Academic Freedom

Readers will remember the “science guy”: From Reason: As a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen… So I can see where people are very concerned about this, and they’re pursuing criminal investigations as well as engaging in discussions like this….That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good. Via Washington Times More. That sort of thing is big in Big Government now. For example, Breitbart London notes the lawfare approach: Now the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands — some utter nonentity called Claude Earl Walker — has gone a step Read More ›

From Glenn Harlan Reynolds (Instapundit) at USA Today: This [government goes to Muscle Beach] all takes place in the context of an unprecedented meeting by 20 state attorneys general aimed, environmental news site EcoWatch reports, at targeting entities that have “stymied attempts to combat global warming.” You don’t have to be paranoid to see a conspiracy here. Not everyone believes that the planet is warming; not everyone who thinks that it is warming agrees on how much; not everyone who thinks that it is warming even believes that laws or regulation can make a difference. Yet the goal of these state attorneys general seems to be to treat disagreement as something more or less criminal. That’s wrong. As the Supreme Read More ›

Your Excellency, I humbly ask you to strike a blow for academic freedom, free speech and religious freedom, by publicly forbidding Marquette University from calling itself a Catholic university henceforth, and by revoking the mandate of theology teachers at Marquette University to teach theology. In this letter, I’d like to explain why I believe these drastic measures are necessary and justifiable. Before I go on, I’d better introduce myself. My name is Vincent Torley, and I’m an Australian Catholic layman (now residing in Japan), with a Ph.D. in philosophy and several other degrees. Thanks to my years of study in an open academic environment where people were free to defend any and every point of view, I have a firm Read More ›

From (lawyers) David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman here: We help scientists, writers, businesses and others targeted for speaking out on scientific issues and policy to defend themselves. Yes, but who needs free speech when we’ve got Science? 😉 Most recently, their target is the Climate change bureaucracy (March 23, 2016): Assuming the mantle of Grand Inquisitor is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.). Last spring he called on the Justice Department to bring charges against those behind a “coordinated strategy” to spread heterodox views on global warming, including the energy industry, trade associations, “conservative policy institutes” and scientists. Mr. Whitehouse, a former prosecutor, identified as a legal basis for charges that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Read More ›

From Breitbart: US Attorney General: We’ve ‘Discussed’ Prosecuting Climate Change Deniers “This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch, responding to a question from green activist Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)4% at a Senate Judiciary Hearing.… Perhaps the kind of RICO action Whitehouse has in mind is similar to the one proposed to President Obama a few months ago by a number of key climate scientists, led by one Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University. However this campaign appears to have gone mysteriously quiet of late. Could it perhaps be Read More ›

From TENURE: Fact or Fallacy?: In the last 18 of my 27 years of practice I have focused on representing faculty, staff and students at state and private universities. I have discovered and confirmed that tenure at state universities only protects what needs no protection. Tenure in essence only protects professors who the administration does not want to fire. It does not protect tenured faculty who the administration has decided to terminate. How so? … Actually, the final step of the process is normally a decision by the Board of Regents to either support or reject the President’s recommendation or a faculty committee’s recommendation. My experience has shown that with a recommendation to terminate from the top administrators, a Board Read More ›

Suzan Mazur, author of The Origin of Life Circus, interviews British philosopher of biology (U Exeter) John Dupré, on the upcoming Royal Society meeting, New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives, at Huffington Post: Since the upcoming Royal Society meeting on evolution paradigm shift is a public one, one of its organizers — British philosopher John Dupré — recently agreed to answer some of my questions about the event. This in itself is progress in science, considering the silly secrecy that surrounded “the Altenberg 16” Extended Synthesis conference of 2008 that two years later would produce a book timidly announcing: “The modification and additions to the Modern Synthesis presented in this volume are combined under the term Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: February 12 is almost upon us. It will be Darwin Day, anniversary of the great man’s birth, which we call Academic Freedom Day in homage to Darwin’s wise warning that “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Yes, by now the fulsome comparisons of Darwin to Lincoln as a “great liberator” should be tumbling down the byteway. Looking back primarily at the year 2015, I see several themes in our coverage of intellectual freedom and threats to it. First, and this is really a perennial, there are those Darwinists whose censorship of ideas consists of spreading a cloud of misinformation. Read More ›

