The U.S. Department of Education has reinstated evolutionary biology to a federal grant list for undergraduate studies. David Dunn — acting under secretary and chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings — said the omission, which had sparked heated protests from academics and evolution supporters, was accidental, New Scientist reported Thursday.
"As soon as the omission came to our attention, we took steps to correct it," he said.
The move was welcomed by Becky Timmons of the American Council on Education.
"If (the omission) was deliberate, it is certainly the case that when it came to light, wiser heads prevailed," she said.
Many in the academic community expressed fears that the omission might have been part of an attack on Darwinian evolution by religious groups.
"There are well-funded efforts in this country that have been inappropriately attempting to attack the teaching of evolutionary biology on what appear to be religious grounds," physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland wrote to the Department of Education.
Source: United Press International
