As a graduate of a Methodist university (Texas Wesleyan University), I am saddened by the apparent "reputation suicide" being currently carried out by the administration of a sister school - Southern Methodist University (SMU).
Unlike many other religious schools, Methodist colleges and universities have generally established a reputation for open-minded academic excellence. While they are supported by a church monetarily, they generally have kept their religious beliefs out of the science and social science departments and shown a respect for academic freedom.
But evidently, an excellent academic reputation is not important to the current administration. They seem to prefer wallowing in the mud with the right-wing religious nuts.
It was bad enough that they aligned themselves politically with the failed presidency of George Bush, by wanting to house the Bush Library and it's neo-con policy institute. SMU would be a major producer of neo-con myth-making. Good-bye to the social sciences reputation!
Now they have gone even further, and launched an attack on their own science departments. To the dismay of their science professors and teachers, they are hosting a conference on "intelligent design". These are the people who would have you believe that evolution is only an unproven theory, that the earth is only about six thousand years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together. Good-bye to the science reputation!
Just as the neo-con myth-making is destroying conservatism, the creationists wish to destroy science. Both are simply propaganda efforts by right-wing nuts. They want to destroy centuries of human scientific and social progress, and impose their own weird religious beliefs.
Maybe it is time to replace the school's administration, before they can complete their reputation suicide. The alternative is too sad to contemplate.
This is a horrible nightmare. I learned to think during my years at SMU, and I was there for over a year before it even occurred to me that it was a school with a religious affiliation, much less a Christianist perspective. Most of my friends were skeptics or Jews or both.
ReplyDeleteIf the Intelligent Design people weren't intellectually dishonest, I'd have no problem with it. They could make their case in the marketplace of ideas like everyone else. But they are dishonest: just watch The Privileged Planet, and you will see that.
Of course, they can't make their case honestly-- they'd disappear faster than you could say Pons and Fleischmann.