ID advocate Eric Hedin gets tenure at Ball State

May 12, 2016 • 9:15 am

You may remember Eric Hedin, the Ball State University physics professor who, as I discovered in 2013, was teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in a student seminar. Since Ball State is a state university, that was a violation of the First Amendment, which, as the Supreme Court has ruled, prohibits teaching creationism in public (government) schools, an action violating the “Lemon test.” (ID was also ruled out of bounds in the Dover case.)

Ball State subsequently investigated the course; its then president Jo Ann Gora said that Ball State would not countenance the teaching of ID; and Hedin was prohibited from teaching his religion-laden “science” course. You can see all the posts about this here. For our victory I was proud to receive the Discovery Institute’s “Censor of the Year” award for 2014. Boy, did my head swell!

Since then, Hedin has apparently stopped teaching ID, as he was told to, and has taught straight physics courses as well as doing real physics research. The curriculum vitae on Hedin’s university website mentions no ID papers, but a respectable number of genuine physics publications—certainly a good record for someone at a teaching-oriented school.  His teaching reviews, at least by students, are ok as well. Thus, when Colleen Flaherty, a reporter for Inside Higher Ed, told me that Hedin had just gotten tenure, and interviewed me about it, I couldn’t find any reason that he shouldn’t have been promoted, and said so:

Coyne said he didn’t think Hedin’s past should preclude him for getting the promotion he otherwise earned, and that getting “called out on the national stage at [sic; should be “and”] told to stop” in 2013 was probably punishment enough. Hedin’s research portfolio doesn’t appear to involve any publications on creationism, Coyne added. And “if he does [intelligent design] in his spare time, he has the right to do that — he just can’t do it in the classroom.”

Coyne also said he agreed with Laats that there should be a high bar for university investigations into professors’ classroom practices. But he rejected the notion that his criticisms of Hedin and others threatened academic freedom.

“I agree there has to be a damn good reason to investigate but it seems to me like a violation of the Constitution is a perfectly valid one,” Coyne said. “Teaching creationism in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment.”

That’s the way I feel: Hedin’s been called out enough, the ID problem is solved at Ball State, and you shouldn’t wreck a guy’s career if he makes one misstep.  Several readers have emailed me that they think his tenure is a travesty, but I can’t agree. He seems to be doing pretty well in his field of scholarship: the physics of molecules; so why consign him to perdition forever for one error. Only God does stuff like that!

It still mystifies me, though, why Ball State hired two ID advocates in Physics and Astronomy: not only Hedin, but Guillermo Gonzalez, still a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute. Coincidence? Gonzalez was denied tenure Iowa State University, not for ID-related stuff but for nonperformance. The Discovery Institute, of course, cried “persecution,” but an appeal sustained the university’s decision, affirming that Gonzalez’s tenure denial was due to a lack of research performance and funding. Ball State then hired him.

Gonzalez’s teaching evaluations at Ball State are mediocre. We’ll see what happens to him at Ball State.

Don’t read the comments on the Inside Higher Ed post; they’re festering with creationists. Unwisely, I have engaged with a few of them.

Review: Cunk on Shakespeare

May 12, 2016 • 8:15 am

by Matthew Cobb

As regular readers will know, Jerry’s favourite Boltonian, Philomena Cunk (aka Diane Morgan), starred in a 30-minute special on BBC2 last night, entitled Cunk on Shakespeare. It was a hoot, and I guffawed all the way through. Tw*tter was awash with people repeating their favourite lines (guilty, m’lud) as Morgan and the three script-writers –  Charlie Brooker,  Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris – demolished every trope of the TV documentary (‘I’m going on a journey’ said Cunk, grimacing, before claiming ‘I’ve been studying Shakespeare ever since I was asked to do this programme, and it turns out he was more than just a bald man who could write with feathers’), while savaging how literature is taught and presented.

In a performance that proved Morgan to have the kind of dead-pan talent that made Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel so great, Cunk swivelled her eyes, pursed her lips, consulted her phone and was generally mardy as she tried to make sense of the bald man from Stratford with the aid of the usual band of experts, who this time seemed happy to be along for the ride, rather than utterly bemused as in the case of some of her previous outings.

