UA ALLELE Lecture Series Continues with Noted Anthropologist, Author

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Jonathan Marks, a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, will present his lecture, “Darwin’s Ventriloquists,” Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the Biology Auditorium on The University of Alabama campus.

Marks is the third in a series of six speakers from the 2009-2010 Alabama Lectures on Life’s Evolution, known as ALLELE.  The lectures are made possible, in large part, by private gifts from Lou Perry of La Jolla, Calif., Eric Hopkins of Austin, Texas and The Barbara and Frank Peters Foundation of Corona del Mar, Calif. Marks’ visit is co-sponsored by the UA department of anthropology.

Marks has written and spoken extensively about the inappropriate use of race in genetics and medicine. He will make a case in his presentation that scientific racism is a more serious problem for evolutionary biology than unscientific creationism is.

“I argue that evolutionary biology cannot afford to provide a safe intellectual haven for scientific racism today,” Marks said.

Marks’ research focuses on understanding human evolution and variation through critical, historical and social studies of human genetics. He has graduate degrees in both genetics and anthropology, and he was active in the field of molecular anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s leading up to the human genome project. He was recognized for offering scientific and ethical criticism of the Human Genome Diversity Project. He became vice chairman of the Indigenous Peoples’ Council on Bio-Colonialism as a result of that work.

Marks’ book, “What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee,” won the 2003 W.W. Howells Book Award from the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association, and it is also the 2009 winner of the prestigious J. I. Staley Prize from the School of Advanced Research. This year, he published “Why I Am Not a Scientist,” which will be available for purchase at his presentation.

In addition to private support, the ALLELE lecture series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, geological sciences, philosophy and psychology.

The lectures are designed for a non-technical audience and are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.bama.ua.edu/~evolution/alleleindex.html.

The ALLELE lecture series is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.