The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.
John Thomas Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925, with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools. He was tried in a case known as the Scopes Trial, and was found guilty and fined $100.
Raymond Sydney Ginger was an American historian, author, and biographer of wide-ranging scholarship whose special focus was on labor history, economic history, and the epoch often called the Gilded Age. His biography of the American labor leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs is widely considered definitive, and his account of the Scopes trial has also received high praise. Both titles are still in print, and both, along with many of his other works, have been widely used in college courses across the United States.
John Howard Francis Shattuck is an international legal scholar and human rights leader. He served as the fourth President and Rector of Central European University (CEU) from August 2009 until July 31, 2016. He is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and he joined the faculty of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in January 2017.
Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. It was first called the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, later took the name Granville College, and, in the mid-1850s, was renamed Denison University, in honor of a key benefactor. The college enrolled 2,300 students in Fall 2023 and students choose from 65 academic programs.
Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, celebrated the achievements of several 19th-century American authors and had a profound impact on a generation of scholars. It also established American Renaissance as the common term to refer to American literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Matthiessen was known for his support of liberal causes and progressive politics. His contributions to the Harvard University community have been memorialized in several ways, including an endowed visiting professorship.
Roger Nash Baldwin was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.
Roland Gerhard Fryer Jr. is an American economist and professor at Harvard University.
Mather House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University. Opened in 1970, it is named after Increase Mather, a Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony who served as President of Harvard University from 1681 to 1701. Mather's Faculty Deans are Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan and Amala Mahadevan.
The Great Monkey Trial is a book on the Scopes Trial by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1968. The book is a non-fiction account of the trial, as well as its social and political context and impact. This history of the trial was based on the archives of the A.C.L.U., assorted newspaper files, correspondence and interviews with over a dozen of those present at the trial, books and magazine articles written on the trial, and a couple of visits to Dayton. The book also contains several political cartoons published at the time of the trial. Several critics have referred to the book as the definitive or comprehensive account of the Scopes Trial.
Harvey Claflin Mansfield Jr. is an American political philosopher. He was the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he taught since 1962. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2004, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush and delivered the Jefferson Lecture in 2007.
Judith Nisse Shklar was a philosopher and political theorist who studied the history of political thought, notably that of the Enlightenment period. She was appointed the John Cowles Professor of Government at Harvard University in 1980.
Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes is a 1958 book about the Scopes Trial by Ray Ginger, first published in hardcover by Beacon Press and later reprinted in paperback by Oxford University Press. Ginger, a New York trade book editor at the time and later, a professor of history at Brandeis, Wayne State University, and the University of Calgary, had written about Eugene Debs and the city of Chicago in the time of John Peter Altgeld before he tackled the Scopes trial. In the conclusion of Six Days or Forever? Ginger wrote that his book had two purposes: First, to get "the facts straight" in order to correct "many mistakes in previous accounts of the episodes," believing that his book "comes much closer than do those accounts to telling what actually occurred." Second, Ginger "tried to view the Scopes trial in the broadest possible context" (242).
Kennard Baker Bork is a retired university teacher of geology and geography from the United States. He graduated with a BA from DePauw University in 1962 then went on to obtain an MA (1964) and a PhD (1967) from Indiana University Bloomington. He ended a career stretching more than 35 years as Alumni Professor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Ralph Wendell Burhoe was an important twentieth-century pioneer interpreter of the importance of religion for a scientific and technological world. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1980.
John Francis Manning is an American legal scholar who serves as the provost of Harvard University, and was the 13th Dean of Harvard Law School. He was previously the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), where he is a scholar of administrative and constitutional law.
Christopher Sandy Jencks is an American social scientist.
Danielle Susan Allen is an American classicist and political scientist. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the former Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
Edward Kennard RandFBA, known widely as E.K. Rand or to his peers as EKR, was an American classical scholar and medievalist. He served as the Pope Professor of Latin at Harvard University from 1901 until 1942, during which period he was also the Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for two terms. Rand is best known for his 1928 work, Founders of the Middle Ages.
Jay Backus Woodworth was an American geologist and educator. He was one of several American pioneers in the scientific study of earthquakes, and he became a recognized authority on glacial geology in New England.
