“Academic Freedom” AKA As The We Can’t Fire Those Left-Wing Kooks Policy

“Academic Freedom” at universities is just supposed to mean that professors are allowed to research and express controversial ideas without being fired. In theory, that’s a good idea. However, because it has been taken to such an extreme in academia, in practice, what it means is that Communists, conspiracy theorists, and left-wing wackos are allowed to indoctrinate college students with their bizarre ideas without getting fired.

Just look at what’s going on at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

“A University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor who has come under scrutiny for saying that the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks compares President Bush to Adolf Hitler in an essay that his students are being required to buy.

The essay, “Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11,” is part of a $20 book of essays from 15 authors called “9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out,” according to an unedited copy first obtained by WKOW-TV in Madison and later by the Associated Press.

The book is on the syllabus for the twice-a-week course, “Islam: Religion and Culture,” being taught by part-time instructor Kevin Barrett, but only three of the essays are required reading, not including Barrett’s essay.

Barrett is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, whose members say U.S. officials, not al-Qaida terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies,” he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

“That’s not comparing them as people, that’s comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that’s an accurate comparison that I would stand by,” he said.

But he did say in an interview: “Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler.”

You can be sure that the University of Wisconsin-Madison wouldn’t allow someone who claimed the Holocaust didn’t exist to teach kids. You can be sure that they wouldn’t allow a KKK member who believed minorities were inferior to whites to teach kids. They wouldn’t let one of Fred Phelps’ God Hates F*gs lunatics teach a class. So, why should they give a pass to a left-wing kook who thinks Bush is Hitler and the WTC was knocked down by our own government?

The last place any of the twisted nutjobs with these sorts of views should be is in a university teaching students and if the University of Wisconsin-Madison doesn’t understand that, then the taxpayers in Wisconsin should insist that their funding be cut until they start to get the picture.

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