Starting tomorrow, Denyse O’Leary is retiring from the News desk at Uncommon Descent. Physicist Eric Hedin, who replaces her, will be known to many readers from the controversy at Ball State University, Indiana, when he was barred from teaching a class on ID, mainly due to the efforts of Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. As David Klinghoffer puts it,
What I found most despicable about the successful attempt to silence Professor Hedin was the power disparity. Hedin was a young scientist — on tenure track but not holding tenure, and thus highly vulnerable — at Ball State University, an “institution…named after a manufacturer of glass canning jars — a benign backstory for an utterly benign university campus.” Or that was what Hedin imagined. His persecutor, on the other hand, was a prominent academic, enjoying maximum career safety at the University of Chicago. Let’s be honest: between the two, there was no contest. Coyne could move against Hedin without fear, and he did. On the other hand, Hedin’s career was on the line, and both knew it.
Hedin was stunned to find himself accused of violating the First Amendment. He was also anxious that the older, more powerful scientist was about to put an end to Dr. Hedin’s life in science. Amid a media controversy, Discovery Institute sought to intervene, but again, the power was all on the side of the atheists.
News, “David Klinghoffer Muses On The (Almost) Cancelation Of Physicist Eric Hedin” at Uncommon Descent (March 4, 2021)
Since then, Coyne has burnt up a fair amount of time at his blog, Why Evolution Is True, caterwauling about the Cancel Culture he helped create, oblivious to his role in the matter.
Here’s a sample chapter from Hedin’s book, Canceled Science: What some atheists don’t want you to see, in which Hedin tells the story.
Denyse will continue to post now and then, just not as the regular News person.
Over to you, Eric!