I almost feel sorry for Guillermo Gonzalez. The Discovery Institute is turning him into a political football, and making his denial of tenure a far greater mess than is warranted. They’re going to hold a press conference on Monday.
The fight will rage on over Iowa State University astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez, who advocated for intelligent design, the theory that disputes parts of evolution, and lost a bid for tenure.
Advocates for Gonzalez said in a release distributed Tuesday that they will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Monday in Des Moines. There, they said, they will discuss documents they contend will prove that Gonzalez “lost his job” because he supports intelligent design, not because he was deficient as a scholar. Gonzalez’s backers say an appeal to the Iowa Board of Regents and possibly a lawsuit would be the next steps.
…
The news conference scheduled for Monday at the Capitol will include attorneys for Gonzalez, representatives of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization that supports discussions of intelligent design in science classes, and one or more state legislators, staff of the Discovery Institute said.
The most likely result of this caterwauling: no change in Gonzalez’ status at all, and he’ll have to find another job elsewhere. Search committees everywhere, though, will see him as pure poison, a grandstander who will turn every criticism into a public event. He will be known as the Intelligent Design creationist with a team of lawyers.
If by some bizarre stroke of highly politicized luck he is given tenure, he’s going to be the non-collegial colleague who is taking up a tenure line that they could have given to someone more productive. This will not be a happy situation for him or his department.
Gonzalez can’t win in this fight.
The Discovery Institute, though, stands to benefit from turning Gonzalez into a martyr — they’ll be waving the bloody shreds of his career at everyone, blaming the Darwinists, when the real destructive force here is the DI itself. Anyone else in this position would quietly go through internal channels to review the tenure decision, and when that failed, would quietly go about applying for new jobs…with the intent of doing a better job of fulfilling the requirements for tenure at a new position. This situation comes up a lot — tenure approval is not automatic by any means — and you just have to move on. I’ve been there myself.
I suspect, though, that the DI simply sees a state full of presidential candidates and an opportunity to score some political points. We’ll have to tune in on Monday and see if any of them take the bait and try to use a national candidacy to play games with an individual decision by a single university.
I’m guessing that at least 2 will take the bait, most likely Romney and Huckabee.
If I win, does this put me in the running for the next Molly Award?
Wow, I just checked out the history of this on the web.
Gonzalez became an IDer and just stopped doing science. He stopped getting grants, writing papers, or even producing grad students.
Rather than being a textbook example of “Darwinianist Discrimination”, this is a textbok example of how ID is a science stopper: It kills curiousity, because current gaps in scientific knowledge are all that they have, and they become afraid of what they might find rather than interested in it.
Don’t they realize that if you try to leave gaps in scientific understanding, others will step in to fill those gaps, and so also the tenure vacancies at universities?
Does the DI have an astronomer on the payroll yet? I mean, they really need to round out the group if they don’t, they need someone to discuss who it was that designed all of those stars and such, I mean, irreducible complexity shouldn’t just apply to biology. Why would you have hydrogen around for so long without having stars, just like those mousetrap springs.
End sarcasm :)
How much you want to bet that the “Expelled” guys will be there putting some film in the can?
“Gonzalez became an IDer and just stopped doing science. He stopped getting grants, writing papers, or even producing grad students.”
I remember looking at this case when it was making the rounds and asking, “How does he expect to do astronomy if he doesn’t have any telescope time?”
Sharing a night here and there with a former co-worker is not going to be enough to sustain an active, nationally recognized research program (which is the standard for promotion at a place like ISU).
I wonder if these populist fools realize that they have made Gonzales essentially un-hirable? What university would want to even give him a shot now, knowing that once hired, if he is not granted tenure, regardless of his performance, they will be made the target of protests and villification?
Can I carp a little about this? Intelligent Design is not a “theory” in the scientific sense of the word. Depending on who you talk to, it disputes almost all of evolution, or (in Michael Behe’s case) just the part about mutation. Etc., etc.
He’s marching to the sound of the DI ideology now.
Getting tenure is probably the last thing on his mind now. He has decided to play the martyr game to the hilt (can anyone say Christ complex?). He’ll no doubt be doing it for years to come.
Ain’t people special.
What a waste.
slpage wrote (#6):
Isn’t that exactly what the “populist fools” want? Would it be in their interests to have Gonzales land a tenure-track position? No, much better for them if the entire academic world continue to “discriminate” against him.Cynicism? What cynicism?
