Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Bill Zedler, champion of "academic" freedom

So, Texas is apparently worried about losing its status as most backward state. Enter state representative Bill Zedler, who is introducing a bill that will prevent students and professors from being "discriminated against" for questioning evolution. Because apparently he believes that this is NOT the exact opposite of the problem with science education.
Texas Republican Bill Zedler has a mind that was intelligently designed with an extraordinary capacity for deliberately misinterpreting facts, and with an ability to use disingenuous arguments about academic freedom to push a religious agenda. Fortunately, millions of years of evolution have also left him with a mind that is incapable of adequately disguising his transparent attempt to violate the first amendment of the United States Constitution.
I humbly submit to Mr. Zedler that he should modify his bill, expanding it to include the following:

  1. No student shall be expected to depart any university with any knowledge that supplants or contradicts any beliefs or preconceived notions they may have had upon first enrolling.
  2. No one shall be denied employment as a doctor at any university health center as a result of their disbelief in the germ theory of disease, nor as a result of a lack of medical training.
  3. Any student accused of plagiarism or any other form of academic misconduct shall be examined by panel consisting of three members of the faculty and the university ombudsman. The student shall be held underwater for no less than twelve consecutive minutes. Should the student drown, he or she shall be deemed innocent of said misconduct.
  4. Each university shall establish a quota system for tenured faculty in each department as follows. Each Chemistry Department must have no less than four (4) practicing alchemists. No less than seven (7) members of each English Department must be functionally illiterate. Women's Studies Departments must include at least six (6) self-identifying misogynists, including at least one (1) violent sex offender.

I look forward to seeing the revised version of the bill.

Update: New post presenting my webcomic on this subject.

1 comment:

  1. New Mexico house bill 302 was amusingly (but perhaps accurately) given the running title "Protection from certain scientific topics".

    You have to watch out for that science stuff, it can be dangerous in the wrong hands....

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