The whole context:
Another concern of the Baylor arts and science faculty are the alternative science links, such as the Creationism Connection and Discovery Institute, that now appear on or connect to the Polanyi web site.One of those sites, as mentioned in the article, is the Discovery Institute."We now show up in a cohort of people that Baylor has worked very hard at disassociating themselves with," Weaver said. "So, my concern is partly how quickly word is going to get out and how compromised it will make us look?"
Weaver considers the links "damning publicity" and is fearful such implications could scare off potential faculty and promising medical students.
Beatty understands their concern.
"I understand the science faculty's point of view regarding the web sites," Beatty said. "It is understandable how the center's interest is presented, or in this case, misrepresented."
Beatty said it was "regrettable that the net could be used to misrepresent your work" but explains that "when you are on the net, you are vulnerable to a lot of outside links and are unable to control who links to you or how your work is perceived."
Gordon agrees with Beatty that such links are unfortunate.
In an interview with the Waco Tribune Herald, Gordon said, "We have no control over who decides to link to our site. We do not endorse a connection to those sites at all. They didn't ask our permission. It would be better if they removed it, but we can't spend our time policing the Internet."
As I said, you have your opinion. I have mine. I also stated that Dembski and the center did not hide their association with Discovery.
This site contains your story and more, http://www.texscience.org/files/dembski-baylor.htm
From that site.
The Discovery Institute, where Polanyi director William Dembski is a senior fellow, studies the theory they call intelligent design.
Many intelligent-design researchers have been funded by the institute's Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture. They say they rely on such private funding because the National Science Foundation and most universities won't sponsor the work. William Dembski, director of the Polanyi Center, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's center, and Bruce Gordon, assistant director of the Polanyi Center, is a fellow at the Seattle organization. Dembski has received fellowships of $40,000 to $50,000 from the Seattle institute, and his salary at the Polanyi Center is paid from a $75,000 grant from the John Templeton Fund, which the institute distributes. Brumley said the university will pick up Dembski's salary after the grant expires next year. Sloan has said Dembski and Gordon answer to Baylor and not the Discovery Institute. Dembski could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but Gordon said he believes intelligent design should be taught in public schools only once it gains widespread scientific credibility.
The Polanyi Center was established quietly in October 1999. Dembski and his like-minded colleague Bruce Gordon were hired outside the traditional academic channels of a search committee and departmental consultation. Dembski says that he did meet with some faculty, both before and after Baylor hired him. But the vast majority of them were unaware of the existence of the center until its Web site went online and scientists outside the university began sending incredulous e-mails to their colleagues at Baylor. What, they asked, was this? Had Baylor gone fundamentalist? Would they be teaching creation science instead of evolution in their biology classrooms? The Baylor scientists, already sensitive to their university's religious mission, were now the laughingstock of the scientific community, and they didn't like it.
"When you say Baylor now, people are going to go, 'Oh, yeah, they have that creationist center,'" says Charles Weaver, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor and one of the most outspoken critics of the Polanyi Center. "We fought that as a city for a long time: 'Waco. Oh, you guys are the crazy ones with Koresh.'" He worries that the Polanyi Center and Dembski's association with the intelligent-design movement will discourage promising premed students and respected faculty from coming to Baylor.
Baylor Provost Donald Schmeltekopf defends the university's actions by pointing out that there are more and more people in academia interested in questioning the naturalistic assumptions of the scientific establishment and that Dembski is one of the most visible among them. "We thought it would be an interesting thing for Baylor to get into the conversation and to be a participant," he says.
But Weaver says Baylor faculty members have been asking these questions about the relationship between science and religion for years in the school's interdisciplinary Institute for Faith and Learning. "The inference that some of us have drawn is that...we must have come up with answers that aren't those we were expected to come up with," says Weaver, who is a Presbyterian elder. "My faith background is one of asking lots of questions and living with a lot of doubts, and those may not be qualities that are valued at Baylor anymore. It may be that those of us with certainties are better adapted for the environment."
In any case, Schmeltekopf's conversation was about to turn into an argument, and a nasty one at that. In April, Dembski's Polanyi Center hosted a conference on naturalism sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank where Dembski is a fellow, and the Templeton Foundation, whose moneys have gone a long way to bankroll the intelligent-design movement. The conference sought to answer a very unusual question: Is there anything beyond nature? An impressive collection of scientists from all over the world attended the conference, among them Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg. Of course, Weinberg titled his presentation "No," a straightforward answer to the conference's central question. And other speakers announced that they were going to give their honoraria to organizations that promote the study of evolution in schools.
Baylor faculty, by and large, boycotted the conference altogether. But that wasn't all. Just days after the naturalism conference, the faculty senate voted 27-2 to dismantle Dembski's center. If there was to be a center studying the intersection of science and religion at Baylor, they held, it should be rebuilt from the ground up--with faculty input. In an editorial published in the Houston Chronicle, President Sloan charged that this uproar over faculty input was a cover for the real issue: the substance of the work being done by the center. "In my experience," he wrote, "people often object to 'the way things were done' as a rhetorical substitute for what was done." Sloan refused to dissolve the Polanyi Center, citing issues of censorship and academic integrity.