May 15, 2000

Baylor faculty upset over
university center studying creation
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___WACO--A bitter battle has erupted between the faculty and administration of Baylor University over formation of a center charged, in part, with studying whether mathematical and scientific formulas can prove an intelligent design behind creation.
___President Robert Sloan and other university administrators created the Michael Polanyi

The Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor has become an issue of controversy for the Baylor faculty.

Center in October 1999. It is named for a world-renowned physical chemist and philosopher who died in 1976.
___Faculty members, particularly from the sciences, have complained they were not consulted about formation of the center but should have been because the center's work relates to their areas of study. Some science professors have expressed fear that perceptions about the center's work will reflect negatively on the image of Baylor's science departments.
___These concerns were elevated in mid-April when the Polanyi Center sponsored its first-ever conference on the role of naturalism in science, including presentations on the emerging academic discipline known as intelligent design. That conference, which included a diverse array of speakers with established academic credentials, drew about 350 participants.
___But some Baylor faculty members refused to attend the conference, accusing Sloan and the Polanyi Center of promoting creation science, a perspective that attempts to convert a literal reading of the Old Testament book of Genesis into scientific theory.
___Other faculty members outside the sciences have joined the protest on the basis of how the center was formed, citing a lack of collegiality between the administration and faculty.
___The battle came to a head April 18, when Baylor's Faculty Senate voted 27-2 for dissolution of the Polanyi Center. Sloan responded in an address to the faculty the next day, declaring he would not close the center simply because the faculty demanded it.
___Instead, he reiterated his commitment to a previously announced plan to establish a peer-review committee, comprised primarily of outside scholars, to evaluate the work of the Polanyi Center.
___The way the Polanyi Center was created is no different than the way other centers have been created at Baylor during both his and previous administrations, Sloan added.
___Robert Baird, chairman of the Faculty Senate, told his colleagues the Polanyi Center controversy is "one of the most divisive issues to have arisen on the Baylor campus during my 32 years on the faculty."
___Before the Faculty Senate vote calling for the center's dissolution, Baird also called for closing the center and starting over in a process that would allow faculty to exert more control. "If it is desirable for Baylor to have a center to explore the connections between science and other disciplines, a committee of Baylor faculty from across the disciplines could be formed," he suggested.
___"The directors of the center claim to be doing science, ..." Baird charged. "Yet the center was created without consultation with colleagues in the sciences. Another major purpose of the center is to examine the connections between science and religion, yet again it was created without consultation with colleagues in the department of religion."
___The Baylor Lariat quoted geology professor Joe Yelderman speaking against the center on similar grounds.
___"I am concerned as a science professor because something involving the sciences occurred without us (faculty) knowing about it," Yelderman told the Lariat. "As a professor, I am concerned that people will make us guilty by association and assume that we are associated with or linked to this organization that is very well established as a pseudo-science rather than science."
___Yelderman referenced concerns by science faculty that the Polanyi Center advocates creation science.
___In an interview with the Baptist Standard, Sloan said he does not believe the Polanyi Center advocates creationism nor does it run counter to the scientific processes taught elsewhere in the university.
___"I understand why many scientists feel nervous, but this really is not a question of trying to impose certain specific interpretations of Genesis on the scientific disciplines," Sloan said. "There are many scholars of a religious and non-religious bent who think some of the old paradigms--Darwinism and neo-Darwinism--can be challenged. A Christian university is a place where we ought to be able to ask questions about our belief in God the Creator and the nature of the world in which we live."
___In a statement released on Baylor's website, Sloan said he does not affirm creation science. "I think it is not good theology, and I would be embarrassed for what I understand to be creation science to be taught at Baylor University."
___Nevertheless, Sloan said in the statement and interview, he strongly affirms God as Creator. "What is a given is that we affirm a Christian worldview, that we affirm a Creator and that the Creator has revealed himself through Jesus Christ."
___Bruce Gordon, associate director of the Polanyi Center, also said in an interview that the work of the center should not be confused with creation science.
___"With anything new and novel, there's going to be a certain amount of suspicion," he admitted. "When you use the word 'design,' it raises questions about what is the intelligence behind this design. Worries arise as to whether this might be a species of creationism in a bad sense."
___And the mere mention of the word "creationism" among the scientific community "conjures up all sorts of connotations," Gordon said. But that's not what the Polanyi Center is about, he added.
___Simply setting out to discover whether scientific formulas can prove the existence of an intelligence behind creation does not inherently identify that intelligence, Gordon noted. "The uniqueness of that intelligence and the character of that intelligence are not transparent just because a mathematical inference can be made. You're a long way from being able to determine anything that resembles the Judeo-Christian belief."
___Gordon said he believes the Polanyi Center ought to be continued at Baylor because of its uniqueness. No other such enterprise exists at any other American university, he said.
___The center consists of two people, Gordon and Bill Dembski, who serves as the center's director. Dembski is considered one of the nation's foremost authorities on intelligent design studies, and his 1999 book "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology," was named one of the year's 10 most-influential books by Christianity Today.
___"Given Baylor's identity as a Baptist institution and its commitment to historic Christianity, it seems like this is a reasonable context to be asking these questions," Gordon said. "The sorts of concerns that are the focus of the Polanyi Center have a natural place in the dialogue at Baylor."
___Debate over the Polanyi Center is only the latest in a string of altercations between Sloan and the Baylor faculty since he assumed the presidency in 1995. Sloan and the university have been the target of more than two dozen lawsuits brought by faculty over claims such as wrongful termination and denial of due process.
___Baylor spokesman Larry Brumley cited this underlying tension as the primary force behind the Polanyi Center controversy. Some of the faculty members making the most strident claims about the Polanyi Center are longtime critics of Sloan, he said, who are venting years of pent-up anger.
___It is ironic, Brumley suggested, that faculty members who normally advocate free inquiry are demanding the withdrawal of such freedom from one aspect of university life.
___"To shut the center down right now, as the Faculty Senate has called for, would be a form of censorship," he said.


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