Indiana legislators embarrass their state

UPDATE: Over at the Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News and Views” website, where no commenting is allowed, David Klinghoffer thumps his chest and pretends that the threat of the Fatuous Four legislators carries real weight. Klinghoffer implies darkly that if Ball State doesn’t play ball and allow ID to be taught, the university will lose state funding:

Our inaugural Censor of the Year, Jerry Coyne, is all bluff and bluster. He says that although four state legislators have written to the president of Ball State University gravely requesting clarification of BSU’s ban on intelligent design, nothing will come of it:

“The DI is going to lose on this one, and if the legislators try to pass some ‘equal time’ law for ID in Indiana Universities, they’ll just look ridiculous. The Discovery Institute is simply unable to accept that they can’t push creationism in a public university, and are trying to make trouble.”

That paragraph just by itself is ridiculous. No one wants some enforced policy of “equal time” for ID, merely freedom for scientists and scholars to teach and research about the evidence for design in nature if they wish to do so. That’s a very different thing from “creationism,” and even more different from “pushing creationism.”

The pretense that ID is not creationism, and that teaching ID is not pushing creationism are, of course, lies for Jesus.  And the “freedom to teach ID” is freedom to proselytize Christianity, which is not a freedom at all: not under our Constitution and not in public schools. It’s not academic freedom, either, not when it comes to science classes.  Klinghoffer continues:

Coyne, who played a key role in walking Ball State down this particular plank, is uneducable. Even so I think he may be in for a surprise.

The surprise, of course, is the DI’s insane idea that Ball State will bend on this one because they’re afraid of losing funding. Here’s Klinghoffer’s threat:

So Coyne doesn’t think that Senator Dennis Kruse, Senator Travis Holdman, Senator Greg Walker and Representative Jeffrey Thompson pull any weight with President Gora? I think they do. Senator Kruse is only the chairman of the Senate Education Committee. In 2012 Ball State received $143.5 million of its $352 million budget from the state of Indiana. That is 41 percent. That suggests some influence these lawmakers can bring to bear.

What’s more — more anxiety-making if you are an administrator at Ball State — is that the percentage of state funding has been falling precipitously already for decades, as is true across the country in higher ed. According to the Muncie Star Press, at BSU it’s down from 65 percent in 1987. Still, as of 2012, Ball State was considerably more dependent on public money than some other state universities in Indiana. Purdue University gets only 24 percent, while Indiana University gets 22 percent.

The combination of dependence and shrinking support is an uncomfortable one.

. . . So Coyne wants us to think that, under these circumstances, when four legislators tell President Gora they have “serious questions” about her management of a public university, that’s a light thing, easily brushed off?

Yes, that’s exactly what I think, and I’m willing to bet that that’s exactly what will happen. Four Republican legislatures cannot cut funding to BSU because, in the end, the State won’t mandate that intelligent design can be taught in a science class. That would require cooperation of the rest of the legislature and of Indiana’s governor. And if the state doesn’t want to make itself look ridiculous and anti-science, that won’t happen. BSU, of course, won’t bend to the legislators’ ludicrous demands anyway.

What Klinghoffer doesn’t realize is that Indiana, despite the religiosity and benighted attitudes of many of its citizens, doesn’t want to make itself look as ignorant as the people at the Discovery Institute.
____________

Yesterday I wrote about how four Indiana state legislators wrote to Ball State University (BSU), asking questions about how Eric Hedin’s class came to be removed from the BSU science curriculum after it was found to be ridden with religious proselytizing.  I now have a copy of their letter, which I’ll post below.  This letter was written in collaboration with the creationist Discovery Institute (DI), which is deeply upset that intelligent design was banned from BSU science classes. That banning was a whack on the nose of the camel of Christianity as it tried to stick its nose into the tent of higher education.

As I predicted, all four signers are Republicans. Dennis Kruse, to Indiana’s shame, is chair of the state Senate Committee on Education and Career Development. Travis Holdman is on the Senate Commission on Improving the Status of Children. Greg Walker is the chair of the Senate Ethics Committee (!) and on the Committee for Commerce, Economic Development, and Technology.  Jeffrey Thompson, a state Representative, is not only on the House Education Committee, but is in fact described as a “Chemistry, Physics and Math Teacher, Danville Community High School.”

It’s no surprise, of course, that these are Republicans, for that is the Party of Ignorance, but it’s somewhat surprising that all of these are dedicated in some way to improving education and Technology in Indiana. Hoosiers, be ashamed of your state!

As several readers noted, the legislators and the Discovery Institute have gone badly wrong on this one. As reader Erp noted, the course at issue is the Honors Course “Dangerous Ideas,” taught by Paul Ranieri (pdf of the course here). Reader Ant dug up Paul Raniei’s c.v., which you can find here, and Ranieri is hardly the agent of Satan that the DI and legislators make out. In fact, Ranieri, an associate professor of English, is apparently a Catholic. He got his bachelor’s degree at a Catholic college, Xavier University of Ohio, and under his activities as Faculty Advisor you’ll see this:

Ranieri was Chairman of the English Department from 1998-2001 and acting Chair in 2007. He appears from his c.v. to be deeply dedicated to undergraduate education, and his Honors Course seems to be one that simply challenges students’ ideas using the book What is Your Dangerous Idea?, which, as I noted, contains as many defenses of religion as attacks on religion. It isn’t a science course, nor does it seem to proselytize religion. It appears in fact to be what a college Honors course should be: one in which a diversity of competing viewpoints are discussed.  But that doesn’t mean that in a college science course a diversity of competing viewpoints should be discussed, especially when one of those viewpoints—Intelligent Design—has been rejected as science by both the scientific community and the courts.

If the Indiana legislators want all viewpoints to be taught in science courses, by all means let them agitate for alchemy to be taught in Chemistry classes, faith healing and homeopathy in health classes and the medical school, and astrology in the psychology class. For Intelligent Design has no more credibility than these pseudoscientific “alternatives.” The reason that ID rather than homeopathy is being pushed is obvious: ID is a religiously-inspired theory, and teaching it is part of the “Wedge Strategy” to get materialism expelled from public education and replaced with Christianity.

Those legislators and the Discovery Institute are going to lose on this one. They chose the wrong course to use an example, and they’re making fools of themselves. It’s particularly embarrassing for representative Jeffrey Thompson, who teaches science in high school! Let’s see an Indiana newspaper for once come out and decry in plain terms the ignorance of these legislators, as well as their apparent ignorance of the U.S. Constitution.

We can look forward to a lot more angry posts by David Klinghoffer and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute after the dust settles on this one.

Submitted with respect,
Jerry Coyne
Discovery Institute “Censor of the Year” for 2013