Judge Jones, whose distinction prior to the Dover case was running the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, now has multiple honorary doctorates for rendering his decision, which he cribbed from the ACLU’s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Ben Stein, who is an acclaimed actor, author, and economist, on the other hand, has just been denied an honorary doctorate at the University of Vermont:
“This is not, to my mind, an issue about academic freedom or the openness of the campus to all points of view. Ben Stein spoke here last spring to great acclaim,” UVM President Dan Fogel said. “It’s an issue about the appropriateness of awarding an honorary degree to someone whose views in many ways ignore or affront the fundamental values of scientific inquiry and I greatly regret that I was not attuned to those issues.” (full story click here)
That’s right, for questioning Darwin and pointing out the racist implications of his theory (implications that Darwin himself drew in his DESCENT OF MAN), Ben Stein is now an affront to science.
Perhaps one beneficial consequence of the current recession/depression is that tax-payers will pay more attention to how their tax dollars are being misused by schools like UVM. But that may be too much to hope.
We’ll know that the tide has turned when Judge Jones’s Dover decision and Darwin’s inflated claims about the power of natural selection are themselves seen as an affront to science.