Big congrats to PeeZed for his continued annoyance of the Discovery Institute, and equally big props to the admin/PR folks here at UMM for making sure that people list Paul as being from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and not our little sister campuses in the Twin Cities. It would be easy for UMM to turn a blind eye to this whole thing, quietly distancing themselves from Paul’s work, and I’m damned impressed that they’ve made such a clearheaded effort to support him (or at least remain clearly connected to him) in this way.
What’s equally impressive is the excellent way that Paul responded, taking the opportunity to point out UMM’s continuing support for the wide diversity of beliefs and backgrounds (religious and otherwise) at UMM.
We have an excellent university out here in our lonely stretch of the prairie, and I think it is wonderful that the Discovery Institute has chosen to mock us for our institutional support for diversity. That’s public relations gold. “Come to UMM—the university the Intelligent Design creationists detest!” It’s good timing, too, as this is when we’re trying to get students to apply and enroll for the next academic year. It’s not too late: if you know any high school seniors, send them to our page for prospective students, have them apply, and we promise to give them a first-rate liberal arts education if they are accepted and choose to come here. As another bonus, the Discovery Institute’s PR is going to discourage students who are poor at science, the only ones who approve of their message, from coming here. It’s free advertising, and it’s going to select for a better applicant pool. Woo-hoo!
“Woo-hoo!” indeed! I know that our lives are absolutely enriched by friendships with people with a broad range beliefs and experiences, from Christian to Athiest and from Buddhist to Wicca. I’ve also been lucky enough to have done research (mostly in evolutionary computation) with well over a dozen of our fine students here at UMM since arriving in 1991, and they’ve ranged from athiests of a flavor not unlike Paul to a great collaborator who went on to spend two years in seminary in Scotland.
Oh, and WeatherGirl (who brought PeeZed’s post to my attention) says “Woo-hoo!” as well :-). She’s painting closets at the moment, though, so the response was left to me. We’re hoping she comes out of the closet soon, though, and you might hear more from her then.
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