The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1993
Stephen C. Meyer
When most of us think of the controversy over evolution in the
public schools, we are likely to think of fundamentalists pulling
teachers from their classrooms and placing them in the dock. Images
from the infamous Scopes "monkey" trial of 1925 come
to mind. Unfortunately, intolerance of this sort has shown itself
in California in the 1990s as a result of students complaining
about a biology instructor. Unlike the original Scopes case, however,
thiscase involves a distinguished biology professor at a major
university -- indeed, an acknowledged expert on evolutionary theory.
Also unlike Scopes, the teacher was forbidden to teach his course
not because he taught evolutionary theory (which he did) but because
he offered a critical assessment of it.
The controversy first emerged last fall after Dean Kenyon, a biology
professor at San Francisco State University, was ordered not to
teach "creationism" by John Hafernik, the chairman of
his biology department. Mr. Kenyon, who included three lectures
in biological origins in his introductory course, had for many
years made a practice of exposing students to both evolutionary
theory and evidence uncongenial to it. He also discussed the philosophical
controversies raised by the issue and his own view that living
systems display evidence of intelligent design -- a view not incompatible
with some forms of evolutionary thinking.
Mr. Hafernik accused Mr. Kenyon of teaching what he characterized
as biblical creationism and ordered him to stop.
After Mr. Hafernik's decree, Mr. Kenyon asked for clarification.
He wrote the dean, Jim Kelley, asking what exactly he could not
discuss. Was he "forbidden to mention to students that there
are important disputes among scientists about whether or not chemical
evolution could have taken place on the ancient earth?"
Mr. Kelley replied by insisting that Mr. Kenyon "teach the
dominant scientific view," not the religious view of "special
creation on a young earth." Mr. Kenyon replied again (I paraphrase):
I do teach the dominant view. But I also discuss problems with
the dominant view and that some biologists see evidence of intelligent
design.
He received no reply. Instead, he was yanked from teaching introductory
biology and reassigned to labs.
There are several disturbing aspects to this story:
First, Mr. Kenyon is an authority on chemical evolutionary theory
and the scientific study of the origin of life. He has a Ph.D.
in biophysics from Stanford and is the co-author of a seminal
theoretical work titled "Biochemical Predestination"
(1969). The
book articulated what was arguably the most plausible evolutionary
account of how a living cell might have organized itself from
chemicals in the "primordial soup."
Mr. Kenyon's subsequent work resulted in numerous scientific publications
on the origin-of-life problem. But by the late 1970s, Mr. Kenyon
began to question some of his own earlier ideas. Experiments (some
performed by Mr. Kenyon himself) increasingly contradicted the
dominant view in his field. Laboratory work suggested that simple
chemicals do not arrange themselves into complex information-bearing
molecules such as DNA -- without, that is, "guidance"
from human experimenters.
To Mr. Kenyon and others, such results raised important questions
about how "naturalistic" the origin of life really was.
If undirected chemical processes cannot produce the coded strands
of information found in even the simplest cells, could perhaps
a directing intelligence have played a role? By the 1980s, Mr.
Kenyon had adopted the second view.
That a man of Mr. Kenyon's stature should now be forced to lobby
for the right to teach introductory biology, whatever his current
view of origins, is absurdly comic. Mr. Kenyon knows perhaps as
much as anyone in the world about a problem that has stymied an
entire generation of research scientists. Yet he now finds that
he may not report the negative results of research or give students
his candid assessment of it.
What is more, the simplistic labeling of Mr. Kenyon's statements
as "religion" and the strictly materialistic view as
"scientific" seems entirely unwarranted, especially
given the philosophical overtones of much origins theory. Biology
texts routinely recapitulate Darwinian arguments against intelligent
design. Yet if arguments against intelligent design are philosophically
neutral and strictly scientific, why are Mr. Kenyon's arguments
for intelligent design inherently unscientific and religiously
charged? In seeking the best explanation for evidence, Mr. Kenyon
has employed the same method of reasoning as before he changed
his view. His conclusions, not his methods, have changed.
The problem is that in biological origins theory, dominant players
currently insist on a rigidly materialistic mode of explanation
-- even when, as Mr. Kenyon maintains, explanation of the evidence
requires more than the limited powers of brute matter. Such intellectual
strictures reflect the very essence of political correctness:
the suppression of critical discourse by enforced rules of thought.
Fortunately, San Francisco State University's Academic Freedom
Committee has come to a similar conclusion, ruling decisively
this summer in Mr. Kenyon's favor. The committee determined that,
according to university guidelines, a clear breach of academic
freedom had occurred.
Apparently, however, Mr. Hafernik and Mr. Kelley disagree. Mr.
Hafernik has emphatically rejected the committee's recommendation
to reinstate Mr. Kenyon, citing his own freedom to determine scientifically
appropriate curriculum. In response, the American Association
of University Professors informed the university last month that
they expect Mr. Kenyon's mistreatment to be rectified. Meanwhile,
as SFSU considers its response, a worldclass scientist waits --
yet another casualty of America's peculiar academic fundamentalism.
Copyright © 1993 Stephen C. Meyer. All
rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date: 12.29.98