There were four articles yesterday—very similar in content—about the hiring of Intelligent Design advocate Guillermo Gonzalez at Ball State University. And they give us a bit of new information.

Here are a few snippets from “Intelligent hire?” (good title!) by Colleen Flaherty in Inside Higher Ed, who contacted Gonzalez for a statement about his hiring:

In an e-mailed statement, Gonzalez said he was “very happy” to be working at Ball State, and that he had assured faculty and administrators there in interviews that he would not teach intelligent design – just as he hadn’t at Iowa State. That institution denied him tenure, he added, “not because of poor academics on my parts, but for ideological and political reasons.”. . .

Well, at least we know Gonzalez has abjured teaching ID in the classroom, but he’s still playing the martyr card, despite the fact that there is ample evidence that the tenure denial was based simply on lack of scholarship, including an absence of research funding. As the article notes, “Iowa State has said that Gonzalez’s tenure denial, and the vote to uphold that denial following his appeal, was based on his academic record.”

Were I Gonzalez, I’d keep quiet about my “martyrdom” and lack of tenure, for all it does is call attention to his failure.

. . .Gonzalez and his supporters say he was rejected there in part due to his 2004 book, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, which argues that there’s evidence in the Earth’s design that it is unique within the universe. “For some reason our Earthly location is extraordinarily well suited to allow us to peer into the heavens and discover its secrets,” reads its synopsis. That’s contrary to the widely accepted science on the Earth’s location.

Moreover, Gonzalez called the controversy surrounding his hire “artificial,” and “largely generated by one activist blogger who is not an astronomer” – presumably Coyne.

You don’t have to be an astronomer to see the problems with The Privileged Planet, and as for “artificial controversy,” well, all I did was note that Ball State had hired a Discovery Institute fellow at the same time that one of their own ID advocates was under investigation. That’s not artificial, but reality; and if anyone’s responsible for calling this to people’s attention, it’s the news outlets.

We also hear what Gonzalez will be teaching, and another welcome affirmation that he’ll keep ID out of the classroom—even though he still accepts it.

. . . Gonzalez will teach introductory-level astronomy courses on the tenure track next semester and continue his research in astrobiology and stellar astrophysics, again keeping intelligent design out of the classroom.

But, he said, “My view that there is evidence of design in physics and cosmology (the type of design I have written about) is not out of the mainstream; a number of cosmologists and physicists hold to this view.”

Some disagree. David Southwood, president of the Royal Astronomical Society and professor of physics at Imperial College London, said he’d reviewed Privileged Planet for a publication and found it interesting “in the way that many books about unlikely facts are.” However, he said, “I found the notion that we were put on Earth specifically to discover bizarre and unscientific.”

Continuing, he said, “My fundamental concern with Gonzalez’s analysis of things that he sees as planned and I see as coincidence is whether he can take a truly scientific view. There were no counterexamples as I recall.”

Ball State then affirms its opposition to ID and the fact that it’s inappropriate for science courses. But if course, it was considered appropriate for a science course by Hedin and his chairman. The statement below suggests that Ball State will take Hedin’s course out of the science curriculum:

A Ball State spokeswoman said said the university hired Gonzalez – who previously taught at Grove City College in Pennsylvania – by normal hiring standards, and that Ball State agreed with numerous academic societies that intelligent design is “not appropriate” for science courses. “Although it might find its place in appropriate classes and contexts including – but not limited to – religion and philosophy courses,” Joan Todd added.

As always, my view has been that a). Hedin should not be fired, b). Gonzalez’s hire was strange (how many physicists are looking for jobs?, but Ball State had a right to hire him based on his record, c). Gonzalez has no right to teach ID in the classroom, and Ball State would do well to keep an eye on him, and d). research on Intelligent Design is not scientific scholarship, since it’s a discredited and religiously-based form of science with no evidence to support it. Therefore a university is within its rights to deny someone tenure if they try to use ID work as evidence for “scholarship.”:

While supporters of intelligent design like to describe it as a credible theory, most scientists disagree. “Intelligent design has been discredited by science,” said Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of Chicago who writes about evolution and creationism in education on his blog, Why Evolution is True. “But if [Gonzalez] wants to talk about it in his writing and speeches, he has a right to do that. But he can’t pass that stuff off in a university classroom. He doesn’t have the right to get tenure working in discredited science.”. . .

. . . [Hector] Avalos agreed. “I would not deny him a job just because of his [intelligent design] views, especially if he is doing good work outside of his [intelligent design] interests,” he said. “I believe other scientists and scholars at Ball State should render a final opinion of his work or his ability to do science at his university.” He encouraged scientists at Ball State to voice their opinions about intelligent design as a viable scientific theory.

Hector Avalos is an interesting chap: a former child evangelist and Pentecostal preacher who is now a Professor of Religious studies at Iowa State University and a big opponent of creationism. As Wikipedia notes in his bio:

Avalos is an internationally recognized opponent of neo-creationism and the intelligent design movement, and is frequently linked to Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist and proponent of intelligent design who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in 2007. Avalos co-authored a statement against intelligent design in 2005, which was eventually signed by over 130 faculty members at Iowa State University. That faculty statement became a model for other statements at the University of Northern Iowa and at the University of Iowa. Gonzalez and Avalos are both featured in the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008).

*****

The reporter for the Des Moines [Iowa] Register is named, curiously, Tom Coyne, though he’s no relation (he interviewed me yesterday). Gonzalez is of local interest because he became notorious for being denied tenure in Iowa; Coyne’s piece is called, “Intelligent design debate over former ISU professor resurfaces.“

The only bit the differs from the other news is this:

Robert Kreiser, senior program officer for the American Association of University Professors, said he found it surprising that a university would have two cases that appear similar in such a short span, although he said he doesn’t know what discussions went on in each instance.

The Gonzalez hiring appears to pit professional competence against academic freedom, Kreiser said.

“He has the freedom to carry out the research that he judges to be appropriate, but his colleagues have the freedom as well, and indeed the responsibility, to assess his research in terms of norms of the profession,” Kreiser said.

That’s a shot across the bow! At any rate, I too, am a bit suspicious that somebody sympathetic to intelligent design haunts the halls of Ball State University. But of course I have no hard evidence for that beyond the presence of both Hedin and now Gonzalez at BSU.

This next bit of the Register was something I asked Tom Coyne to emphasize in his piece, since I’m often—and wrongly—accused of trying to cost Hedin and Gonzalez their jobs.  I hope the Discovery Institute sees this, because they can’t really lie about the issue if statements like this are in a newspaper. On the other hand, maybe they can, since lying is their habitual behavior.

Jerry Coyne, an ecology and evolution professor at the University of Chicago who said he first complained to Ball State about Hedin’s class, said during an interview Tuesday that he doesn’t think either Hedin or Gonzalez should lose their jobs.

“I just think they need to keep religion out of science class. That’s my only mission,” he said.

There’s a report at Fox News, too, but it’s word-for-word identical to Tom Coyne’s piece. Pity he didn’t get credit at Fox for having written the story. Coyne’s story also appears on ABC News, where it will get more exposure.