If I thought the external review committee's final report was
interesting, I must admit that Bill Dembski's Meta-News post
was even more interesting. (Not the least that it indicates
that Dembski is responding to some stimuli, even if not my
email questions.)
I'm sure that the Baylor administration, like most college
administrative structures, would prefer to have the moderate
words of the external review committee be the ones that would
be remembered when all is said and done. The administration
wanted Dembski to be at Baylor and to proceed with his
Intelligent Design work there, but they also have a school to
run, which requires both (1) a faculty and (2) the goodwill of
the alumni. The MPC brouhaha has managed to alienate a good
chunk of the faculty, and controversy is almost always seen as
a bad thing for alumni relations. The review committee's
report seemed to be going down as an acceptable compromise all
around. Then we have Dembski's short Meta-News piece, which
could hardly be better designed to cause hard feelings. One
might say that the engenderment of bad feelings serves as a
specification for it. I surmise that the immoderate, if not
gloating, tone of Dembski's Meta-News post has the potential
to damage his relationship with the administration that has
gone to no small effort to protect him.
Wesley
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 19 2000 - 01:14:18 EDT