Religious Right pushes for "Academic Freedom" in teaching as well as Professional Society

[christian thompson]

>From Nature, tomorrow (7 April, 434: 686), there is a report on the
efforts of the fundamentalist, religious right, etc, to get bills of
"Academic Freedom" passed in various states, etc. Not only would these
bills require the teaching of Intelligent Design as the alternative to
Darwinian Evolution, etc. They also include a clause about professional
societies, like Entomological Society of and Biological Society of
Washington. These bills would require professional organization to:

"...maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the
substantive disagreements
that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields
of inquiry ..."

So, who needs "peer-review," just publish anything researchers submit,
etc.

I wonder whether list-servers should be included too!



F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
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