I am really excited to invite you to an evening with Dr. Eugenie Scott on the Fresno State campus next Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009! An evolutionary biologist by trade, Dr. Scott is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, and as such, has been at the forefront of the culture war around the teaching of evolution in the US for over a quarter century. Along the way she has testified on behalf of evolution and science at numerous venues, most famously at the Dover trial a couple of years ago, and has authored several valuable books on the subject, including Evolution vs. Creationism and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools (with Glenn Branch). I am therefore thrilled that she accepted my invitation to come down into the valley to talk to us because here, as you may know, we happen to be in something of a hotbed for that culture war as well, although not nearly as hot as some other parts of the country (no attempts to mess with public school science curricula at least).
Dr. Scott will give a public lecture on "Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution" at the campus' Satellite Student Union (maps) at 7:30 PM on Dec 2, 2009, as part of a new Evolutionary Biology lecture series hosted by the campus Consortium for Evolutionary Studies (see poster below for the various sponsors of this particular talk). We are bracing for a good turnout since this will be one of the most prominent speakers to come here and speak on behalf of teaching evolution and science in the classrooms - and we plan to bring some more over the coming year.
I know we got off to a bit of a late start in the Darwin Bicentennial celebrations this year, but we hope to keep the momentum going into the future as we try to light a few more candles in the dark in this lovely valley.
Click below the fold for the poster announcing this lecture - feel free to download and share it as widely as you like! And if you are on Facebook, check out the event page to rsvp and invite others, and become a fan of the Biology Department page while you are at it. I hope you will join us for this talk next week.
Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution? - a lecture by Eugenie Scott at Fresno State
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