Comment on “Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU by Sean Pitman.
Note that there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, in the WASC guidelines that prohibits the teaching of SDA beliefs. And the endorsement of LSU by WASC says nothing, absolutely NOTHING, about whether LSU teaches or does not teach LSU beliefs.
WASC’s emphasis on the academic freedom of professors comes at the expense of the freedom of the institution to remove professors from employment who are no longer representative of the Church’s clearly stated goals and ideals. WASC cites a need for the school to have “appropriate autonomy” or distance from the SDA Church – even though it is the Church that built, owns and operates the school. Where does WASC recognize the responsibility of professors toward their employer? the Church in this case?
This hiding behind the notion of “academic freedom” in order to continue to openly deride and undermine the Church’s most fundamental doctrinal positions in the classroom is sheer nonsense. After all, Catholic schools have recently fired teachers for undermining Catholic doctrine outside of the classroom (and a math teacher no less – see Link). Yet, no accrediting agency threatened the Catholic Church with loss of accreditation of its schools over such infringements of “academic freedom”? Why not?
To quote the reason for the Catholic school’s dismissal of this math teacher:
“When students in a Catholic school are running around the school with this survey and it says, ‘Do you believe in God?’ and it says, ‘No,’ well, that’s in conflict with what we are teaching.â€
WASC would have a cow if LSU required its professors to answer “Yes” to questions regarding fundamental SDA beliefs on origins – like, “Do you believe in a literal 6-day creation week where God created all living things on this planet?” Or, “Do you believe in a literal worldwide Noachian Flood that destroyed all land animal life on this planet and formed much of the geologic column and fossil record?”
WASC is in fact threatening LSU, and essentially all of our schools in the western US, with loss of accreditation if the SDA Church insists that teachers actually support the Church’s doctrinal positions in their classrooms – to include their science classrooms. That’s a problem for the Church… a big problem…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
“Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU
What is interesting to me is WASC’s threat against one of our schools with the use of “academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and the role of the governing board”… independent of the Church’s entire purpose for creating a school in the first place. The Church isn’t asking that theories of evolution be removed from the curriculum of its schools. That’s not remotely true. The Church is arguing that these Darwinian and other mainstream evolutionary theories should be explained in great detail; but that our own professors should be able to go beyond the mere teaching of these theories to explain to their students how and why these theories are actually untenable given the overall weight of evidence in favor of the SDA perspective on origins – evidence which should also be presented in our schools in the most eloquent and attractive manner possible.
Yet, WASC goes on with its threat against our Church Schools with the following statement:
Realizing that this is a challenging denominational matter, the Commission is deeply concerned with this external threat to La Sierra’s institutional autonomy and to academic freedom. In your communications with the Commission, both in writing prior to meeting and at the Commission meeting, you expressed the commitment of the board and the president to resist efforts that would compromise academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
What? Is the Church supposed to support the “freedom” of a teacher to undermine the very purpose of the Church school to begin with? – the very reason why the SDA Church built it and supports it? Turning the tables around, “academic freedom” has not protected those who would think to question mainstream evolutionary thinking within public universities or institutions.
Just look at what happened to Dr. Richard Sternberg, the editor of the peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington when it published Stephen Meyer’s paper, “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories†which questioned mainstream evolutionary thinking. Sternberg’s “academic freedom” did not prevent him from loosing his academic rank and his job at the Smithsonian Institute.
http://www.educatetruth.com/featured/angry-scientists-publishing-on-intelligent-design/
What WASC is trying to do is to uphold a state-sponsored religious philosophy of science at the expense of opposing views being presented against the prevailing view. This is not what SDA education should be about. The Church should strongly resist the implications of this WASC review or end up loosing all benefit to the Church’s goals and ideals from owning and operating its own schools of higher learning…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!
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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…
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Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…
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Where did I “gloss over it”?
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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.
Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).
Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.
