Intelligent Design Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez the Victim of Academic Persecution, Says Discovery Institute

On Monday, the Discovery Institute announced that it is making public a record of secret e-mails exchanged among faculty at Iowa State University about noted ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. The e-mails, according to the Institute, show forth the fact that an orchestrated campaign was organized and conducted against Gonzalez by his colleagues, with the intent to deny him tenure because he is a supporter of the philosophy of Intelligent Design (ID).

Faculty involved in the tenure decision knew very well that Gonzalez supports ID. Over a year before his tenure evaluation was scheduled, one ISU professor wrote an e-mail that left no doubt that Gonzalez's tenure application would never receive a fair evaluation.

In private e-mails, Gonzalez's colleagues deliberated about his tenure and collaborated to express their contempt for his views by asserting that ID is "intellectually vacuous and that "embalming is more of a science" than ID.

What's more, they asserted that Gonzalez should be lumped with "idiots" and "religious nutcases." They laughed at and ridiculed Gonzalez's ID work, saying they would only study it "[u]nder medication."

Members of ISU's department of Physics and Astronomy desired for Gonzalez to understand "that this is not a friendly place for him to develop further his IDeas" and they hoped "he may look for a better place as a result."

Flying in the face of his public statements and those of ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, the chairman of ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Eli Rosenberg stated in Dr. Gonzalez's tenure dossier that Dr. Gonzalez's support for intelligent design "disqualifies him from serving as a science educator."