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Thursday, May 20, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

I 

once had an interaction with 
my high school physics teacher 
that has stuck with me ever 

since. During one of the weekly 
chats we’d have in her classroom 
after school, I wondered out loud 
why neither evolution nor the Big 
Bang theory were covered in the 
biology or physics curricula. My 
teacher explained to me that being 
in a town drenched in parochial 
ideology, there was a don’t ask, don’t 
tell policy covering the teaching 
of evolution. Science instructors 
were encouraged to not teach the 
subject and to only field questions 
when asked. While not surprising 
to me in light of the culture of my 
hometown — Ortonville, Mich. — it 
was infuriating to know that social 
pressure was pushing my science 
teachers to avoid evolution in their 
general science courses. No law was 
restricting them. Only the fear of 
becoming a social pariah was in the 
way of them providing students with 
a scientifically complete education. 

What 
is 
happening 
in 
my 

hometown is not an anomaly in the 
contemporary United States. A 2019 
survey reported that only 67% of 
public high school biology teachers 
present Charles Darwin’s theory 
of evolution by natural selection 
as the scientific consensus. This 
is an increase from past surveys, 
but still quite low given that the 
theory of evolution is one of the 
most championed theories in all 
of biology. One out of every three 
teachers is not portraying evolution 
by natural selection as the robust 
scientific theory that it is — a theory 
that has been fortified with new 
evidence every year since it was first 
proposed. This presents obstacles to 
students who wish to further their 
science education at postsecondary 
institutions. More worrisome is 
that evolution denial propagates 
ignorance and scientific illiteracy — 
issues all the more pertinent in light 
of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Legal prohibitions on the public 

instruction of evolutionary theory 
do not hold anymore, but teachers’ 
apprehension 
about 
teaching 

evolution as agreed-upon science 
indicates that traditionalist mores 
still weigh down the American public 
education system. Bans on teaching 
evolution in public schools is as old 
as the theory itself. One of the first 
major conflicts between scientific 

educators and conservative policy 
makers in U.S. history was the 
Scopes Trial of 1925. This legal case 
concerned a Tennessee public school 
teacher who taught evolutionary 
theory despite a Tennessee law 
prohibiting instruction of human 
evolution in any school that received 
state funding. This trial catalyzed 
the debate between creationism and 
evolutionary theory. From then on, 
legal challenges to the instruction 
of evolution and natural selection in 
public schools have been mounted 
by many Christian groups — usually 
those from evangelical traditions — 
with varying degrees of success. 

Now, I cannot criticize those 

1920s Tennessee creationist policy 
makers too virulently, as at that time 
evolution was not a majority-held 
belief among Christians nor society 
at large. But criticism is warranted 
for contemporary teachers and 
education boards who are still 
reluctant to teach evolutionary 
theory and natural selection in light 
of the now 160 years of evidence — 
including the crucial discovery of 
DNA and genes — that provide robust 
support for evolution. And while I 
understand that some regions of the 
country have intense negative social 
sanctions against anti-creationist 
rhetoric that can be hard for teachers 
to overcome, it is more important that 
teachers plan science curriculum 
around empirical observations than 
socially-pressured traditional beliefs. 

This is not to say that learning 

about religious practice has no room 
in education — just that it does not 
belong in scientific curriculum at 
the expense of silencing scientific 
fact. A more apt place would be in 
the domain of social studies, with an 
emphasis on the diversity of religious 
practice. But having evolutionary 
theory not presented to students 
within 
their 
science 
courses 

promotes widespread ignorance 
and scientific illiteracy, two issues 
detrimental if a society wishes to 
better itself. Denying students the 
knowledge that many biologists view 
as foundational to their discipline 
serves ideology much more than 
it serves education. 

