World’s Oldest Living Alum Testifies on Behalf of Evolution

ATDP pioneer Abigail Lustig before the Texas Board of Education, posted on YouTube!

Back in the dim mists of time (well, in 1982) ATDP began its life as the “UC Berkeley Gifted Program.” One of its 282 students was a middle schooler from Lafayette, CA named Abigail Lustig. As it says on the ATDP Timeline published online for the program’s 25th anniversary in 2006, Abigail “now holds the record for longest continuous connection with the program; she is currently a professor of History of Science at the University of Texas, Austin.”

From being a student at the Gifted Program, Abigail started working summers at ATDP as a Teacher’s Assistant, as a Study Lab mentor tutor, and eventually became an instructor for courses such as Science and the Humanities, First-Year Latin, and Intermediate Writing. While obtaining her BA, and then PhD, at UC Berkeley, Abigail also worked as a staffer at ATDP. Her connections with the program extended to her family, as Abigail’s mom Elise Lustig taught the Human Anatomy courses for many summers in the Elementary Division, and her younger sister Sanny was a Instructional Associate in the ED as well.

Fast forward to now… Cut to the present, and an e-mail from Prof. Lustig telling us of a testimony she gave last March before the Texas Board of Education. The Board was revising its public school science standards last year and holding hearings on proposed revisions that would have introduced covert creationist language into the biology portion—under the leadership of the Board’s chairman and almost half the members, who are creationists. The best part of Abigail’s e-mail was the news that her testimony was posted on YouTube. Here it is, then (below)—Prof. Lustig online, in a 4 minute or so video clip that could well be subtitled, “World’s oldest living alum testifies on behalf of evolution.” The actual YouTube title is: “Texas historian: evolution is an established fact.”