According to The Daily Telegraph ‘Cunk’s implacable idiocy was thrillingly iconoclastic. Mainly, though, it was very silly and gloriously funny’, while The Guardian said ‘I also like that it’s not so squirmingly Ali G-mean on the serious Shakespeare contributors – the archivist Paul Taylor, theatre director Iqbal Khan, actor Simon Russell Beale and Mr Burton, the “fictional English teacher from TV drama Educating Yorkshire”. I think they’re having a good time too. Brilliant.’ 

But judge for yourselves. Lucky UK readers, or those with the know-how to pretend they are in the UK, can watch it on iPlayer. [JAC: a very kind reader send me a samizdat copy, which I’ll watch soon.] For the rest of you, here are some extracts (I’d be interested to know how many of the jokes non-anglophiles get).

The first, on the words Shakespeare may or may not have invented, is NSFW unless you have headphones on, as it contains A Rude Word (hyphenated) towards the end. Just listen to the brilliantly subtle emphasis when Cunk says ‘Did he?’ at the beginning.

Here she talks with Matthew Burton, an English teacher who featured in an excellent documentary about school life, Educating Yorkshire, and learns how to pronounce ‘pentameter’:

And finally, her she is discussing with theatre director Iqbal Khan. If only real presenters would challenge their interviewees in this way:

JAC: Philomena’s Twi**er followers have taken a big jump, of course, so I now face many more competitors.

Readers’ wildlife photo

May 12, 2016 • 7:45 am

Just one photo today as there is a lot of persiflage to come, and you’re spoiled with photos anyway! This, of course, is from Stephen Barnard, who is watching the two bald eaglets (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) grow rapidly, stuffed with fish by their parents Desi and Lucy.

This is the biggest fish I’ve seen them bring to the nest, and probably close to the limit of what they can comfortably carry. (This is Lucy.)

Click to enlarge:

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I asked Stephen what kind of fish it was, and he replied:

It’s definitely a trout because those are the only fish of that size here. I think it’s a Brown Trout (Salmo trutta), judging by the shape of the tail, but it’s hard to tell for sure because it’s covered with dirt. Lucy may have had to make a rest stop or two on the way to the nest.

Oops—this just in from Matthew, a tw**t with one predatory bird capturing another. An amazing video (click the blue arrow):

Look at those glowing eyes approaching, and the other bird thinking, “WTF just happened?”

Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe):

May 12, 2016 • 6:15 am

It is Thursday, May 12, and still gray and rainy in Chicago. This is beginning to get depressing. But, like Maru, we do our best. I am going to work with no clear idea what I’ll write on the website today, but Ceiling Cat always sends me some ideas.

On this day in 1932, the son of Charles Lindbergh was found dead after a kidnapping; this caused a national furor until they caught, tried, and executed Bruno Hauptmann for the crime (I didn’t look up the name of the killer; ain’t I good?). And, in 1986, the NBC peacock logo debuted, making it the 30th anniversary today (I thought it had been around longer).

Notables born on this day (a good crop) include Edward Lear (1812), Florence Nightingale (1820), Dorothy Hodgkin (1910; one of the headlines when she won her Prize was “Oxford Housewife Wins Nobel”–look it up), Yogi Berra (1925), Burt Bacharach (1926; he turns 90 today), George Carlin (1937), and Steve Winwood (1948). Those who died on May 12 include Nelly Sachs (1970), Perry Como (2001), and Peter Gay (2015).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a First World Problem:

A: Do you want chicken or beef for dinner?
Hili: I will have to think about it.
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In Polish:
Ja: Chcesz na obiad kurczaka czy wołowinę?
Hili: Muszę się zastanowić.
And in Wroclawek, Leon shows remarkable weather forecasting (but is the storm in his bones?):

Leon: I can feel the storm gathering in my bones.

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Heather Hastie on Islam, women’s dress, and the disingenuous nature of CAIR

May 11, 2016 • 1:30 pm

Over at her website Heather’s Homilies, Heather Hastie has a new post, “Islam and Women’s Clothing“, which is well worth reading. It began with her reading a paragraph on the website of a local Islam-promoting organization (CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, based in Chicago), a paragraph that’s part of a page trying to explain the religion in the most positive way possible. Among its claims:

What about Muslim women?

Under Islamic law, women have always had the right to own property, receive an education and otherwise take part in community life. Men and women are to be respected equally. The Islamic rules for modest dress apply to both women and men equally. (Men cannot expose certain parts of their bodies, wear gold or silk, etc.) If a particular society oppresses women, it does so in spite of Islam, not because of it.