Makes sense to me. There’s a LOT more money on the professional “Victim for Christ” circuit than in Astronomy.
Poor guy. I wonder if he’s practicing asking life’s important questions – like, “do you want fries with that?”
Another brain lost.
What? You’re implying that other Intelligent Design creationists don’t have teams of lawyers.
Sorry, I think you’ve finally lost your grip on reality. :-)
Don’t think they much care either way. The martyr schtick sells well, but had Gonzalez got tenure, they’d have claimed it as an implicit approval of his ID work.
I work near the Iowa State Capitol. So that’s that cold chill I felt about 11:00 yesterday morning. Obviously the Creator™ isn’t on their side. It was 20 degrees and windy yesterday. Today it’s 45 and calm.
I had the misfortune of seeing Gonzalez when he gave a speech at the University of Northern Iowa a couple of years ago when I worked there. His visit seemed orchestrated to cause as much uproar in the community as possible. In the week or so before his visit all these mysteriously pro-ID letters to the editor and bullshit editorials started appearing in the student paper. When the College of Natural Sciences circulated a petition among the faculty declaring that they categorically dismiss ID as non-science, there was a backlash in the student paper against the whole college.
Most UNI students don’t care about biology beyond the gen ed biology course they took. But all of a sudden, there they were, spouting how we should “teach the controversy” and how “there is so room for Jebus in the classroom.” All of this is especially frightening in light of the fact that UNI’s (nee Iowa State Teacher’s College) education program produces hundreds of new teachers every year. (And Christians accuse us godless atheists of trying to corrupt young, impressionable minds. Ha!)
As a warning to any institution receiving a CV from Guillermo Gonzalez: he’s a rabble-rouser. He’s a troublemaker. He’s a fraud. Despite declaring that he’s not a biologist, he had no problem claiming that he, as a “scientist” understands exactly how Intelligent Design creationism is superior to Darwinian evolution. When the biology faculty pressed him, he couldn’t explain his beliefs, of course. He’s a biologist when he’s proselytizing ID creationism, but he’s not a biologist when you challenge him.
Probably he asked Michael Behe two questions: 1) How much does Lehigh pay you? 2) How much do you make from your ID schtick? And when he heard the answers he said, screw academia, I’m going for the big bucks.
When I was an undergrad at ISU I attended several presentations and discussions on ID and Gonzalez’s book. He always declined to show up and defend his thesis, the same way he declines to do actual science.
Surely Oral Roberts Univ. could find space for him.
Gonzalez has no future at any real university. Perhaps Dembski can get him a gig at Billy Bob’s Bible School or wherever the hell it is he works.
Let’s review. Gonzalez was denied tenure at every level up to the President of ISU. Why he hasn’t already appealed to the Regents is a mystery; he’s had time and according to the Regent’s agendas they discuss personnel matters regularly. Obviously, the likelihood of the Regents overturning the entire chain of command by granting Gonzalez tenure is slim.
(Snowball’s chance slim.)
That leaves a lawsuit. What’s the case? Religious discrimination? The DI has mentioned “viewpoint discrimination” a few times. Can you sue for viewpoint discrimination?
I see no merit for a suit, either, which means the DI is only stirring up controversy, again. I guess you have to stir up the controversy if you’re going to teach the controversy.
Carsonjok hit this dead on. This is just the DI creating their own “example” of academic intolerance for their “Expelled” propaganda. It’s promo material to them.
Pdiff
Would it be rude of me to suggest that for a scientist, supporting intelligent design is being deficient as a scholar?
I guess I can live with being rude.
PZ wonders if any of the presidential candidates who are now blitzing Iowa will try to score points with the right-wing Christians by jumping on the Gonzalez bandwagon. Not surprisingly, the only state legislator mentioned in the Des Moines Register story as planning to attend the DI’s press conference, Sen. David Hartsuch, has endorsed Mike Huckabee. Remember when he raised his hand at the first GOP debate and said he didn’t believe in evolution. I wonder if Huckabee will show up at the press conference.
“When the College of Natural Sciences circulated a petition among the faculty declaring that they categorically dismiss ID as non-science, there was a backlash in the student paper against the whole college.”
I’m wondering, Alex, was Mike Schott involved in the mix at all? Mike was always ready to mix it up with creationists when I was at UNI in the late 80s. I know a couple years after I left, he did a debate against someone.
