The Discovery Institute's Martyr Of The Year, Guillermo Gonzalez, was denied tenure at Iowa State University last year and lost his appeals all the way up the chain to the Iowa Board of Regents. The pseudodocumentary Expelled (directed by Mark "theistic evolutionists 'would have confused the film unnecessarily'" Mathis) chronicles Gonzalez' pitiful tale of woe unencumbered by facts. Gonzalez (and by extension, the DI) had access to the details of the case. Are they afraid of sharing those facts?
You see, during the 7 years he was at ISU, Gonzalez received periodic updates from his department, college and university tenure committees regarding his progress toward tenure. Those updates would either show he was making acceptable progress, or would point out his deficiencies and propose measurable remedies.
If those updates showed that Gonzalez was on the right track, why aren't he and the DI trumpeting these reports to the press?
Otherwise, we have to assume that Gonzalez knew all along that he was not making progress toward tenure, and that he chose not to address his deficiencies in favor of becoming the DI's Martyr Of The Year.
From other reports, after ISU hired Gonzalez he failed to conduct new research, only had one graduate student defend a dissertation, and received a scanty $22,661 in outside funding during that 7-year period . . . and that was in frantic, last-minute funding from the Discovery Institute. This, in an astronomy department at a Tier I research university where colleagues brought in an average of $1,300,000 during their tenure track time; 4 of the last 12 who sought tenure in that same department didn't get it. (Do we hear any of them hollering "help, help, I'm being repressed expelled?")
Compare Gonzalez' track record to a professor I know in a related field at a Tier II teaching university . . .
During the past year, this professor had well over $4,000,000 in projects funded, had 10 papers published or under review, won a couple of awards for outstanding teaching, and had at least one graduate student complete their degree. Yes, during the past one year. If Gonzalez had achieved this much during his seven years at ISU, the DI wouldn't have their Martyr Of The Year.
Gonzalez' future is assured as a new professor of physics at Grove City College in PA, an institution which proudly bills itself as independent of pesky federal regulations such as Title IX; as a result, its students are not eligible for federal aid. According to the college, "Intellectual inquiry remains open to the questions religion raises and affirms the answers Christianity offers." (The term "evolution" only appears in the pdf course description for one upper-level biology course taught at that college.) The college has recently acquired a telescope with the announced intent to "work with area public schools as well as other colleges and universities on educational and research projects." In other words, look out for an incursion by Gonzalez & his fans into the REAL science of area classrooms.
Gonzalez and the DI could easily release his intact periodic evaluations to the public to support their assertions that he was unjustifiably denied tenure. Otherwise, his martyrdom has as much credibility as Nixon's "I am not a crook."
posted by Cheryl Shepherd-Adams
