I reported earlier that Professors admit they’ll deny tenure to IDers. There are now hints the anti-ID crowd are increasingly willing to deny diplomas to PhD students, master’s students, and undergraduates. Based on news reports I’ve read and studies such as those by Steve Verhey, presently, I estimate 1/4 to 1/3 of biology freshman accept ID. The anti-ID crowd knows rising numbers of pro-ID biology students receiving diplomas are a threat to the status-quo.
The Cornell IDEA club has commentary on this report by Nobel Intent (Bill Dembski provided other links at New York Academy of Sciences keeps the world safe for Darwinism) on a recent war planning conference:
Branch’s final topic was how to handle a situation where a biology department winds up with a creationist as a graduate student. This was both of general interest, as creationists tend to use their degrees as rhetorical weapons, and of personal interest, as I was part of the Berkeley class that produced the noted Discovery Institute fellow Jon Wells. Unfortunately, his conclusion was that there are no easy answers. He did, however, note that graduate departments exist to serve the scientific community by providing qualified individuals to perform research and teaching services. There is no ethical requirement for graduate faculty to be complicit in the training of someone who is ultimately going to actively harm the field.
No easy answer? The easy answer is to not make someone’s acceptance of ID a factor whatsoever! Simple!
I remind the readers of this fact:
Indeed, if undergraduate majors in our biology department revealed such profound misconceptions about basic evolutionary biology we would have serious misgivings about conferring their degrees in biology.
Dr. Stephen C. Weeks, evolutionary ecologist, University of Akron
Dr. Peter Niewiarowski, evolutionary ecologist, University of Akron
Dr. Lisa Park, paleontologist, University of Akron
I got a little chuckle out of this from Nobel Intent
Next up was Glenn Branch of the NCSE, which, as he puts it, spends its time putting out brushfires of evolution controversy around the nation. His talk focused on the efforts of creationists to gain a footing in collegiate settings, with the ultimate goal of gaining credentialed supporters to advance their cause. He tracked how many formerly religious or creationist campus organizations have recently morphed into pro-ID IDEA Clubs. Branch noted that the religious nature of the national IDEA organization was obvious in the fact that it has only recently dropped its requirement for members to be Christian. These clubs hope to foster debate on campus, but Branch suggested they were best avoided. Many creationists are far more skilled at arguments that appeal to a non-scientific audience than scientists are, and debates draw a crowd. In the absence of the legitimacy conferred by debate, the attendance at IDEA clubs is usually limited to a few committed activists.