Caroline Crocker - George Mason University

George Mason University

Crocker had a position as a part-time faculty member of George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. She alleges that, in December 2004, her department barred her from teaching evolution and intelligent design after she mentioned intelligent design while teaching her second-year cell biology course. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences stated that the university did not have a policy or a rule on whether certain topics should be discussed, but questioned whether a concept with theological underpinnings belonged in a science course. He added "I'm a Buddhist, but I don't think we should teach reincarnation in biology classes."

Her lecture which raised concerns, as repeated at Northern Virginia Community College, included erroneous creationist claims which have long been discredited. Her claim that microevolution is quite different from macroevolution is a common and incorrect creationist distortion, and her assertion that the latter was not established as "No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory" is completely incorrect, as no evolutionary biologist has proposed that this could happen, and if it did it would be disproof of evolution. She misrepresented peppered moth evolution experiments to claim that they were falsified, repeating an intelligent design creationist claim. In asserting that the Miller-Urey experiment was irrelevant as views on the atmospheric composition have been revised, she ignored more recent research including the experiment being re-run successfully with revised conditions. Having claimed that many scientists believe that complex life reveals the hand of an intelligent designer, she said that "The problem with evolution is that it is all supposition – this evolved into this – but there is no evidence", and that anti-Semitism, eugenics and death camps in Nazi Germany had been based on Darwin's ideas of natural selection. Biologist and critic of creationism PZ Myers, denounced Crocker's claims, pointing out that long running Christian antisemitic attitudes led to the holocaust. He advised her to read books in support of evolution instead of anti-evolution material from the pro-ID Discovery Institute.

On 28 April 2005 Crocker was reported as stating that being prevented from teaching both evolution and intelligent design was "an infringement of academic freedom", and appealing the case to a grievance committee. She was teaching material which was not part of the curriculum of the courses, and academic freedom does not give the freedom to ignore the expected course content or teach about anything you want. Crocker was allowed to continue teaching and complete her non-tenure track contract in the normal way, then her contract was not renewed. A university spokesman said this was for reasons unrelated to her views on intelligent design, and that though they wholeheartedly supported academic freedom, "teachers also have a responsibility to stick to subjects they were hired to teach, and intelligent design belonged in a religion class, not biology."