Cowardice, Creationism and Science Education: University Presidents

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They would be reluctant to mandate that ID be off-limits as a topic of discussion on campus, even if they thought the case for it was weak.

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I don't think that anyone is asking university presidents to mandate anything as off-limits. The question is whether the university presidents should take a stand on the quality of academic research. If a university history faculty member were to teach Holocaust denial, I would not expect them to be dismissed except if it can be shown that the quality of their research were below acceptable standards. On the other hand, I would expect the president of the university to denounce it.-

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Put it this way. If Ward Churchill, then ID.

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As I recall, the governor of Colorado is putting pressure on the university to dismiss Churchill. There is a university committee investigating his writings to see if they can scrape up some grounds for dismissal. So much for academic freedom, eh?

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It appears that the faculty only has to make students "aware of serious scholarly viewpoints", so creationism and ID don't qualify and don't have to be included in a science classroom discussion.

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It depends on who gets to decide what constitutes serious scholarly viewpoints. The purpose of these laws is to allow conservatives to "go after" supposedly biased liberal professors. But if the "liberal professors" and their "liberal colleagues" are the ones who determine what are the serious scholarly viewpoints, and what constitutes making the students "aware", then the whole bill is toothless. Somehow, I suspect that these "liberals" aren't going to be the ones to determine whether students are "made aware" of "scholarly viewpoints", or whether the "controversial matter" has a "legitimate pedagogical purpose" -- the purpose of the law is to allow people with an axe to grind to tie up these "liberals'" time in court.