Evolution is an election issue in Ohio this year. Ninety percent of the science faculty at Case Western Reserve signed a letter endorsing the candidacy of Tom Sawyer for Ohio School Board. Sawyer is running against the incumbent Dr. D. Owens Fink, a professor of Marketing at the University of Akron. Fink supports I.D. and the insistence the the science curriculum standards include lessons in which evolution is singled out to be critically analyzed. The Ohio board voted against such an addition to the curriculum last year.

The organizer of the letter at Case Western Reserve is Lawrence Krause, professor of physics. Krause has been active in the I.D. and evolution debate, not only in Ohio, but in other parts of the country. Krause also wrote a letter to the Pope (July, 2005) in which he took issue with Cardinal Christoph SchÅ¡nborn, archbishop of Vienna who appeared to dangerously redefine the Church’s view on Evolution. According to Krause, the Cardinal dismissed the 1996 message of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy, calling it “rather vague and unimportant”. Krause concluded his letter with this statement: “We are writing to you today to request that you clarify once again the Church’s position on Evolution and Science, that you reaffirm the remarkable statements of Pope John Paul II and the International Theological Commission, so that it will be clear that Cardinal SchÅ¡nborn’s remarks do not reflect the views of the Holy See.”

Krause also wrote to the U.S. Department of Education, and pointed out that Evolutionary Biology had been omitted from a list of majors eligible in the Education Department’s National Smart Grant Program.