'Intelligent design' professor earns tenure at Ball State
- About 2.3 million years ago, the earliest species of Homo, the genus to which all modern humans belong, evolved in Africa.
- About 1.8 million years ago, a more evolved species, Homo erectus (upright man) appeared. This species spread from Africa to Eurasia. The anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens (wise man) with bodies and brains like ours, evolved in Africa from earlier forms of humans.
- The earliest known fossil of a modern human is less than 200,000 years old. Source: National Academy of Sciences.
MUNCIE — Eric Hedin, a Ball State University faculty member who was ordered to stop teaching intelligent design in a science course, has been granted tenure.
An associate professor of physics and astronomy, Hedin declined to be interviewed for this story but told The Star Press, "I am pleased to have received approval for tenure and I look forward to continuing my professional contributions to Ball State University."
A "Boundaries of Science" class taught by Hedin reportedly promoted the idea that nature displays evidence of intelligent design, in contrast to an undirected process like evolution.
In 2013, Ball State President Jo Ann Gora decided ID was not an appropriate subject for a science class after receiving a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation about Hedin's course. After an investigation by a panel of academic experts, Gora said ID, which some call pseudoscience, was overwhelmingly regarded by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory.
Combined with Ball State's hiring of ID advocate Guillermo Gonzalez as an assistant professor of astronomy in 2013, the Hedin controversy put BSU at the center of a national educational debate over science versus religion.
After a seven-year probationary period, Ball State faculty can be granted tenure based on evidence of a pattern of achievement in teaching, scholarship and service in a professional capacity. It provides faculty freedom of teaching; opportunities for research and extramural activities; as well as economic security, according to the BSU faculty handbook.
Hedin, who previously taught at two Christian schools, Taylor University and Huntington College (now Huntington University), was hired into a contract faculty position at BSU in 2002 and then into a tenure-track position in 2012.
In 2008 Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University, essentially a form of termination, after which he taught at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, before landing at Ball State.
Michael J.I. Brown, an observational astronomer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, told The Star Press in 2014 it was a "remarkable coincidence" that two astronomers who believe in ID ended up at Ball State. Two ID-believing astronomers winding up in the same modestly sized astrophysics department by random chance are as unlikely as two astronomers who own chimpanzees ending up in the same department, Brown said.
Gonzalez, who continues to teach at Ball State, also remains a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a think tank known for its advocacy of ID. Other senior fellows at the institute include professors/faculty members who teach at religious schools like Gonzaga (Roman Catholic), University of San Francisco (Jesuit Catholic), Houston Baptist, College at Southwestern (Baptist), and Catholic University of America.
The National Academy of Sciences says science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks in conflict with each other. The evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith, and "science can neither prove nor disprove religion."
The Discovery Institute's John West declined comment for this story. The institute fought for Hedin's academic freedom and fair treatment, as did some Indiana lawmakers.
Gonzalez has said he will not be discussing ID in his classes at Ball State, nor did he do so at Iowa State, where he says he was denied tenure for ideological and political reasons. Ball State spokesperson Joan Todd says Gonzalez is in a tenure-track position at BSU.
Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.