Thursday, November 22, 2007

Discovery Institute loses, gains a Fellow

When law professor (and President of the Evangelical Theological Society) Francis Beckwith converted from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism earlier this year, he made somewhat of a public splash. When he subsequently resigned as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in July, neither DI nor Beckwith made any public comment. But law professor Peter Irons writes at Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog:
Beckwith, who is a recognized scholar on church-state issues, has made no public statement on the reasons for his resignation (and his private comments on those reasons, while revealing, are not for publication, at least now). After Beckwith resigned, the DI quietly removed his bio from its website, and he just disappeared into the ether.
Ed Brayton's blog post is reporting on the addition of a new Discovery Institute Fellow, movie reviewer and culture critic Michael Medved, an intellectual lightweight who believes in Sasquatch. (The link here also includes criticism of Medved for an article about American slavery, but I actually think Medved's article is better than the critique of it.)

As Irons notes in his comment, "In replacing Beckwith with Medved, the DI has traded intellectual substance for Hollywood glitz."

And Medved isn't even a good movie reviewer.

2 comments:

Leo said...

Medved never ceases to disappoint. It is a wonder that he is taken seriously in evangelical circles. I suppose that the evangelical community thinks that "a name" gives legitimacy - sadly tis not true...There are atleast two Medveds or two Bartons for every Mark Noll or George Marsden. They gotta look beyond the surface.

Leo said...

Did you know that the December issue of Scientific American contains a sympathetic discussion on a scientist who hypothesizes that Sasquatch exists?

Maybe Medved is not totally nuts...