Academic Freedom

Without the usual nuttery. As Ross Pomeroy tells it, Feynman was a jerk where women are concerned, except when he regarded them as colleagues. Ashutosh Jogalekar, who penned the article at Scientific American, described having a similar reaction to Feynman’s “casual sexism,” which also manifested in more than just social arenas. But, he noted, though some of his actions are “disturbing and even offensive” when viewed from the socially-evolved lens of today, “they were probably no different than the attitudes of a male-dominated American society in the giddy postwar years.” Thus, Jogalekar reasoned, we should not condemn Feynman wholly as a sexist. Actually, in a lot of places, a guy who behaved that way was viewed as a jerk in Read More ›

In Jamaica, this distinguished professor — literally the man who led the Caribbean region’s medical fight against HIV/AIDS from the beginning in 1983 on — has been fired as at Tuesday afternoon by UWI’s Vice Chancellor for giving a politically incorrect expert testimony to The Supreme Court in Belize. This is a sign of how pressure group activism led by radicals of various stripes . . . it hardly matters that they all think they have cornered the market on the correct view on whatever bees are buzzing in their bonnets . . . is undermining the civilisation’s hard won consensus on freedom of inquiry, of expression and of educators and students around the world. Not to mention, just plain Read More ›

I think we need to watch a video by Friend of UD, Kirk Durston. But first, a loop-back note: I have been rather busy elsewhere with issues like AS-AD, Kondratiev waves, Hayek’s investment triangle, SD and Schumpeterian creative destruction.(Pardon the resulting absence.) BTW, this line of thought leads me to hold that the oh- so- dominant . . . and too often, domineering . . . evolutionary materialism of the past few generations has run its course and is about to be overtaken by ideational creative destruction in an information age.  A patently superior idea — we live in an obviously designed world, and we and other living creatures show further compelling signs of design — is going to prevail, Read More ›

We had an experience a couple years ago where some of the Discovery scientists were traveling with one of our supporters. So that night, we were at this cowboy steakhouse feeding the troops. So I jumped in and offered the Discovery Institute credit card to pay for the Discovery Institute scientists, and this young waitress came back with the bill and the credit card. And she looked left and looked right and lowered her voice and said, “Can you tell me what the Discovery Institute is?” Well, I said, we’re a scientific think tank, and we’re investigating the evidence for intelligent design and challenging standard Darwin. She says, “I thought so!” She said, “Our professors hate you.” And then she Read More ›

Thought you all might be interested in a new essay of mine on whether or not we should teach our students methodological materialism.
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The new director of the NCSE, Ann Reid, is a fellow alum from the same institution as I, and in addition to my obligation to show her collegial courtesy, I feel in such high profile blog as hers, I should comment with as much eloquence and grace as possible. I would hope any IDists posting to Ann’s blog will be more diplomatic than we usually are in our blog wars, and write as if we are seeking to reach the undecided middle rather than just venting our dislike of evolutionism. Angry responses against evolution on her blog I do not view as speaking well of ID and creation. UD is a better place to vent such feelings. 🙂 Please do Read More ›

Students who ask science professors certain questions will be the ones who’ll appreciate the weaknesses in various anti-ID or anti-creation theories. Preferably they’ll ask after they’ve gotten an “A” in the class, maybe even after they’ve gotten their diploma. The ideal IDist or creationist student can hopefully score in the 99th percentile on evolutionary tests, but still understand the difficulties with anti-ID theories like Darwinian evolution. Jonathan Wells had his list of questions that high school students should ask their biology teachers, and there have been some good responses, thus I didn’t think Wells’ list provided pointed enough questions. So I’m developing a list for college students interested in ID or creation science. Here are some questions off the top Read More ›