More than 200 faculty members at 20 Iowa colleges have signed a statement opposing a proposed state law that would give instructors at public colleges and schools a legal right to teach alternatives to evolution.
The legislation in question, titled the Evolution Academic Freedom Act and pending before the state House of Representatives’ education committee, declares that “in many instances, instructors have experienced or feared discipline, discrimination, or other adverse consequences as a result of presenting the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution.” The bill expressly protects “the affirmative right and freedom of every instructor” at public schools and colleges “to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views” on evolution, and says “students shall not be penalized for subscribing to a particular position or view.”
The statement signed by the Iowa educators in response to the bill says: “It is misleading to claim that there is any controversy or dissent within the vast majority of the scientific community regarding the scientific validity of evolutionary theory.” Therefore, it says, “‘academic freedom’ for alternative theories is simply a mechanism to introduce religious or nonscientific doctrines into our science curriculum.”
Legislation by Design
Measures promoting or protecting the teaching of alternatives to evolution have been proposed in six states this year. Most rely heavily on language suggested by the Discovery Institute, an organization in Seattle that encourages educators to question evolution and to teach “intelligent design,” which holds that some form of intelligence has helped shape the universe and life within it.
Of the six states’ measures, those proposed in Mississippi and Oklahoma have died in the Legislatures, but those in Alabama, Iowa, Missouri, and New Mexico remain pending. A Florida lawmaker has announced plans to offer up such a bill in his state.
Louisiana enacted such legislation last year, a step that prompted the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology—an association of biologists—to announce this month that in protest it was scrapping plans to meet in New Orleans in 2011 (The Chronicle, February 16).
But Glenn Branch, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, which promotes the teaching of evolution and tracks legislative battles over it, said the new Iowa statement represented the first organized effort by college faculty members throughout a state to oppose a bill calling for the teaching of alternatives.
Iowa State University came under heavy fire from critics of evolution when it denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and a leading advocate of intelligent design, in 2007 (The Chronicle, June 1, 2007).
Mr. Gonzalez’s tenure denial came two years after more than 120 Iowa State faculty members signed a statement denouncing intelligent design, partly in reaction to his work. E-mail records revealed that members of his department had considered his support of intelligent design as a problem in his tenure case, but his performance was criticized for other reasons as well, and the Iowa Board of Regents voted overwhelmingly last year to reject his appeal of the university’s decision, which he said had violated his academic freedom. He has since become an associate professor of physics at Grove City College, a Christian institution in Pennsylvania.