Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

Fri Aug 19 09:12:26 PDT 2005

Steve: I am not afraid of anyone teaching secular subjects. I do it myself, all the time.

My problem is with the government school monopoly, which creates a captive audience of impressionable children for (to quote JS Mill) "moulding" children in a mold designed (or evolved) by those who control the public school curriculum. With Mill, I believe that a free society promotes educational choice, not the moulding of children in the shape that government chooses.

Cheers, Rick Duncan

Steven Jamar <sjamar at law.howard.edu> wrote:
Doesn't seem to me to be anything nefarious about science journals refusing to publish things that are not good science.  Will they miss some things and get it wrong?  Oh yeah.  

But we know that ID is not good science.

It may be good philosophy or even good religion or politics.  But ID folk seem to have no trouble publishing books (or at least no more so than others), articles, news stories, editorials, and so on.

BTW, Rick, can we turn this around and ask what you and others are so afraid of when schools are teaching secular subjects without your version of god and religion infusing them?  Might not others be asking "what are they so afraid of" when evolution and science are attacked and teachers who teach it are prohibited from doing so and textbooks are changed to hide the controversy and remove the underpinning of modern biology from their pages?

What are they/you so afraid of?

Steve

On Aug 19, 2005, at 11:34 AM, Rick Duncan wrote:

I am not (nor do I have any desire to be) a scientist. But I do teach and write about free speech, and when I hear that the powers that be are trying to suppress a new idea, my 1A instincts are triggered and go into high gear.

Such is the case with ID--when I read about people trying to discredit ID scholars and trying to prevent ID scholarship from being published or taught, I ask myself "what are they so afraid of?" Why not have symposium issues of science journals devoted to debates between the best ID scholars and their critics? Why not welcome ID scholars on university faculties in the name of intellectual diversity and open-mindedness? Why the mockery and suppression rather than a fair and free debate? 

Methinks I need to spend more time in the classroom discussing the EC and the teaching oif ID. In Edwards, the Court struck down the Balanced Treatment Act only by first misinterpreting the law's stated secular purpose (academic freedom for students) and then declaring the law unconstitutional for want of a secular purpose.The Balanced Treatment Act was clumsy and poorly drafted. I think a properly drafted law (one that sets out a clear secular purpose of teaching the controversy for the benefit of students) concerning the teaching of ID is clearly permissible under the EC. Federal courts should not be acting as science curriculum committees for public schools. That is the job of state and local government. 

I think we will read and discuss Prof. Beckwith's article on Public Education, Religious Establishment, and the Challenge of Intelligent Design in my Con Law Seminar this Spring. Or does it violate the EC to teach about ID and the EC?

Rick Duncan

Frank: Do you have 15 reprints to spare?

Francis Beckwith <francis.beckwith at mac.com> wrote:
Ed:

I appreciate your comments. I admit I am a tad bit sensitive about this.  I do think thought that the way Forrest and Branch frame my appointment that it appears that we were part of some internal Baylor scheme to win the place over for ID.  As I noted in my letter, I applied to Baylor without knowing anyone there (except Dembski, and that was of no help, as you would probably guess given the Polanyi controversy).  For the record, the Dawsons did not technically object to my views on church and state, but rather, my work on ID and the law as well as my fellow status with Discovery.  My views on church and state were never inquired about. In fact, my views are fairly mainstream, and will be published in a couple of weeks in the next issue of Chapman Law Review, in an essay, “Gimme That Ole Time Separation: A Review Essay of Phi! llip Hamburger’s Separation of Church and State.”   My views on ID are spelled out in my letter.  (BTW, I was recently interviewed by the Ft. Worth
 Star-Telegram about “Justice Sunday II.” It will surprise many of you to know that even though I am a supporter of Judge Roberts, I came out against the event on theological grounds, that such events held in the pulpits of churches many corrupt the integrity of churches, which is not to say that individual church-goers or groups of them may not publicly support the President. My problem is with the use of the church and its pastoral authority to do this.  My comments were published last week in the Star-Telegram.)

I never even knew about the “Wedge strategy” until I received a personal letter by a member of the Dawson family in which she mentioned it (August 2003).  Having said that, in principle I see nothing wrong with helping to fund scholars who offer critiques of philosophical materialism (which i! s part of the Wedge document), since I believe that there are some very good arguments against it and these scholars need the help. I do not read it as some sort of blueprint for the institution of “theocracy,” as Forrest and Gross seem to suggest in their book. I read it as a noble attempt to provide support for scholarship that offers arguments for an understanding of human beings, culture, and law that better grounds our fundamental rights than materialism.  To put it another way, it is an attempt to defend in a sophisticated fashion the view of liberal democracy, religious liberty, subsidiary institutions, and natural rights offered by thinkers such as John Paul II.  

