Another Professor in Hot Water Over Evolution

Inside Higher Ed is posting a story about a professor at Georgia Southern University, a state school in Statesboro, Georgia.  Quoth Colleen Flaherty:

Lecturing for a week about how “evolution could not have happened.” Offering extra credit for students to watch the film “God’s Not Dead.” Showing religious bias in exam questions. Student reviews saying he’ll try to “convert you.”

Those charges, among others, make up a complaint filed recently by two First Amendment watchdog groups against T. Emerson McMullen, an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. The institution says it’s now investigating the professor for allegedly using his classroom at the public university to promote his anti-evolution Christian beliefs.

Apparently the Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science have become involved in this and have pushed for an investigation into the charges.  It strikes me that if he is a science professor, these are serious charges.  If, on the other hand, he is a history professor, then it is incumbent on him to get the history correct.  If he does that, then the sole focus should be on whether or not he is using his classroom as a pulpit.  Despite his insistence otherwise, enough of the student comments indicate that, at least to some degree, he is. 

When I teach Anthropology 110: Human Origins, I am open to speaking with students about the apparent conflicts between evolution and Christianity, but I do not openly discuss them in class or promote EC.  I also use established science.  To do otherwise, I believe, would hurt the cause of Christianity.  Wisely, the Discovery Institute has left this one alone.