The Texas Education Agency is caught up in a firestorm over whether science curriculum director Chris Comer was forced out of her job because she didn’t back intelligent design sufficiently. She forwarded an email about a speech by Dr. Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design prior to her dismissal. The book argues that creationists use intelligent design to get their creed into schools and force Darwinism out. But who is Forrest?
A professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University, in 2005 she was an expert witness in the pivotal Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The Dover school board made science teachers read a prepared speech to students saying evolution was a theory with gaps, and then point them to intelligent design tome Of Pandas and People, published by Texas-based “think tank” Foundation for Thought and Ethics. 11 parents sued, and brought in Forrest.
The Thomas More Law Center, representing the school district, tried to have her barred as an expert witness, calling her a “conspiracy theorist and web surfing, ‘cyber-stalker.'” Meanwhile, the Discovery Institute, which originally recommended Pandas to the board, circulated a fake (they later claimed spoof) transcript of a radio talk show in which she was called “Dr. Barking Forrest Ph.D.”
Ruling in favor of the parents, Judge John E. Jones III said teaching ID was a clear violation of the separation of church and state. What may have galled the IDers most? Jones was a Bush appointee.
This article appears in November 30 • 2007.
