must be the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” we have crossed into non-science…

I don’t know how this got turned into a discussion of the Landscape. No, the Landscape is not anything like ID. It’s an hypothesis that people have been led to by investigating the properties of solutions to string theory, and that has bee proposed as a solution to certain apparent fine-tuning problems that we observe in the data. ID, meanwhile, is a public-relations stunt that explicitly attempts to overturn well-accepted scientific understanding. Any particular physicist might not like or agree with the idea of the Landscape, but that’s just part of the scientific process, not antithetical to it.

I completely agree with JoAnne that using one’s university position to advocate pseudoscience is something that can legitimately be held against you when it comes to a tenure decision; it should be one factor among many. Once someone already had tenure, I would defend their right to advocate whatever sort of crackpot theories they liked.

No, the Landscape is not anything like ID.

No but as I’ve said… If you believe that…

“We will be hardpressed to answer the IDists if the landscape fails”

….IS very much like ID.

Should I reference the interview with Lenny, or should we just admit that he was trying to put irrationale pressure the rest of the string community and others via the popularized political bandwagon that he and Richard Dawkins jumped onto *simultaneously* as a viable means for rebutting the IDists?

Which is it?… Neither looks very much like honest science to me.

Prof Gonzales considerable intelligence will be better used if he instead apply for tenure as a theologian. The moment he gave those ID lectures at other academic institutions in the capacity of an ISU prof, he ceased to be a credible scientist and have embarrassed his employer. Unless, of course he can develop a scientific theory of ID, shows how it can be verified experimentally in a paper that’s accepted in a peer-reviewed publication.

I’d like to take issue with Joanne’s descriptions of Gonzalez’ research accomplishments. The concept of a Galactic Habitable Zone is far to speculative to be considered to be “discovered”. It is based almost entirely on rather dubious speculations regarding what is required for the development of intelligent life. Similarly dubious arguments are often used in discussions of the anthropic principle, and in both cases it often seems that the proponent has some ulterior motive for using these dubious assumptions. (In Gonzalez’ case, it is not difficult to think an ulterior motive.) In any case, W. H. Tucker and Virginia Trimble have each written about these issues well before Gonzalez and collaborators.

The statement that his work led to the discovery of two new planets also seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is presumably based on his work on the metal abundances of stars known to host extrasolar planets. Gonzalez has certainly been a leader in this field, and it is now known that stars with higher metalicity than the Sun are more likely to host massive, short period planets. After this relation was established, there was one survey that explicitly targeted stars with a high metal abundance which has led to a few planet discoveries. But, the people doing these searches also study the metalicities themselves, so it is not clear how much of a role Gonzalez’s results have played in this effort. In any case, the study of the chemical abundances is Gonzalez’s real contribution.

Rob,

But ID proponents are out there claiming that it is science, and that there is scientific evidence for it.

But that doesn’t make ID as a thesis anti-science, it just makes those proponents dumb.

The core scientific argument of ID is this: evolution is wrong. That argument is at odds with scientific evidence.

What I’m saying is that there is no core scientific argument in ID at all. ID’s core is merely this:

(ID1) The world is, at some fundamental level, intelligently designed.

What you are after is the further claim:

(ID2) If the world is intelligently designed, then evolutionary theory is wrong.

Evolutionary theory qua scientific theory, on the other hand, properly holds something akin to:

(E) The number and type of observed species correlates to the outcomes predicted by differences in the rate of gene replication.

The obvious problems are these: even if ID2 is anti-science, it doesn’t follow from ID1 and it isn’t implied by not-E. As such, the core claim of intelligent design, ID1, doesn’t have anti-science implications at all. Moreover, the claim that ID1 should be the default explanation isn’t anti-science, either, it’s simply a strange claim; it doesn’t match any of our intuitions about what the default claim of science would be, that is fairly well fulfilled by the more universally skeptical “there is no relationship whatever between phenomena”.

Sean made the key point above.

Intelligent Design is a publicity stunt, nothing more, nothing less.

Asking if it’s a valid scientific theory is like asking if the leak of Alec Baldwin’s call to his daughter is valid scientific expression.

-Rob

Eric,

Oh, no! I certainly agree with that: it’s totally unscientific. I disagree that science is to be equated with rational inquiry. Math and logic are rational inquiries but not, really, science. Also, literature and art are unscientific (not science at all) but this doesn’t make them anti-science. They’re just not science, perhaps to their dismay.

