A Seattle think tank that questions the theory of evolution has assailed Ohio State’s administration for violating the constitutional rights of graduate student Bryan Leonard.
The attack was leveled by the Discovery Institute, which defends “teaching the controversy” of intelligent design.
Believers of intelligent design maintain that the universe is so complex that it could not have been organized, and beings created, without the hand of some kind of “designer.” They are not specific as to who or what that designer is.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled last month that the Dover School District cannot teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution because it is “a mere re-labeling of creationism,” and not a science.
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creationism is a religious belief and cannot be taught in the public schools. The Dover decision applies only to the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The Institute filed a public records request with OSU “seeking all documents related to Darwinist attacks” on Bryan Leonard, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education. The request was denied.
Following complaints by three faculty members, Leonard’s research and the dissertation committee overseeing it were investigated by the school of teaching and learning. OSU refused to reveal the results of the investigation. The defense of his dissertation was postponed last June and has not been rescheduled.
Leonard’s main dissertation research question is: “When students are taught the scientific data both supporting and challenging macroevolution, do they maintain or change their beliefs over time? What empirical, cognitive and/or social factors influence students’ beliefs?”
The Discovery Institute responded to what they called a blanket refusal of the public records request by pointing out that some of the documents requested had already been given to reporters last spring.
John West, associate director of the center for science and culture at Discovery Institute and chairman of the political science department at Seattle Pacific University, a Christian university established by Free Methodist pioneers over a century ago, called OSU’s refusal “an outrageous response.” He said he had been told by a Columbus Dispatch reporter that she had been sent the documents.
“This abuse of the (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) should concern every OSU student, not just those with unpopular views,” West said. “They used FERPA to protect themselves when the Discovery Institute inquired, but they handed out the information to reporters last May.”
In a statement, West said, “We are concerned that Leonard is being targeted for unfair and possibly illegal treatment because of his viewpoint about evolution, in violation of his First Amendment rights.”
“It looks an awful lot like Leonard is being targeted for payback,” West said after noting Leonard’s work for the Ohio and Kansas Boards of Education. In Ohio, he helped prepare a controversial life-science curriculum for 10th graders adopted on a 13-5 vote by the state board of education. In Kansas, he testified in support of new science standards, including scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory, which were adopted.
In describing to the science committee of the Kansas Board of Education his teaching in the 10th grade classes at Hilliard-Davidson High School in Hilliard, Ohio, Leonard said, “the way in which I teach evolution in my high school biology class is that I teach the scientific information, or in other words, the scientific interpretations both supporting and challenging macroevolution.”
In response to questioning by Kansas officials, Leonard testified that he neither believed that “all of life was biologically related to the beginning of life,” nor that “human beings are related by common descent to prehominid ancestors.”
Upon learning of Leonard’s testimony, three OSU professors – Brian W. McEnnis, a mathematics professor, Jeffrey K. McKee, an anthropology professor, and Steve Rissing, an evolution, ecology and organismal biology professor – signed a letter to Graduate College Dean Carole Anderson that said, “there is evidence that Mr. Leonard’s dissertation committee has been improperly constituted and that his research may have involved unethical human subject experimentation.
“We note a fundamental flaw: There are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution. Mr. Leonard has been misinforming his students if he teaches them otherwise. His dissertation presents evidence that he has succeeded in persuading high school students to reject this fundamental principle of biology. As such, it involves deliberate miseducation of these students, a practice we regard as unethical.”
The three professors also complained that, although Leonard’s dissertation deals with the teaching of evolution, “no member of his dissertation committee is a science educator or an evolutionary biologist.”
Anderson sent a copy of the professors’ letter to Peter V. Paul, chairman of the school of teaching and learning, and told Paul in a cover letter that the letter from the professors “does raise some reasonable concerns about the composition of the (dissertation) Committee, and the likelihood that Mr. Leonard’s dissertation will receive the kind of objective evaluation that the degree of Ph. D. requires.” The cover letter also asked Paul to conduct an investigation as to the qualifications of the dissertation committee and the other “reservations” expressed in the OSU professors’ letter.
In an e-mail to The Lantern last month, Paul, who was unavailable by phone, said he “did not have any additional, substantial information to offer on this difficult case.” He said he had been told to refer all questions to the Graduate College’s spokesman.
The Lantern made a freedom of information request last month to Anderson seeking “access to and a copy of the results of the investigation by the school of teaching and learning.”
The request was denied.
Michael Layish, OSU’s associate legal counsel, wrote to The Lantern that releasing the records would be in violation of the FERPA.
Leonard has been unavailable for comment to The Lantern by phone or e-mail for six months. In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer in December, 2002, he said Ohio’s new science standards, upon which the curriculum was subsequently based, gave him the authority to teach ideas critical of evolution.
“The idea is to increase students’ knowledge of evolution,” Leonard said. “Showing them the controversies of evolution can help us achieve this goal. I’ve often found that students are more interested in the controversy.”
Such questioning of the basis of evolution has aroused vehement objections in the academic community.
A June 10, 2005 article in the Inside Higher Ed online newspaper said “faculty critics have objected both to the idea that Ohio State appeared to be on the verge of awarding a Ph. D. for work questioning evolution and to the way Leonard’s dissertation committee violated Ohio State rules.
“Beyond Ohio State, a blog for evolution scientists, ‘Panda’s Thumb,’ has been publishing criticism of the dissertation defense and of the way the review committee was set up. Despite all the criticism, Ohio State officials stress that the decision to call off the dissertation defense was made by Leonard’s dissertation advisor, not by university administrators responding to the controversy. Some scientists are questioning how Leonard came so close to a Ph. D. legitimizing intelligent design.”
