Here they are, in philospher James Barham’s view, with a rundown as to why, with links/vids, sources.
You will notice friends and foes of ID on the list.
Ben Carson, M.D., retired neurosurgeon
He has been hailed as the next president of the United States [2] and as the savior of our nation.
He has been reviled as an “Uncle Tom” and sneered at as a “token” whom Republicans need to “assuage their guilt” for being such racists.
(Also disinvited from Emory due to failure to support Darwin’s followers’ beliefs.)
Noam Chomsky, linguist and anti-government activist
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and author of more than 100 books—has the rare distinction of being famous (or infamous) for two almost wholly unrelated bodies of work.
Robert P.George, Catholic intellectual
George’s secular liberal critics go still further, accusing him of “hate speech” and calling on Princeton University to fire him.
Hate speech? Is that all they’ve got on the guy? People can be guilty of “hate speech” today, and not know it.
Mary Ann Glendon, Catholic intellectual
Feeling that she was being used by the renowned Catholic university as “conservative cover” for its decision to invite the liberal Obama, Glendon wrote an open letter to Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., declining the Laetare Medal.
William Happer, physicist and climate skeptic
But Happer’s willingness to say bluntly what he thinks, and not mask his disdain for the climate change bandwagon by countless qualifications, is precisely what makes him controversial—and why he is on this list.
Note: If you really want to hear the climate change bandwagon kazoo’d out of town, read Canada’s most famous high school dropout, Mark Steyn.
Leon R. Kass, biochemist and ethicist
… under Kass’s leadership, the Council issued a report in August of 2001 recommending that federal funding for research on stem cells derived from embryos be curtailed (more specifically, limited to cell lines already in existence). Bush implemented this decision by executive order, igniting a firestorm of controversy with Kass at its center.
Catharine A. MacKinnon, feminist law professor
The pithiest—and therefore the most widely quoted—version of this idea is a paraphrase of MacKinnon’s views by the authors of a study on radical feminism published in 2003: “In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape.
Thomas Nagel, philosopher
He is, as the saying goes, a “philosopher’s philosopher”—that is, someone who is highly respected in his field, but whose name one would hardly expect to be reviled in the more downmarket reaches of the blogosphere.
Peter Singer
To the non-philosopher, Singer’s positions may appear paradoxical in the extreme. On the one hand, he is a staunch vegetarian and one of the world’s leading animal rights activists. On the other hand, he favors killing newborn babies born with certain birth defects! [But wait till you hear why… ]
Thomas Sowell
Sowell is another centaur (like Thomas Nagel, above)—someone who simply ought not to exist. Sowell is a black conservative. To his critics, that makes him a traitor, a “useful idiot,” a sell-out, a Quisling, an Uncle Tom, and worse.
It’s a cut above many such lists. For one thing, Barham ignores tenured crackpots, focusing on controversial profs whose ideas are considered persuasive but dangerous. Again, here.
For sure, readers, you will find someone you hate and someone you should listen to more carefully. And nine others as well. 😉
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