[asa] Richard Colling to get Biology Class Back

From Science and Religion Today:

"It looks like microbiologist and immunologist Richard Colling
<http://www2.olivet.edu/academics/CAS/faculty_bios.php?id=14> will again be
teaching the general biology class at Olivet Nazarene University
<http://www.olivet.edu/about/default.asp> . Back in
<http://scienceandreligiontoday.blogspot.com/search?q=colling> October, we
told you about a rally in support of Colling, who in 2007 was barred from
teaching the course <http://www.newsweek.com/id/40907> after his book
<http://www.randomdesigner.com/> Random Designer attracted national media
attention. The book tries to reconcile evolution with Christian faith by
promoting "theistic evolution" (and challenges the Church of the Nazarene
<http://www.nazarene.org/> 's belief in biblical creation). Colling, who has
tenure and had been teaching at the school for more than 25 years, was
stripped of his regular teaching duties (he could only teach small courses
that didn't involve his book), and other professors were barred from using
his book in their classes-decisions that raised questions of academic
freedom at Christian and other religious institutions of higher learning.
(The school's professors, however, were allowed to teach the same views that
Colling promoted in his book and teach other books with similar content;
implying that the actions against Colling were the result of pressure from
financial supporters who had been reading about his views on evolution in
newspapers and magazines, and mistakenly believed he was the only one
teaching them.)

But last month, the American Association of <http://www.aaup.org/>
University Professors found that the school had violated Colling's academic
freedom with their actions. "President Bowling made the decision not to
allow Professor Colling to teach Biology 201 and to ban Random Designer from
the curriculum for the express purpose of appeasing off-campus critics,
including key members of the board of trustees, evidently hoping that these
critics would believe that he had done something to suppress the teaching of
evolution at Olivet Nazarene when in fact he had not," its report
<http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/protect/academicfreedom/investrep/2009/olivet.htm>
reads. "The investigating committee finds, however, that in doing so he
disregarded the faculty's primacy in matters of curriculum, abrogated his
responsibility to defend faculty freedoms from 'outside influences,' and,
most importantly, weakened academic freedom at Olivet Nazarene University."
The report concludes that the "administration of Olivet Nazarene University
curtailed the academic freedom of Professor Colling in order to dampen
controversy that had arisen among anti-evolutionist elements of the
university's church constituency. In thus acting, the administration placed
a higher value on what the president called 'constituent relations' than on
the principles of academic freedom to which the university itself claims to
subscribe." Now, Colling and the university are meeting to try to resolve
their differences, according to
<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/11/aaup> Insider Higher Ed. He
has been told he can go back to teaching and his book can be used, an
outcome that he says is 'a successful and positive resolution of the
academic freedom concerns originally raised.'"

Yours faithfully,

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org

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Received on Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:21:16 -0500