NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2013: Baba Brinkman, of "The Rap Guide to Evolution" fame; Jay Labov, the senior advisor for education and communication for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council; and Sean B. Carroll, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin and Vice President for Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In a February 20, 2013, press release, NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott commented on the worthiness of all three recipients. She described Brinkman's rap as accurate and funny, adding, "it connects with audiences scientists rarely reach." She referred to Labov as "NCSE's go-to guy" for his work coordinating the Academy's advocacy of evolution education. And she praised Carroll for his "superb" efforts at communicating evolution to the public over the past two decades.
Brinkman, Labov, and Carroll join Bruce Alberts, Fred Edwords, Niles Eldredge, Steve Gey, Brandon Haught, John F. Haught, Victor Hutchison, Lawrence S. Lerner, Jere Lipps, Steve Mirsky, and Patricia Princehouse, to name a few, as NCSE's Friends of Darwin. The Friend of Darwin award is presented annually to a select few whose efforts to support NCSE and advance its goal of defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools have been truly outstanding.