Academic Freedom (not)

You may or may not have heard of Paul Mirecki, from the University of Kansas. He's one of the people who testified against the inclusion of Intelligent Design (ID) in science classes in Kansas schools. A few days ago, he was mugged, beaten up and hospitalized by two thugs who claimed they were beating him because of his position on ID.

Now, it turns out that Kansas legislators are planning an investigation and hearings on him (presumably to have him fired) because he is planning to teach a course entitled, "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

Mirecki was said to say in an e-mail, "The fundies (fundamentalists) want it all taught in a science class. But this will be a nice slap in their big, fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category 'mythology.'"

The school forced him to drop "mythology" from the title of the course.