The Scopes Trial: 100 Years Later

Location: (GEAR) G. David Gearhart Hall, 026 | 340 N. Campus Dr., Fayetteville, AR

As we approach its 100-year anniversary this July, the cultural salience of the Scopes Trial endures. A misdemeanor legal case that was purposely staged into a contentious drama became a blazing emblem for America’s power struggle between individual freedoms and majority opinion.

“Even when I walk into a high school biology class, most students have heard of the Scopes Trial, and they all have their own ideas on why it’s still important today,” said Edward Larson, University Professor of history and the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. “I am convinced it’s the best-known trial in American history.”

Larson examined the famous “Monkey Trial” in his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (Basic Books, 1997), which he went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for in 1998. Larson will visit the U of A campus to discuss the trial’s enduring legacy as part of the Palmer Hotz Endowed Lecture Series in the History of Science, hosted by the Honors College.