Choosing Incompetence in Madison

by Winfield Myers  •  July 11, 2006

http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2006/07/choosing-incompetence-in-madison

If a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, insisted against all evidence and experience that a given combination of substances--let's posit hydrochloric acid and plutonium--would yield a healthy drink rather than a toxic stew, would deans, provosts, and fellow academics rush to defend his "freedom of speech?" Imagine an accounting professor who demanded that columns of figures for corporate tax deductions always equal, say, $716,980.23, while individual deductions in all circumstances add up to the square root of pi. Would tenure protect him? How about a professor of structural engineering who didn't believe in beams, foundations, or walls?

Now imagine a professor tasked with teaching undergraduates about Islam who would write:

From a Muslim perspective, it hardly seems worthwhile to engage in dialogue with non-Muslims who believe that 9/11 was an act of "Islamic terrorism." Either we discuss the compelling evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, or there is precious little to talk about.

Or:

If non-Muslims persist in allowing the 9/11 Big Lie to stand, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, Muslims will be tempted to find something other than words with which to defend themselves. In a future without 9/11 truth, "Islamic terrorism" may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Confronted by what appears to be a gargantuan, Satanic lie that launched a global war on Islam, Muslims may feel compelled to defend themselves "by any means necessary," as Malcolm X so eloquently put it.

And:

9/11 was designed by non-religious, Machievellian-Straussian cynics who believe that hatred and hostility are what move the world.... For them, it was just a minor special effects extravaganza, put together by Hollywood specialists to manipulate audience emotion and pave the way for war—a slightly more realistic version of Wag the Dog. For them, the deaths of a few thousand people mean very little—after all, these top Pentagon strategists spend their lives contemplating nuclear exchanges in which losses of 20 or 30 million people would be "acceptable."

Or, finally:

Did the architects of 9/11 really think they could tell the whole world what they were going to do—in Brezhinsky's The Grand Chessboard and PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses—pretend to train the "hijackers" at phony CIA-drug-mob "flight schools," set off explosions in the WTC right in front of dozens of witnesses who would survive to tell the tale, confess on national television to demolishing WTC-7, have the Secret Service leave Bush dallying in a known location for an hour during an alleged surprise attack, prevent the Air Force from intercepting the attack planes, and then give three equally absurd, utterly contradictory stories explaining that "failure"?

You'll find more of the paranoid style in other writings by Kevin Barrett, the adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, whose ahistorical, conspiracy-laden claims might be sufficient to prove his unworthiness to teach to rational observers, but who can count on officials at UW-Madison to stand by his side.

Yesterday, in response to the controversy surrounding Barrett's assertions, Provost Patrick Farrell was joined by Gary Sandefeur, dean of the College of Letters and Science, and Ellen Raferty, chair of the department of languages and cultures of Asia, in clearing the way for Barrett to teach "Islam: Religion and Culture" this fall. Farrell called Barrett's views "unconventional" rather than "ridiculous" or "utterly unsupportable," but it's increasingly what one expects from university administrators, a sub-species of academic whose feet are always firmly ensconced in mid-air.

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