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Today The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about astronomy professor and intelligent design advocate Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure rejection at Iowa State University. Opening line of the article:

At first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination.

I’m surprised by this position and the word “discrimination” is inflammatory. Legally, of course, discrimination is unlawful. Candidates for tenure can’t be denied based on race or gender, for example, under federal law. Iowa State’s own faculty handbook makes it clear that it doesn’t discriminate based on race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Vietnam Era Veteran. But can someone be denied tenure based on advocacy for intelligent design? Is that discrimination against religion, or discrimination against ideas that fall outside the merits under review?

Conveniently, proponents of intelligent design have made it clear that intelligent design is science, not religion. So even the IDers aren’t claiming religious discrimination. So what does the Chronicle mean by “discrimination”? The article goes on to independently evaluate Gonzalez’s publication record, and finds it above-average in his department. On these lines, Gonzalez himself “‘is convinced [he’s] satisfied the departmental requirements for tenure’” and is appealing his tenure denial. Then the Chronicle reports that Gonzalez does not have any grants from NASA or NSF, the two most important granting agencies in his field, and that he has done little to distinguish his scholarship since arrival at Iowa State. Of course, all of these factors are important, and were certainly evaluated in Gonzalez’s tenure review. But what the Chronicle fails—egregiously, in my opinion, for a journal on higher education—to explain is that tenure is never guaranteed, not even for faculty who show a decent accumulation of professional merits.

Applying for tenure is not like applying for an apartment. You may be rejected for many reasons, including that your standing in your academic field is not well-respected. From the Iowa State handbook’s section on tenure and promotion:

Evaluation of a faculty member for promotion and/or tenure is based primarily on evidence of scholarship… Scholarship is the umbrella under which research falls, but research is just one form of scholarship. Scholarship also encompasses creative activities, teaching, and extension/professional practice.

See? There’s a broad description of the type of scholarship needed to earn tenure. If Iowa State denied Gonzalez tenure because of his book advocating intelligent design, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, then they were legally justified in doing so. A whole lotta blogs have already addressed the this-is-how-tenure-works issue; see here, here, and here for examples. The Chronicle should be chastened for suggesting discrimination and providing such a misguided explanation of the tenure process.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 3:01 pm and is filed under News and reports, ID / creationism, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.