Lecture: Friday, December 4, at 4:00 p.m. in Whittenberger Auditorium, IMU
Speaker: Judge John E. Jones III
Topic: "Judicial Independence and the Pennsylvania Case of Intelligent Design
in the Public Schools”
Judge Jones is perhaps best known by many for presiding over the 2005 landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, after which he held that it was unconstitutional to teach intelligent design within a public school science curriculum.
Below is a small excerpt from his biographical sketch:
"In 2003 Judge Jones struck down portions of Shippensburg University’s speech code on the basis that they violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. In that same year Judge Jones ruled, in a decision later affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statute assessing milk producers in order to fund advertising, including the Milk Mustache/got milk® campaign did not infringe the free speech rights of the producers. In 2005 Judge Jones presided over the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, after which he held that it was unconstitutional to teach intelligent design within a public school science curriculum. In 2006 he ruled that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s ballot access procedures for minor political parties did not violate the Constitution.
In 2007 Judge Jones and the Kitzmiller case were featured in the two-hour Nova special “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial,” televised nationally by PBS. In April 2008 “Judgment Day” won a Peabody Award, which is the oldest and most distinguished honor in electronic media. Judge Jones has also appeared as a guest on national television shows such as Today on NBC, the NewsHour on PBS, and C-SPAN’s America & The Courts."
We are honored to have Judge Jones on the IU campus to help us conclude our inaugural Themester of “Evolution, Diversity and Change”.
