Physics prof a victim of ‘double standard’
Ball State University president Jo Ann Gora stated that to allow physics professor Eric Hedin to present intelligent design as a valid scientific theory would “violate the academic integrity” of the course Hedin was teaching.
In a statement to Ball State faculty and staff, Gora said: “Intelligent design is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory .... To allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.”
According to WORLD Magazine, Gora was responding to pressure from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which had been alerted to Hedin’s material by a University of Chicago ecology professor.
Casey Luskin, an attorney who works as a research coordinator at the Discovery Institute, says the university appears to violate its own policy in the way it has handled the situation.
“If you look at Ball State’s faculty guidelines, it has some very strong protections for academic freedom,” he tells OneNewsNow.