So just why was gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University denied tenure? Certainly not because he hasn’t fulfilled his university’s tenure standards for excellence in research. According to his own department’s standards, to be promoted to associate professor (with tenure),

excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation is required and would ordinarily be shown by the publication of approximately fifteen papers of good quality in refereed journals.

So how many refereed articles has Gonzalez published? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty? Actually, he has published 68 articles in refereed journals, thus exceeding his own department’s normal standard for research excellence by 350%! (Unfortunately, the Ames Tribune story about the denial of tenure to Gonzalez wrongly reports that this standard is a “minimum” requirement for tenure in his department. In fact, it is offered as the usual and ordinary benchmark for meeting his university’s research excellence standard.)

Since Gonzalez clearly far exceeded his university’s stated standard for research, the question again arises: Why was he denied tenure? It seems obvious that it was due to ideological bias against intelligent design—which has been on clear display at Iowa State during the past few years, as Gonzalez has been publicly attacked and demonized by faculty colleagues for his support of ID.