Mike taught a great Human Origins class, although he had an issue with me coming late for the midterm exam. Exam started at 1, but the UNI/Missouri NCAA tournament game didn’t get over until 1:15 (UNI won, of course on Mo Newby’s last second shot). Mike had locked the classroom door, and made a big production before opening it. Fortunately, I wasn’t the last one to arrive. I aced that exam.
See, this is what I don’t get.
He didn’t somehow have enough time to write grants, conduct significant research, advise students, or write significant reports.
On the other hand, he had plenty of time to write reviews, popular articles, popular books, and involve himself in partisan politics.
When you’re a tenue track professor, you should have a specific set of goals associated with getting tenure. Most of the professors I’ve seen get rejected were essentially living with a deathwish….they knew that they weren’t living up to standards and they didn’t care, for whatever reason. This guy appears to be no exception.
Which suggests that the focus of both Iowa and the scientific community should be the fact that this guy is using the discrimination issue as a means to cover up for the fact that he really is lacking as a researcher and professor. His creationism may be a symptom of the deeper problem (that is, his apathy towards science) but it is not the cause of this.
Creationism is almost ubiquitously an excuse to avoid conducting actual research and familiarizing one’s self with actual science. While I wouldn’t claim that this man’s Creationist sympathies have hindered his work, I would claim that he is using Creationism as an excuse for why his work simply isn’t up to par.
Which makes DI’s actions a real gambit, because the widesprad realization that Creationism is basically a worthless excuse for poor scholarship is not good for their agenda.
I predict that neither candidate will pick the issue up. First, it takes a little bit to explain the circumstances. Second, with the caucus quickly approaching I don’t think that Huckabee or Romney (both of whom are doing well) will want to insert a new issue into the debate.
Perhaps if Huckabee starts to slip, he may use it to bash Romney because the issue, in all fairness, will play well with conservative voters in Iowa. I don’t see that happening yet.
But if I’m wrong I will be the first to nominate J-Dog for the next Molly Award for his prescience.
Two professors have been under attack for Darwinism and Evolutionism in the midwest.
Richard Colling was under the cannons at Olivet for teaching biology students about evolution.
A professor at an Iowa community college (Southwest??) lost his job when students complained that he wasn’t respectful of creationism.
There are some persecuted martyrs in all this but they are being persecuted by the usual suspects, religious fanatics/bigots. But they did luck out. Neither has been burnt at the stake. Yet.
You’re wrong PZ. Gonzales can win this fight and so can the DI if he gets tenure.
I once worked a college in the east where the department had a member who was granted tenure after both the department and the chairman recommended against it. He was a do-nothing whose main strength was complaining that no one appreciated the great teaching he was doing. The president bought this garbage and overruled everyone who knew the guy.
He was pure poison. He had no prospects for advancement and was enthusiastic about downgrading anybody else who did. We couldn’t trust him to work on a committee because he would intentionally make the rest of us look bad. We couldn’t let him teach outside of a limited range of courses because he would foul them up so much. He and a few pals could strangle the department’s plans whenever they wanted to and, believe me, they wanted to. And did.
The same thing can hold here. Gonzales can get tenure and drive his closest colleagues crazy. Then he can adopt the martyr complex and tell the world – through the DI of course – how those awful evilutionists are holding back this wonderful scientist – him. The DI can, for its part, point to him as a practicing scientist with tenure who supports their views.
For the DI this is a no-lose situation. If he does not get tenure, he is a martyr they tried to help except that those horrid Darwinians had the power of the establishment behind them. It he does get tenure, they have a tenured scientist who supports them.
The real victims are the ones who work with the man now and perhaps in the future.
Gosh, isn’t life wonderful when you don’t have to take into account academic integrity?
–PatF in Madison
Gonzalez just shows what happens when you pursue pseudoscience instead of science at a public institution. And yeah, no one wants a wingnut chair warmer with a fleet of lawyers in a tenured position.
Not to worry. He will have a brilliant future as a propagandist for the extreme wingnut theocrats. There is a real shortage of Ph.D.s who will teach pseudoscience at the multitude of bible colleges dotting the landscape. I’m sure he is the next creation astronomer at Liberty, Bob Jones, or O. Roberts universities. He can and will spend the rest of his life making up lies for Jesus. This is legal but it is neither ethical nor astronomy.
