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
Read more about Academic Freedom Bills: Santorum Amendment, Overview, Alabama Bills, Oklahoma Bills, Maryland Bill, New Mexico Bills, Linkage With Expelled Film, Florida Bills, Louisiana Act, Missouri Bills, Michigan Bills, South Carolina Bill, Iowa Bill
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)
“Freedom to think our own thoughts, freedom to utter them, freedom to live out the promptings of our inner life ultimated in this convention, was termed a monstrosity of the 19th century. What was it?—the legitimate out-birth of the eternal law of progress. This reformation underlies every other; it is the only healthful centre around which hope of humanity can revolve.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
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—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)