ICR:BILL HONIG'S OFFICE FORMALLY RECOMMENDS CLOSURE OF ICR GRADUATE SCHOOL

   As has been expected for some months, a recommendation that the
California State Department of Education deny the ICR Graduate School's
license to operate has been submitted by the team of scientists which
investigated ICR's program last August.

   The team, which had been selected by the office of Mr. Bill Honig
(Superintendent of Public Instruction for California), consisted of
five scientists, four of whom had strong anti-creation records. The
report which accompanied the recommendation to deny ICR's application
for reapproval of its license to operate (not accreditation, as some
have thought) consisted of a 48-page polemic against ICR in particular,
and creation thinking, in general. A classic example of overkill, it
contained numerous errors of fact, unwarranted assumptions, and
prejudicial opinions. The entire report had no commendations or
recommendations for improvement. Clearly, the sole intent was to close
the only American graduate school in the sciences which teaches from a
strictly creationist perspective.

   Quoting from the conclusion (page 47) of the document should be
sufficient to establish the anti-creationist prejudice of the
committee. "The questions raised by creationism, however, are far from
trivial....To be specific, unless these questions of scientific
integrity are adequately addressed, no remediation of the problems
addressed in this report will render the program acceptable."

   In other words, no matter how good ICR's programs might be, they
could not be licensed in the State of California as long as they were
creationist.

   ICR has been fully approved by the State since its inception in
1981, and has received reapproval at required intervals in subsequent
years. In August of 1988, a five man investigation team voted 3-2 in
favor of reapproval, despite strong pressure from outside to deny. One
team member, however, with a strong record of anti-creationist (as
opposed to routine acceptance of evolution) activity prior to the
visit, submitted a minority report which Honig used to reconvene the
committee about four months later. He succeeded in getting one member
to change his vote because of ICR's creationist (i.e., "anti-
scientific") approach. This made the vote 3-2 against reapproval and
Honig threatened to deny ICR's license.

   In the negotiations that followed, Honig and his legal staff
suggested that they might allow ICR to continue if all creationist
interpretation were removed from credit courses and thesis work,
placing it in separate non-credit courses. They then scheduled a second
visit in August 1989 to verify the changes. Once it became clear that
the intent was to deny reapproval regardless of any changes, however,
ICR appealed the earlier decision and cancelled the scheduled visit.
Honig's office refused to allow this, however, and continued with the
scheduled visit, which resulted in the current recommendation. If the
denial is implemented by Honig, as now seems inevitable, ICR intends to
appeal and to take every feasible step to get the decision overturned.

   The precedent at stake is enormous. The State is about to rule that
a private, Christian school such as ICR cannot teach science in a
creationist context. If the state in fact does have this power, then we
can expect that all Christian education will soon come under similar
attack.

