Two weeks ago Bill Zedler, state rep for District 96 in Arlington, tossed into the legislative heap House Bill 2454, which would prohibit "discrimination by public institutions of
higher education against faculty members and students based on
their conduct of research relating to intelligent design." It was referred to the Dan Branch-chaired Higher Education Committee last week and has since gone on to get quite a bit of pub outside of the state -- like this piece from Saturday's Christian Post, in which Casey Luskin of the anti-Darwinism Discovery Institute in Seattle says that "without academic freedom to follow the evidence where it leads, science cannot progress."
Yesterday, Zedler spoke at length with Mother Jones's Josh Harkinson about his proposed legislation. I am thinking of staging the back-and-forth as a one-act; perhaps Kevin Moriarty's interested. An excerpt:
MJ: I thought people doing work on the science of evolution typically don't weigh in on what caused the beginning of life.
BZ: I wonder why?
MJ: They say they don't know the answer.
BZ: If somebody does decide to weigh in, why should they be discriminated against?
MJ: Because they don't have the scientific evidence to substantiate their views.BZ: The debate ought to be: "How did it happen?" But we're not gonna allow that one to be brought up! I don't think they oughta be thrown off campus if they come up with it.
