Christopher Hitchens, whom many of us admire despite occasional differences of opinion, died at only 62 on December 14, 2011. Lawrence Krauss organized an event with four of Hitchens’s friends, all reminiscing about the Great Lion of Rhetoric. The panel was filmed in London on December 13, 2024—just 19 days ago—and I’ve put the video […]
If you want to see a compilation of all of Trump’s executive orders, you can find links here that will take you to the contents of the official orders. I’ve talked about the new rules on sex and gender before, but wanted to discuss them again, briefly. Click the screenshot below to see Trump’s EO […]
Last night, I discussed a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump that included an extension of his earlier move against “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies to the area of higher education. The order makes direct reference to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, […]
This will be the next-to-last item I write about my entanglement with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)—I hope. I am pretty sure that the joint statement below resulted from the fracas that ensued after the FFRF took down my post about biological sex, followed by my resignation and those of Richard Dawkins and Steve […]
When I was invited to go on Piers Morgan Uncensored, I was deeply undecided. I knew Morgan was quite conservative and religious, and I’ve seen clips of him bullying his guests. So I had a back-and-forth with the producer, trying to discern what Morgan wanted to ask me about. I got a long list of […]
In late August 2024, the Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti, issued updated guidance to the Health Research Council (“HRC”) after years of scandalous funding was revealed. Dr Reti wanted it to fund cures, not Kaupapa, and definitely not spiritual curses. Especially given $126 million is spent in annual “health” research and the government’s books are not […]
Mark Zuckerberg announced: In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making […]
Below is my column in Fox.com on the potentially historic change in policy at Meta to restore free speech protections. As one of the longest and loudest critics of the company over its censorship history, it is admittedly hard to trust. However, an alliance of Mark Zuckerberg with Elon Musk could prove the most important […]
Jerry Coyne writes: When I wrote yesterday about my critique of Kat Grant’s “What is a woman?” piece, a critique published on the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) website, I had no idea that what I wrote was being removed by the FFRF at that moment! … One part of what Coyne wrote resonated with me: The first […]
Penny Simmonds announced: Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds and Associate Minister of Education David Seymour today announced legislation changes to strengthen freedom of speech obligations on universities. “Freedom of speech is fundamental to the concept of academic freedom and there is concern that universities seem to be taking a more risk-averse approach,” Ms […]
Hobson’s Pledge reports: We attempted to book the Sunday Star Times, The Post, the Christchurch Press, and The Southland Times. It would have been a tidy sum of money for the financially beleaguered media outlet… Our ad was very simple. Just words on a page communicating what is at the heart of the debate – equal rights. Vote […]
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is under fire this week after it censored a leading scientist, atheist, and board member, Jerry Coyne, a professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Chicago. The FFRF took down a column in which Coyne published a column titled “Biology is not bigotry,” a critique of an earlier […]
Leigh Revers writes at National Post Canada Universities better get prepared for Poilievre’s anti-woke agenda. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. ‘Even the dullest minds in the upper administrations of Canada’s top universities — and trust me, they are spectacularly dull — must see the writing on the wall’ The recent spectacular […]
Like me, Steve Pinker has resigned from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). His resignation was sent yesterday. Steve is a bigger macher than I. both intellectually and, in this case, because he was Honorary President of that Board. I put below his two emails, reproduced with permission. The first one […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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