On July 21, 1925, a jury in Dayton, Tennessee, found John T. Scopes guilty of teaching evolution. The case has become so familiar that it is easy to reduce it to a historical curiosity: Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, Darwin, religion and a small Southern town thrust into the center of the nation’s attention.
But Scopes was not convicted merely because Americans disagreed about evolution. He was convicted because Tennessee had decided one side of that disagreement could not be taught in a public classroom. The state used political power to establish the boundaries of acceptable knowledge.
That distinction carries the enduring warning of Scopes: Once government claims the power to control what may be taught, it also claims power over the boundaries of acceptable thought. One hundred and one years later, that warning remains alive…