HE WOULD NOT BE WORTHY OF RICHARD T. ELY. Milwaukee's radio webloggers will not let go of the error in judgement the University of Wisconsin committed in hiring Kevin Barrett to cover a Middle Eastern Studies course. Jeff Wagner has a jaw-dropping exchange between a reader and Regent Jeffrey B. Bartell, who defends the hiring, kookiness notwithstanding, in this way.

I regard the 9-11 conspiracy theory of Mr. Barrett to be absolutely preposterous. Maybe that's partly because I received an excellent education at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. But I don't believe that an otherwise qualified teacher (he has received very good student evaluations) should be banned from the classroom on the basis of his controversial, even bizarre, views. What are "falsehoods" to you may be credible truth to someone else. And I don't want to rely on "Popular Mechanics" as the ultimate arbiter. U.W. students have the intelligence and analytical powers to sort out fact from fiction and paranoia -- the University's cherished "sifting and winnowing". We should allow them that same learning experience you and I had.

Once upon a time, that learning experience included professors active in research taking the time to read the bluebooks, and they may have marked down for grammatical errors ... not some guy off the street who cannot distinguish serious research from speculation. Apparently at least one Regent has the same problem. (And if you don't want to regard Popular Mechanics as definitive, read Henry Petroski. Same conclusion, with peer review.)

Jeff Wagner also has this gem.

Barrett is so far out there that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel cartoonist Stuart Carlson, himself no stranger to Bush Derangement Syndrome, has taken to mocking Barrett. Having it suggested that you are a "tin foil hat wearing nut case" by Stuart Carlson is like being called untalented by Paris Hilton. It's got to hurt.

[Superintendent's note to the webmaster at the Journal-Sentinel. Fix. The. Link.] More substantively, Mr Wagner observes,

In the first public comment on the matter by the Board of Regents, Board President David Walsh defended Barrett arguing that Barrett should be able to share his views in the classroom. I guess Walsh would also have no problem with a Holocaust disbeliever teaching a survey course in World War II or a supporter of slavery teaching a Civil War class? Yeah, right.

The point is that teaching that "2 + 2 = 6" or that "the world is flat" isn't about academic freedom at all. Instead it's about academic ignorance. Teaching that 9/11 was an "inside job" falls into the same category.

True, up to a point. There ought to be room in the academy for a Civil War class to make sense of the evidence from Time on the Cross that slaves were fed more nutritious diets than free men ate.

Evening hostess Jessica McBride posts an electronic interview with Mr Barrett in which he lays out a potentially coherent course outline.

One such debate is occurring in the academic community, both here and abroad, and there are several defensible positions, including:
* extremist attack by a very dangerous foe--this means war
* extremist attack by a wildly over-rated foe that got incredibly lucky--the 9/11 death toll was the equivalent of a month or two's traffic fatalities, and you're more likely to get hit by lightning than get killed by these terrorists
* "blowback" hypothesis -- this is the natural result of American imperialism
* "inside job" or "complicity" hypothesis

Mr Barrett has weakened his case, however, by so publicly and incoherently pushing the inside job hypothesis. His obligation as professor or designated replacement is to present such material in such a way that the student cannot tell whether he is sympathetic with the neoconservative position or with the Arab street.