Last Tuesday's the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that evolutionary biology, you will recall, had been left off a list of eligible science majors for students applying for federal SMART grants.
A Department of Education spokeswoman had assured us this was only due to a "clerical consolidation" and not any nefarious intent of minions from the Ministry of Science and Culture.
But the prayers of the science community have been answered, the Chronicle reports today.
For on the third day, which was last Friday, the Department of Education announced that evolutionary biology had mysteriously risen to acceptability for SMART grants.
Exercise physiology is now okay, too! It's fun to look at the blank lines in the list before and the bold italic entries after the resurrection (page 7 in both documents).
Amen.
I wonder what was politically objectionable about exercise physiology?
I am pretty sure that exercise physiology was just a red herring...a nominal removal of one other discipline so it wasn't so absolutely glaringly obvious that they were performing an exorcism on evolutionary biology. This way, it was only sort of glaringly obvious what they were doing, and it allowed them the pathetic "uh, some sort of clerical consolidation error" cover. They are so cute when they are being transparently political, aren't they?