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Gonzalez’s Tenure Appeal Rejected by Iowa State University President Geoffroy
| June 2, 2007 | Posted by Galapagos Finch under Intelligent Design |
How accurate were the predictions of Dr. Ivan A. Conway Moore, Ph.E., Thomas Huxley Professor of Pugilistic Ideology at Iowa State University? Read More Moore…
41 Responses to Gonzalez’s Tenure Appeal Rejected by Iowa State University President Geoffroy
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SeekAndFind (comment #28) said,
BTW, The Discovery Institute stated that :
“…outside research funding is not a published criterion for earning tenure in Dr. Gonzalez’s department. Indeed, it isn’t even mentioned in the departmental standards for tenure and promotion.”
That’s true, but outside grants are mentioned in the new edition of the university-wide Faculty Handbook that doesn’t apply to Gonzalez (see comment # 22). I don’t know if outside grants are mentioned in the previous edition of the Faculty Handbook. Anyway, in the new edition of the Faculty Handbook, grants are only one of many factors to be considered and are not given any more weight than any of the other factors.
(quoting DI) “Dr. Gonzalez has 68 peer-reviewed publications, or 350% more than the departmental standard. Twenty-one of these articles were published since 2002, the year after Dr. Gonzalez arrived at ISU”
IMO to be fair to tenure candidates who had little or no work experience before coming to ISU, papers published before coming to ISU should not be counted. But Gonzalez still exceeded his department’s benchmark of publishing 15 papers while at ISU.
ajl said (comment #29)
A NASA or NSF grant should yield him $200,000 over 2 or three years.
$1.3 million over seven years averages out to nearly $200,000 per year, not spread over 2-3 years.
(I said) “There is a similar complaint about the $50K that Gonzalez received from the pro-ID Discovery Institute.”
If you are going to play in their sandbox, you need to play partly by their rules.
That’s what I said — getting funding from the DI compromises Gonzalez’s independence. In comment #19, I give some other reasons why grant-grubbing is bad or unnecessary.
If a guy can competitively win grants, and lots of money, then that does show promise.
Not necessarily — it could just show that he is good at getting grants. And getting grants is not the only way to show promise.
If you get a NSF grant and do nothing with it, you can kiss the next one good bye.
Maybe by that time you already have tenure, so getting grants is less important.
There is another important thing that grants do: they keep the university in business. A research institution does not run on tuition alone.
And as you yourself pointed out, if you are going to play in the sandbox of private grant donors, you are going to have to play at least partly by their rules. This compromises the independence of universities.
Another thing it does is fund grad students. Those are called graduate research assistants.
Many grad students teach.
(I said) “With this fetish about getting grants, a bad researcher could get a big grant from a rich uncle and obtain tenure in that way.”
now that is just a silly proposition
Not silly — there are lots of scams out there and I would be surprised if no one has thought of this one. A guy named Sam Fox bought an ambassadorship by making a $50,000 contribution to Bush’s re-election campaign.
I think that it will now be harder for ISU to recruit and retain untenured faculty members — particularly those with unorthodox views — now that it has been shown how easy it is to be denied tenure at ISU. Ironically, tenure, which was supposed to help protect academic freedom, is now being used to enforce academic conformity.
vrakj
I stand corrected. However, when the quote is shown in context it becomes clear that “obtaining competitive grants and contracts” is just one of many examples of ways to demonstrate academic excellence in research and creative activities. The examples given are not inclusive, just some of the possibilities. Even if all of these are construed as explicit requirements there is no guidance ranking one above another nor is there any guidance about how much is enough when it comes to grants. Guillermo did indeed obtain outside grants. Perhaps not as many or as much as some other tenured astronomers but he greatly exceeded other tenured astronomers in other categories most importantly in the number of peer reviewed publications and citations of same.
H’mm:
Interesting onward exchanges. It seems, on balance, that grantmaking is one among many indicia of academic promise [though it is one fraught with problems on distortion of science due to funders' agendas].
But of course int his case, academic promise was never in real — as opposed to rhetorical — dispute.
However, I think there is a little elephant standing in the room:
1] Namely, we already have a peer on public record, to the effect that ID support was a material factor in a vote against in his own Dept, and in aggregate several of the members of his Dept are on record on the same lines.
2] Further to this, the description of ID used and the summary of Dr Gonzalez’s work made, were grossly inaccurate, reflecting certain commonly met with distortions propagated by NCSE and their ilk. Indeed, it seems Mr Hauptman has never read what his colleague wrote, even before going on public record against him. That is telling, and not in favour of Mr Hauptman or the system he was supporting.
