A Chronicle of the Ball State Controversy

Christopher Stephens offers a time-line of all of the happenings at Ball State over the past year involving the controversy with intelligent design. 

Gonzalez Won't Teach ID

Guillermo Gonzalez has made a public attestation that he will not teach intelligent design at Ball State University.  As the Muncie Star Press reports:

Gonzalez, who was hired by BSU this summer as an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy, is best known for his advocacy of intelligent design.

“As I communicated to members of the department during my interviews, I plan to continue my research on astrobiology and stellar astrophysics,” Gonzalez said in a statement issued this week.

The statement reported that he will not be discussing intelligent design in the classroom, and that he did not discuss intelligent design when he taught at Iowa State University, either

That may not be enough to soothe folks like Coyne and Harris but it is a huge step forward to placate the faculty at Ball State, I am sure. It is important for him to distance himself from the modern ID movement in this sense and for them to understand that. The anti-science comments made by the faculty at Iowa State are not without merit.

It is one thing for ID supporters to believe that the universe is created and guided by an intelligence. It is another for modern ID supporters to, having no theoretical constructs of their own, take pot shots at organized science in support of their ideas.  At least "mainstream" creationism, warts and all, has a testable framework. You can test the hypothesis "the earth was created six-thousand years ago." That's easy. Trying to test the hypothesis "God created the heavens and the earth," That's hard.  Add to that the fact that the public face of ID as purveyed by people like David Klinghoffer, Cornelius Hunter, William Dembski and David Berlinski is rabidly "anti-Darwinian," and you have a science credibility problem.  Gonzalez is wise to stay well away from that. 

Inside Higher Ed on Guillermo Gonzalez

Inside Higher Ed has a short blurb on the hiring of Guillermo Gonzalez at Ball State University.  It reads in part:

Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University, where he said that he was being punished for his views, but his faculty colleagues said he was rejected based on traditional tenure criteria. A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth. And many scientists -- while having no problem with intelligent design as a focus in philosophy or religion classes -- object to science departments teaching it.

What is considerably more interesting is the comments section, which contains an invocation of Godwin's Law and some reactions to the blurb. For example, one (correctly) writes:

I'm pretty sure that this sentence cannot be true: "A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth."

Unless, that is, the word "origin" no longer means what it used to mean.

Another individual responded “The hiring of such people should automatically decertify the institution.” This was not very well received and reminded me of what defrocked comedian Mike Warnke once upon a time said: “He was so narrow-minded he could look through a key-hole with both eyes.”

It is quite interesting to see the range of variation in comments to this story, both here and elsewhere.  It seems to have struck quite a nerve. 

Throwing Caution To The Winds...

Ball State University, in the middle of a controversy surrounding one of its faculty, Eric Hedin, has just hired Guillermo Gonzalez, the astronomer who made waves a few years ago when he was denied tenure at Iowa State University.  He maintained that the reason for this was because he is a supporter of Intelligent Design.  He appealed the decision and lost the appeal.  It is hard to argue with his publication record up to the point—he had 66 publications in a little over twenty years (2007 data) and they were all in mainstream journals. Arguments were made at the time that he had not published acceptable science in some years leading up to the denial of tenure. A look at the actual published papers in his vita would seem to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, Iowa State faculty admitted later that his support of ID was a factor in the denial. Charles Huckabee, of the Chronicle of Higher Education writes:

The astronomer, Guillermo Gonzalez, made headlines when Iowa State University denied him tenure in 2007, a decision that was upheld by the university’s president and the statewide Iowa Board of Regents. He maintained that he had been denied tenure because of his advocacy of intelligent design. The university said the decision was based on scholarly concerns, such as a publication record that dwindled after a promising start. After leaving Iowa State, Mr. Gonzalez landed on the faculty at Grove City College, a Christian institution in Pennsylvania.

What effect this will have on the Hedin case is unclear but it will certainly make Ball State a lightening rod for more criticism from folks like Jerry Coyne.