The Intolerance Of Academia Creating Modern-Day “Galileos”

Let me begin by reproducing a short-but-powerful article:

University of Vermont President Engages in Double-Speak and Double-Standards When It Comes to Disavowing Pro-Intelligent Design Commencement Speaker Ben Stein

“In today’s academic double-speak, invitations to far-left revolutionaries and race-baiting Congressmen are apparently ‘inclusive,’ while inviting a speaker who favors free speech on the issue of evolution is beyond the pale,” says Discovery Institute’s John West. today’s academic double-speak, invitations to far-left revolutionaries and race-baiting Congressmen are apparently ‘inclusive,’ while inviting a speaker who favors free speech on the issue of evolution is beyond the pale,” says Discovery Institute’s John West.

Apologizing for inviting gifted actor and writer Ben Stein to be commencement speaker at the University of Vermont, University President Daniel Fogel has highlighted what he called Stein’s “highly controversial views” about “evolutionary theory, intelligent design, and the role of science in the Holocaust.” Fogel went on to express penance for inviting Stein by claiming that “Commencement should be a time when our community gathers inclusively, not divisively.”

I guess inclusivity is why in 2007 Fogel chose as commencement speaker Democratic congressman John Lewis, who in 1995 compared Republicans to Nazis (last year Lewis compared John McCain and Sarah Palin to segregationist George Wallace and racist church bombers). Or perhaps President Fogel’s concern for inclusivity is better demonstrated by his 2006 commencement speaker, Gustavo Esteva, a far-left activist and advisor to the radical Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico.

Of course, it’s being reported that Stein withdrew as the university’s commencement speaker “voluntarily.” Voluntarily, that is, after he received a phone call from Dr. Fogel likely making clear he was no longer welcome. Given Fogel’s subsequent disavowal of inviting Stein in the first place, it’s pretty obvious that his phone call was designed to elicit Stein’s withdrawal. Fogel’s spinelessness in the face of the Darwinist thought-police is equaled only by his tone-deafness to his own rhetoric. After disowning Stein, Fogel has continued to insist: “I am firm in my belief—profoundly held—that, as a university, UVM is and must remain a marketplace of ideas.” Fogel’s ideal marketplace must have a lot of empty shelves.

Simply follow the links to see just how blatantly intellectually hypocritical “academia” has become.

It is perfectly okay to feature a bigot like John Lewis, who has repeatedly used racist inflammatory propaganda against Republicans to bring down his opponents with rhetoric over reason.

It’s okay to feature the spokesman of a violent terrorist organization which is responsible for countless murders and terrorist kidnappings.

It’s okay for a prestigious university such as Columbia to feature holocaust-denying totalitarian Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who calls Jews a “cancer” and who has repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel.

All in the name of “diversity” and “freedom of expression.”

But someone like Ben Stein, who came out with a documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, can literally BE expelled (thus validating the whole point of the movie) by the very same self-righteous hypocrites who invite speakers who openly espouse bigotry and even the most unimaginable violence.

And what is the thoughtcrime that Ben Stein is guilty of? He presented and defended in his movie the views and situations of scientists who have been relentlessly persecuted by university administrators for having anything whatsoever to do with the Intelligent Design movement (which presents the possibility that a higher intelligence is necessary to explain the complexity of the universe).

Which, by the way, people overwhelmingly believe. Fully 85% believe that an Intelligent Designer – specifically God – was directly involved in the process of creating human beings.

As a child, I read, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a tale about believing foolishness just because the privileged and powerful were gullible enough to believe foolishness. A mischievous pair of weavers convince the emperor and the ruling elite that they have thread so magnificent that it has the power of being visible only to those who are wise enough to see it. No one sees the alleged garments, of course, but everyone is afraid to admit that they aren’t “wise” enough to see.

Finally, in the dramatic conclusion, the emperor parades his new clothes for all his subjects to see. Everyone marvels at the spectacular design – until a child points and laughs at the sight of the emperor parading around in his underwear.

In the story, the people begin to murmur to one another, “He really isn’t wearing any clothes!” And the whole farce immediately begins to unravel.

But in the modern version, the child is immediately silenced and thrown into a hole somewhere, and the parade continues on and on and on. And anyone in the future who speaks out gets to join that kid.

This isn’t a matter of whether intelligent design (which Americans overwhelmingly believe in, by the way) is “true” or not. If that is the standard by which Ben Stein is being “expelled,” then we must conclude that American academia must therefore embrace as “true” the views of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (you know, denying the Holocaust, favoring a religious-fascist totalitarian state, working toward the extermination of Israel, and so on). This is a matter of freedom of expression, of allowing and tolerating ideas in the name of diversity, of freedom of thought, of engaging in open and honest debate, and of basic intellectual honesty.

Are universities so terrified by Intelligent Design that they must single out and persecute every academic who has any connection to the position? Or even more terrifying, have our universities – once celebrated for their diversity of thought – themselves become fascist organizations devoted to ideological propaganda and groupthink?

