Word: darwinism
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...Western civilization, and, if so, what should be in it? The heart of the dispute at Stanford has been whether to amend or remove from the university's freshman Western culture courses a roster of 15 prescribed classics. Many scholars regard those works, ranging from Homer and Dante to Darwin and Freud, as part of a sacred canon. But revisionists, including many blacks, Hispanics and women, want to build a new, theme-based program rather too cleverly called CIV (short for Culture, Ideas and Values...
Last week Stanford's faculty senate voted 39-4 for a compromise revision of their canon. This fall the original 15 books, all of them written by white, Western males, will be pared down. Out goes Homer, as well as Darwin and Dante. The six new requirements are unspecified works from Plato, the Bible, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Marx. Next year Stanford's Western Culture Program will be formally replaced by CIV. All freshmen will read works "from at least one" non-European source chosen by the professor, who is required to give "substantial attention to issues of race...
...when he misrepresents the facts, and times when he gets them wrong. For example, his statement that memory is not at all localizable in the brain--evidence to Sheldrake that it's not in there at all--is out-of-date. He overemphasizes the role of acquired characteristics in Darwin's theory of natural selection--saying "it could just as easily be called 'Darwinian inheritance'"--and cites the ideological vendetta against Mendelism under Stalin as scientific authority...
...Western Culture program requires that students take one of eight wide-ranging courses. The core books--including works by Homer, Dante, Darwin and Marx--are required reading in each of the eight, but beyond them, instructors can choose which books to include...
Henry Adams remarked after the Civil War that anyone wishing to disprove Darwin's theory had only to trace the evolution of the American presidency from George Washington to Ulysses Grant. Americans have often cherished a sort of golden-age theory of the presidency. They look back on, say, Harry Truman and John Kennedy as historical giants. In fact, neither man looked all that imposing when he was in the White House. Truman was often vilified as an undistinguished little haberdasher, utterly unfit to succeed a demigod like Franklin Roosevelt. Those underwhelmed by the current presidential candidates might remember that...