Intelligent design professor loses tenure appeal

Professor Guillermo Gonzalez, known at Iowa State University as a vocal supporter of intelligent design theory, is well aware of the controversy his views have stirred up over the years.

One indicator could have been the 2005 circulation of a campus-wide petition denouncing intelligent design (the belief that the universe was deliberately created by a supreme being) as “supernatural” and non-scientific; The statement was signed by more than 120 university faculty members. The University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa circulated similar petitions in support of ISU’s position later that year.

Nevertheless, Gonzalez continued to teach physics classes and lecture on a book he co-authored, “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery.”

But this week the professor was dealt a blow that he interprets as a direct response to his philosophical and religious beliefs. The Iowa Board of Regents denied Gonzalez’s tenure request, a decision he had appealed after initially being denied last spring.

“If academic freedom doesn’t defend the professor with minority viewpoints, what good is it?” said Gonzalez last week.

The professor is considering legal action against the university in defense of his First Amendment religious freedoms.

One thing that hasn’t been clear in the news coverage is how ISU’s official curriculum defines intelligent design, or whether it is mentioned at all. I’m getting a sense that Gonzalez does not directly teach these theories to his students – he has written several papers and books in support of intelligent design, and that may be what the university is reacting to.

It would also be interesting to know to what extent the school’s tenure board may take into account the soundness of a professor’s scientific theories (not just intelligent design but ANY controversial theory) in evaluating a tenure request. This distinction, after all, could make the difference in detecting any potential bias in the board’s decision.

Christian protest group appeals arrests for role in anti-gay demonstration

A group of 11 protesters will get another day in court Monday as they move forward with a civil lawsuit arising from arrests at a gay pride rally in 2004.

Members of the Christian organization Repent America were taken into custody at the Philadelphia event after using bullhorns to quote Bible verses to hundreds of rally participants. The 11 were charged with disorderly conduct, criminal conspiracy, reckless endangerment, rioting, highway obstruction, failure to disperse, possessing an instrument of crime and ethnic intimidation.

Attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal consortium, said the case reveals a deep institutional bias against religious demonstrators:

“The First Amendment right to free speech and religious freedom is at stake. Christians should not be arrested simply for exercising their constitutional free speech and religious expression rights in a public place. If this violation of these Christians’ rights is allowed to stand, the First Amendment rights of all people of faith are in jeopardy.”

The protesters were cleared of all charges in 2005, before ADF attorneys decided to bring the lawsuit in response to the arrests. A Pennsylvania district court ruled against the protesters in January 2007, saying, “There is no constitutional right to drown out the speech of another person.”

Appeals court to Internet trolls: You have the right to remain anonymous

Anyone who has spent time on an Internet message board has met one: That irritating guy who spouts defamatory nonsense on every subject from partisan politics to racist propaganda—a “troll,” as he is commonly known—is a staple of online discourse.

He may be obnoxious, but now his right to play virtual tough-guy is legally protected. A California appeals court decided Wednesday that online commenters have a First-Amendment right to remain anonymous even when their remarks are perceived as “scathing personal attacks” and potentially harmful to a company’s business.

This particular case involved 10 employees of a Florida company who posted derogatory and sexist comments about their employer on Yahoo message boards. When the employer sued Yahoo to reveal the identities of the commenters, the company refused.

As one blogger summarized:

“The appeals court acknowledged that the Wild West of the Internet is still bound by rules about libel, and that especially in the corporate and financial arena, people’s reputations and entire companies can suffer damages as rumors spread over the ‘Net. Still, the judge ruled that what Doe 6 had posted were not assertions of ‘actual fact’ and therefore not actionable under Florida’s defamation law, despite being ‘unquestionably offensive and demeaning.’”

This case is another interesting chapter in the “actual fact” debate (see the post immediately below this one), in which the courts have attempted to draw a line between defamation and constitutionally protected speech in public forums and advertisements.

The question comes down to, what is the difference between hurting someone’s feelings and legitimately harming them? When the Internet is involved, the question gets even murkier due to variation in different companies’ policies on releasing clients’ identities.

An even more extreme version of this case came up last June, when two female Yale law school students sued an online message board to disclose the identities of posters who had, according to the blog Ars Technica, made a “string of public character assassinations, rumors, and (repeated) rape threats.”

Rape threats? Yeah, that one’s probably across the line. But so far the women have been unable obtain a court order or make any progress in identifying the malicious posters.

Controversial advertisement is protected speech, says Illinois Supreme Court

Another victory this week for outrageousness in advertising: the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a controversial ad that ran in the Sun-Times last fall did not meet standards for defamation and should be protected under the First Amendment.

