The University of Vermont Uninvites Ben Stein

The good news is that Ben Stein is not going to be the University of Vermont’s commencement speaker after all: the choice of Stein caused such an uproar that he withdrew. The bad news is that the uproar seems to have come almost entirely from the Darwinist community; the University of Vermont’s president, Dan Fogel, went so far as to assure Richard Dawkins that

Although we have recently learned that Mr. Stein will be unable to receive the honorary degree here or to serve as Commencement speaker, please know that it was our expectation that his remarks would address the global economic crisis and that he would speak from his widely acknowledged area of expertise on the economy. We regret that he will be unable to do so.

I’d love to know what President Fogel thinks that "widely acknowledged" means. I fear it means "acknowledged to such a degree that the New York Times is happy to feature Stein as an expert". Which is precisely why the NYT must stop publishing Stein’s inane, offensive, and largely fictional blatherings forthwith.