I wrote a couple weeks ago about Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” in which he argued that conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians, faced harsh discrimination in academia — and that liberals should embrace intellectual diversity on campus. His descriptions of discrimination sounded uncannily like what some ID proponents have faced.

Now, in a follow-up article, Kristof makes clear that he doesn’t think tolerating differences in academia should extend to dissent from evolution:

Mixed in here are legitimate issues. I don’t think that a university should hire a nincompoop who disputes evolution, or a racist who preaches inequality. But as I see it, the bigger problem is not that conservatives are infiltrating social science departments to spread hatred, but rather that liberals have turned departments into enclaves of ideological homogeneity. Sure, there are dumb or dogmatic conservatives, just as there are dumb and dogmatic liberals. So let’s avoid those who are dumb and dogmatic, without using politics or faith as a shorthand for mental acuity. [Emphasis added.]

What? First, Kristof groups dissent from evolution with racism. Second, he labels anyone who questions evolutionary theory as “a nincompoop.” Not only is this not complimentary, but it ignores the growing scientific dissent from neo-Darwinism.

Of course, Kristof finishes by offering reasons to accept political diversity, including that “stereotyping and discrimination are wrong,” intellectual diversity is helpful to universities, and covering multiple points of view increases the relevance of the university to ongoing policy discussions.

But Kristof is inconsistent. This rare academic freedom advocate doesn’t think tolerance should apply to alternate viewpoints on evolution. He gives no thoughtful reason for this exception.

There is, as I mentioned, ongoing scientific debate over whether evolutionary mechanisms can explain life’s diversity. In Altenberg, Austria, in 2008, a group of 16 distinguished biologists got together to discuss holes in neo-Darwinism. Out of this conference came the book Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. The scientists of The Third Way of Evolution reject intelligent design, but question the ability of natural selection and random mutations to generate diverse biological species.

The late biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences Lynn Margulis stated, “New mutations don’t create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.” Over 950 PhD scientists have signed the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list, publicly affirming they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”

For a summary of evolutionary theory’s weaknesses along with links to scientific articles challenging the major mechanisms of neo-Darwinism, read Casey Luskin’s article, “The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution.”

Kristof also says, “We liberals should have the self-confidence to believe that our values can triumph in a fair contest in the marketplace of ideas.” Good! But a “fair contest” implies familiarizing yourself with competing ideas that are out there “in the marketplace.”

That he has not apparently done, at least when it comes evolution. Rather than dismiss dissenting scientists as nincompoops, Kristof could stand to spend some time on self-education.

Photo source: Argonne National Laboratory [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.