washingtonpost.com In Texas, a Darwinian Debate Religious Student Protests Professor's Question on Evolution
By Karin Brulliard Special to The Washington Post Sunday, February 16, 2003; Page A07
AUSTIN, Feb. 15 -- Micah Spradling was never good at English or history. But science, he could do.
As a senior at Texas Tech University, Spradling enrolled in a biology course last fall with the hope that he could get a recommendation from the professor for his application to medical school. But he dropped the course after two classes, when he learned that no matter how he performed in the class, his chances of a recommendation were probably nil.
The biology professor, Michael L. Dini, had a strict policy. He would write recommendations only for students who could "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to this question: "How do you think the human species originated?" Spradling, who believes in creationism, believed that made him ineligible.
"I had people say, 'Well, why didn't you just lie to him?' " Spradling said by telephone from Lubbock, in the Texas Panhandle, where the university is located. "But I don't really deny my faith, not to any extent that was going to go against anything that I was about."
So the 22-year-old student transferred to Lubbock Christian University to take the same course and secure a recommendation.
Last month, the Justice Department launched an investigation into whether Dini's insistence that his students affirm a belief in human evolution illegally discriminates against students' religious beliefs.
The case encapsulates a head-on clash between what civil liberties groups and university officials consider academic freedom and scientific standards and what some religious groups regard as blatant discrimination based on faith.
The Justice Department inquiry was prompted by a complaint from the Liberty Legal Institute of Plano, Tex., a lawyers group that favors prayer in public schools and the right to distribute Christian literature at public schools and parks. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has asked Texas Tech to submit information on its policy relating to letters of recommendation by Feb. 24.
But the university insists it has no such policy and doesn't intend to create one.
"A letter of recommendation is personal to a professor," said Dale Pat Campbell, general counsel and vice chancellor at Texas Tech. "If you start infringing on a professor's academic freedom, you might as well blow your house up. That's a very sacred thing you're talking about."
No other students have complained about Dini's policy, Campbell said.
Hiram Sasser, staff attorney for the Liberty Legal Institute, said Dini's policy is a clear violation of civil rights that compromises students' academic freedom.
"You have to let your students think for themselves," he said. "I don't believe Dini does. He has a religious litmus test. Would we be having this conversation if he was denying letters of recommendation to Muslim folks, requiring them to accept that Mohammed was not the prophet?"
Shortly after the Justice Department stepped in, Dini changed the wording of his requirement for students seeking recommendations. The professor's criteria are posted on his Web site, www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.htm. He now asks students to "give a scientific answer" to the question: "How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species?"
He also added that the question should not be "misconstrued as discriminatory against anyone's personal beliefs."
The decision to change the wording was Dini's, Campbell said, noting that he thought neither version demanded that students disavow their religious beliefs. The professor's criteria also require that a student know him fairly well and receive an A in his course.
Sasser said the altered wording does not help.
"It tells me they know we're right," he said. "They're trying to create a better position for themselves if they were in a lawsuit. But it's a sham. It's still the same thing."
Dini's policy is grounded in academic standards, not religious discrimination, said Harvey Madison of the Lubbock chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "I interpret it to mean that you must accept, or at least not reject, the theory of evolution," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't make any religious reference."
Dini, 48, said he has been instructed by his department chairman not to speak with journalists. But his Web site offers a short autobiography of the professor. Educated in Catholic schools, he joined a Catholic order of teaching brothers after high school and focused on biology and religious studies in college. After 14 years, he wrote, he ended his "stint" with the order while pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame.
"It is easy to imagine how physicians who ignore or neglect the Darwinian aspects of medicine or the evolutionary origin of humans can make poor clinical choices," Dini wrote in his policy on letters of recommendation. "So much physical evidence supports the evolution of humans from nonhuman ancestors that one can validly refer to the 'fact' of human evolution, even if the details are not yet known."
Ted Reid, a professor of ophthalmology at Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center, said he and most other professors at the university support Dini's policy. Evolution is "a rock-solid scientific principle" that does not necessarily contradict religious principles, he said.
"I'm a Catholic Christian," said John C. Zak, chairman of Texas Tech's biology department. "In my mind, there is no incongruity between the scientific understanding of evolution versus the theological. They are just two different aspects of reality."
Sasser, of the Liberty Legal Institute, said his group is not as concerned with the debate between creationism and evolutionism as it is with religious freedom. He said the institute will consider a lawsuit against the university if the Justice Department takes no action.
"What we're asking for costs nothing and takes, like, five minutes," he said. "It's just to say, 'Look, we're not going to allow people to deny letters of recommendation because of their religious beliefs.' "