Dear Dave… get a clue. Claims that anthropic arguements that creationists use are “dubious” are stereotypically lame from a willfully ignorant and reactionarily opposing knowledge about the subject.

They use terms like “dubious” in conjunction with what we do and don’t know about why carbon based life is favored, but they conveniently don’t know stuff, like the fact that… Carbon based life arises directly from an environment that is better suited (by a ratio of 10:1) to the creation of silicon based life, in spite of the fact that silicon based life is the next most plausible life form that we have ever been able to imagine.

Little details like that… ya know what I mean?

Eric,

When I say “I disagree that science is to be equated with rational inquiry” that means that: for any inquiry (I), if that inquiry is rational (R), then it is science (S) ((x) ((Ix & Rx) Sx)). On the old definition of a “science” (18th and early 19th century, as when Kant uses it) that would probably be true, but colloquially it isn’t.

Eric Mayes,
13.7 billion years is a calculation made by Terrans, ie:
calculations made by ‘man or woman’ on planet Earth.

There is no maths that PROVES the Universe is said 13.7 billion years old – it is based on many assumptions – and of course light always travels the shortest distance(s) in space – but even the speed of light may not actually be ‘contant’ thru long distances. And there is nothing that ‘proves’ there is nothing beyond the observable universe …

But of course it is purely coincidental that a ‘being’ on a small planet in the solar system in the corner of a galaxy somewhere in the observable universe would make such calculations – and presume to KNOW that the universe is 13.7 billion years old or presume to know that TIME is always constant.

You probably think yourself openminded enough to accept the possibility that there could be life in other parts of the universe – even in other universes – yet are clearly too narrow-minded or short-sighted to see that these lifeforms may have ‘evolved’ to higher forms (at some ‘future’ point) … or as may be your case devolve into ever lower forms.

This resonates well with my current reading, a biography of Kepler entitled “Kepler’s Witch”. It turns out that his mother was accused of witchcraft and nearly burnt for it. Kepler, of couse, was deeply religious (Lutheran) and corrected the year of the birth of Christ to the currently accepted figure (4 BC) in his treatise:De Vero Anno quo Aeternus Dei Filius Humanam Naturam in Utero Benedictae Virginis Mariae Assumpsit (Concerning the True Year in which the Son of God assumed a Human Nature in the Uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary”).

I doubt that Dr. Gonzalez will have the least problem finding another tenure track position, and eventually tenure, at another more or less enlightened institution. I wonder if he would have been treated this way if his efforts had tended more towards some other religious belief, something more compatible with current academic prejudices, perhaps Moslem or Wiccan.

Analyzer #20, you ask:

What if his research were top-notch, but he also happened to claim that disease was caused not by pathogens but by imbalances of the bodily humours, to be regulated by the occasional bloodletting? What if he believed—and expressed his belief publicly and loudly—that the Sun goes around the Earth? How about alchemy, or phlogiston, or phrenology, or astrology? None of these need affect the quality of his research, so should they just be ignored?

Well, it wouldn’t bother me too much on the face of it (in particular, I don’t care what a scientist actually believes). As I said, I can understand an institution’s point of view if they do rightly fear that a tenured appointment would make them into a laughing stock based on the expressions of that professor’s opinions; I am just saying that I wouldn’t be one of those that were laughing. Indeed, I’d probably ignore the stuff I thought was crazy and consider the serious stuff. I don’t, however, have a particular problem with what little I know of this case, because I think that there’s an element of truth in the fear that the community (students, researchers, others with an interest in this stuff) would look poorly on the institution in question. I just probably wouldn’t be one of them, if the good research was good enough.

I guess that if the work was undeniably superb, the threshold at which embarassment was assessed too painful for the institution to bear would be higher. If I have a problem, it’s with that ‘community’ I mentioned, which I think should be a little less uptight. Mind you, in the main, it’s not picking the fight but, rather, kicking back at intrusions from god-bothering demagogues.

