Silenced!: Academic Freedom, Scientific Inquiry, and the First Amendment under Siege in America

213 Pages·2007·0.6 MB·English

by  Bruce E. Johansen

Silenced!

Silenced!
Academic Freedom, Scientifi c Inquiry,
and the First Amendment under
Siege in America
Bruce E. Johansen
Foreword by Matthew Rothschild
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johansen, Bruce E. (Bruce Elliott), 1950–
Silenced! : academic freedom, scientifi c inquiry, and the First Amendment under
siege in America / Bruce E. Johansen ; foreword by Matthew Rothschild.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-275-99686-4 (alk. paper)
1. Academic freedom—United States. 2. United States—Politics and
government—2001- I. Title.
LC72.2.J64 2007
378.1'21—dc22 2007008456
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2007 by Bruce E. Johansen
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007008456
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99686-4
ISBN-10: 0-275-99686-7
First published in 2007
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1759 (Maharidge, 2004, 203)
Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and
suffi cient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the confl ict,
unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free
argument and debate.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1779 (Packer, 2006, 59)

Contents
Foreword by Matthew Rothschild ix
Preface xi
Introduction xix
1 Weather Wars: Hard Science and Hardball Politics 1
2 Soft Science: How Intelligent Is This Design? 23
3 The Second Amendment Trumps the First 53
4 Gut-Based Discourse in the Age of the Internet 67
5 Student and Faculty Rights (and Lefts) 97
6 Terrorology 101 121
Coda: Doing Well in an Apocalypse 153
Selected Bibliography 163
Index 179

Foreword
George W. Bush’s presidency is nearly over, but the Bush Age may be with us for
decades longer, if we let it. Many of the salient features of this epoch have already
been duly chronicled: the messianic militarism, the debacles in Iraq and Afghani-
stan, the sanitization of torture, the redistribution of income to the rich, the cyni-
cal appointment of industry representatives to head the very agencies designed to
regulate those industries, the criminal indifference to Hurricane Katrina, and the
bizarre cohabitation of neoconservatives with far-right evangelicals.
But one aspect of the Bush Age has not received the attention it deserves, and
that is the wholesale assault on our civil liberties. A chill is in the air, but we have
been living with it for so long now that it is becoming dangerously imperceptible.
This is why Bruce Johansen’s book is so essential. Focusing on academic
freedom and scientifi c inquiry, he takes his readings. For the most part, they are
not comforting. What they tell us is that those who dare to oppose government pol-
icy in an age of hysteria often put themselves at great risk. They can have trouble
getting tenure or being hired at prestigious universities. If they have been sloppy at
all in their work, they can lose their jobs. And sometimes worse. Johansen tells the
story of Professor Paul Mirecki, who chaired Religious Studies at the University
of Kansas. Mirecki, who in an e-mail had indelicately referred to religious conser-
vatives as “fundies,” planned to offer a course called “Special Topics in Religion:
Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Other Religious Mythologies.” The outcry
was so great that he had to cancel it. Shortly afterward, two men beat him up with
a metal object, sending him to the hospital. More notoriously, University of Colo-
rado professor Ward Churchill received dozens and dozens of death threats. And
the family of Jay Bennish, the high school teacher who compared Bush’s rhetoric
to Hitler’s, also received death threats.