Dive Summary:
- On Wednesday, Ball State University President Jo Ann M. Gora issued a statement to faculty and staff saying that intelligent design "is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory," and is therefore "not appropriate content for science courses."
- The appropriate place for the idea that an intelligent force guided the development of the universe and life on Earth, Gora said, was in social-science and humanities courses dealing with religion—as long as it isn't presented as being more valid than other views.
- Controversy rose over intelligent design at the school due to allegations that physics and astronomy assistant professor Eric Hedin taught the idea in an honors symposium, and over the school's hiring of intelligent-design movement leader Guillermo Gonzalez as an assistant professor of physics and astronomy.
From the article:
... "Teaching intelligent design as a scientific theory is not a matter of academic freedom—it is an issue of academic integrity," Ms. Gora said. She said that allowing intelligent design to be presented in a science course 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." ...