John G. West is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute (DI), and associate director and vice president for public policy and legal affairs of its Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which serves as the main hub of the Intelligent design movement.
West received an undergraduate degree in communications (Editorial Journalism) from the University of Washington in 1986.
[3][4] At the 1995 DI-sponsored 'Death of Materialism' conference out of which it was born, he delivered an address entitled 'The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture', which was an early articulation of the Wedge Strategy (later leaked in 1998 as what became known as the Wedge Document, with an introduction identical to West's opening paragraphs).
[6] Historian of Science Mark Borrello criticized West's argument in writing, "West means blaming biologists in general and Darwinian theory in particular for the coerced sterilization laws that passed many state legislatures in the first half of the 20th century.
Historians of science know that the passage of the first sterilization laws at the beginning of the 20th century occurred during the 'eclipse of Darwinism'."