Flannery’s against deplatforming of this type, of course, as all civilized people should be — but that doesn’t mean we must believe malarkey about Darwin’s personal views on race:
A recent article at The College Fix reports that the University of Sheffield’s teaching and research handbook has declared Charles Darwin a “racist” who concluded that his “renowned theory of natural selection justified the view that the white race was superior to others, and used his theory of sexual selection to justify why women were clearly inferior to men.” The Sheffield proclamation brought a hail storm of denials and protests, insisting that it was unhistorical and “morally stupid.” The Darwin defenders stress that he was opposed to slavery, and as Adrian Desmond and James Moore tried to demonstrate in their book Darwin’s Sacred Cause, that formed a conviction of universal “blood kinship” based upon common descent for the evolutionist.
Nevertheless, I’ve indicated repeatedly that there is a difference between the sheer fact of opposition to slavery and a fervent belief in racial equality. That Darwin opposed slavery is certainly true, but that he rejected the idea of racial equality is also true. This is why I’ve called Desmond and Moore’s misguided book a whitewashing effort that offers “little new and nothing of importance.” It is also wrong to exonerate Darwin as merely the product of his “times,” an era when supposedly everyone was racist. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, certainly wasn’t. Unlike Darwin, he insisted all peoples everywhere “possess human qualities of the same kind as our own,” and in terms of “intelligence and morality” emphasized that there is “no marked superiority in any race or country.”
Nothing of this sort ever came from the public or private pen of Darwin; in fact, quite the opposite.
News, “Charles Darwin: Racist Spokesman for Anglo-Male Superiority?” at Mind Matters News (May 13, 2021)
Darwin’s racism doesn’t make his theory — either in its original form or any current iteration — right or wrong. The theory must be addressed on the merits of the case.
See also: Sheffield University: Darwin ruled “problematic” figure due to racism The article provides a whole list of non-woke historically significant scientists about to be subjected to whatever the Woke have in store for them, mostly post-mortem.