A Century After The Scopes Trial, Censorship Still Thrives In Evolution Debate

This month, America commemorates the 100th anniversary of a landmark cultural event that taught us about the dangers of censorship. July of 1925 witnessed the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” where a Dayton, Tennessee, public school teacher was put on trial for violating a state law that prohibited teaching human evolution.

The teaching of scientific ideas should never be banned, much less criminalized. We like to think of censorship as something from the dark ages of the past, before our modern enlightened era vanquished intellectual intolerance. But 100 years after Scopes, we have what the late Supreme Court Justice Scalia once called “Scopes-in-reverse,” where scientists and scholars face reprisals if they challenge neo-Darwinian evolution.