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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.”

Bruce Chapman

Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute
Bruce Chapman has had a long career in American politics and public policy at the city, state, national, and international levels. Elected to the Seattle City Council and as Washington State's Secretary of State, he also served in several leadership posts in the Reagan administration, including ambassador. In 1991, he founded the public policy think tank Discovery Institute, where he currently serves as Chairman of the Board and director of the Chapman Center on Citizen Leadership.

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