Free Republic

Thumbs Up President Bush is right about evolution and design. By Peter Wood Opposable thumbs: mighty useful. In fact, we anthropologists put the lowly opposable thumb near the top of physical characteristics that make humans human. Without fully opposable thumbs, we would wrench-less in a world without plumbers, soccer would be the only sport, and the Moonlight Sonata would have to be whistled. The manual dexterity that, when you think about it, makes civilization possible, owes quite a bit to our thumbs. Well, of course, not just our thumbs. As handy as thumbs are, they are part of an engineered...

Academics Flee From Diversity Debate By Peter Wood March 11, 2003 In early February, the debate club at Colby College in Waterville, Maine invited me to debate the role of "diversity" in higher education with, they hoped, the president of the College, William Adams, who likes to be called "Bro." President Adams declined. So did his vice president, Arnie Yasinski, the “Associate Dean for Intercultural Affairs,” Jeri Roseboro, and the “Coordinator of Multicultural Student Programs and Support,” Bernadette Buchanan. In all the debate club invited 13 members of the administration and the faculty to debate me. They all declined. President...

IF YOU’RE LIKE most Americans, you’ve probably winced in annoyance many times when official documents prompted you to state your race. Not surprisingly, activist Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative – which would bar government busybodies in California from asking such questions – is enjoying huge and growing popularity. Every good cause attracts some lunatics, however. In the case of racial privacy, the lunatic fringe includes respected scientists who say that race does not even exist. They’re called the "No-Race" school. They claim that there is no scientific basis for categorizing people into races because – among other things – some...