Zack KopplinZack Kopplin, the young activist behind the initiative to repeal Louisiana's antievolution law and the effort to expose the funding of creationism through vouchers-for-private-schools schemes nationally, was profiled in the Houston Press (February 20, 2013). "Kopplin, now 19 and a student at Rice University, has taken his fight to Houston, to Texas," the article explains. "And if our state's legislators don't yet know his name — if they haven't seen him all over cable news or haven't read his writings on famed evolutionist Richard Dawkins's Web site — they soon will."
In Texas, Kopplin will be lobbying the legislature not to implement a vouchers-for-private-schools scheme like Georgia's or Louisiana's, which have been accused of using public funds indirectly to subsidize the teaching of creationism: "Per Kopplin's research, Louisiana's encounters with creationism have been even starker and more egregious: self-proclaimed prophets declaiming their holiness; schools learning of the friendships between Adam, Eve and iguanodons; students shoveled in front of television sets showing little more than Bible-based videos for hours."
Among those quoted in the article are Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network; NCSE board member Barbara Forrest; Harry McDonald, the president of Kansas Citizens for Science; Kevin Carman, formerly the dean of the College of Science at Louisiana State University, who blamed Louisiana's antievolution law for making the state unattractive to scientists; Nobel laureate Harry Kroto, who described Kopplin's efforts as "heartening"; and Neal Lane, the former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, who similarly praised Kopplin for his activism.