106 of the first 108 colleges in America were founded as religious Christian institutions. It was these colleges that shaped the minds of our founding fathers, who in turn produced the foundational principles and values that enabled this country to become the greatest nation in the history of the world. And in a similar but even earlier vein, the first universities in Western Europe were founded under the aegis of the Church, and emerged from the monasteries. The scientific method itself emerged from the mind of a publicly-confessed Christian: Roger Bacon joined the Franciscan Order in 1247, and argued that a more accurate experimental knowledge of nature would be of great value in confirming the Christian faith. Sir Isaac Newton – almost universally regarded as the greatest scientist who ever lived – actually wrote more on Christian theology than he did on science. And the founders of every single major branch of science were confessing Christians.

The fact is that science arose only once in human history – and it arose in Europe under the civilization then called “Christendom.” Christianity provided the essential worldview foundations necessary and essential for the birth of science: The earth was not the illusion of Eastern religion and philosophy, but a physical, tangible place. And the material world was not the corrupt and lower realm of Greek religion and philosophy, but God created it and called it “good.” And God endowed the capstone of His creation, man – as the bearer of His divine image – with the reason, the curiosity, and the desire to know the truth. And God – who made the universe and the earth for man – made man the caretaker of His creation. And thus the great astronomer Johannes Kepler described his project as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

And yet today, amazingly, against all history and against all truth, we are assured that science must be officially and completely atheist in order to have any legitimacy, and that God – or even the possibility of God (or even a far more intellectually neutral “Intelligent Designer” – must be purged from every element and aspect of “science.”

Tragically, genuine science has been perverted and undermined by ideologues who are attempting to impose their atheistic worldviews upon society and remake the scientific enterprise in their own image. And in their efforts, they are using the very worst and most oppressive of tactics to destroy, intimidate, and silence their opposition. Such academics cite Galileo (another confessing Christian, by the way) and the largely propagandized tale of his persecution by the Church as an example of religion being hostile to science. But how is their own behavior any different from the worst intellectual intolerance exhibited by the Church? In their overarching zeal to persecute and expunge any meaningful sign of God from the ranks of academia, they have themselves become even worse than their caricature of religion which they so despise.

Update April 20, 2009: a new example of liberal pseudo-intellectual tyranny:

Expulsion threatened over prayer for sick teacher
Students’ lawsuit against California college moves forward
April 09, 2009

Attorneys representing two students who have been threatened with expulsion by a California college because of a prayer for a sick professor say a federal judge has refused the school’s efforts to have the case dismissed.

“It’s outrageous,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which is working on the case brought by students Kandy Kyriacou and Ojoma Omaga of the College of Alameda in Alameda, near Oakland.

“Since when does praying for a sick teacher to get well – with her consent – earn a suspension? This is not just a constitutional violation; it is a complete lack of common sense. These students were not looking for a fight, but since the school to this day insists that it can expel them if they pray again, we will have to resolve it in federal court,” he said.

The public-interest legal group said the decision by a San Francisco federal judge means the lawsuit will move forward.

The case was prompted by an incident just before Christmas in 2007 in which the students went to deliver a Christmas gift to a professor.

“Kandy found the instructor alone in her shared office,” according to Pacific Justice. “When the instructor indicated she was ill, Kandy offered to pray for her. The instructor bowed her head, and Kandy began to pray – until she was interrupted by another faculty member, Derek Piazza, who walked in and said, ‘You can’t be doing that in here!’ Kandy quickly left and rejoined her friend and fellow student, Ojoma Omaga. Piazza followed Kandy outside and repeated his rebuke.”

While the students reported they were surprised by the teacher’s aggressive behavior, they were stunned when, days later, they both got letters notifying them of the college’s retroactive “intent to suspend” plan.

The letters, however, provided no facts on which to make such a threat, listing only vague references to “disruptive or insulting behavior” and “willful disobedience.”

School officials informed them during administrative hearings that Kyriacou was being disciplined for praying for the sick teacher. Omaga was not part of the prayer, and her offense apparently was that she was with Kyriacou a short time later.

The lawsuit was filed when the college refused to rescind the letters, leaving the students in peril of suspension or expulsion for any other offense, such as praying on campus. The decision from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston turned back college attempts to deny the students a hearing on their complaint.

“To this day, the College of Alameda has never provided a real explanation for its threats to expel these students,” said Steven N.H. Wood of the Walnut Creek firm of Bergquist, Wood and Anderson, which is working with Pacific Justice on the case.

“But it has disciplined them for non-disruptive, private prayer between consenting adults. We will not stand by and let a college trample these fundamental rights,” he said.

Said Dacus, “It is alarming that a publicly-funded college would seek to suspend and expel students for praying on campus, then dig in its heels to defend an untenable, unconstitutional position. We are encouraged that the federal court has given us the green light to pursue this case.”

Let’s just realize one thing: liberal intellectuals are all in favor of discriminating against any speech with which they do not agree.  They are every bit as intolerant as the straw men they routinely create to demonize people of faith.