“Does the DI have an astronomer on the payroll yet? I mean, they really need to round out the group if they don’t, they need someone to discuss who it was that designed all of those stars and such…”
The answer to ‘who it was that designed all of those stars and such’ can be found at
http://www.theintelligentdesigner.com
N.B. the Designer has no relationship with the Discovery Institute and does not reside in Seattle.
It seems to me that Gonzalez doesn’t want DI to go away. If he did, he could just tell them, or make a statement when he has a chance.
He wants DI there. This is a miscalculation on his part, if he wants to get tenure anywhere.
I feel exactly the opposite of you here, PZ. I don’t feel sorry for Gonzalez at all. He’s getting exactly what he wants: Career destruction.
Think of the book sales this will eventually generate.
The DI said:
“They will discuss documents they contend will prove that Gonzalez “lost his job” because he supports intelligent design, not because he was deficient as a scholar.”
Surely thinking ID is in anyway a legitimate or valid scientific theory calls into question your ability as a scholar ? The same way David Irving’s holocaust denial bring into question his ability as a scholar. Actually in the case of Irving not so much call it into to question but to evisicerate it.
Or am I missing something ?
@#29
Ok, now that’s not fair, I never even saw the job posting! Guess I’ll just have to join the Mor(m)ons and get my own planet and play creator there.
FYI, Gonzalez’s lesser known co-author on the Privileged Planet, Jay W. Richards, has been a member of the DI for several years and had previously co-authored books with other DI members, including Bill Dembski, so Gonzales is hardly likely to abandon his DI buddies at this point. He’s firmly locked into the fortunes and misfortunes of Intelligent Design.
As for Jay Richards, well I heard him on the radio last week hawking the Privileged Planet book and DVD, on the Christian apologetics show “The Bible Answerman” with creationist Hank Hanegraaf. It was the sole focus for two full hours of religious apologetics (and, of course, an infomercial). So not only is the Privileged Planet the death knell for Gonzalez’s career in astronomy, it is yet more evidence (as if it is really needed) for the blatantly religious agenda of IDists in general, and the DI in particular.
First of all, employment relations is a complex area of the law, where there can be different results based on “losing a job” versus being denied tenure. The DI clearly intends to try to blur those lines.
Certainly, any employment decision (including tenure denial) that is based on the employee’s religious beliefs is suspect (especially where the employer is the state) and probably reversable. Of course, the DI won’t want to admit, or have Gonzalez’ lawyers admit, that ID is a religious position. I suspect they’ll try this neat two-step: ID is a scientific position but the academic world perceives it as religious and, therefore, they are discriminating based on a perception of Gonzalez’s religious beliefs, which is just as bad as doing it based on his actual beliefs. It is an argument that I don’t think a judge can dismiss out of hand, even if we can.
Once again, however, that would seemingly be inviting a decision on whether ID is science or not. I suppose they can argue that it doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t matter whether the discrimination was based on his religious beliefs or the administration’s perception of those beliefs.
It’ll be interesting …
Hmmm. Is this DI media event the first big project of Michael “Slavery Wasn’t So Bad” Medved? Seems like he would appreciate cheesy theatrics.
Uhmmm…
Not sure why we are supposed to be a privileged planet anyway. Astronomers point out that the nearest large spiral galaxy, Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way galaxy in 2 billion years.
This is a celestial train wreck of truly cosmic scale.
1. How often these days do spiral galaxies collide? The universe is getting old at 13.7 billion years and it is expanding, meaning on the whole the galaxies become less likely to collide with time. Not being a quantitative astronomer, I don’t know but such collisions must be rather rare these days.
2. This can’t be good news for earth. There is a potential for a lot of high energy events, gravitational and nuclear that could well end our biosphere.
Granted that 2 billion years is a ways off but if we are optimistic, we or our descendants may still be around. If the galaxy is empty of intelligent space faring life as is possible, we may even own it by that point. Doesn’t sound very privileged to be one of the last galaxies in the universe to get smashed up in a vast accident.
It is obvious that the DI has given up even pretending to do science or pseudoscience. They are taking their place as just another propaganda arm of the theocrats. Fox news, the various Xian broadcasting networks, the various doublethink tanks, and creo websites.
Just a job. Everyone has to eat. Probably the money they could have spent but didn’t on real research will just go for propaganda events. And now that they are out in the open, their funding will likely increase.
Goebbels said it long ago. Lie big and lie often. At least they are predictable and Gonzalez has given up astronomy for a career as a liar. Whatever, probably pays better than academia and certainly easier.
