Night of Narcissus

.....I'll have a full report (on the SOCCCD board meeting) some time tomorrow. Right now, I'm beat, and I've gotta get to bed.
.....BRIEFLY: Wagner is the new board president, and boy was he efficient. It was the first meeting to end early in years, I think. I don't think it was early enough for Don, though.
.....Dave Lang seemed to think that his stepping down (from the board presidency) was momentous—epoch-shattering even. He hoped, he said, that "history" would treat him well.
.....Well, actually, history doesn't give a shit about little Davey Doo. But if it did give a shit, it would judge him to be a mere quisling and jackass. ATEP is falling apart; the colleges' accreditation is fouled up; the district is seriously behind the 8-ball because of Davey's boy Mathur's 50% screw-up; and morale still sucks.
.....Wow, what a legacy. Wagner got a laugh when he said that Lang left some big shoes--and a hot seat.


.....After accepting about seventeen prizes, Lang commenced throwing darts at Chriss Street, the OC Treasurer. Those are some seriously sour grapes. (Lang wanted the job that Street got. That's what Lang is all about. That's what he's still about.)
.....The two VPIs gave an oddly incoherent report about "language and the flat world." Still don't know what that was all about. English, it turns out, is the "killer language." But is that a good thing or a bad thing? The report seemed pretty unclear about that. Should we stop offering foreign languages? Maybe. Maybe not.
.....Jay, Milchiker, and Padberg were all over Mathur, making him look like an asshole. So I'd have to say that, all in all, it was a damned good night.
.....More tomorrow.

Anti-evolutionists ecstatic—and inconsistent

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Academic Freedom and Evolution:

.....Opponents of evolution have of late been trying to frame their arguments as being about academic freedom and free expression. As a result, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute is ecstatic over the recent discovery of e-mail messages among professors at Iowa State University criticizing the views of a pro-intelligent design professor whose tenure bid was denied. “Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez and Academic Persecution” is the title of the institute’s Web page about the case. (Iowa State says that the professor’s views on evolution were not a decisive factor in his dismissal.)
.....The Christian Law Association, meanwhile, frames a lawsuit against the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution by a fired postdoc who does not believe in evolution or want to do work related to evolution as a matter of his being punished for his beliefs.
.....But the groups arguing for freedom of expression of evolution deniers have not been heard agitating for the rights of Richard Colling. He’s a professor at Olivet Nazarene University, in Illinois, who has been barred from teaching general biology or having his book taught at the university that is his alma mater and the place where he has taught for 27 years. A biologist who is very much a person of faith, these punishments followed anger by some religious supporters of the college over the publication of his book in which he argues that it is possible to believe in God and still accept evolution.
.....“I thought I was doing the church a service,” Colling said in an interview. He believes that religious colleges that frame science and faith as incompatible will lose some of their best minds, and that his work has been devoted to helping faithful students maintain their religious devotion while learning science as science should be taught.
.....“You can’t check your intellect at the door of the church,” he said. Colling has tenure and he hasn’t been fired or had his pay cut — which university officials have told the American Association of University Professors means that Olivet Nazarene can’t be accused of violating his academic freedom.
.....Actually, the AAUP tends to believe that having courses taken away (without due process) and having your books banned generally is a violation of academic freedom, and the association is currently investigating the case while pushing (without success) for the sanctions against Colling to be lifted. The case is in many ways notable because the AAUP gives religious colleges considerable leeway in enforcing religious beliefs and is getting involved here only because of evidence that the university is violating its own stated principles. At the same time, the AAUP says that proponents of intelligent design are not necessarily correctly citing the principles of academic freedom in some other prominent cases attracting attention….

• Did you know that Trustee Tom Fuentes is involved in the publishing of books that attack evolution? Imagine that! See Fuenteian titles.