Regular readers of National Review are familiar with the writings of John Derbyshire. I first came to know of Derbyshire more than a decade ago when I read his novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, a mesmerizing story of a Chinese émigré – a former Red Guard who has become obsessed with President Calvin Coolidge (an ideal Confucian leader, as described by the character) as well as with the memory of a long-lost romantic relationship with a woman he knew in his youth.
In addition to being a skilled novelist, Derbyshire is also a brilliant controversialist, fearlessly addressing such issues as race, immigration, the war in Iraq and the larger global war on terror, and the long and bitter debate over scientific measures of intelligence. In so doing, he has not hesitated to cross many conservatives of note like Linda Chavez and even National Review's own Ramesh Ponnuru.
The latest controversy joined by Derbyshire concerns the movie Expelled, a documentary narrated by Ben Stein about the alleged persecution of scientists, academics, and others who have dared question the dominance of Darwinian evolutionary theory as it relates to the origins of plant and animal species and even the very beginnings of life itself across the universe. Derbyshire has sharply criticized the film, referring to it as a "wretched thing," a Christian fundamentalist Trojan horse (though Stein is Jewish, and there is little mention of religion in the film), the enterprise of "a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive."
Derbyshire goes on to accuse Ben Stein of inflicting "a blood libel on Western civilization," of calling the very validity of science and the scientific method into question by criticizing Darwinism and drawing a connection between it and Adolf Hitler's murderous policies of racial extermination. To be fair, Stein did not exactly help his cause when, during a conversation with Paul Crouch, Jr. on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, he said "…Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people." That certainly could have been better stated. Stein should have specified that blind faith in science, without moral guidance, can very possibly lead to devastating results.
Ultimately, for all his bluster in condemning the film as a waste of celluloid, Derbyshire made this surprising statement in The Corner on April 28: "Some readers of today's column are upset / angry / scornful that I have presumed to pass comment on the Expelled movie without having seen it." I wouldn't say I was upset, angry, or scornful, just surprised that for all his intense antipathy toward the film, Derbyshire hadn't actually bothered to watch it, "wretched" as he believes it to be. I cannot stand Michael Moore, who I think is a loudmouthed, corpulent fifth-columnist, but if I ever chose to write a review of Sicko, I would make sure I saw it before unleashing any torrents of criticism, if only for the purpose of knowing what the devil I would be writing about.
As for my own impression of Expelled, I saw it on the afternoon of April 25 and found it to be a compelling call for the defense of academic freedom and intellectual inquiry. The goings-on of day-to-day affairs among academics are a mystery to most Americans, many of whom cling to quaint notions of our country's colleges and universities being idyllic places where professors are free to pursue a life of the mind without the day-to-day drudgery of mind-numbing work that most people have to contend with. It is a fanciful notion that would make any academic professional chuckle.
Academia can be, and often is, intensely political and the fights therein are fierce, especially where major grants and other large sources of funding are at issue. In my own discipline – history – dissenting theories and viewpoints are generally frowned upon, and intellectual and pedagogical disputed can often lead to not only loss of funding, but denial of tenure or worse. Faced with such reality on a daily basis, I fully understand what professors like Guillermo Gonzalez are up against. Personally, I have seen the careers of brilliant professors brought to an end despite stellar teaching skills and solid scholarship. As is the case with most organizations, within universities the tried and true is preferred over the new and innovative – an ethos of getting along to go along prevails.
As for the actual debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design, I hold no brief for either side. If anything, having been taught evolutionary theory at a Catholic high school and later at a Catholic university, I am inclined to favor the former. I have never understood there to be an inherent contradiction between evolutionary theory and my Catholic religious beliefs.
For me, the ultimate issue in play with Expelled is academic fee inquiry. Denying people tenure, restricting funding, and professional blacklisting is not only anti-intellectual and anti-science, it violates the very climate of liberty that we Americans claim to cherish. If Intelligent Design advocates are wrong, then prove them wrong with facts, not with underhanded political tactics or verbal invective.
From my own academic field, I am reminded of when a controversial amateur historian, a former British submarine captain named Gavin Menzies, presented a startling hypothesis. Menzies claimed that a series of Chinese expeditions across the Indian Ocean to India, the Middle East, and Africa between 1405 and 1433, under the command of Admiral Zheng He, had managed to reach American shores some seven decades before Columbus. Menzies published his fanciful theory in a book entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered America. To put it simply, the thinness of his evidence did not support the richness of his conclusion.
There were some professional historians who took the low road, dredging up old information about a lawsuit Menzies had once filed as well as a story about an accidental collision involving Menzies's submarine during his Royal Navy career. But most historians took the high road, noting that Menzies had made numerous linguistic errors in translating medieval European and Chinese documents, had failed to understand the state of science and navigation in fifteenth century China, and had misread medieval Portuguese maps which he claimed showed an incontrovertible Chinese influence. Menzies was proven wrong on the basis of facts, not personal attacks. However wrong they may be, Intelligent Design advocates deserve the same courtesy.
Like Vox Day, I too quite like John Derbyshire and value his contributions over the years to our country's literature and political commentary. On the matter of Expelled, though, I must disagree with Derbyshire's method of argument, even if I lean toward his position on the Darwinism-Intelligent Design debate.
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