Resource person: Audra Bullard - office@clehighlands.com

Description:

One hundred years is a long time in politics, less in science, and even less in religion. This year marks the centennial of the best-known intersection of those three forces in American culture: the “Tennessee Monkey Trial.” Seen narrowly, Tennessee v. Scopes was a small-town criminal prosecution under a largely symbolic state law against teaching about human evolution in public schools. Given a broader meaning in a culturally divided era, it came to represent a complex clash pitting resurgent American evangelicalism against progressive notions of science, religion, and liberty that some saw as a battle for the soul of America. Over time, it grew to symbolize the sort of multi-sided and highly-charged confrontations that continue to divide Americans over laws, regulations, and court decisions involving contested visions of individual rights, religious freedom, and popular control over matters of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Ed Larson holds the Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. Recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, Larson received a Ph.D in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from Harvard. He taught for twenty years at the University of Georgia, where he chaired the history department. The author of fifteen books and over eighty published articles, his books also include A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800; Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory; and New York Times bestsellers, The Return of George Washington, 1783-1789 and Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership. Larson recently published, American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795. His next book, Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters, is due out in November, 2025.

Notes: Cancellation Policy Please let us know immediately if you are unable to attend a class. There is no refund for cancellations within two (2) weeks prior to a scheduled class. Programs that include food, beverage or art materials must be canceled within three (3) weeks prior to receive a refund. CLE reserves the right to cancel a program if the minimum enrollment has not been met or for circumstances beyond our control, and participants will be notified, a complete refund will be issued. All classes are held in the CLE Lecture Hall at the Peggy Crosby Center unless otherwise noted. In the event information has changed from the published brochure, it will be posted on our website and in our e-blasts. Addresses for “private home” venues will be provided to registrants within 2 days of the program date.

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