Lauri Lebo

Last updated
Lauri Lebo
Born(1964-03-18)March 18, 1964
Newberrytown, Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)Teachers' union spokeswoman, ACLU-PA BOD, Author, journalist
Notable credit(s)Coverage of Kitzmiller v. Dover
The Devil in Dover
Murder case in 1969 York race riot
SpouseJefferson Pepper
Website https://www.facebook.com/lauri.lebo.5

Lauri Lebo (born March 18, 1964) is a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, [1] Secretary of the ACLU-Pennsylvania Board of Directors, [2] author, former radio station co-owner [3] and disc jockey, [4] and reporter from York County, Pennsylvania. Lebo was the principal local reporter covering Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2004 and 2005, and was featured prominently in the Nova documentary Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial both because of her coverage and because her father, Shiremanstown Mayor Dean Lebo, who co-owned Christian radio station WWII-AM (broadcasting to Harrisburg), sided with the Dover school board in the controversy. [5]

Contents

An award-winning journalist for over 20 years. Lebo helped to reopen murder cases from the 1969 York Race Riot, [6] [7] She left reporting to write The Devil in Dover , [8] a book about the trial of the intelligent design movement and its effects on Dover.

Early life

Lauri was the oldest of Dean and Ann Lebo's five children. She attended Sunday school weekly and sang in the church choir. She believed the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, and Jesus’ sacrifice. Her mother taught her to enjoy life. Her father taught her about possibilities. As she grew older, she drifted away from the church. [9]

Her father's conversion to the Pentecostal faith began in 1987, when Lauri Lebo was about 23. Her father, who had taught her about the distance of the stars and whom she loved dearly, became “... a fundamentalist, speaking-in-tongues, slain-in-the-spirit, beware-the-mark-of-the-beast, faith-healing Christian...”) [10] [11]

Lebo said her York County male elementary school classmates used to beat her up because of her “big mouth.” [11]

Inspired by her friend's journalist father, Ed Jensen, who included his daughter's friends in his “clever” news-related conversations, Lebo decided to become a journalist. [12]

When she was 15, her family evacuated [13] their home due to the Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown just across the Susquehanna River from Newberrytown, less than 5 miles from her home at the time. [14]

Journalism/Authorship career

Ed Jensen stayed in the area to report when Three Mile Island had its partial nuclear meltdown. When Jensen died three years later of cancer, Lebo “understood what it means to be a reporter," and she became one in 1985. [12]

In 2000, her first big story covered the 1969 York, PA race riot. [15] Based on a series of articles for the 30th anniversary of the riots by Lebo and others at the York Daily Record/Sunday news, the York County District Attorney and Deputy Prosecutor each reopened investigations. [7]

In 2004, the York Daily Record assigned their Education Reporter, the then-Christian Lebo, to cover Kitzmiller v. Dover , which she called “the most amazing story I've ever covered in my life.”

Lebo sat through every day of testimony. [4] “As a reporter who doesn't come from a scientific background,” she was amazed daily that she was getting paid to “learn about evolution and the scientific method.” [13] The plaintiffs presented “The biology class you wish you could have taken”, [16] as Lebo quoted Margaret Talbot. “Every day we’d... learn something else incredible about... the fossil record, about the Avida program, which is a software program that actually shows evolution.” [5] Lebo had thought she could see the “hand of the Divine” when Intelligent Design was first described to her. She had been looking forward to hearing scientific arguments for the Christian god. Instead, she heard the primary scientist for the defense, biochemist Michael Behe, admit that astrology is as much a science as Intelligent Design is. [17]

During her December 2015 interview with Freedom From Religion’s Freethought Radio podcast, Lebo compared the pressure that Dover teachers felt to teach Creationism in biology class on the one hand, to the pressure she received from her employer to "write something nice" about Creationism on the other. [13] Although it relented after several months, the York Daily Record threatened Lebo with dismissal if she spoke at “Evolution 2006”, put on by the Stonybrook University Department of Ecology and Evolution. The York Daily Record also strongly opposed Lebo's request for time off to write her book on the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, claiming this would offend their conservative Christian readers. So Lebo quit her job as reporter and wrote The Devil in Dover . [8]

Afterwards, Lebo became a reporter for Religion Dispatches, [18] from which she announced, on 2011-07-10, her retirement to join the Pennsylvania State Education Association. [19]

Lebo was one of three panel judges for the 2016 Heywood Broun (journalism) Award. [20] In October 2016, Lebo was given the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Freethought Heroine Award in recognition of the special contributions of women to freethought and the battle to keep state and church separate. [21]

