Acts Have Consequences

The recent Kansas creationist kangaroo court hearings on evolution run by three creationist members of the Kansas State Board of Education (see here and here for stories) and the previous (1999) debacle in Kansas are having consquences for higher education in that state. In a story in the Lawrence Journal-World the Provost of Kansas University said

For the state to be portrayed repeatedly in the national press as being anti-science does damage to this university. The frustration is you fight this reputation problem every step of the way.

KU dropped three places in the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings of universities.

Kathy Martin, one of the creationist members of the Kansas State BOE, pooh-poohed the issue, saying

I feel most people could probably care less,” she said. “I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal except in certain circles.

“Certain circles” presumably refers to those who actually know something about the issue.

This is a wakeup call for Ohio, my principal concern. Consider these events:

The recent discovery of the scandal associated with Bryan Leonard’s Ph.D. candidacy at the Ohio State University

Ohio’s so-called “Critical Analysis” model lesson plan drawn straight from Jonathan Wells’s trash science (= Icons of Evolution), and

Ohio’s ethically impaired but politically powerful Governor pressuring the State BOE to weaken the science standards, which allowed that lesson plan to be considered.

None of this bodes well for the Ohio State University.

RBH