I’d be curious to hear what readers think about this story, since I’m not sure what to think about it myself. Is the professor within his rights? Is it proper to charge religious discrimination against him and the school?

My own reactions in answer to Mr. Auster’s specific questions are as follows:

1) The professor may be within his moral rights because to give a recommendation is to put your own personal advocacy and reputation behind someone. That can’t be done coercively without being dishonest. If the professor would be just as within his moral rights to assert that he won’t give recommendations to whites, for example, then he is within his rights here. Making the policy publicly known may not be prudential, because anyone with a clue now knows that his recommendations don’t reflect an objective assessment of his students’ capabilities; and indeed it may even be an attempt on his part to “out” students who are at the top of the class and disagree with his religion. So it is the unfair act of an idiot, but in my experience it would not be the only unfair act of an idiot that is perfectly within a professor’s rights as a moral matter. Legality under current law may be a different story; see below.

2) The professor is in fact engaging in religious discrimination, since he has as much as expressly said that unless one professes the religion of scientism (not to be confused with “demonstrates scientific knowledge”) one will not get a recommendation.

3) As to whether it is proper to charge him with religious discrimination as a legal matter, it probably is. If a professor who published a policy saying “I will not give a recommendation to any student who does not assent to the Nicene Creed” could be so charged than this professor could also be so charged. But if I were a professor of theology I might withold a recommendation from a student who wasn’t a Catholic in full communion with Rome, and it might be interesting to see where the regime of enforced religious indifferentism would take this line of reasoning.

Significant parts of science have clearly become religion: see the classic _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ by Thomas Kuhn and more recently _Biology as Ideology_ by leading Harvard geneticist R. C. Lewontin. Lehigh University biology professor Michael Behe’s _Darwin’s Black Box_ is required reading here; and on the general Richard Dawkins silliness that says you can’t be religious and scientific at the same time, _The Science of God_ by Schroeder is a classic. The religious adherents of scientism-as-religion, this professor being an example, understand science about as well as Ozzy Osbourne understands parenting.

It’s not completely obvious what the prof is demanding. He might be saying you can’t be a literal 6 days creationist who simply rejects the fossil record. On the other hand he might be saying you have to believe that natural selection is the only acceptable explanation of the evidence, ultimately because only mechanistic explanations are legitimate. The two demands are very different.

As Matt points out a letter of recommendation is a personal judgement, so I think a lawsuit would be out of place here in either case. If the professor thinks a commitment to mechanistic explanations helps make a good scientist he might be wrong but he’s not being crazy. But then I think that most lawsuits for religious etc. discrimination are out of place because they require us to act as if things don’t matter that commonly do matter.

One question of course is whether the professor’s conduct should be viewed as a personal judgement or part of an overall array of attitudes and conduct biased in favor of liberalism, scientific materialism or whatnot. What would happen for example if another professor wouldn’t give recommendations to students who had no doubts about neo-Darwinian orthodoxy?

In general I think it’s a bad idea to resolve these things by lawsuits even though the other side does it. It shouldn’t be lawyers who control academic understandings of what’s reasonable and what isn’t. Here’s another example:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30781

A high school principal wouldn’t let a kid wear a pro-life T shirt on the grounds that it was like wearing a swastika but reversed himself under threat of legal action. It seems to me that it would be better to try to get a new principal than accept the idea that students have a constitutional free-expression right at school to be walking bumper stickers.

“It seems to me that it would be better to try to get a new principal than accept the idea that students have a constitutional free-expression right at school to be walking bumper stickers.”

Aah, but pupils DO have the constitutional right to be walking bumper stickers. Under operative court rulings, the only permissible basis for schools to restrict student dress is if it is deemed likely to be “disruptive” of the learning process. So, for example, the usual T-shirts with photos and slogans would not be disruptive, whereas a T-shirt with fighting words would be disruptive.

In short, schools do not now have the authority to maintain a general environment that they consider proper to the nature of a school; they only have the authority to restrict outright disruptive behavior.

And, to return to Mr. Kalb’s point, even conservatives do not challenge this system of permissiveness, or in any case they have long given up attempting to do so. Instead, they accept the permissive system and seek to secure their own rights within it.

I know all about Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), I just don’t approve. The ruling was ridiculous then and it’s ridiculous now.

I think the Liberty Legal Institute has a weak case. A professor has a right to expect proficiency in the discipline he teaches before he gives a favorable recommendation. If some factor keeps a student from demonstrating proficiency as defined by the prof, the student must accept that he will be evaluated accordingly when recommendation time rolls around. If, let’s say, “Darwinian Biology” is the sticking point because the professor deems evolution an essential part, let the student choose some other course of study or let him seek a recommendation from some other prof. The student is also free to set up, together with like-minded folk, his own college where he can study, let’s say, “Non-Darwinian Biology.” After he graduates with his diploma in “Non-Darwinian Biology,” however, he can’t complain if job offers are few and far between.

Academic disciplines should not have to accommodate themselves to religion.

That being said, this subject is a difficult one because, for example, what about the case where a medical school requires a Catholic or Orthodox-Jewish obstetrics student to perform an abortion? I haven’t thought about this topic from all angles, but as with so many other questions, ordinary common sense and respect for others can go a long way toward solving many of the “extreme-case scenarios” such as this one: don’t needlessly require someone to do an act which for him is an abomination — often there are reasonable ways to work around these things to everyone’s satisfaction.

I don’t see a conflict between the Bible and evolution. Being created in God’s image refers to our soul, not our body. While the body (which includes our brain and the inherited portion of our IQ) evolved as Darwinists say, our soul (which no one can define scientifically) was directly created by God. The evolutionists doubtless see that this interpretation would solve the problem but they like getting the creationists’ goat too much to propose it as the long-sought solution.

Opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution is definitely the wrong approach on the part of believing Christians and Jews. The future of their religions does not lie along that path, but along the path of reconciling their religions with all known science, as St. Thomas Aquinas brought Christianity into line with Aristotle. And yes, for those who are wondering, Christianity and Judaism can be reconciled with all currently known science, including quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, relativity, AND (gasp!!! … ) the Darwinian theory of evolution, wherewith the following passage from Scripture presents absolutely no contradiction:

In St. Jerome’s Latin:

“[Dixit Deus,] Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram. … Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam; ad imaginem Dei creavit illum; masculum et feminam creavit eos.”  (Genesis 1, 26-27)

In John Wycliffe’s English translation:

“[God said,] Make we man to our image and likeness …  And God made of naught a man to his image and likeness; God made of naught a man, to the image of God; God made of naught them, male and female.”  [In verse 27 here, of course, Wycliffe is simply translating the Latin verb for “to create” into English as “to make out of nothing.”] (Genesis 1, 26-27;  http://www.sbible.boom.ru/wyc/gen1.htm )

Suppose we have a religion that demands that the earth be considered the center of the universe and that only such a geometry was consonant with that religion. Epi-cycles and all.

Could you get a degree in astrophysics and still believe in your religion?

Would it be religious discrimination to deny a degree to an earth centered astrophysics believer?

M. Simon:
“Could you get a degree in astrophysics and still believe in your religion?”

Why not? Einstein understood quantum physics really well but he never believed in it. A degree represents competence with a body of knowledge not some sort of religious assent.

“Would it be religious discrimination to deny a degree to an earth centered astrophysics believer?”

Yes; but as I’m not categorically against religious discrimination that doesn’t influence the question for me.