[Vision2020] Wilson is not a great mind, and neither am I

[Nick Gier]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your civil response to the issue of accreditation of New St. 
Andrews College (NSA).  I'm grateful that at least one member of the Wilson 
Gang is willing to respond on V2020.  As Jim Wilson's assistant and heir 
apparent, you cannot deny that you are part of this group.

Your latest response would make more sense if NSA were not actively seeking 
academic credibility and acceptance.  With its fancy faculty titles and 
other ornaments it is presenting itself as a quality academic 
institution.  Methinks they sometimes try a little too hard, especially 
with the academic robes at least once a week at their Friday 
disputatios.  And, Eric, there have been deceptions; indeed, my involvement 
in this issue started with a lie and several deceptions.  Let me just 
refresh your memory from my most recent post.  And let me remind Dean 
Atwood that I gave him many weeks to clear the record on his own initiative.

"In a letter to the Moscow Pullman Daily News, I expressed my 
disappointment that not a single NSA student or faculty attended the 
[AAR-SBL] conference. The accreditation issue then arose in Atwood's 
response to that letter, in which he told the community that NSA had better 
things to do. In that letter of May 23 [2003] Atwood also misled Moscow 
community by disguising his accrediting agency [a deception], failing to 
mention that NSA was only a candidate [a lie], and implying [another 
deception] that NSA was accredited by the Council of Higher Education 
Accreditation and the U. S. Department of Education."

In that May 23 letter Atwood, while disguising the lower ranked accrediting 
agency, did mention by name a prestigious Christian liberal arts college 
association that he would really like to be accredited with.  So it is 
clear that NSA wants to play the game of official academic 
accreditation.  This is not just an issue of a private education business 
playing by its own rules (and hiring its family members) or a simple matter 
of freedom of speech, which of course all of us grant Wilson & Co.

This is the reason for my challenge: NSA can follow the rules or it can 
choose to be a back water Bible college without the integrity and prestige 
that comes with abiding by time tested and honored rules.  With regard to 
hiring family and friends, most schools are so strict that they do not hire 
their own PhDs! Furthermore, there are thousands of satisfied students from 
unaccredited Bible colleges, eternally grateful that they have not been 
tainted by secular education, but no one in their right mind would claim 
that they somehow validate the academic quality of those colleges.  It is a 
question about freedom in this special sense: the choice to respect an 
academic tradition that started with medieval Christian universities and 
that has been preserved by our best colleges and universities.

The question is also not one of private versus public schools.  The 
association that Atwood would like NSA to join insists on PhDs, refereed 
journal articles, and treating other academic institutions with 
respect.  Good Christian liberal arts colleges are not, as you claim, "free 
to do whatever [they] wish, outside of crime." A Christian liberal arts 
college is obviously more than just a place, in your words, for "cranking 
out happy customers."

Finally, I beg to differ with you: Doug Wilson is not a "great mind" and 
neither am I, but thanks for the flattery.  I have some very strict 
standards for a "great mind."  One rule of thumb might be the following: 
you know you are a great mind when good schools regularly offer courses on 
you. (In my field that would be courses on Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, 
Hegel, Wittgenstein, etc.) Now, in the future, NSA might offer courses on 
Doug Wilson's thought, but I would strongly urge rejection of that "great 
mind" nomination. Incidentally, I don't think that the testimony of other 
conservative evangelical preachers is acceptable for "great mind" 
consideration.  Sorry.

Here are some more rules of thumb. A great mind would not set up a school 
system where prospective teachers are told that they don't need to have a 
college degree.  A great mind would not write an essay on Southern slavery 
that distorted evidence and broke every scholarly rule in the book.  A 
great mind would not have accepted such an essay in any monograph series, 
the most scholarly line of any academic press.  (Yes, Eric, good academic 
presses have to "jump" through all sorts of "hoops," such as hiring outside 
reviewers.) A great mind would not hold an annual "history" conference to 
which no professional historian is ever invited.  I could go on here, but I 
think you get the picture.

Eric, just one last question.  Where in this response or the previous one 
have I been insisting on my own "religious principles"?  I would really 
like to know.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick Gier





"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
--Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm