Well, again, it depends what journals. Astronomy is not my field, but in my field there are “peer reviewed journals” that are prestigious and others that are pretty much worthless.
I only mention this because we don’t know. Given the brief description of the nature of his work and the number of articles he has published, I think it is highly probable that he was highly qualified for the job.
I think the odds are probably 99-1 that he was fired for reasons of bigotry. Possibly combined with jealousy, since it can be dangerous when a junior professor publishes at ten times the rate of the tenured faculty. When a faculty is not top notch, and if they are more concerned about themselves than the good of the department and the students, then they tend to be leery of hiring younger people who are obviously much better than they are.
It’s looking more and more like bigoted persecution all the time.
Letter from Granville Sewell, Mathematics Dept.,University of Texas El Paso to the President of Iowa State University re: denial of tenure:
Gregory Geoffroy
President
Iowa State University
Dear Dr. Geoffroy,
Anyone familiar with the case of Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez suspects that he was not denied tenure at Iowa State for lack of academic excellence—he has nearly 70 peer-reviewed publications, including an article in Scientific American, and Nature and Science have run articles about his work—but because of his expressed view (expressed only OUTSIDE the classroom) that certain features of the universe can be considered as evidence of design. This is in fact a widely held view among scientists: for example, it is a well-established fact—established through many peer-reviewed scientific articles—that most of the basic physical constants of our universe, such as Planck’s constant, the speed of light, the charge and mass of the electron, and so on, had to have nearly the values that they do have or intelligent life would not have been possible anywhere in the universe. There are only two widely-held interpretations for this so-called “fine tuning.” One is that the fortuitous values of these constants are the result of design, the other is that there are many universes, with varying values for these constants, and that life arose in ours because the values here were favorable to the development of life. Neither view is strictly scientific, because both the alleged designer and the alleged other universes are in principle unobservable. There are quite a number of scientists who prefer the design explanation. Dr. Gonzalez may be in the minority, but it is a very sizable minority, and most members of this minority are free to express this point of view at their respective institutions without fear of academic punishment.
Dr. Gonzalez has in fact, through peer-reviewed publications, added significantly to the list of features in our universe which may suggest design. He has rarely, if ever, spoken publicly in support of the less widely-held view that certain features of biological evolution also suggest design, but apparently his association with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which does hold this view, was more than could be tolerated by some faculty members at ISU. He was criticized for his views in a letter drafted by a professor of religion, Hector Avalos, and signed by 120 ISU professors, and we suspect that this letter played an important role in the tenure decision.
Your decision to deny tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, unless reversed, sends a clear message to the rest of the academic world that only some philosophical points of view are welcome at Iowa State University. Academic freedom is meaningless if it is limited to certain philosophies. Please reconsider your decision.
Sincerely,
Granville Sewell, Mathematics Dept.,University of Texas El Paso
http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/isu.html