Don’t be silly, the Rapture will happen way before then.
Huckabee’s not going to endorse the nonsense over Gonzalez, as he’s tried to smother over his endorsement of creationism, of course without denying it. This doesn’t mean that DI isn’t trying to support Huckabee (with Huckabee’s implicit approval) in the primaries.
Certainly it’s also a promo for Expelled beyond whatever politics is going on. They’re having a tough time coming up with persecution that really looks like persecution, even trolling for whining students on their web site. They’re stuck with Sternberg’s machinations and trying to make the backlash against that out to be “suppression,” Gonzalez’s supposed persecution, Sal’s whine that he has to dissemble by utilizing a pseudonym on the web (though clearly he doesn’t have to), and a few odds and ends, including people who won’t even show their faces.
One thing I think the Expelled dolts hadn’t properly factored into the equation is that the morons they’re targeting usually don’t even know what tenure is, nor what is supposed to be so bad about people disliking Sternberg even when he is “fighting for the truth” (they got that one right, at least). That’s one reason the film is so heavy on shots of Nazis and overwrought dishonest rhetoric, that the film may just backfire on them.
Well at least the DI is trying, however hamhandedly, to make Gonzalez into a cause celebre. They don’t have many other options, especially after the fisking that NOVA gave them. Move attention away from Dover and Behe’s sorry stint on the witness stand, and get back to the only thing these bozos can do, which is to hurl false charges against anybody and everybody who opposes their attempt to force pseudoscience into academia.
Indeed, this is about all that’s really open to them, since there’s nothing legal left to be done in the Sternberg case. So they might have done this even without the primaries and Expelled, with those two phenomena simply adding to the appeal to whine some more, rather than to plow any money into research trying to discredit “Darwinism” (let alone into ID “science” that presents no research possibilities whatsoever).
After all, they have so few opportunities even to trump up a set of charges that might sell beyond the sad little coterie of idiots that they already have under their thumb.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Missed this the first time around, but caught it the second time:
….says the politician.
Or approve of it if they do — it’s just more of those “fat cat” socialist academics with their “jobs-for-life”, a way of sheltering them from doing real, honest work by keeping them sucking at the public teat.
Or something like that.
The danger for Gonzalez in pursuing litigation is that the court’s may actually examine his credentials for tenure. The IDists must have thought that Kitzmiller would be a “slamdunk” too, given their star witnesses and a Bush-appointed judge for the trial. And we all know how that ended. If Gonzalez wants to pursue litigation, he probably would be better off getting a personal trial lawyer and avoiding any help from the DI.
PDB doth quoteth…
“He said he thought Gonzalez was denied tenure because of his work involving intelligent design.
“We’re living in a day and age where there is nothing that is not politicized,” he added.”
Hokey smokes, it’s not the ISU astronomy faculty who are demonstrating on the steps of the capital building?
“The danger for Gonzalez in pursuing litigation is that the court’s may actually examine his credentials for tenure. ”
Quick question: can the court subpeona the letters? They are supposed to be confidential. You can’t redact them, either, because who writes them is an important part of the assessment.
This is why appeals are generally done within the university (to the provost, president, board, etc), because they have access to the letters.
In the end, aside from all the other lack of credentials he had, I have a sneaky feeling the letters were scathing. There is no basis for passing a promotion case where half of the letters are clearly against. Yes, you can get promoted with a questionable letter or two, but get a couple that say “absolutely not” and you are going to have a hard time. Get half of them to say “absolutely not” and it’s not even close.
Seems really dumb to try to sue.
This guy will be DESTROYED by lawyers… his lawyers can try to portray the university as unfair.
They just show need to show that he’s not worth the trouble.
Whatever, probably pays better than academia and certainly easier.
hell yes, just ask Billy Dembski.
Always nice to have a career as a sleezbag for a backup choice. Well, provided you can entirely divorce yourself from the ethics of it.
It’s a complicated question of evidence but, generally speaking, the lawyers on both sides can get access to the entire personnel file on Gonzalez if he sues. However, redaction might be allowed of irrelevant materials after the judge has reviewed the records.
But can the letters be introduced into evidence to make them public?
Letters are written with the understanding that they are not to be shared with the subject. If the letters can be forced into public domain, I think that could cause a problem for letter writers in the future. Would they be less willing to write for a case if they thought it would be controversial?
