Oh, crap. I’m coming to this a few days late. When they updated their software, I also grabbed the link to Crooked Timber’s newsfeed, and it was garbled (I discovered that NetNewsWire prepends an “http://” in front of url’s that specify a “feed:” protocol, producing an unholy hybrid that does not work) so I’ve been missing everything from them for some time. In particular, I missed an interesting discussion of classroom “diversity” that was fueled by this stunning comment in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

Rep. Dennis K. Baxley said his own undergraduate education at Florida State University—in the 1970s—illustrated the failings of higher education: The problem was that an anthropology professor “did a tirade” in his course that evolution was correct and that creationism was not. Baxley said that students should not “get blasted” as he did for not believing in evolution.

Baxley said that faculties have too many �€œleftist totalitarian niches�€� and that lawmakers want to do something about the fact that “we�€™ve allowed universities to become an extreme leftist stronghold.”

Wow. And I mean, wow.

A couple of points come to mind:

Tirades are no-nos in the classroom. I do tirades on Pharyngula, but not in my lectures—”tirade” implies that the students aren’t allowed to sneak in a word or two or express a difference of opinion, and that it is intended to castigate the audience. If Baxley was actually subjected to one, he experienced some poor pedagogy, but that’s it—it wasn’t a leftist conspiracy to brainwash him. I have a suspicion, though, that it wasn’t actually what he claims it was. We professors generally have an audience supportive of good science in our science classes, and there isn’t usually the level of frustration with that required to fire up a good rant. More likely, he just got a good lecturing in why creationism is garbage.

He shouldn’t be upset at that. It’s called “teaching the controversy“.

In fact, he should expect more of it. If science instructors are asked to waste spend more time discussing Intelligent Design creationism, that’s what we’re going to do: use the time to rip it to shreds critically. And he should look forward to more blasting of creationists.

Another point: this was in an anthropology class. Isn’t it a good idea for students to know the best scientific explanation for human origins in that discipline? Baxley signed up for the course, and I’m curious to know what he expected to learn. Migration routes from the Garden of Eden? That the Lascaux paintings were actually done by God, and given the illusion of a greater than six thousand year old age? I’m finding it hard to imagine an anthropology course that wouldn’t give a die-hard culture warrior of the right the heebie-jeebies: social anthropology with all of that appreciation of non-Western cultures, or physical anthropology with comparative primate anatomy and million year old fossils…all of it pretty much diametrically opposed to the Religious Right’s wacko ideas.

Lastly, I occasionally get grief from readers because I am vociferously liberal, and they complain that I tar conservatives with a broad brush. There is some truth to this. I can appreciate in an intellectual sense that there can be an intelligent, reasonable conservative position on many issues, one that I can respect even if there is no way in hell I’d ever favor it myself. I even think I have benefitted from conservative thought in the past—the modern US scientific establishment is largely the product of old-time, hard-headed conservative policy (look up Vannevar Bush sometime; arguably one of the most important founders of the American military-industrial research complex, and no poncing liberal, he).

But, face it, those days are gone. The new face of America’s Republican party, what used to be our conservative party, consists of people like Baxley—know-nothings and theocrats who blithely consider teaching good science a property of “leftist totalitarian niches”. I find it hard to take seriously accusations that my brush is too wide when the representatives of the Right are using an industrial-grade paint-sprayer themselves.