The ad, paid for by the Chicago clothing retailer Cosmo’s Designer Direct, appears to contain veiled references to the store’s main competitor, Imperial Apparel, accusing the store of selling “cheap imitations” of Cosmo’s well-known 3-for-1 sale. The ad also includes language that could be construed as anti-Semitic:

“WARNING! Beware of

Cheap Imitations Up North …

We all know, there is only

one ‘America’ in the world

and only one ‘3 for 1′ in the

Midwest. […] So to the shameless

owners of Empire rags cen-

ter, east Eden and south of

quality, we say…’Start being

kosher…Stop openly copying

and coveting your neighbor’s

concepts or a hail storm of

frozen matzo balls shall del-

uge your ‘flea market style

warehouse.’ […]

 

It is laughable how with all

the integrity of the ‘Iraq

Information Minister’, they

brazenly attempt pulling

polyester over your eyes by

conjuring up a low rent

3 for imitation that has the

transparency of a hookers

come on…but no matter

how they inflate prices and compromise quality, much to

their dismay, Cy and his son

Paul the plagiarist still remain

light years away from

delivering anything close to

our ‘3 for 1′ values. […]”

Imperial’s owners claimed that several people who saw the ad called the store to ask them about it, and the business suffered financially because of the negative exposure.

The Court ruled that the ad contained no direct fact-based statements and that a “reasonable reader” would not automatically understand it to be an attack on Imperial.

If this case sounds familiar, it could be because it resembles (a watered-down version of) the facts behind New York Times v. Sullivan Supreme Court decision, in which the Times was exonerated for running an ad attacking (but not naming) a Montgomery police chief during the 1960s civil rights movement.

Both cases reinforced the legitimacy of public criticism through advertising, a notion first debated in the Hustler Magazine v. Falwell case, in which the Court ruled that statements that cannot “reasonably [be] interpreted as stating actual facts” are protected under the First Amendment.

Britney Spears incident prompts talk of paparazzi safety zone

The Los Angeles City Council wants people to stay away from Britney Spears. Probably good advice.

But because some people insist, Councilman Dennis Zine called for a city ordinance Thursday to place limits on how close paparazzi can get to people they photograph, because, he says, there is an inherent safety risk associated with the chaotic mob mentality (think Princess Diana). Zine added that such a law would cut down on the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on special police escorts – Spears’ trip to the hospital this week cost LA residents an estimated $25,000.

But a few media observers are calling the “safety zone” proposal an infringement on the rights of the press to report on (and photograph) public news events.

“‘Any kind of law that you try to draft to cover the paparazzi will apply to all reporters. You can’t carve out a law that will apply to just the paparazzi,’ said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.”

Even leaders within the LAPD are speaking out against the proposed measure, which they say is unnecessary:

“‘Councilman Zine is responding to frustration we all have with the paparazzi,’ [Police Chief William J.] Bratton said. ‘We already have appropriate laws within the constitutional guidelines and we intend to do that whether it is erratic driving, trespassing on private property or any action that goes beyond the constitutional rights to cover a story.’”

The police protection for Spears’ hospital trip included two dozen officers, several motorcycles, a helicopter and an ambulance with darkened windows.

New website address…

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Oklahoma petitioners plead not guilty to conspiracy charges

Three people arrested for violating an Oklahoma petition law pleaded not guilty this week to charges of conspiracy to defraud the state.

The three – Paul Jacob, Rick Carpenter and Susan Johnson – were indicted after taking part in a petitioning campaign in October in which they called for, among other things, inclusion of a “taxpayer bill of rights” on the state election ballot. Oklahoma law prohibits the hiring of out-of-state residents to work as signature-collectors in petition campaigns; Jacob (who is affiliated with the U.S. Term Limits organization) is from Virginia, and Johnson (president of the National Voters Outreach) is from Michigan.

Jacob said the group checked with state election officials before the petition drive to confirm the legality of using non-resident workers, and that they informed him it would be permissible for the workers to “move to Oklahoma and immediately declare residency.” Jacob also asked for and received relevant legal precedent before coordinating the campaign.

After several petition workers moved to Oklahoma to satisfy the residency requirement, they gathered the 300,000 signatures necessary to get the measure on the ballot. Says Jacob:

 

Then, the various forces of big government that had worked so hard to block the vote, joined by a who’s who of corporate CEOs and the heads of energy companies and banks… challenged the petition. And the Oklahoma Supreme Court came to their aid, providing a much different standard for residency than in the past. The judges now equated residency with a ‘permanent home.’”

As a result, Jacob and other paid workers were arrested and all signatures were thrown out.

Attorney General Drew Edmonson wrote, “Our allegations involve violations of state election laws that denied the ability of the Oklahomans who legitimately signed the petition to bring this measure to a vote.”

