Let's all 'help' the Discovery Institute

Oh this is a good one! "Help Support Academic Freedom by Suppporting Discovery Institute". You have to love the sheer unmitigated gall of some people. According to this press release, the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute needs your financial support to continue: [by the way -- the typo in the title is not my error, but theirs when I cut and paste the title from their website on 19 Dec about 2:30PM]

• scientific research and publications that meet the Darwinists on their own turf, forcing them to respond to the growing scientific evidence for design; [aside form the fact there HASN'T been any such research of publications]
  
• training for top graduate students in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities through our summer mentoring program; [Let's training these graduate students how to ignore science and preach and market pseudo-science]
  
• this online news service (Evolution News & Views), which has received over 2.25 million page views in 2008; [I would have thought this would be labels more appropriately as Propaganda than News]
  
• our internet radio show ID the Future, publicizing information censored by the establishment media, and which has over 25,000 subscribers.; and, [Censored, in other words laughed at, not taken seriously, and pretty much ignored by anyone other than the faithful]
  
• practical help for teachers, scientists, and students who are facing indoctrination or persecution at their schools or colleges. [Sure practical help for Professor Gonzales and the former Dover PA school board. That kind of 'help' cost him tenure and them over $1,000,000]

Am I against Academic Freedom, no I am not! I am a teacher and I understand what Academic Freedom really is. It is not license for a teacher to say anything they want about any subject. Just like Free Speech there are practical limits and responsibilities associated with Academic Freedom that the Discovery Institute ignores.

This is another tactic to gain popular support. Is Intelligent Design an example of Academic Freedom? Not in the science classroom of a public school it isn't! In other classes it may very well be, like Philosophy or Sociology. I would expect Intelligent Design to be well remembered in Marketing classes of the future. But as a scientific theory, it is not Academic Freedom to express pseudo-science in a public school science class. What it is . . . is against the law!

My suggestion, if you really want to help is donate to a cause that supports something useful. Give to a food bank, shelter, or other charity where you can not only help people, but get a tax write-off. Giving to the Discovery Institute is a waste of perfectly good money.