On a classic ID the Future episode, attorney Herman Bouma tells host Sarah Chaffee the story of how his talk at a National Association of Science Teachers conference was canceled at the last minute. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Bouma’s planned lecture highlighted how Darwin’s Origin of Species set an example of engaging one’s scientific critics with civility and reason. The talk was accepted. But then three conference officials, accompanied by security guards, shut him down the morning he arrived to set up for the talk, accusing him of promoting fake science.

Darwin wrote that “I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.” But if Bouma’s account is any indication, Darwin’s example — and his hope — weren’t much in evidence among the conference officials who shut down Bouma’s talk. For information from Discovery Institute on teaching the evolution controversy, go here. You can find more from Herman Bouma at Evolution News.