Just another slant on this: The situation that’d concern me is if his promulgation on ID _remains_ an off-hours activity. The reasoning is that in one’s official work one has to give faculty seminars, talks at other institutions, appear at conferences, etc, explaining one’s work to peers who will point out flaws and problems in the work so the outside world gets a representative picture of how the work is viewed. (As an example, consider the brouhaha about Hawking’s “black holes don’t destroy information” presentation: it might have got more media attention than it deserved, but I can’t think of media coverage which didn’t include comments from conference attendees saying things like “there just wasn’t enough detail there to see what was going on”.) By contrast, someone with an academic position can ensure they only talk about “off-hours” ideas in “easy, unchallenging” settings whilst still trading on the “prestige” of their official job.

Sorry, this is completely off topic, but I was directed here by someone at “Not Even Wrong”, because they thought someone on here might be able to answer this question I had:

I stumbled on your website, trying to find information about a theory about gamma ray bursts that has been written up in general interest publications, such as the Economist. I am a layman (although with a scientific background — chemistry), but I have a paranoid interest in particle physics.
The theory that I was wondering about was Dr. Clavelli’s theory that GRBs are produced by a spontaneous SUSY transition in white dwarves. From what I understand, GRBs are generally thought to be caused by exploding stars, and if anything, GRBs tend to not occur in galaxies where there are not very many elements heavier than helium, which seems to negate this idea. I was wondering whether Clavelli’s ideas (regarding GRBs and spontaneous SUSY transitions in general) are taken very seriously in the physics community as a whole.

I’m an “old school” physicist (I probably have 25 yrs on most of you) and for a variety of reasons of I believe the tenure system is obsolete (note that most people in favor of it are those w/ it or those trying to get it). That being said, I quite agree that in this case, denial of tenure was the appropriate decision. If the publication of the book was the only matter at hand, then the award of tenure should still be considered, despite the contrarian contribution (to borrow a term from the global warming debate). But conducting “official” lectures as university faculty does indeed cross the line and constitutes grounds for loss of tenure. Back in the days of yore, so I would have voted.

Now Rob Knop argues that the problem is that ID puts the issue in the public domain rather than in the “scientific” domain. To my mind that makes no difference. Never mind that we are not strictly trained to be teachers…we are expected to be teachers, and that includes the public, as well as the people who show up in our classrooms. Indeed, it is probably the public who are the students we most need to reach.

Carl Brannen,

Gonzalez’s problem is not his religious beliefs, but his public advocacy of ID. ID is an attack on science and an attempt to fool the public into thinking that there is some scientific alternative to evolution. Either his religious beliefs have confused him to the point that he doesn’t understand that ID is not science, or he is simply being dishonest. Any university that hopes to attract high quality students and faculty in the future is not going to want to hire him. He’ll damage their reputation the same way that Michael Behe has damaged the reputation of Lehigh University.

Suppose Gonsalez was an evangelist in his spare time and went about preaching the truth of the Bible, including a literal reading of Genesis. Would that disqualify him from tenure?

Suppose G. went around publicly debating that global warming is not happening or that it is nothing to worry about. Would that disqualify him from tenure?

Suppose G. went about advocating Reaganomics or some such theory of economics? Suppose G. agreed with Michael Ledeen that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Would that disqualify him from tenure?

Just asking.

Seems to me that the demand for orthodoxy – whether on the Right or on the Left – has never been greater, and this country will be the poorer because of it.

Now Rob Knop argues that the problem is that ID puts the issue in the public domain rather than in the “scientific” domain.

That’s not exactly what I was arguing. I did say that there are ways to be a proponent of an unpopular scientific position while remaining a good scientist, and what the ID people are doing (arguing their case in front of school boards and the public consciousness) is certainly not it. I do think that so doing is not evidence of somebody with a viable but fringe scientific theory, but is back-door, back-stabbing science– and that’s why I think all of these arguments about “off hours” are irrelevant.

However, they can only argue it that way, because ID is scientifically vacuous. If somebody were to keep arguing ID in the scientific sphere, they’d be no better than somebody who kept arguing cold fusion or N-rays. It doesn’t stand up in the scientific domain.

-Rob

If somebody were to keep arguing ID in the scientific sphere, they’d be no better than somebody who kept arguing cold fusion or N-rays.

They’d be no better than Julian Schwinger?

I’m a new reader to Cosmic Variance and loving the entries – especially ones like this about academic politics!