3] Yet further, we have a tendentious or even slanderous petition circulated by an interested antagonistic party, with 120 or so faculty signatures, targetting this professor. Compounding that, we see where there is no evidence that the Administration took steps to assure a fair peer assessment process.
4] Worse, the instigator of the witch hunt, having duly compared the Bible adversely to Hitler’s Mein Kampf on public record [yes he views the Bible as worse than MK], has now been made a full professor of the institution. [I believe his lifetime publication record was something like 14 peer reviewed papers, and that in a field in which I daresay it is a lot easier to publish than in technical astronomy.]
IMPLICATIONS: All of this adds up to a witch-hunt and a vote to ostracise/black-ball like the old Athenian elites’ game of voting on who to exile as a dangerously influential person.
In short, we are back to a self-selecting nobility that promotes its partyline-spouting acolytes to be its successors. Any convenient excuse to expel the dangerous influence will do — e.g., “low on Grantmaking; good enough to put up front to justify expulsion.”
All, at public expense and in the teeth of the known desires of that public.
Bottomline: the tenure system is broke, and in particular, the “consensus” view of a self-selecting elite is not at all to be confused with the balance of the case on the merits. [Next time someone talks about "the consensus view" on Darwiniam, or on Climate Change etc, point out the implications of this PC-self selecting system, and its extension into the peer-reviewed Conferences and Journals etc.] In short the very credibility of academically trained, peer-reviewed expertise is on the line here . . .
In the end, the party-line game is going to cumulatively so damage the reputation of the academy and science when the public wises up to what is going on, that the damage will be horrendous.
If you doubt me, ask the formerly highly regarded professors of Marxist Leninist science from Eastern Europe.
GEM of TKI
As I mentioned in another post, now another institution interested in GG has the opportunity to hire him.
I tried to post yesterday but I guess it got swallowed up by the ether.
I would like to know how conservatives can maintain a consistent position trying to defend the academic freedom of Gonzalez and yet attack the academic freedom of a traitor like Ward Churchill? I agree with Kairo. Why should anyone be granted a lifetime position without possibility of termination for any reason short of criminal behavior. That sounds like a good deal for professors and a lousy deal for everyone else in the country. The tenure system was broken the day it was invented. There is not another kind of job in the country that guarantees a job for life. Instead of complaining about GG not getting tenure we should be attacking the system itself as corrupting of all its participants.
dennis grey
I think based on the exchanges I’ve been reading thus far, I have to come up with one conclusion…
In today’s climate, Anybody who thinks that achieving tenure is anything other than political is naive.
If Guillermo Gonzalez holds ANY views that displease the powers that be at his university, he’s toast. It has nothing to do with his abilities or worthiness.
This column from the Des Moines registers says it all :
http://www.desmoinesregister.c.....1035/RSS03
———————
So far the university’s top
academic, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman, has not intervened to protect Gonzalez’s free speech, which is interesting, because her previous job was as president of the University of Colorado, where she defended the academic freedom of another embattled professor, Ward Churchill, to write as he pleased.
Churchill is the famous fellow who penned an essay justifying the deaths of the victims in the 9/11 attacks, calling those who worked in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns.”
If the professorial hierarchy at Iowa State doesn’t see this case as a challenge to academic freedom, the context of our times explains why.
—————————-
So, its OK for Churchill to believe that terrorist victims are Nazis but not OK for Gonzalez to believe that the universe is fined-tuned by an intelligent agent.
OK, while these ideas may seem odd to peopole outside of academia, allow me to provide alittle insight into the academic process:
IMO to be fair..
but that isn’t how it works, whether it is your opinion or not. You are injecting your utopian view on how the world should work. We have to stick to how the system (whether broken or not, currently operates).
to tenure candidates who had little or no work experience before coming to ISU, papers published before coming to ISU should not be counted.
that is just erroneous. When you take a job with a University (just like a private company), you negotiate. It is perfectly reasonable to negotiate that your entire body of work be evaluated.
Now, in my case, a University granted me years toward tenure, based on my work at another University. So, those other papers count.
But, not being an idiot, I postponed a few of my publications from University “A”, so that I would have my University “B” title on the paper.
