CURRY CHANDLER
Assistant News Editor
The Pepperdine University School of Law will begin the academic year with the addition of a Pulitzer Prize winning author and professor of history and law.
Dr. Edward Larson will hold the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair at the School of Law as well as a professorship at Seaver. His previous position was at the University of Georgia, where he held the Talmadge Chair of Law and taught American history.
Though Georgia was his most recent home, Larson has lived and practiced law on the West Coast before.
“I’m attracted to the progress being made, the constant improvement in both the university and the law school, and being a part of that,” Larson said. “I also think the university environment, living on campus, will be a great place to raise my children.”
Larson came to Malibu with his wife Lucy, and his two children, Sarah and Luke.
Larson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1998 for his book “Summer for the Gods,” an examination of the 1925 Scopes trial that tested a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching in public schools of any theory that conflicted with the biblical account of creation.
What Roe v. Wade is to the issue of abortion, so the Scopes trial (often called the “Scopes Monkey Trial”) is to the question of the theory of evolution’s place in state-funded schools, as well as the separation of church and state in regard to such matters.
“The issue has continued to remain alive,” Larson said. “Over the years I’ve counted dozens and dozens of trials that in the newspapers get billed as ‘Scopes Two.”
In 1999, 74 years after the Scopes trial, the Kansas State Board of Education voted in support of science education standards that lacked any mention of biological evolution, the age of the Earth, or the origins of the Universe.
A 2000 report titled “Evolution and Creationism in Public Education” prepared by the People for the American Way (a liberal advocacy organization) discovered that 83 percent of Americans supported the teaching of evolution in classrooms, while only 3 in 10 favored the presentation of creationism as a science. The following year the Kansas State Board of Education reversed its 1999 decision.
Larson said his work remains heavily influenced by his dual passion for the study of history and the application of law. The Scopes trial naturally lent itself to Larson’s field of expertise, as it contains a healthy combination of both.
“I’m interested in its notion of separation of church and state, both as a historical event, as a historian and as a historically-important trial,” he said.
Being awarded a Pulitzer Prize could be seen as the professional peak in anyone’s career, but Larson said he is not concerned about any pressure to out-perform his own achievements.
“If anything, the Pulitzer Prize is a stepping stone that you can use to open doors, to do ever more interesting and challenging things,” he said.
Larson says his scope of interest encompasses more than law. He has studied medicine and science, specifically their respective histories. The National Institute of Health recently appointed him to the panel overseeing the history of research of the human genome.
08-28-2006