Denialism Blog

Some followup from the earlier post:

If Gonzalez thinks ID is science, and not religion, he may have an even harder time arguing that there is discrimination here. Professors, rightly so, have freedom of religion and can believe whatever they want in their personal lives. However, if he thinks ID is science, I don’t think it is discrimination to count that fact against a candidate, just as it wouldn’t be discrimination to give a student a lower grade for having a wrong answer on a test. Writing a book about DI applied to astronomy would be exactly the type of extramural statement that would “demonstrate[] the faculty member’s unfitness for his or her position.”

Final thought: It’s really impossible to say whether this is an academic freedom issue without knowing the process and substance of the ISU tenure review. Perhaps more details will emerge on the institutional appeal, but chances are, the decision of the committee will be upheld. Gonzalez could choose to sue, but in the process, Gonzalez would bear the burden of proving that 1) protected speech was involved (easier to prove if ID is a religion), 2) ISU impermissibly discriminated based on this protected speech, and 3) Gonzalez’s interest in expressing the ID hypothesis outweighs the institution’s interests. In the discovery process, Gonzalez would have to open his files and emails to the institution’s counsel, who would pick through it and may find embarrassing communications with the ID groups.

(In fact, if any of you are real jerks and want to have fun with this guy, I’d suggest filing a freedom of information act request under Iowa state law for Gonzalez’s emails with outside DI groups. His email may be exempt (I don’t know the particulars of Iowa law; in other states, requestors have obtained professors’ email), but it’s a fairly simple and low-cost intervention.)

And even if Gonzalez wins his case, what does it get him? A court-ordered appointment in a department where he’s not welcome! Generally, if you’ve lost your tenure case, it’s best to move on quietly and try again at another school. No other school will want to hire you if you make a federal case of it.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t know much of anything about this controversy surrounding Guillermo Gonzalez, but I do know a fair amount about academic freedom. I wrote an article several years ago on legal protection for professors’ speech. Legally, professors have the same rights as ordinary public employees, and so only a small spectrum of academic speech is protected by the First Amendment. As a result, many institutions have been successful when they decided to fire a professor based on their expression.

Of course, most of these disputes never make it to the courts. Internal rules at institutions, both substantive and procedural, guided by principles adopted by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and norms that are tolerant of professors’ activities are the real law of academic freedom. Legally, academic freedom is too narrow for my taste; in the setting of the institution, it’s much broader, but not limitless. If it had no limits, no institution could made tenure decisions without accusations of discrimination.

It’s worth considering AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure in thinking about these situations. AAUP, a strong advocate of free expression, recognizes that academic freedom is contextual, and that it has its limits. Specifically, note how AAUP’s statement provides the greatest shield in contexts where the professor is speaking in her area of expertise, and less protection for comment on unrelated (“extramural”) matters:

Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.

[…]

College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

Interpretative comments to this second paragraph note that an institution can fire a professor for extramural activities under certain circumstances and through exercising adequate due process:

If the administration of a college or university feels that a teacher has not observed the admonitions of paragraph 3 (quoted above) of the section on Academic Freedom and believes that the extramural utterances of the teacher have been such as to raise grave doubts concerning the teacher’s fitness for his or her position, it may proceed to file charges…In pressing such charges, the administration should remember that teachers are citizens and should be accorded the freedom of citizens. In such cases the administration must assume full responsibility, and the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges are free to make an investigation.

However, circumstances where extramural activities can result in dismissal are rare:

Paragraph 3 of the section on Academic Freedom in the 1940 Statement should also be interpreted in keeping with the 1964 Committee A Statement on Extramural Utterances, which states inter alia: “The controlling principle is that a faculty member’s expression of opinion as a citizen cannot constitute grounds for dismissal unless it clearly demonstrates the faculty member’s unfitness for his or her position. Extramural utterances rarely bear upon the faculty member’s fitness for the position. Moreover, a final decision should take into account the faculty member’s entire record as a teacher and scholar.”

Some other observations:

These standards are usually viewed from the perspective of an institution trying to discipline a professor for political activities; a different set of procedural standards are used to evaluate nonreappointment, which is apparently what happened to Gonzalez. Academic freedom is part of reappointment decisions, of course, but the institution still can evaluate intramural work and determine for itself whether it is worthy of tenure.

People with good reasoning skills don’t fall for stupid things like spun arguments and advertising.

I always suspected that if we taught a basic reasoning class in public schools in which kids were taught about logic and critical thinking it might lead to a decrease in the efficacy of advertisement.

Reasoning abilities are influenced by intelligence and socioeconomic status, but they are also skills that can be learned and honed with practice, says a “decision scientist” at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Many people are affected by the way that information is framed, marketed or spun, as in advertisements, thereby exhibiting poor decision-making skills, says Wändi Bruine de Bruin. But people with strong reasoning skills make the same choices no matter how information is presented to them.

For example, if a brand of beef is advertised as being 95 percent lean, a person should be equally likely to buy it as if it is advertised as being 5 percent fat, she said.

Her research, set to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows a scientific link between people who are their own worst enemies and reasoning skills, although it is still unclear if the thinking problem causes the social incompetencies.

…

Bruine de Bruin’s study also looked at how different factors, such as intelligence and socioeconomic status, affect decision-making. She was surprised to find that, although these variables affect how well a person reasons, they don’t explain it entirely-reasoning appears to be a separate skill.

In other words, “smart people don’t automatically make good decisions,” said Eric Johnson, a professor at the Columbia Business School, who was not involved in the study.

If reasoning is a distinct skill, then a big question is whether it can be taught. Bruine de Bruin hopes to answer this question by teaching people better reasoning skills and following them over time to see how their lives change.

I can’t wait to see the outcome of the proposed trial, will it further substantiate the poor-reasoning = believing advertisement hypothesis? Also, I’d love to hear what the cognitive neuro people think of the study.