$1.3 million over seven years averages out to nearly $200,000 per year, not spread over 2-3 years.
you are missing the forest for the trees. I was just illustrating that $200,000 grants are out there for the taking (well, of course you have to win them). If you get 3 or 4 of them, you are in good shape. There are also larger and smaller grants too.
Not necessarily  it could just show that he is good at getting grants.
partially true. But if you want the big league grants, that comes with alot of hard work. NSF, NASA, NIH, etc. do not come easy. Its not like saying “Bob is a good test taker”. To win grants, and complete them you have to work hard. Just as an example, I am part of a team that submitted a grant to a funding organization. There are 141 other submittals. This will get pared down to 40 after the summer. So, after all this work, come the end of the summer, I have a 1 in 40 shot at it
And getting grants is not the only way to show promise.
yes, getting grants is not the only way to show promise. But, it is the only way the University gets IDC to keep itself funded. That is just a plain fact.
And as you yourself pointed out, if you are going to play in the sandbox of private grant donors, you are going to have to play at least partly by their rules. This compromises the independence of universities.
yes and no. At least for me, I do not participate in research that I am not allowed to publish my work. Some people do, but that is a personal choice.
Maybe by that time you already have tenure, so getting grants is less important.
yes, and therein lies the problem with tenure
Many grad students teach.
and where does the money come from? The College! That is why I used the term GRA, rather than TA. A Department may only have 3 or 4 TA lines available to it. But, they have 30 graduate students. How do you suppose they pull this off? Well, it grant work. That is what pays for the other 26 grad students.
Not silly  there are lots of scams out there and I would be surprised if no one has thought of this one. A guy named Sam Fox bought an ambassadorship by making a $50,000 contribution to Bush’s re-election campaign.
still a silly proposition. Of course there are abuses. Hell, some faculty sleep with their grad students. But what you are talking about is really far end fringe stuff. And if 1 in 500 faculty members have figured out this scam to get their uncle to give money, then that isn’t too bad.
BTW, as a faculty member, I have to fill out a conflict-of-interest form every year. What you are saying is that a faculty member is doing something unethical and not getting caught.
Dont think the University looks the other way at this stuff either. Universities get Federal grants, and get Federally audited. They have to be careful that their nose is clean.
Ironically, tenure, which was supposed to help protect academic freedom, is now being used to enforce academic conformity.
sadly, you are correct about that. But again, if it is true that GG did not bring in outside grants, then that is a problem.
On another note, I would like to know if after his 3 year review if his grant funding was made known to him as an issue. I have a friend under review currently who was told after 3 years that while he had a number of publications, he needed to concentrate on being the primary author.
But, the good thing is, he can now focus on that the next three years. Did GG get that same warning?
Dennis Grey (comment #35) said,
There is not another kind of job in the country that guarantees a job for life.
You forgot about the federal judiciary.
Instead of complaining about GG not getting tenure we should be attacking the system itself as corrupting of all its participants.
I too think that tenure is bad because I think that it is unfair to those who can’t get it, but I feel that it should be administered fairly so long as we have it. So even though I am against tenure in general, I am supporting tenure for Gonzalez because of the principles “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
I would like to know how conservatives can maintain a consistent position trying to defend the academic freedom of Gonzalez and yet attack the academic freedom of a traitor like Ward Churchill?
Conversely, how can the liberals maintain a consistent position trying to defend the academic freedom of Ward Chuchill and yet attack the academic freedom of Guillermo Gonzalez? As SeekandFind pointed out (comment #36), quoting the Des Moines Register,
IMO using tenure for the purpose of enforcing academic conformity rather than tenure’s intended purpose of protecting academic freedom removes all justification for having tenure at all. The ISU Faculty Handbook says about tenure,
– from http://www.provost.iastate.edu.....tion-5.2.1.
Sounds rather hypocritical now, doesn’t it?
H’mm:
Thanks for the onward discussion on tenure in the politically correct hothouse climate of contemporary American Academe.
On key points:
1] My main point is that we need to see that the system is broke and that that distorts alleged “consensus” even in the famous Journals that are the alleged Gold Standard of new knowledge. So, we should not be intimidated by claims on peer review, whether of articles or on careers. (So, a whole line of NCSE-type arguments reveal themselves to be empty hypocritical rhetoric hiding the ugly fact of academic persecution, slander and unjustified career busting — GG being a major current case in point. Sternberg comes to mind, and so does Dean Kenyon, among too many others.]
