There’s a great post at the Volokh Conspiracy about the tendency of liberal academics to celebrate inquisitions and excommunications. This is of particular interest for a bunch of reasons, including my need to research the topic more for my book. If anybody has first hand experiences on the subject I’d love to hear from you. Or if you’ve read anything good on the subject (left or right) I’d love to know about it. But please don’t send it to my normal address. Send email on this subject to [email protected]. It may be a little while before I respond.

Anyway, just to get people thinking on the subject, it’s long been my opinion that for all of the left’s glorification of Galileo as a victim of a religious inquisition, the real masters of the art are professional academics themselves. After all, while the Church may deserve its share of criticism for what happened to Galileo, his scientific colleagues have gotten-off scot-free. See my column on Bjorn Lomberg’s treatment for more of what I mean.