I’ve visited a few times in the past 24 hours and each time the term “tenure flaps” sound dodgier and dodgier.

Would Isaac Newton have gotten tenure at ISU? He was an alchemist and believed that the Bible was the literal word of God.

Would Isaac Newton have gotten tenure at ISU? He was an alchemist and believed that the Bible was the literal word of God.

Meh. Science 300 years ago = apples; science today = oranges.

(No Newton/apple pun intended.)

Science 300 years ago = apples; science today = …

…curvature of spacetime.

(No Newton/apple pun intended.)

If I could only say as much.

Three hundred years later on okanet Earth
the apple still falls to the ground because of …

The Moon orbits the Earth because of …
The Earth revolves around the Sun because of …
The Sun moves along the Milky Way because of …

You go to tenure review with the senior faculty that you have, not the ones that you want.

Actually, I don’t know about ‘secretive’, but I don’t have any problem with judges being selected by smallish groups. Certainly, I don’t support the direct election of judges that does, as you say, take place in a fair number of places in the US.

I really do not understand your objection to him speaking at another university. Of course he was billed as an ISU professor – that is his job title isn’t it? Were he a medical doctor would you object to him being referred to as an MD? Should an elected official who gives an invited speech only be billed as Mr. Jones instead of Congressman Jones when the topic of said speech is not related to government at all? What of a CEO giving an invited speech at some philanthropic event? Is it wrong to say Mr. Smith, CEO of Big Company will give the keynote?

While it is certainly true the school is perfectly within its rights to give tenure to whomever they so chose, it is disappointing that the decision is not primarily one of his academic work. Perhaps a better idea would to establish a policy for all falculty that when giving an invited lecture at another institution on a subject outside their field that they must disclose at the start of the talk they are there in a personal capacity and any thing they say should not be taken as representing the view of their employer or fellow employees.

Okay, not that it’s worth anything, but here’s my take on this….

Some here and elsewhere seem to argue that denying someone tenure because they hold unpopular ideas is a bad thing. The trick is, he does not just have some unpopular ideas, he has been advocating those ideas by writing a book and, apparently, by giving lectures. Thus these cannot be treated as his “private beliefs” anymore, as a scientist and a scholar he has the responsibility as a scientist and a scholar to engage and respond to critics. How Dr. Gonzales handles the reaction to his ideas therefore has a direct bearing on his tenure. At the most basic level, one should expect that he would attempt to convince his peers in his department and his university that his ideas have merit, or at lthe very least, covince them that considering the idea could be useful in some way (sort of like how the Copernican model could be treated as a useful computational tool even if you still thought the heliocentric model was right). The better he is able to do this, it seems, the more likely he is not only to get tenure but also to be a scholar who can effectively advocate a position and deal with criticism. Thus the tenure proccess may not be that much at odds with the idea of promoting good scholarship in this case.

Additionally (occurred to me as I hit the submit button, so apologies for another multiple post), this is going to be a lot more difficult for other subjects whose boundaries are less (relatively) well-defined than ‘science’. A historian, or political scientist, or sociologist, etc, would have a lot more freedom and still be within the defensible bounds of their general subject area. Even an applied mathematician could get into areas that, whilst on the face of it don’t look to be in the mathematical domain, would be subject to mathematical analysis whilst causing significant offence/discussion (a la Freakonomics).

What comprises disreputable conduct is pretty hard to pin down, in general, when talking about the statements/books/lectures of research faculty; having people securely ‘thinking the unthinkable’ is a great advantage to society in most cases but might be argued in specific cases to be deleterious (such as theorising on racial differences) or, at least, offensive, whilst in all cases clearly having the potential to cause damage to an institution’s reputation (and for most educational institutions, reputation is clearly related to economic health). In some senses, we in science have it rather easy; we might disagree on what science is to some extent and some of us might be looking carefully for wedges being driven into that, but that pales into comparison with the difficulties of assessing what was appropriate that would plague other disciplines. On the other hand, science has a particularly high regard in the public mind, and is, thus, an attractive target for being co-opted into, say, a thinly-veiled creationist cause.

Joanne:

I would first like to note that you and others engage in much tap-dancing to arrive at a predetermined conclusion (i.e., Guillermo Gonzalez should not get tenure), which is what you accuse Gonzalez of doing with his teleological musings.