From Emma C. Williams at at Quillette: An increasing number of high-profile academics are finding themselves barred from various establishments that are supposedly in the business of thought. Jamie Palmer has addressed the issue in this very magazine, and my first article here was about the attempted no-platforming of Professor Germaine Greer by students at Cardiff. The latest to join the list of fine academics declared unfit to speak at a supposedly learned venue is Professor Richard Dawkins. The Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, a forum that prides itself on being “a celebration of science and critical thinking” and with a declared goal of “fostering a more rational world” has decided that Dawkins’ sharing of a satirical video in Read More ›

With your coffee … At “TGIF: Dawkins disinvited to science conference”: Professor Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to speak at a science event withdrawn by organisers for sharing a “highly offensive” video mocking feminists on Twitter. Here. Make a point of seeing it while it is up. Big Social Media like Facebook and Twitter have taken to censorship of speech that offends whoever complains. If WordPress gets into the act, there’ll probably be some fragile consciousness out there wittering to the new media censors about Uncommon Descent. After all, If someone who has political cachet makes a big to-do about feeling attacked or threatened, their target has committed an offence. So, even if we are nothing more than your daily Read More ›

I’ve already written here about the recent dust-up between the United Methodist Church (UMC)and Discovery Institute. Being involved with this has caused me, as a United Methodist, to take a closer look at some of the official statements of the UMC on science. As regular UD readers will likely know, the church has banned Discovery Institute from exhibiting at the upcoming General Conference. Vince Torley has already written here that probably UMC co-founder John Wesley wouldn’t be welcome at this year’s General Conference, so I won’t rehash that aspect. Rather, I want to take a closer look at the official statements of the UMC on Science to which the Church appealed as rationale for denying Discovery Institute an information table Read More ›

For reader info, in case it happens when you try to access Uncommon Descent or a  page here: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has approved the use of HTTP status code 451. The code alerts readers when a page has been blocked for legal reasons or censored. The code number was inspired by Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s novel about censorship. From Fast Company: Code 451 is a big step for transparency, but since it’s optional, it probably won’t be a final solution. As Bray tells The Verge, “It is imaginable that certain legal authorities may wish to avoid transparency, and not only forbid access to certain resources, but also disclosure that the restriction exists.” Others will righteously flaunt the Read More ›

Must be. The servers may have gone down, downloading info re his grants. Readers will recall that Matzke, a long-time commenter here on behalf of the Darwin lobby, now at Australian U, was shortly afterward accused by John West at Evolution News & Views for using NSF grant money improperly, for a political purpose (to undermine academic freedom bills). Yes, well, in other news, birds fly. Undermining researchers’ and teachers’ intellectual integrity is all the Darwin lobby has got going for itself.  Isn’t the purpose of raising public money for science to compel everyone to fund whatever nonsense or malice such people dream up? Well, Pos-Darwinista (a top Portuguese-language blog) wrote this morning with the following information: Try downloading the grants Read More ›

In an article in National Catholic Reporter on academic freedom, journalist Menachem Wecker tells us, Contrary to popular belief, academic freedom isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. Instead, it guarantees that professors can only be dismissed for cause, ascertained by a hearing of their peers. Okay, but in these times, “cause” doesn’t mean very much, does it? Sure enough, So if a biology professor “goes off the deep end” and tells students there’s no such thing as evolution, or genes don’t exist, that professor will go before a committee, which could decide that behavior is unprofessional, Reichman said. But if a biologist goes in a new research direction that threatens “some of the old truisms of the field,” that professor must be Read More ›