Journalism philosophy

Since the Dover trial, Ms. Lebo has subscribed to Walter Williams’ Journalist’s Creed, the words of which “remain one of the strongest summations of the guiding principles of our craft” [22] and the Walter Lippman philosophy of “objectivity of method”, [23] rather than the pretense that journalists have no opinions. [11] “If one side is a lie” and the reporter treats it as equal to the other side, that reporter performs a disservice. [8] She also asserted that media consolidation threatens a journalist's “depth and breadth of knowledge (of her/his sources and community) and does a disservice to democracy.” [24]

Journalism awards

Selected articles

Current career / Activism

Lauri Lebo has served as the Southern Region Advocacy Coordinator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, [32] a chapter of the National Education Association. She has also served as a spokeswoman. [33]

Lebo is also the Secretary for the ACLU-PA Board of Directors. [34] She won the ACLU-PA 2012 Best published letter to the editor on a civil liberties-related issue (voter ID). [35]

Lebo is a scheduled speaker at the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 39th Annual Convention. [36]

Related Research Articles

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dover, Pennsylvania</span> Borough in Pennsylvania, United States

Dover is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,953 at the 2020 census. The borough is located about eight miles from downtown York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenie Scott</span> American anthropologist

Eugenie Carol Scott is an American physical anthropologist who has been active in opposing the teaching of young Earth creationism and intelligent design in schools. She coined the term "Gish gallop" to describe a fallacious rhetorical technique of overwhelming an interlocutor with as many individually weak arguments as possible, in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth R. Miller</span> American biologist

Kenneth Raymond Miller is an American cell biologist, molecular biologist, and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brown University. Miller's primary research focus is the structure and function of cell membranes, especially chloroplast thylakoid membranes. Miller is a co-author of a major introductory college and high school biology textbook published by Prentice Hall since 1990.

The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains that ID cannot be empirically tested and that it fails to solve the problem of evil; thus, it is neither sound science nor sound theology.

<i>Of Pandas and People</i> Creationist supplementary textbook by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon

Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level supplementary textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, edited by Charles Thaxton and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design – the argument that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. The overview chapter was written by young Earth creationist Nancy Pearcey. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. Before publication, early drafts used cognates of "creationist". After the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling that creationism is religion and not science, these were changed to refer to "intelligent design". The second edition published in 1993 included a contribution written by Michael Behe.

The "Teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Forrest</span> American academic

Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute.

Robert T. Pennock is a philosopher working on the Avida digital organism project at Michigan State University where he has been full professor since 2000. Pennock was a witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs, and described how intelligent design is an updated form of creationism and not science, pointing out that the arguments were essentially the same as traditional creationist arguments with adjustments to the message to eliminate explicit mention of God and the Bible as well as adopting a postmodern deconstructionist language. Pennock also laid out the philosophical history of methodological and philosophical naturalism as they underpin to science, and explained that if intelligent design were truly embraced it would return Western civilization to a pre-Enlightenment state.

<i>Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District</i> 2005 court case in Pennsylvania

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first case brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school policy requiring the teaching of intelligent design (ID). The court found intelligent design to be not science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John E. Jones III</span> American judge (born 1955)

John Edward Jones III is the 30th President at Dickinson College and a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his presiding role in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, in which the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes was ruled to be unconstitutional. In 2014, he ruled that Pennsylvania's 1996 ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. On May 14, 2021, it was announced that Judge Jones would serve as interim president of his alma mater Dickinson College for a two-year period beginning July 1, 2021. On February 28, 2022, Jones was named the 30th President of Dickinson College.

The intelligent design movement has conducted an organized campaign largely in the United States that promotes a pseudoscientific, neo-creationist religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering on intelligent design.

Charles B. Thaxton is a proponent of special creation who went on to become one of the first intelligent design authors.

<i>Creationisms Trojan Horse</i> 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross

Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross on the origins of intelligent design, specifically the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and its wedge strategy. The authors are highly critical of what they refer to as intelligent design creationism, and document the intelligent design movement's fundamentalist Christian origins and funding.

The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.

Christina Castillo Comer is the former Director of Science in the curriculum division of the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Comer spent nine years as the Director of Science until she resigned on November 7, 2007. Comer's resignation has sparked controversy about agency politics and the debate to teach evolution in public schools versus creationism or intelligent design.

<i>The Devil in Dover</i> 2008 book by Lauri Lebo

The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America is a 2008 book by journalist Lauri Lebo about the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District intelligent design trial, through her own perspective as a local reporter on the trial as she confronted her own attitudes about organized religion and her father who was a fundamentalist Christian.