That’s all I’m going to say on this. It’s too painful to write about a time in my life that I would like to leave in the past.

Take care,
Frank

On 8/18/05 11:28 PM, "Ed Brayton" <stcynic at crystalauto.com> wrote:

Francis Beckwith wrote: 
Mark:

Having been the victim of such retaliation here at Baylor, I am skeptical of Ed's response (though I like Ed personally, and carr no ill will toward him).  Some of these people will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who even entertains the possibility that ID advocates are raising important questions that may have a place in public discourse including classrooms (such as in my case).   

Below is my letter that was published in the most recent issue of Academe, in reply to a misleading hit-piece penned by Barbara Forrest and Glenn Branch, two people who never even bothered to contact me before they wrote their piece. Yet, they claim to know intimate details of what occurred here at Baylor as well as the content of my writings.  

First, I want to thank Frank for sending me a link to the actual article written by Branch and Forrest, which can be found here <http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2005/05jf/05jfforr.htm> . But I also have to say that, given his description of the article as a "misleading hit piece", I expected much more. In fact, Frank is barely mentioned at all. The article is really about the Polanyi Center, an issue which has long been out in the open. I don't know if Frank objects to their descriptions of what went on in forming, and then disbanding, the Polanyi Center, but if he does he has not said so. After describing the events that led up to the founding of that center and the outraged reaction from the faculty and many Baylor alumni, Gross and Forrest say this about Frank:

"Baylor also hired two additional members of the Wedge, mechanical engineering professor Walter Bradley and philosopher Francis J. Beckwith. 

Shortly after his appointment as associate director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor, Beckwith w! as involved in a controversy of his own, when twenty-nine members of the Dawson family complained that Beckwith's views on church-state separation rendered him inappropriate for the post. Particularly troublesome to them was his affiliation with the Discovery Institute, the institutional home of intelligent design, which they described as promoting "the latest version of creationist theory."
That's the full text with regard to Frank, and near as I can tell there is nothing false in it at all. I suppose he might object to being characterized as a member of The Wedge, but given that he is listed as a Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, the braintrust behind the Wedge strategy, this is not an unreasonable assumption. It's possible, of course, that Frank is not an ID advocate but merely advocates that ID may constitutionally be taught in schools, but given his fellowship with the most prominent ID think tank, I don't think it's unreasona! ble for people to group him in with them (at least in some ways; I would not aim the same charges of dishonesty at Frank that I do at some of the other DI fellows, particularly John West and Jonathan Wells). I suppose also that Frank might be irritated at the mention of the controversy at Baylor when the Dawson family complained, but nothing said in regard to that was false and given that the ar!
 ticle is
 about the controversy at Baylor becoming home to so many ID advocates, it's certainly germane to the story. I don't think there is anything in that passage about him that justifies saying that Branch and Forrest "claim to know intimate details of" the events surrounding his hiring. They simply say list him as someone with ties to ID that was also hired. There is no detail claimed or given, as opposed to the much greater detail they put into the hiring of William Dembski and the resulting controversy. The comments about autocratic hiring were in relation to Dembski, not Frank. So whi! le I can understand why Frank would be mildly annoyed by the article, I don't think it's reasonable to call it a "hit piece" written by people who will "stop at nothing to destroy anyone" who advocates ID. Nowhere do they advocate that Frank's job be in any jeopardy at all, they only mention that the Dawson family wanted that at one point (and I personally think they were wrong to do so). And w!
 ith all
 due respect to Frank, who I really do like and respect very much, I think this is part of the reason why I tend not to take such claims of persecution all that seriously. When you examine what really happened, you often find that the claims don't really stand up to scrutiny and what was said was far more mild. To turn the above into an attempt to "destroy anyone" who advocates ID is to engage in extreme hyperbole, I think.

Ed Brayton

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Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner

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-- 

Prof. Steven D. Jamar                               vox:  202-806-8017

Howard University School of Law                     fax:  202-806-8567

2900 Van Ness Street NW                   mailto:sjamar at law.howard.edu

Washington, DC  20008   http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour. "

William Blake

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Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered."  --The Prisoner
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