2] So, how should we assess scientific and related philosophical and history of science issues? Simple: on the merits of fact and logic, and as further constrained by assessing the worldview backgrounds and institutional agendas connected thereto. By these criteria, we have a take-home lesson: the main design inferences as advocated by GG, Leslie, Tipler, Davis etc, not to mention, Dembski, Behe and a lot of others, holds up very well thank you — and the screams of the commited fundy atheists and their fellow travellers are just so many dogs barking against the passing caravan. To pretend otherwise is hypocritical, as Larry has just pointed out.
3] Tenure, suitably modified, is probably fixable — limited [not lifetime] terms, graded levels of award of terms of office, recognising that there are legitimate different schools of thought that have fundamental differences starting at worldviews level and these should not factor into tenure decisions, recognising qualitatively different but objectively important types of contribution to the life of the academy ["publish or perish" and "how good a money-grubber" taken out of balance undermine quality of teaching and public outreach etc], etc. Putting in play a process of initial and subsequent reviews on quality of performance is in effect the same idea as the initial and periodic accreditation review of institutions and programmes.
4] But all of this depends on men of integrity in office, and the pauline principle that justice relative to core, universal morality in the love does no harm principle, is the principal qualification and task of the one who bears rule. And that is precisely where ISU (as just one example) is failing.
5] The GG vs WC example is telling, and Larry in 38 has again hit the nail on the head. Observe the silence on the part of too many of those who advocate for “academic freedom,” when the victim of injustice is not in their camp. In any case, Mr Churchill drastically misrepresented himself, his qualifications and his work over many years, being elevated to leadership on rather thin actual qualifications.
6] WC compounded this by apparent plagiarism, and the remarks on WTC victims of the terror attacks on 9/11 being “little Eichmanns” were truly out of order and utterly disrespectful. To date, so far as I know, he has not retracted or apologised for such uncivil conduct. It is on background checking that the deeper issues came up and his position became plainly untenable. So there is no moral equivalence between the response of conservatives to Mr CHurchill and that of the PC secularist progressives to GG.
7] A periodic objective, evidence-based balanced review with a range of credible outcomes, would have made it far harder for the sort of things WC indulged in to escape screening. So, it credibly would have enhanced quality of the Academy. However, I don’t hold my breath while waiting for a reform.
8] What is probably more feasible is to create/strengthen alternate systems, and build in the sort of principles and patterns above from the ground up, or at least lead the way in well chosen reforms. Then, on the grounds that there is a refusal to do the right, de-fund [this game can work two ways!] the out-of-control systems, both at an individual level [alumni contributions and endowments etc] and at the public level — forcing people to pay for a system that institutionalises injustice is indefensible.
9] Meanwhile I wish Mr Gonzalez well in his onward career endeavours. There will be institutions out there, one hopes, that will see the diamond that ISU has so thoughtlessly, rudely and unjustly tossed away.
GEM of TKI
H’mm:
The filter has got a lot more aggressive overnight. Comment eaten.
Key points:
1] WC is not comparable to GG — the initial outrage turned up abundant evidence of qualification inflation and there were questions of plagiarism. He has also AFAIK, refused to apologise for an utterly beyond the pale remark. The rhetoric of [im]moral equivalence fails — adn the hypocrisy Larry just pointed to is telling in itself.
2] Tenure is broke but is fixable by using the approach of periodic accreditation relative to the range of contributions academics make to the university. This is similar to how programmes and institutions are accredited to deliver degrees etc. If publicly funded institutions refuse to submit to such discipline, the public should insist that they be defunded.
3] We should also see that there are plainly schools of thought on academic matters, not some mythical “consensus.” That means that the rhetoric of NCSE etc should be exposed, and the matters should be assessed on the merits.
Okay
GEM of TKI
Okay
It got through the filter thanks to intervention.
Overnight, I am confident that we have been handed a lemon that makes some pretty good lemonade: we now see clearly that the tenure suystem as it stands is broke and that in a way that poisons the staffing of the academy, thence the way submittals are going to be peer reviewed in journals and conferences etc.
So, the NCSE mantra about failing to publish in such venues stands nakedly revealed through the Sternberg and GG cases, as a hypocritical and cynically tyrannical attempt at shutting up who you cannot refute. Shameful.
But, we make lemonade: let us use this conclusion whenever that deceptive claim is raised, and let us confidently create our own institutions as we build our own school of thought on the relevant issues. And, since there is a plain institutional bias and even oppressive manipulation, we demand that funding of censors and oppressors from the public purse cease.
GEM of TKI