The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled "Teach the Controversy", which claims that a controversy exists within the scientific community over evolution. The scientific community rejects intelligent design as a form of creationism, and the basic facts of evolution are not a matter of controversy in science.

In American schools, the Genesis creation narrative was generally taught as the origin of the universe and of life until Darwin's scientific theories became widely accepted. While there was some immediate backlash, organized opposition did not get underway until the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy broke out following World War I; several states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution while others debated them but did not pass them. The Scopes Trial was the result of a challenge to the law in Tennessee. Scopes lost his case, and further U.S. states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution.

Alton Toussaint Lemon was a social worker and civil rights activist best known as named lead plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case on the separation of church and state. His was a recipient of the "First Amendment Hero" award and was the first African American head of the Philadelphia Ethical Society.

References

  1. ↑ "The Pennsylvania State Education Association". PSEA.org. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  2. ↑ "Board of Directors". ACLUPA.org. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  3. ↑ Lebo, Lauri (2009-03-24). The Devil in Dover. The New Press. p. 206.
  4. 1 2 "Intelligent Design on Trial". PBS.org. 2007-11-13. Retrieved 2016-09-04.
  5. 1 2 "Caught in a Culture War". PBS.org. 2007-11-01. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  6. ↑ "Lauri Lebo". The New Press. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  7. 1 2 "Riot Murders of 1969". IRE.org. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  8. 1 2 3 Lauri Lebo - From Dover to DNA: How science-literate communities can change the narrative (speech) (video). Pennsylvania Nonbelievers. 2014-01-19. Retrieved 2016-09-07– via YouTube.
  9. ↑ Lebo, Lauri (2009-03-24). The Devil in Dover. The New Press. pp. 105–106.
  10. ↑ Lebo, Lauri (2009-03-24). The Devil in Dover. The New Press. p. 105.
  11. 1 2 3 The Devil in Dover and elsewhere: the personal side of the Creationism controversy (speech). Year of Darwin (video). Case Western Reserve. 2008-12-02. Retrieved 2016-09-07– via YouTube.
  12. 1 2 Lebo, Lauri (2009-03-24). The Devil in Dover. The New Press. Prologue.
  13. 1 2 3 Author Lauri Lebo, The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America (interview) (podcast). Freethought Radio. 2009-02-09. 149. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  14. ↑ Lebo lived close to Three Mile Island
  15. ↑ "Biography: Lauri Lebo". Columbia University. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  16. ↑ "Darwin in the Dock". The New Yorker. 2005-12-05. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  17. ↑ "Afternoon Session" (PDF). National Center for Science Education. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  18. ↑ "Lauri Lebo". Religion Dispatches. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  19. ↑ "A Short Goodbye". Religion Dispatches. 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  20. ↑ "Terrence McCoy named 2016 Heywood Broun Award winner (Lauri Lebo was a judge)". Washington Post. 2016-07-27. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  21. ↑ "Freethought Heroine Award". Freedom From Religion Foundation. Retrieved 2017-05-13.
  22. ↑ Lebo, Lauri (2009-03-24). The Devil in Dover. The New Press. p. 158.
  23. ↑ "The lost meaning of 'objectivity'". American Press Institute. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  24. ↑ "FCC Faces Public at Third Official Hearing on Media Consolidation". freepress. 2007-02-21. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  25. ↑ "Lauri Lebo". Religion Dispatches. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  26. ↑ "The Scopes Strategy: Creationists Try New Tactics to Promote Anti-Evolutionary Teaching in Public Schools". Scientific American. 2011-02-28. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  27. ↑ "Unregulated Capitalism and Christian Fervor". Progressive Christianity. 2009-10-13. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  28. ↑ "No News Is Bad News". Washington Spectator. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  29. ↑ "'Academic Freedom' is Creationism". Sensuous Curmudgeon. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  30. ↑ "Intelligent Design Propaganda Is Coming to a Theater Near You". Alternet.org. 2008-04-28. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  31. ↑ "Was Guillermo Gonzalez "Expelled"?". The Skeptics Society. 2008-04-23. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  32. ↑ "PSEA Region Advocacy Coordinators". The Pennsylvania State Education Association. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  33. ↑ "PSEA-NEA UniServ Representatives". The Pennsylvania State Education Association. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  34. ↑ "Board of Directors". ACLU-PA. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  35. ↑ "ACLU-PA Recognizes Chapters". ACLU-PA. 2012-12-14. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  36. ↑ "Freedom From Religion Foundation National Convention Speakers". Freedom From Religion Foundation. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
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