If the emails were hosted on a server belonging to a public institution, like a university, then I believe they can be subpoenaed under a Freedom of Information Act request…they’re fair game.
What emails? Are you talking about promotion letters sent by email?
What if they weren’t sent by email?
Gonzalez has seen his own performance reviews. I would assume he had an annual review, but certainly he had a review going up for tenure. (academics, please correct me.)
If Gonzalez feels he was denied review unfairly, why not publish his tenure file and the reviews. Educate us on the controversy and let us (students) decide. If Gonzalez has been wronged it should be obvious.
Of course, I’m neglecting the vast power of the Great Darwinian Conspiracy controlled by the Darwinian Pressure Group, Delta Pi Gamma.
“If Gonzalez feels he was denied review unfairly, why not publish his tenure file and the reviews. Educate us on the controversy and let us (students) decide. ”
No offense, Doc Bill, but this is a VERY bad idea. Students don’t have near enough insight to understand the responsibilities and requirements of faculty, nor the experience to put the information in perspective. I have been in on those types of discussions, and I still for the most part sit back and listen to try to learn what it is all about.
AIUI, someone who misses tenure at one institution isn’t likely to be given a chance at another even if there isn’t a stink surrounding it. There’s just too high a ratios of wannabes to positions, and there’s no margin for an institution to invest in someone who has already failed over a six year effort. Someone with Gonzales’ record on funding etc. certainly isn’t going to get a second chance, unless of course someone hires him as a political statement.
For that matter, failure to obtain tenure is hardly something you want on your CV if you have to go looking for a non-academic job either. AIUI it is customary to not apply for tenure at all if you don’t think you’re going to make it, and start looking for a job without the blemish on your record.
We should wait and see what the letters actually are. AIUI, tenure votes are normally done verbally or by a show of hands, with no statement to justify the vote. Institutions are very wary of lawsuits even when pseudoscience isn’t involved, and a department would have to be extraordinarily careless to leave a paper or e-mail trail for a tenure decision.
I rather suspect that we’ll eventually learn that these letters are merely a collection of generic complaints about his unprofessional behavior, and not actually part of the tenure proceedings at all. It’s not as if the DI isn’t in the habit of misrepresenting things to make it look like they have a case for something.
Almost certainly an annual review that was the basis of annual pay raises, and very likely a separate third year review to let him know how he was doing on the tenure challenge.
Yes, I’ve called for the same thing. But unless people have missed things on the web, his tenure portfolio will show a steep decline from initially great performance to very sub-par performance, which would kill anyone’s tenure prospects even if pseudoscience weren’t involved.
If this ends up in court I suspect he’ll get dovered by lawyers who plot his academic productivity and ID “productivity” vs. time, showing that the former declined rapidly as the latter rose.
As the son of a (now) part time professor, I can look back and see Dad’s efforts to attain tenure where he taught. What repeatedly burned, though was the regular “yes” votes of all involved, only to get told “Next Year” as the slot went to some demented Poly Sci nutjob. (Who said having friends in high places is bad? )
Eventually, after several years of “you’ll have tenure next year” (In writing!!), Dad did something completely out of character. 1 week before classes started, the dean (or whomever) stopped by Dad’s office with the new contract. Of course, it had no tenure. So, he refused to sign, and left the school with a HUGE hole in the Physics/mathematics/Astronomy/Computer Science curriculae, while he went off to work at CEBAF for a few years.
Now, he’s back at that school (with different Dean/President – who are actually concerned with science and productivity) teaching part time – when HE wants to. (not to slander the man, but at his age, there’s just no way I can see him keeping the workload he had way back when)
I don’t know about most of you academic types, but I do know Dad never viewed tenure as job security (since, even with tenure, you can be fired – it’s just harder), or a pay raise (though that would have been welcome). He – and I tend to agree with him – sees it as acknowledgement of work done to contribute to the overall standing of the school. Every paper published, grant won, etc., gets the name of the school in front of potential students and philanthropists. In a more rational way, it’s the same as football (or basketball or hockey or…). It affects the *image* of the school. The more you positively affect that image, the more likely you are to be tenured. Dad gave that school a lot more time than he needed to, teaching extra classses, coaching “side sports” (i.e. not headliners like football or basketball) when nobody else would (not even the athletic department).
Anyway.. as I said, tenure is about image, and – indirectly – money. You don’t do your bit for the school, you don’t *deserve* tenure.
