Two things I touched on but did­n’t explic­it­ly say about the mini-ker­fuf­fle over the KU course on IDC.

First, IDol­a­tors are the ones want­i­ng to keep IDC from being taught. I think it’s fine that it’s being taught in an appro­pri­ate context. 

Sec­ond, IDol­a­tors are the ones advo­cat­ing a lim­i­ta­tion on aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom. And yes, threat­en­ing to cut fund­ing if a pro­fes­sor teach­es a course you find polit­i­cal­ly unpalat­able is a vio­la­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic freedom.

Fun­ny how fast the con­cern for aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom dis­ap­pears from DI announcements.

When the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho clar­i­fied lan­guage regard­ing the teach­ing of non-sci­ence in sci­ence class­es, the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute lashed out, say­ing:

“Cen­sor­ship and thought-con­trol are appar­ent­ly alive and well at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho,” added Dr. John West, Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Dis­cov­ery Institute’s Cen­ter for Sci­ence and Cul­ture. “This is an assault on aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom, and a barefaced vio­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion’s guar­an­tee of free speech.”

When con­ser­v­a­tives are threat­en­ing to cut fund­ing to KU in retal­i­a­tion for teach­ing IDC in a way they don’t like:

[it] should cause some Kansas leg­is­la­tors to ques­tion the extent to which Kansas tax­pay­ers should be fund­ing state spon­sored faith bashing

If Dr. Mirec­ki can’t teach IDC in what­ev­er way he sees fit, uni­ver­si­ties turn into halls of indoc­tri­na­tion. Sud­den­ly, cours­es in Chris­t­ian thought can’t teach that some Chris­tians see God as tri­une while oth­ers see him as uni­tar­i­an, while oth­ers don’t like that whole gen­der thing at all. We live in a trini­tar­i­an soci­ety, and some­one might be offend­ed by teach­ing about uni­tar­i­an Christians.

And we all know that the East­ern Ortho­dox church­es got it wrong, and that the Catholics are actu­al­ly an Egypt­ian cult, not even Christians.

And don’t even start on the Jews.

Or the Bud­dhists.

For­get the Mor­mons.

Also the Masons.

The Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es aren’t just annoy­ing, they’re un-Chris­t­ian!

While we’re mak­ing a list of bad things: Mus­lims, Dun­geons and Drag­ons and Hal­loween.

And if psy­chol­o­gists teach that sui­cide can be pre­vent­ed by ther­a­py and anti-depres­sants, you just tell them about prayer. Same goes for drug addic­tion. Also mur­der.

It’s easy to make fun of Jack Chick, and I take noth­ing that he says seri­ous­ly. The point is, if course con­tent is based on a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test rather than the judg­ment of pro­fes­sion­als, there’s noth­ing to pre­vent pro­fes­sors from being oblig­ed to call the Catholic Church a “great whore,” or deny­ing that Ger­man Nazis caused the Holo­caust because it was actu­al­ly an Inqui­si­tion pro­mot­ed by the Jesuits.

I don’t mean to be hyper­bol­ic, but slip­pery slope argu­ments like this are also known as “the thin edge of the wedge,” and we’ve all seen how the IDol­a­tors love those sim­ple machines. Aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom pro­tects every­one’s right to pur­sue their research where it leads them. When we start cen­sor­ing such speech, we hurt everyone.