A Skeptic on 9/11 Prompts Questions on Academic Freedom

[The Smoking Man]

August 1, 2006
A Skeptic on 9/11 Prompts Questions on Academic Freedom
By GRETCHEN RUETHLING

MADISON, Wis., July 26 — Sipping on a bottle of water and holding a book about the history and future of Islam, Kevin Barrett ticked off a few examples of what he saw as evidence that the Sept. 11 attacks had been an “inside job.”

As children zoomed by on tricycles and shot basketballs at a community center near his home, Mr. Barrett, 47, described how some news orgainzations (the French daily newspaper Figaro and Radio France International, in fact) had reported that an agent from the Central Intelligence Agency visited with Osama bin Laden two months before the attacks. He also said fires could not have caused the collapse of the World Trade Center towers at free-fall speed, as reported by the special Sept. 11 commission. “The 9/11 report will be universally reviled as a sham and a cover-up very soon,” said Mr. Barrett, who has been a teacher’s assistant or lecturer on Islam, African literature and other subjects at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, since 1996. “The 9/11 commission has its conspiracy theory, and we have ours.”

Mr. Barrett’s views, which he described on a conservative radio talk show in June, have outraged some Wisconsin legislators and generated a fierce debate about academic freedom on a campus long known as a haven for progressive ideologies and student activism.

“They apparently have no limits to what can be taught in the classroom,” Representative Steve Nass said of the university’s decision to allow Mr. Barrett to teach a class this fall titled “Islam: Religion and Culture.”

“Barrett has got to go,’’ Mr. Nass, a Whitewater Republican, said. “It is an embarrassment for the state of Wisconsin. It is an embarrassment for the university.”

The week of July 24, Mr. Nass, who is up for re-election this year, sent a resolution signed by 61 state legislators — all but one of them Republican — to Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat, and university officials condemning Mr. Barrett’s “academically dishonest views” and demanding that his one-semester contract to teach the class for a salary of $8,247 be terminated.

Mr. Barrett, a co-founder of a group called Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, argued that he had never presented his personal opinions in class and that he was free to offer those opinions on his own time outside the classroom.

“Why is liberal Wisconsin going bananas over an $8,000-a-year lecturer who’s not even teaching his own views in the course?” Mr. Barrett asked. “I go out of my way to bring in diverse interpretations for students to look at.”

The university’s chancellor, John D. Wiley, said that he was baffled by Mr. Barrett’s beliefs but that they were irrelevant in the classroom, where he must stick to a syllabus that has been approved by the department. That syllabus includes a week devoted to the war on terror.

A 10-day university review had determined that Mr. Barrett presented a variety of viewpoints and that he had not discussed his personal opinions in the classroom, Mr. Wiley said.

“I think it would be a serious mistake for legislators to try to get in and micromanage curriculum,” said Mr. Wiley, who added that university officials would keep an eye on Mr. Barrett by meeting with him throughout the semester. “We don’t go around and question all our instructors to find out what all their views are.”

At the University of Colorado, a committee voted in June to fire Ward L. Churchill, an ethnic studies professor who had compared some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to a Nazi official. Professor Churchill appealed this month to keep his job.

And early this year at Northwestern University, Arthur R. Butz, a tenured professor of engineering, drew strong criticism after saying he agreed with the belief of the president of Iran that the Holocaust was a myth.

Patrick V. Farrell, the provost of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said the university was not focusing on Mr. Barrett’s political views but on the teaching and learning experience in the classroom.

“I want to avoid as much as we can creating some kind of a political test for instructors or faculty, to say that only those whose thinking fits within some predetermined mold are well equipped to teach our students,” Mr. Farrell said. “I think that creates a dangerous precedent.”

Some Wisconsin students said they thought it was a crucial part of a college education to learn about a variety of theories, including radical ones, before forming opinions on a topic.

“It’s a student’s decision in a class whether they believe what a professor is saying,” said Jillian Alpire, 22, who graduated this year. “Just because he said his opinions on a radio station does not mean that’s what the course is going to be about.”

Ben Kopish, 20, a junior, said that such a controversial discourse should be welcomed at a public university that is known for fostering outspoken academic debate.

“If it doesn’t happen somewhere like the Madison campus,” Mr. Kopish said, “then I don’t know where else it would happen.”

But Katherine Brown, 20, who had finished a summer course on Islam, questioned the role of such a political discussion in a religion class.