Secondly, I oppose the idea that tenured faculty deserve to be treated like Brahmins, whereas untenured faculty must remain content with their dalit status until such time as the tenured caste deems them worthy. In public institutions, especially, tenured faculty may not do as they please; there must be just cause and accountability in their decisions regarding tenure.

Jo Anne & Rob,

I have you mistaken in law, history and logic. If Intelligent Design is religion and not science(as is usually argued), and the tenure committee used his expressed belief in it’s decision, they violated the law and the Constitution – no religious test – have you heard that one.

It’s simply false that ID was invented as a weapon against evolution. A very limited study of the history of western thought will show you that it was a prominent idea in the philosophy of nature from ancient times until Darwin.

Calling it anti-scientific is not a meaningful use of the term. In fact, ID is a theory of nature, and it’s one that has testable consequences. ID was rejected by biologists because it lacked explanatory power, failing to explain relations betweens species, and because it made false predictions – too many aspects of life simply aren’t intelligently designed.

If the committee rejected Dr. G for believing in a discredited theory, albeit one distant from his own research, that might be legit if odd.

If you plan to discuss this stuff you ought to try to get your minimum facts together before you just launch into your respective prejudices.

Freedom of Religion doesn’t mean the same thing as being able to use your employment credentials to promote religion, though, I don’t think. Preaching religion in the class, for example, might be grounds to be refused tenure (if you’re hired to research and teach science); the question of preaching religion outside of class, if that is judged to harm the institution, might not be so very different.

I am not convinced that Gonzalez would necessarily win if he sued. I am, myself, the most blackhearted of capitalist imperialist pigs, and to me it looks like a contractual issue. As tenure is something like a re-hire with no guarantees, it seems to me that it’s probably legal (at least constitutionally) not to hire someone that does a lot of preaching, because it’s not penalising their beliefs but, rather, their choice of expression of them.

I’m not at all convinced that the decision is wise, but it looks to me like it’s probably legal.

If Hooters don’t hire a moslem woman that wears the Hijab, is that illegal?

If the Prof was engaged in protected behavior, they can’t legally fire him for making them “look bad.” Nor can they legally use or consider that behavior in making hiring decisions.

Claiming that something is science when it is not is not protected behavior. He’s free to practice his religion and even to preach it–and I would imagine that these freedoms are properly legally shielded from punishment by employers–but the issue is not the religious side of ID. It’s the scientific side of ID.

Analyzer,

Turn your analysis on what you said. If ID isn’t science, how can it have a “scientific side?” You are hung up on meaningless terminology. I don’t care whether you, Jo Anne, etc think ID is science, anti-science, psuedo-science or whatever. It makes some statements about the world, statements that make some wrong predictions and lack much overall explanatory power compared to natural selection. The rest is just BS.

Turn your analysis on what you said. If ID isn’t science, how can it have a “scientific side?” You are hung up on meaningless terminology.

The fact that something is not science does not mean it has nothing to do with science. I wouldn’t present a paper on the tractor beam of the USS Enterprise at a conference, but I don’t know too many people who would say that it had nothing to do with science.

Anyway, JoAnne nailed it. No one is picking on him for what he believes; it’s the intersection of his religion and his work that is the issue. If I’m a receptionist, and I answer every phone call with, “Good morning, the Earth is 6000 years old, praise Jesus, how can I help you today?” does my employer not have the right to tell me to cut it out, and to fire me if I refuse? I’m not being punished for my religious beliefs. I’m being punished for letting them interfere with my effectiveness as an employee and for tarnishing the reputation of my employer.

All jobs, not just tenured ones, are privileges, not rights.

http://www.uni.edu/myuniverse/2005/092605.shtml

INTELLIGENT DESIGN SPEAKER:

The UNI Chapter of Sigma Xi, the Research Honor Society, presents Guillermo Gonzalez, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and assistant professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, speaking on Intelligent Design (ID). He will review the leading ideas proposed by ID theorists and explain why they believe ID is properly a branch of science. He will end with a brief description of the evidence for design which he presented in his book “The Privileged Planet.” Wednesday, Sept. 28, 7 p.m. in MSH Lantz Auditorium.

Diabolical plan, I think, first to invite a prof. to expound on his controversial ideas in front of a professional society, and then to claim that he overstepped the bounds of his profession by doing so, and make it an argument for denying tenure.

