Imagine my surprise when I turned on my computer at the Faculty Corner in Hurst Hall recently and read that the Center for Teaching Excellence will "reward me" with a Green Teaching Certificate if I: "Require students to undertake actions to reduce their ecological footprint ... Encourage students to pressure their congressional representatives to enact environmental protection measures."
Let's leave aside the fundamental and currently fatal weaknesses in statistical modeling that purports to show that the one degree rise in temperature in the past 150 years is unusual, is due to human activity, is responsible for "climate changes" - and that all this is getting dangerously worse. Readers interested in what I have learned from my statistics students who have taken apart such modeling claim by claim are encouraged to read "Why I Flunked Al Gore" at academic3.american.edu/~rossiter/Convenient%20Fibs.html.
Whatever one concludes from analyzing the complex claims of the modelers, what concerns me is the clear implication by a university office that (1) professors should "require" students to "undertake actions" based a particular conclusion about the tradeoff between the environment and the economy and (2) "encourage" students to pressure Congress on behalf of that conclusion.
It is true that as a teacher of statistical modeling, I have become convinced that the certainty of the "global warming" acolytes is not supported by the data. However, I hope I would protest just as strongly if the "requirement" and "encouragement" had to do with political positions that I endorse. Professors are not hired to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think for themselves.
Caleb Stewart Rossiter Adjunct professor, School of International Service
