Academic Freedom bills are a series of anti-evolution bills introduced in State legislatures in the United States beginning 2001. They purport that teachers, students, and college professors face intimidation and retaliation when discussing scientific criticisms of evolution, and therefore require protection. Critics of the bills point out that there are no credible scientific critiques of evolution. An investigation in Florida of the allegations of intimidation and retaliation found no evidence that it occurred.
Based largely upon language drafted by the Discovery Institute, from language originally drafted for the Santorum Amendment, the common goal of these bills is to expose more students to articles and videos that criticize evolution, most of which are produced by advocates of intelligent design or Biblical creationism.
They have spent years working school boards, with only minimal success. Now critics of evolution are turning to a higher authority: state legislators.In a bid to shape biology lessons, they are promoting what they call "academic freedom" bills that would encourage or require public-school teachers to cast doubt on a cornerstone of modern science. —"Evolution's Critics Shift Tactics With Schools", Wall Street Journal
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Famous quotes containing the words academic, freedom and/or bills:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation. Freedom is a loose leash, a license to be different from your mother and still be loved. . . . Freedom is . . . not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.”
—Erica Jong (20th century)
“There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
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—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)