VICIOUS LEFTIST ATTACK ON DIVERSITY

"Writing for the January 2004 issue of the Harvard Law Review, student editor Lawrence VanDyke gave scholar Francis Beckwith's book, Law, Darwinism, & Public Education, a positive review. The book makes constitutional arguments for the potential acceptability of including intelligent-design arguments in high-school science curricula. VanDyke found Beckwith's arguments convincing and said so in his book note.

Such a sin could not go unpunished or unpublicized by those who hold to the inerrancy of the Darwinian scriptures. The Book of Scopes, 2:12-14 reads, "Thou shalt not admit that any explanation of origins outside the neo-Darwinian synthesis may have merit. Verily, thou must proclaim that any alternate explanation is of the same religious origin as witch burning and will be struck down by the Establishment Clause before ever being discussed in a public school."

VanDyke's temerity in giving prime real estate in one of America's most respected legal publications to Beckwith's work was particularly galling to Brian Leiter. Intelligent design? Francis Beckwith? In the Harvard Law Review? It was all too much for Leiter, which may be why he risked his prestige to make this petty, but deadly serious attack on VanDyke:

The author of this incompetent book note . . . is one Lawrence VanDyke, a student editor of the Review. Mr. VanDyke may yet have a fine career as a lawyer, but I trust he has no intention of entering law teaching: scholarly fraud is, I fear, an inauspicious beginning for an aspiring law teacher. And let none of the many law professors who are readers of this site be mistaken: Mr. VanDyke has perpetrated a scholarly fraud, one that may have political and pedagogical consequences

One doesn't need to work very hard to read between the lines. Leiter seems to be threatening VanDyke's career if he should dare to set foot in the academy. The tone of his post makes clear that he means this student editor of the Harvard Law Review harm".

More here.