If you know even a little about Islam, or at least about how some Islamic people and countries interpret the faith, you’ll see through this immediately. It’s a masterpiece of dissimulation.

Heather concentrates on women’s dress, but of course you know how sharia law dictates unequal treatment of men and women, like counting a woman’s testimony in court as worth but half the value of a man’s. Women can’t drive in Saudi Arabia, and can’t go outside unaccompanied, or accompanied by an unrelated man, in many places. The claim that Islam has nothing to do with oppression of women is ridiculous. All the Abrahamic religions, which include Christianity and Judaism, have oppressed women. The difference is that Islam is doing it in a far more pernicious way.

But I’ll let you read Heather’s excellent dissection of this grossly misleading paragraph, which involves citing the Qur’an, as well as the hadith as interpreted by Islamic websites. Conclusion: the paragraph above is full of it.

 

Students at my own university vote down a resolution affirming free speech

May 11, 2016 • 12:15 pm

Oy gewalt!  How can this be? Walking over to the student union for lunch, I picked up a copy of The Chicago Maroon, the student-run newspaper. At the top was this headline: “Student Government tables free speech resolution.”

I am appalled. I am shaking and crying right now. I can’t even. . . .

How could they do that? Read on.

As you may know, the University of Chicago has one of the nation’s strongest and best free speech codes, the result of a committee convened in 2014 and chaired by law professor and constitutional lawyer Geoffrey Stone. You can read it here; it’s pretty uncompromising in support of free expression. It’s been a model for similar speech policies at other enlightened universities.

But last year at the University of Chicago there were at least two incidents in which speakers were shouted down and could not give their talks. Yesterday, a resolution was introduced in the student General Assembly to try to prevent further obstruction and to affirm the University’s free-speech code:

The resolution was proposed by second-year Matthew Foldi. This resolution calls on the University administration to condemn any student who “obstructs or disrupts” free speech, including making threats to speakers on campus, and to enforce such condemnation. It cited the University’s Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression and alluded to two campus events disrupted by student protesters earlier this year.

In his presentation to the General Assembly, Foldi explained that he wrote the resolution in response to February events with Cook County State Attorney Anita Alvarez and Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist and critic of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement. Both events ended early after student protesters drowned out the speakers.

Foldi added that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group that advocates for free speech on college campuses, awarded the University its highest rating for protection of free speech earlier this year.

No-brainer vote, right? Wrong. The resolution was rejected in a 10-8 vote, with 8 cowards abstaining. How can this be? How can you not vote against obstructing invited speakers? Well, two opponents were willing to give their cockamamie reasons:

Class of 2018 Representative Cosmo Albrecht disagreed. “I don’t think we should use this idea of elected officials being…banned from speaking as evidence that free speech is under attack,” he said. “If you’re an elected official you should be willing to face the consequences of your actions…. I think these protests are a necessary part of a democracy.”

Yes, to Mr. Albrecht, so apparently the “consequences of your actions” on this campus include not being allowed to speak. That’s reprehensible. Why not let them speak and then ask questions, or give a counter speech? Do you believe in silencing your opponents?

From the president of the Student Government:

SG President Tyler Kissinger explained that while he does not usually speak on these issues, he urged General Assembly members to vote against the resolution. “As a public official it is my obligation not to run out of the room. I was at the Anita Alvarez event, an event with someone whose office has consistently refused to meet with black and Latino communities that her office has over-policed and I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “I think it is well within the rights of people to protest events particularly for public officials…and I urge a no vote.” [“No” rejects the affirmation of free speech.]

Mr. Kissinger apparently doesn’t understand that “protest” can encompass a variety of tactics that do not include shouting down the speaker.  You can ask questions, picket outside the talk, write articles, give opposing talks, and so on. “Silencing” is not an option, at least not for those who think that viewpoints should at least be heard—especially if the speakers, as in this case, were invited to campus.

I’m disgusted at this behavior by our students. Granted, not all of their representatives voted against the free-speech affirmation, but the vote should have been 26 in favor and none opposed.

Students, if you’re reading this: the majority of your representatives don’t understand the basic principles of democracy and freedom. Vote them out of office. I am ashamed at their tacit approval of silencing tactics to bully people off the stage. And understand that, in the long run, shouting down speakers not only fails to work, but makes you look really bad—like the bullies you are.

I’m proud of my University, yet ashamed of its students.