As Rob Crowther noted earlier, Dr. Ronald K. Wetherington, anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University, has penned an article in the SMU Daily Campus defending himself and other faculty who object to a conference on Darwin versus Design that will be held on the SMU campus this weekend. Wetherington wants to assure readers that he and other objecting faculty are all for debate, so long as it’s in the proper time and place. In fact, he notes that the university actually sponsored an evolution debate back in 1992.
In 1992, mind you! Wow, how could we have forgotten that? Congratulations! It’s just too bad that that the SMU students of today were not even in grade school back then.

Discovery Institute scientists offered a real debate, to take place this Friday night, entirely on the science issues of Darwin’s theory and the alternative of intelligent design. We sent an invitation to the heads of the departments of biology, geological sciences, and Wetherington’s own department of anthropology. Wetherington’s department declined due to a scheduling conflict, but the other two did not respond at all. Now perhaps we know why. After all, they had that debate on campus 15 years ago.
The title of the article by Prof. Wetherington is “Free Speech versus License.” The professor is for the former, but against the latter. Free speech, you see, is what happens when a university lets me speak. License is when they let you speak.
Are we all clear now?
Good, so please don’t raise this subject again until 2022.