

A Texas science education official forced to resign in October wasn’t — as her bosses inisted — fairly punished for insubordination. Her real crime: daring to tell people about a lecture critical of intelligent design.

The Austin-American Statesman reported last week that science curriculum director Chris Comer’s ouster followed her circulation of an email announcing an upcoming speech by Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and an expert witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover. That lawsuit was brought in 2005 by Dover, Pennsylvania parents upset with a school board’s decision to teach intelligent design — the belief that some phenomena can only be explained as divinely manufactured — as a scientific theory comparable to evolution.

A federal judge sided with the parents and legally established intelligent design as religion, not science. But Texas education officials seem to disagree.

Hours after Comer used her work email account to forward the Forrest announcement to friends and a few online communities, Texas Education

Agency adviser Lizzette Reynolds emailed Comer’s bosses and called for her dismissal. A former legislative adviser to President Bush during his Texas governorship and later a Department of Education appointee, Reynolds wrote, "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the

Governor’s Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.”

Education Agency officials mentioned Reynolds’ e-mail in their decision to fire Comer. Informing people about Forrest’s lecture, they said, "directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science … [And] implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."

That a science education official should avoid politicization is understandable. However, supporting evolution isn’t political; it’s scientific. But even if that were not the case, Comer’s views weren’t clear from her email, to which she’d simply added an "FYI" above the lecture’s announcement. It was neutral — and that gives the lie to the

Texas Education Agency’s allegations.

As the Austin-American Statesman editorialized this weekend,

The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism. This state has struggled for years with the ideological bent of the state school board, but lawmakers took away most of its power to infect education some years ago. Politicizing the Texas Education Agency, which oversees the education of children in public schools, would be a monumental mistake. This isn’t the space to explore the debate over creationism, intelligent design and evolution. Each approach should be fair game for critical analysis, so terminating someone for just mentioning a critic of intelligent design smacks of the dogma and purges in the Soviet era.

In Texas, then, "neutrality" has become a term used by conservatives to preserve ignorance, equate informed debate with partisan heresy and push a radical agenda unsupported by verifiable fact. But it could backfire: next year, the Texas Board of Education will review the state’s science curriculum — and the nation will be watching.



State science curriculum director resigns [Austin-American Statesman]



Is misdeed a creation of political doctrine? [Austin-American Statesman]

Image: Chris Corner, from the Austin-American Stateman

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