“I just feel like it isn’t relevant because Islam is a religion,” said Ms. Brown, who added that she agreed with her own professor’s decision not to discuss the war on terror. “It’s not about what’s going on currently in politics so much.”

Mr. Barrett’s ideas place him squarely within a loose confederation of skeptics who think the American government had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks and whose theories are spread through the Internet and other means.

Mr. Barrett and Chancellor Wiley both said the controversy might actually be helping provide Mr. Barrett with a larger platform to voice his ideas. It has sparked curiosity in students like Ms. Brown, who said she was interested in finding out more about why Mr. Barrett believes what he does.

Although Ms. Brown said she did not believe that the government could have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, she added, “So many very important things that we know now were considered radical when they were first presented as ideas.”

[The Smoking Man]

They have a point.

If they had not drawn attention to this guy's ideas, would I be reading about them in China?

If they had left him alone, he would have slipped into anonymity.

[Polly]

Didn't Bush have this to say about Intelligent Design being taught in schools along with Evolution?

so people can understand what the debate is about.

Why not give other alternative theories the same treatment?

[Art]

Didn't Bush have this to say about Intelligent Design being taught in schools along with Evolution?

so people can understand what the debate is about.

Why not give other alternative theories the same treatment?

Good point Polly.

[The Statutory Ape]

There are plenty of professors out there that know their subjects well and teach them well yet also have some crackpot theories.  The majority of crackpots though are just that and it's very possible that his class may have little to no academic merit.

[The Smoking Man]

There are plenty of professors out there that know their subjects well and teach them well yet also have some crackpot theories.  The majority of crackpots though are just that and it's very possible that his class may have little to no academic merit.

Thing is ... He isn't teaching this.

He made some statements to this effect on a radio program and THIS is why he is being targetted.

In his class, he is sticking to a syllabus.

[The Statutory Ape]

There are plenty of professors out there that know their subjects well and teach them well yet also have some crackpot theories.  The majority of crackpots though are just that and it's very possible that his class may have little to no academic merit.

Thing is ... He isn't teaching this.

He made some statements to this effect on a radio program and THIS is why he is being targetted.

In his class, he is sticking to a syllabus.

I read up a bit more.  Apparently one week of his class will be devoted to 9/11, the war on terror, and current events.  That in and of itself, considering his theories and history, would probably make me wonder about his class on 'Islamic Religion and Culture' but the Provost has since gone over his teaching plan with him and decided that it was acceptable.  So I'd assume that it can't be that bad.

[The Smoking Man]

I dunno ... maybe he has a point:

Pentagon inaccuracies on 9/11 air defense probed

24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon said its inspector general is investigating whether officials provided "knowingly false" information to a special commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A secret inspector general's report in May 2005 concluded that Defense Department officials provided inaccurate information about the air defense response to the attacks, but did not say whether it was "knowingly false," said Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka.

The inspector general "will be issuing a report in the near future that will directly address the question of whether the testimony was knowingly false," he said.

Vanity Fair, meanwhile, published a detailed account of the air defense response drawn from audiotapes made in the northeastern command center of the North American Aerospace Defense Command as the attacks unfolded.

The tapes show that no command was given to shoot down United Flight 93 as implied by Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials, the magazine said.

The airliner crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before anyone in the military chain of command even knew it had been hijacked.

Cheney was not informed of the possibility that the United flight had been hijacked until 10:02 am, just one minute before it impacted the ground.

Among other inaccuracies, Major General Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott testified they began tracking United Flight 93 at 9:16 am, but the plane had not been hijacked at that point.

NORAD's northeastern headquarters was not notified of the hijacking for another 51 minutes, the Vanity Fair account said.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States uncovered the inaccuracies during the course of its investigation, and the Pentagon corrected the 2003 testimony in May 2004, Maka said.

The Washington Post reported that some staff and commission members concluded that the inaccuracies were a deliberate attempt to mislead the commission, and debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.

As a compromise, the commission asked the inspector generals of the Pentagon and the Transportation Department to perform an inquiry into whether the information was knowingly false.

A secret Defense Department inspector general's report in May 2005 concluded that the Defense Department "did not accurately report to the 9/11 Commission on the air defense response to the September 11, 2001 hijackings."

"The inaccuracies in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities and insufficient actions taken to ensure complete and accurate reporting of the events related to the 9/11 hijackings."

But it did not directly address the commission's question as to whether they were "knowingly false."