O

n 
Thursday, 
April 
22, 

representatives 
from 

the Graduate Employees’ 

Organization met with University of 
Michigan administrators to discuss 
an important campus free speech 
issue — the right to exercise freedom 
of conscience through the refusal 
of letters of recommendation. The 
discussion revealed the University’s 
policy for what it is: an attack on 
academic freedom designed not 
to protect students or faculty, but 
only to shield the University from 
controversy and liability.

This right has been under attack 

at the University of Michigan since 
2018, when two instructors, in 
separate incidents, declined requests 
for recommendations from students 
wishing to study in Israel. Writing 
these letters would have gone against 
the academic boycott of Israel in 
support of Palestinian human rights, 
 

and both instructors declined them 
for that reason. Even though Professor 
John Cheney-Lippold was exercising 
his constitutional right to free speech, 
University leaders nevertheless issued 
severe sanctions, including the loss of 
his upcoming sabbatical and a denial 
of a merit-based raise for one year. The 
graduate student instructor received a 
formal letter of admonishment from 
her department chair with implied 
threats of dismissal from the graduate 
program if such behavior were to 
happen again. What’s more, President 
Schlissel and then-Provost Martin 
Philbert issued a public statement that 
denounced both instructors. 

The punishment meted out to 

Professor Cheney-Lippold and the 
public statement from the most 
powerful University leaders was 
meant to warn campus faculty of 
the price for academic freedom, and 
potentially had a chilling effect on 
those who might otherwise speak 
out if they did not feel threatened. But 
the University wanted to make sure 
this wouldn’t happen again, so they 
convened a so-called Blue Ribbon 
Panel to devise a policy that would 
govern letters of recommendation.

The resulting policy is a strident 

attack on free speech. It doesn’t 
prohibit instructors from denying 
letters 
of 
recommendation 
for 

political or ethical reasons, but only 
from vocalizing those reasons. This 
did not sit well with GEO members, 
who 
voted 
overwhelmingly 
to 

oppose the policy in our 2020 
contract negotiations. Much has 
been written about “The Palestine 
Exception to Free Speech,” which 
describes the way norms of freedom 
of expression are so often bent to 
exclude those who would speak 
out for justice in Palestine. Despite 
the ongoing assault on Palestinian 
lives and human rights, however, 
our problem with the University’s 
policy on letters of recommendation 
is not just about Palestine. More and 
more, instructors are starting to see 
letters of recommendation as an 
important site of political opposition 
and learning. There is a growing 
movement among mathematicians 
to refuse to write letters for privacy-

violating surveillance organizations, 
like the National Security Agency. 
There is also the longstanding 
trend of declining recommendation 
requests for Teach for America 
applicants. We can think of a whole 
host of objectionable organizations 
— 
ExxonMobil, 
Raytheon, 
U.S. 

Immigration 
and 
Customs 

Enforcement or U.S. Rep. Marjorie 
Taylor Greene’s, R-Ga., congressional 
office — to which an instructor 
may want to vocally refuse to write 
letters of recommendation. Being 
able to voice the reason for denying a 
letter of recommendation is a critical 
component of any boycott, and 
GEO is proud to stand against this 
indefensible policy.

GEO ultimately won a meeting 

with U-M administrators to discuss 
the policy and how it will be 
implemented. The discussion left 
us only with a clearer sense of how 
poorly thought-out and difficult 
to implement the policy is. While 
U-M administrators made repeated 
reference to fears of discrimination 
as justification for the policy, they 
were never able to explain how Teach 
for America applicants could be 
understood as a group that could be 
discriminated against. 

Let America’s educators teach 

science without the stigma

GEO’s Fight for the Right to Boycott

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AMIR FLEISCHMANN | CONTRACT COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR

BENJAMIN DAVIS | OPINION COLUMNIST

Benjamin Davis is an Opinion Columnist 

and can be reached at bendav@umich.edu.

Amir Fleischmann is the Contract 

Committee Co-Chair at the University 

of Michigan’s Graduate Employees 

Organization and can be reached at 

contractchair@geo3550.org.

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