Wow, here are some interesting comparisons being made by the Discovery Institute.
If you were to apply the othering approach in academia today, how might you begin? Well, you’d take a disfavored idea — creationism, for example.
Be wary when one is overly critical of you, but overly generous in regards to themselves.
What’s next? Pilots are required to have valid certificates from institutions that teach competent piloting? When just anyone can’t get a job as a pilot, and they’re discriminated against based on their qualifications, what has the world come to? This “othering” of non-pilots in the pilot business is obscene.
As a Christian ID supporter who believe in a old earth and common decent who also likes peaceful science I wish we can just all get along while respecting our disagreements and having conversations about them
So the Discovery Institute is arguing that creationist institutions shouldn’t be accredited at all? Okay, sounds good to me.
What is interesting about this particular article is that it blatantly misrepresents the WSJ article, which is currently (but not for long) behind a paywall. This article will have an impact among the uninformed, but ultimately this is a dangerous game they are playing.
I only need to convince secular accreditors to follow their existing policy (CHEA and SASCOC). If either one is convinced, there are downstream impacts, whatever ENV thinks about it.
Klinghoffer really did miss the point, which is disappointing because he’s smarter than that. He wrote some good stuff when he was at National Review.
Certainly, that’s a very good suggestion and one that seems like a no-brainer. But to compare / contrast this situation to The Scarlet Letter in an environment where comments are not allowed is the opposite of that. It is disrespectful to make an outrageous comparison and finish by invoking the Chinese social credit system and Big Tech’s censorship. It’s just pouring gasoline on the situation and lighting a match. The desire is to get an emotional response, and to NOT have a conversation about it.
The Discovery Institute seems to have forgotten that accreditation is a privilege, not a right.
Er, no. He made exactly the polemical point that he wanted to make.
@Jesse_England many of us can.
There are institutions that benefit from conflict. For us to move past the conflict, we have to rework these institutions.
Good point.
Wow, that is a bit of a new low, though “new lows” are the Dishonesty Institute’s traditional specialty so it would be disappointing to see them get through a week without one.
As for creationism being labeled, well, sure. All of us go around with labels associated with our academic institutions. I had an easier time finding a job after going to Penn law school than I would have if I’d gone to Widener, just down the road a bit, or Rutgers, just across the river. Nobody supposes that there are no good lawyers who come from those places, but the quality of an institution is assumed to have some predictive value that’s helpful in hiring. And when an institution teaches outrageous nonsense, that will both please those who want to employ believers in outrageous nonsense and displease those who don’t. What’s not to like? Why should anyone think that covering this up provides some sort of social good?
But, of course, as always, the DI is a culture-war club, and while Casey Luskin is no longer there to be its Boy George, Klinghoffer clearly knows the beat.
It’s a smorgasbord of red-baiting, atheist-fearing, liberty-hating BS of just the type that the culture war has always been about. Joshua’s proposal cannot just be a good idea in relation to academic standards – it has to be portrayed as a part of The Big Lie that the communists are using to tear our society apart from within.
These people are the ideological brothers of the people who tried to overthrow our government on January 6.
It reminds me of a fascinating film to which a book by Rick Perlstein guided me: Operation Abolition, a red-scare film made by the HUAC and the FBI, in which all manner of people are smeared with the accusation that, by seeking racial justice, the right to organize a union, or freedoms on college campuses, they have really been serving the secret goals of the Communist Party. The film is bizarre to watch, from a 2021 perspective, because although this is the story the FBI and HUAC hope to put across, it now fails completely and all one can see is out-and-out harassment and violence directed against political dissent. But pieces like this one by Klinghoffer mirror it: we still have these anti-liberty elements in our culture and they are still red-baiting and all the rest of it. The details have changed; but those who would tear down our culture have not.
Ironically, “national norms” is lifted strait from TRACs policy.
They are syndicating this one:
Um.
Did anyone object to him getting a PhD? I didn’t.
Oh, geez. I figured he’d disappeared down a Habitrail somewhere.
I know That’s why I like peaceful science even though I like intelligent design it gives me some hope for the future of these conversations and that’s why I don’t 100% like and fit in the labels creationists or evolutionists (being a good Christian is far more important) I wish the debate were more sophisticated unlike the nye vs ham debate more RTB style and peaceful science types dialogues
“Klinghoffer stokes faux outrage, strays distant from the facts at hand” is the headline equivalent of “Dog bites man”.
As is “Klinghoffer, while working for creationist organization and advancing creationist agenda, denies being a creationist.”