(yeah – it’s oversimplified, and done from a relative outsider’s point of view. I doubt I’m far off, though. I DO know Dad’s thoughts)
Now, finally the Feminazi President and Dean are history, and the school is climbing back up the ladder to academic respectability (even if the Poly Sci people still invite terrorists to lecture)
Sorry – somehow I hit a soapbox button. I do tend to froth at the mouth about that whole episode. I can’t live in the same town with the man, but there’s nobody on the planet I respect more than my father.
Looking at Gonzalez.. without the benefit of all the documentation in the “case”, I wonder if this isn’t just about tenure. If he’s not produced squat professionally in years, and if his teaching is becoming more suspect, isn’t it possible that he’d been put on notice that his contract would not be renewed? (and, thus, tenure completely out of the question) but he can’t raise a fuss about that, because the facts will burn him to ashes. So, he pulls the tenure string and gets all the rank and file to weep big bubble-gum tears over *that*, trying to embarrass the school into reconsidering.
Not that they should, of course. Regardless of his out-of-specialty leanings (for all I care, he could be a closet hedonist), if he’s done no work, he’s last week’s trash.
I sure as hell wouldn’t keep one of my employees under those circumstances.
Some interesting facts to ponder:
The only known graduate student that GG advised at ISU was a masters candidate cross-disciplinedvwith the Education department (he wanted to teach Astronomy). His master’s thesis was to co-author a new edition of a popular astronomy textbook. This book was published, the student and GG are listed as co-authors, yet the student never completed his degree and has a bitter post about astronomy jobs on his website.
The DI claims that the Templeton Foundation awarded him a $58,000 grant. With this grant he eventually produced his book, Privileged Planet, and a single paper published in a non-astronomy journal. However, it was awarded in 2000, before he joined ISU. And there’s an anomoly. According to the Templeton Foundation, “Professor Gonzalez received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in the amount of $42,851.07” as an astronomy research grant. Further research on my part revealed that only about a third of that was received by GG while at ISU. So why didn’t he get the remaining $15,000, and where are the astronomy research papers? And is there a connection between the two?
The DI also claims that his part of a major research grant was $64,000. But again, the grant was awarded in March of 2001, before he joined ISU at the end of July 2001. The DI notes that the grant was for 2001-2004, but the project lasted another two years. His research is suddenly dropped from the annual project reports, despite detailed plans for additional work. So these questions arise: how much did he get while at ISU, did he get the full amount claimed by DI, and why was he dropped two years early while still purportedly doing research?
The first few years at ISU, the astronomy group filed annual reports that include what each faculty is researching. In all of these reports, GG’s research is a continuation of research started at his previous institution – most of the observation time took place or was scheduled before he came to ISU. In addition, as of last June, at most three of the 21 papers published after he came to ISU were from original research started after he came, plus two review papers.
The same annual reports detail that he was helping set up the astronomy program’s teaching website. A year later he was dropped from the team.
A history of resting on his laurels, getting dropped from projects (possibly for failing to deliver?), failure to generate new research or get new research grants. Not exactly inspiring.
Compare this to Dr. Pohl. Pohl joined ISU’s astronomy program in 2003 and was awarded tenure at the same time GG was denied tenure. His output since 2001 exceeds GG’s. As of June, he had 12 original research papers published or pending that were projects started after joining ISU (his papers for previous projects note his affiliation as his previous institution with ISU as his current address) – this doesn’t include review papers. He pulled in a $250,000 grant from NASA immediately after joining ISU. He has numerous master’s and doctoral students and post-docs working under him. He designed a major orbital telescope and is on the board governing the use of that telescope. Now that is impressive!
GG is reported to have brought in about $22,500 in ISU-sponsored outside grants (sponsorship means ISU has determined that the research being sponsored by the grant meets certain quality controls) – this might be the portion of the earlier mentioned grants paid while he was at ISU. The last three astronomy professors granted tenure all brought in at least 10 times that while they were in their probationary period: Kawaler-$280,000, Krennrich-$225,000, and Pohl-$250,000. And those are minimum amounts, I may not have found all the grants awarded. To put it in perspective, my wife is a doctoral student in anthropology (social-cultural and medical), a field which unlike astronomy is not noted for large grant awards. Since 2001, she has been awarded over $25,000 in outside research grants, including a Fulbright (and not including the scholarship she received). That’s better than GG was able to do!
Rasputin: I dunno, but I agree – that was my first reaction to the remark as well.