Do “anti-science bigots...censor scientists and stifle science”?

The central and very powerful thesis of Expelled, is that it is not just God who has been “expelled” from the reigning intellectual worldview, but also, sound science and those pursuing it are being expelled from the academic enterprise. This involves, as ID advocate Bill Dembski claims, suppression of ideas by a strategy of “widespread persecution -- destruction of livelihoods, careers and reputations.”

All negative personnel decisions are messy and are almost invariably interpreted or overtly spun in diametrically divergent ways. In 27 years of academic work, I have never seen someone lose their job - including for reasons of clear moral breech - who did not remonstrate with charges of impropriety. Conversely, in cases of demonstrably unsound and subsequently overturned negative decisions - including some recent nationally prominent examples - those making the initial decision never fail to argue for it in light of institutional policy. Termination is a bit like divorce. Sometimes there’s a clear villain, usually there is not; those on the inside typically claim it is the other party, and those on the outside better be careful about taking just one party’s word.

Complexity notwithstanding, a couple of things about the academy are clear to anyone who is not, in Richard Dawkins’ phrase about evolution-doubters, “ignorant, stupid, or insane.” One, there is surely a leftward ideological tilt in academic life. It is simply not intellectually svelte to be a Bush supporter, a pro-life advocate, a Rush Limbaugh dittohead...or an evangelical Christian. Two, it is absolute professional suicide to be a young earth creationist in a geology department or an anti-evolutionist in a biology department at any institution outside of a few parochial colleges. And it may be just as bad to be an ID advocate in any science department. The question is, is the latter due to the suffocating influence of the former: does the exclusion of ID and other criticisms of evolution represent “the ugly specter of academic suppression” imposed by “anti-science bigots”enforcing a materialist ideology? The film’s crucial assertion is: “Yes.” It makes this allegation by addressing two questions:

1. are ID advocates expelled, and if so,
2. are there proper grounds for doing so?

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