Group Identity, Protest, and Evolution Exhibits in America

Abstract

Protesting evolution exhibits fulfills the personal social needs of the protestors. This paper analyzes the possible motivations behind publicly reported controversies and how the type of protest may have fulfilled the goals of the protesting group irrespective of the outcome to the museum exhibition. The five types of protest reviewed in this paper include: legal challenges that seek to have evolution declared a theological concept equivalent to creation; staged public protest and harassment of museum staff; claims of representativeness through public opinion survey, petition, and assertion of right, to suppress presentation of scientific concepts; claim of public sanction and authority to promote theistic views; public performance to reinforce in—group identity and shared beliefs. Of these, only those that constitute the desire to threaten staff or seek to curtail open public discourse on the scientific theory are considered combative and socially detrimental. The paper concludes that museums need to take on the task of identifying which protests threaten the rights of visitors to explore new concepts and questions whether museums can, in fact, be a forum for the social development of knowledge.