The Deed Is Done
Heeren, Fred
A T E P D U Bill Dembski is fired as mob rule quashes free scientific inquiry at Baylor University. III- -N 28 The FED ;SD NE December 2000 / January 2oor - TheAmerican Spectator m...
...and he was restricted in what he could put on his Website and in how he could reply to his critics, no matter how public or vocal they became...
...For a brief moment, it looked as if Dembski might get a reprieve, but no such happy ending was in store for the besieged mathematician...
...It's the faculty and administration that has suffered the real black eye...
...They have ensured that their university will be remembered as a place where the rule of the mob trumps free scientific inquiry...
...Dembski was pressured not to attend a meeting in Washington, where intelligent design advocates met some members of Congress and their staff...
...He promised that his work would continue unabated and declared that"Dogmatic opponents of design who demanded that the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo...
...And what have the Baylor faculty accomplished...
...Dembski was fired as director of the Michael Polanyi Center, and the center itself looks to be effectively "redefined" out of any meaningful existence...
...TheAmerican Spectator 9 December 2000 / January 2oo~ press and the Internet to publicly excoriate Dembski...
...With the faculty mob in full cry, President Sloan let loose the reins and gave the horse a stiff slap on the rump for good measure...
...Apparently this was wishful thinking...
...The Baylor faculty would decide by committee what Dembski could and could not research at his center...
...When the conference turned out to be a resounding success, Dembski's critics were aroused to greater fury...
...Sloan, seemingly feeling that McCarthyism can be resisted only so long, acceded to their wishes and fired Dembski from his director position...
...He lives in Wheeling, Illinois...
...He has four years remaining on his contract, and will continue on at Baylor with the title of associate research professor within the Institute for Faith and Learning, the home of his former center...
...Freedom of speech at Baylor, it seems, only works one way...
...Therein lay the rub: The intelligent design movement, of which Dembski is a prominent member, is based on the theory that life, which is made up of mutually dependent parts, can be better explained as the product of mindful planning than of chance...
...Dembski himself is philosophic...
...Though few of the opposing faculty had the training or knowledge even to understand Dembski's mathematical methods, they were convinced that it was nothing more than stealth "creationism...
...A T E P D U Bill Dembski is fired as mob rule quashes free scientific inquiry at Baylor University...
...At first, Robert Sloan refused, saying that the response had "border[ed] on McCarthyism...
...They not only boycotted the event, but they took to the FRED HEEREN is a science journalist who writes about modem cosmology, paleontology, and biology...
...Dembski proposed to test that hypothesis using mathematical methods to investigate biological systems...
...In mid-October the committee released its report...
...Dembski's book on intelligent design, The Design Inference, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998 after extensive peer review...
...Bruce Gordon is the "Survivor" of this tale, but all his efforts at "damage control" and "building bridges" have only served to help destroy Dembski's original vision for the research center...
...Meanwhile, Sloan essentially put Dembski under a gag order...
...He will find the means somehow to continue his research...
...The faculty senate recommended that the university dissolve the center...
...President Sloan achieved peace for his time at the expense of academic freedom...
...III- -N 28 The FED ;SD NE December 2000 / January 2oor - TheAmerican Spectator m I n n our last issue we reported on the brouhaha at Baylor University over the Michael Polanyi Center and its director, mathematician William Dembski, and his attempted research into the subject of intelligent design in nature...
...While it could find no errors in Dembski's monographs or papers, and it affirmed the legitimacy of intelligent design research in general, it also attacked it as "too restrictive" and mandated that more "room should be made for a variety of approaches and topics...
...Baylor faculty, however, were intent on preventing such research from taking place...
...Accentuating the positive, he released a statement noting the committee's acceptance of intelligent design research as "a legitimate form of academic inquiry...
...In fact, the report managed to avoid all mention of the center it was assigned to evaluate, as if attempting to erase it from history...
...By the time the Polanyi Center put on a conference last April attended by many mathematicians and scientists, two Nobel Prize winners among them, critics at Baylor were up in arms...
...For those who just tuned in, here's ' '~ _ the background: William Dembski, a ~: i ~a leading thinker on applications of probability theory, was hired by Pres4s ident Sloan over a year ago to run the " " - " Michael Polanyi Center, a research institution set up by President Sloan himself to investigate the concept of intelligent design in nature...
...As we went to press, Bill Dembski was left with a noose I ~ around his neck, being hoisted upon a skittish horse by an angry mob of Baylor faculty, with Baylor's president Robert Sloan holding the reins and Dembski's erstwhile sidekick, Bruce Gordon, having drinks with other Baylor faculty in the saloon across the street...
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...Colleagues at other universities even tried to sabotage the conference by "disinviting" all the scheduled speakers...
...Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and academic expression...
...Seeking some means to placate them, however, Sloan convened an "independent committee" to evaluate Dembski's work and ideas...
...Congratulations...
...Dembski, who realized then that he was facing "death by a thousand cuts," chose finally to break his silence...
...The faculty, which had spent the last year publicly savaging Dembski, claimed that his statement was not collegial...
Vol. 33 • December 2000 • No. 10