The case has sparked outrage among various citizens’ rights groups, who view the arrests as politically motivated attempts to protect special interests. Paul Jacob wrote on his website,

 

“The people who run the state of Oklahoma want to make certain that upstart reformers like Rick Carpenter don’t dare attempt any future initiatives, and that professional petition managers like Susan Johnson or “outside agitators” like me quickly think better of providing any assistance to such citizen-initiated efforts.

The goal is to scare, to intimidate, to silence… Politics has lurched off the highway of democracy, off the curb and back into the old insider system, the gutter method of accumulated power.

Once upon a time you could participate in politics without a battery of attorneys. Once upon a time you could lose an election without fear that one’s opponents would use the power of their office to imprison you. No more.”

If convicted, Jacob, Carpenter and Johnson could face fines up to $25,000 or up to 10 years in prison.

NYT reporter resists grand jury subpoena to reveal confidential source

The ACLU issued a statement Friday criticizing a federal grand jury’s motion to subpoena a New York Times reporter in an effort to question him about his confidential sources.

The reporter, James Risen, wrote a book that includes a chapter on a CIA operation to dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. The grand jury is seeking information from Risen’s source because he or she may have broken the law in leaking the information to the reporter. Risen will fight the subpoena.

ACLU Director Anthony Romero said,

The work of Mr. Risen, the New York Times and other publications has been tremendously significant in uncovering government abuses, and the ripple effects are still being felt. As we’ve seen with stories on NSA wiretapping, CIA black sites and extraordinary rendition, conversations between reporters and confidential sources can have historic consequences. We should do everything possible to protect that relationship.”

Risen’s situation has caused widespread disagreement on a reporter’s right to withhold information on confidential sources. A U.S. Senate bill that would expand the press’ ability to protect sources is currently on the floor, and a similar bill – the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 – has already passed the House. This most recent bill went so far as to include professional bloggers in the mix of journalists protected by the act.

But some commentators view Risen’s case as an overreach of press freedoms, some suggesting that the NYT and Risen see themselves as “above the law”:

Ultimately, I hope that the court sends Risen to jail for a good long time and fines both him and his employer for their disrespect for the law. And this should be more evidence that the Press needs to be taught a sharp lesson about where the First Amendment ends and their responsibilities as American citizens begin. I believe that while we desperately do need a free press, it is time Congress passes a law specifying that if classified information is released like this, then reporters must assist in the subsequent investigations or face trial as accomplices.”

As with many First Amendment cases, this one raises the question of where one can draw a line between a free press and an effective system of justice. Often this line is drawn around the issue of whether the confidential source has in fact broken the law – although most state shield laws recently approved have protected journalists in all cases except those that could cause direct threat of injury or death.

Florida school boards protest teaching of evolution as scientific fact

A Florida public school board voted Thursday in favor of a resolution to pressure state education officials to change recently imposed standards that they regard as a mandate to teach evolution “as scientific fact.”

Members of the Nassau County School Board want the standards to include language “such that evolution is not presented at the exclusion of other theories of origin of life.”

Representatives from another Florida district, the LaFayette County School Board, also protested the new standards, which were adopted January 25.

One contested excerpt from the policy requires that 7^th grade students be taught to

Recognize and describe that fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species.” (p. 25)

Another contentious issue that has emerged in this debate is Seminole County’s directive to public school teachers to refuse to speak to the media under any circumstances:

“It has come to our attention that press calls are being made to some schools regarding the question of teaching evolution in our schools… This question is a district issue, not one to which individuals should respond…

It is the official position of the administration that is responsible for making curriculum decisions that the science curriculum of Seminole County Public Schools is aligned with the Sunshine State Standards and meets the requirements of law. No discussion beyond that statement is held.”

Both the proposed revisions and the administrative gag order have drummed up quite a bit of controversy. With Charles Darwin’s birthday approaching on Feb. 12, it seems likely that more commentary on the subject is forthcoming.

“Honk for Peace” protesters acquitted of ‘disturbing the peace’ in Michigan

A federal judge has exonerated five anti-war protesters who were ticketed for encouraging passing motorists to “honk for peace.” The protesters, and one driver who had honked in support, had been cited for disturbing the peace (ironic, no?).

The ACLU’s Michigan office intervened in April, suing the city of Ferndale for violating the group’s First Amendment rights to free speech. “Honking is a time-honored means of political expression in Michigan,” said ACLU legal director Michael Steinberg on Thursday.

Police officers issued the sign-bearers tickets for violating a local law against honking for any reason other than alerting other drivers of danger – and also for causing a noise disturbance.

According to the ACLU attorneys, this is one of the only cases in which car-horn honking has been debated as a form of protected political expression.