Oh yes, you might also want to take a look at the James Sherley tenure case at MIT. A biology professor very anti non adult stem cell research denied tenure.

JoAnne Hewett begins her post by saying she is embarrassed to admit that Iowa State is her alma mater and ends it by saying denial of tenure was justified by Gonzalez’ giving an invited lecture promoting intelligent design while “billed as an ISU professor.” From all appearances, it seems Hewett was right in the first instance, and that whatever Guillermo Gonzalez may have contributed to the promotion of intelligent design is unlikely to have benefitted from his association with ISU.

There is such a thing as giving one’s affiliation for purposes of identification without the implication that the individual is speaking for the institution. See, e.g., Dr. Hewett’s bio page under “contributors” on this blog.

Gonzalez’ work supportive of a design inference isn’t exactly out in far left field. See the book jacket endorsements on _The Privileged Planet_ from, among others, Owen Gingerich and Simon Conway Morris.

ID is intrinsically a religion hiding behind a facade of science: plain and simple! Here’s a fundamental question which drive at the heart of this dispute: was Gonzalez selling himself as a man of religion or as a man of science? And for Gonzalez to sell himself as a man of religion wearing the clothes of a scientist is an act of deception: nothing more, nothing less!

JoAnne Hewett’s argument that denial of tenure is justifiable based on extramural statements (rather than classroom performance, research or publications) is not specifically an argument about tenure standards, but raises broader issues of academic freedom. In this respect, my understanding is that under AAUP standards an untenured faculty member is supposed to have the same academic freedom all other faculty members have. So if Guillermo Gonzalez’ conduct in making a invited presentation to a Sigma Xi chapter at another university was grounds for denial of tenure on the basis that he stepped over the line of what academic freedom permits under AAUP and First Amendment standards (which I very much doubt it did), wouldn’t similar conduct by tenured faculty could also be grounds for discipline?

The bottom line is that Gonzalez’s actions undoubtedly undermined his credibility and respect within the scientific community. Regardless of your feelings about ID, it is not respected by most scientists. For this reason, Gonzales becomes a liability for ISU, and this is most definitely grounds for denial of tenure.

Excellent point, Eli! From the looks of things, IDers are aiming to gain a privileged status in academics: a status whereby they can freely vacillate between teaching science and religion–all in a single setting, in fact! And, in my opinion, it sets a dangerous precedent to allow scientists to inject religion into their scientific work!

Belizean

If it is chock full of supernatural assumptions and completely untestable (even in principle), then, yes, his positions is anti-science. And it would be wrong to grant him tenure in a pro-science department.

And completely illegal not to grant him tenure on that basis.

adam,

I suggest you review your understanding of US law. Religious activity is protected speech, and if you aren’t advocating or doing something criminal, the State of Iowa can’t legally take any job action against you for it. This is all spelled out very clearly in Civil Rights case law and the statutes.

He can’t use his classroom to proseletyze, but what he does on his own time, if of a religious character, cannot (legally) be used against him any more than his race, sex or ethnicity could be.

Dear CapitalistImperialistPig,

There are a couple of problems with your argument. First, denial of tenure is not a decision to fire someone. It is a decision not to hire them for a permanent job. This makes it much harder to win a lawsuit.

Second, the very essence of “Intelligent Design” would seem to defeat any attempt to make a religious discrimination claim. If Gonzalez were to claim that he rejects evolution based on his religious beliefs, but that this doesn’t interfere with his astronomy, then he might be able to claim religious discrimination. But, “Intelligent Design” claims to be a scientific theory, so the tenure decision could be based on his poor scientific judgement in accepting ID. So, in order to make his claim, Gonzalez would have to deny the central fraud behind ID. This seems unlikely.

Here is a story on the ISU president’s denial of Gonzalez’ appeal of his tenure decision. The story reports that Gonzalez received only $22,661 in grant money since July, 2006, and that the average total funding for physics and astronomy professors prior to tenure was $1.3 million. It also quotes the president as saying that ID issues played no role in his decision. I’m pretty sure that $1.3 million is much higher than the average for astronomers that don’t build instruments, but if he only got $22k in funding over 6 years, it is not a surprise that he didn’t get tenure.