Education
Evolution
Free Speech
Flying Censorship Monster Crashes in Kansas
Kansas is a supposedly conservative state, but it has an exceptionally pugilistic counter-culture at the University of Kansas. When the subject is criticism of Darwin’s theory — on scientific grounds, mind you — these folks are eager for blood. There have to be some limits to toleration, but criticism of a science theory considered crucial exceeds those limits! Just try to get tenure at any university in Kansas — and not just in the biology department — if you express public doubts about Darwinism. The faculty could hardly wait, moreover, to urge the state a few years ago to prevent high school teachers from raising any questions about Darwin’s theory whatever.
But, historically, there is a funny thing about censorship; once it starts it doesn’t know where to stop. So now we get University of Kansas faculty and their media backers all in a dither because the administration has cracked down on a tasteless tweet about the NRA. Surely, it should be open season, so to speak, on the NRA! Not Darwin, mind you, just the NRA!
Nope. Having yielded the power to censor, this crowd cannot then find ways to defend their own offenders. Writes Rebecca Shuman for Slate, “If you’re a professor in Kansas, you’d better stay off the Internet.”