Features
Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin Going Back To School
Greg Graffin has a fun summer lined up with Bad Religion but come August it’s back to school for the punk rocker.
Graffin is returning to Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., to teach Evolution in the fall semester Aug. 24 through Dec. 11. After attending the University of California, Los Angeles for his undergraduate studies and master’s degree, the singer/songwriter earned his Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell.
“This is the first year of three that I am slated to help develop the course and lecture at Cornell,” Graffin said, according to Epitaph. “I have a colleague who is a gifted geneticist, Richard Harrison, who will be co-teaching with me. I only have to lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That leaves plenty of time to head overseas on the weekends!”
This isn’t Graffin’s first time at the head of the class. In recent years he’s balanced rocking out with Bad Religion with lecturing in life sciences and paleontology at UCLA. Last year he released the science memoir “Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God.”
Photo: James Hendershot
Rams Head Live!, Baltimore, Md.
Graffin’s contributions to science were recently honored by a group of paleontologists who discovered an ancient bird fossil in the Gansu Province of north-western China. This month’s issue of Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society in London reports that the fossil was named “Qiliania graffini.”
Here’s what Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, who was one of the paleontologists who discovered the fossil, had to say about the Bad Religion frontman:
“The species name is in honor of Dr. Gregory Graffin, Ph.D.: paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, professor, rock star, and inspiration to numerous budding and established scientists around the world.”
Next month Graffin and his Bad Religion bandmates will rock the
A handful of United Kingdom dates are set for July 10-13. In the fall the band join Van Halen, Alice Cooper and Panic! At The Disco in Australia for the Soundwave Revolution Sept. 24-25, Sept. 30-Oct.1 and Oct. 3.
Click here for Bad Religion’s website.