Saturday, November 11, 2006
Now Kevin Barrett thinks the CIA is behind the insurregency
Wisconsin's wacko guy Kevin Barrett now says, "Your tax dollars are paying for the killing of American soldiers in Iraq. The CIA is paying for resistance in Iraq."
So closed Kevin Barrett's fourth and final lecture on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, delivered as part of his course on Islam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anticipation of this part of the course, and Thursday's class in particular, had been building for months.
Barrett has been at the center of a national controversy that also focused on tax dollars - specifically, whether they should be used to teach material considered outrageous, manipulative and inaccurate.
Gov. Jim Doyle and state legislators called for Barrett to be fired last summer for arguing that the Sept. 11 attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government. University administrators defended Barrett's right to the classroom in the name of academic freedom. But they threatened him with dismissal if he did not keep his enthusiasm for his views in check in the classroom and did not stop seeking publicity outside the classroom.
The part-time teacher vowed to teach the official version of the attacks alongside the Sept. 11 theory to which he subscribes. He said he would neither tell his students what his view was nor penalize them for not buying the theory. And he emphasized that 9-11 was just a small part of the course that he didn't get to until a period late in the semester.
That period was last week and this week.
Andrea Bromley, a sophomore, came away saying Barrett had failed to be impartial.
"It's become much more opinionated now that we're doing 9-11," Bromley said, referring to the tone and progress of the course. "He's trying to explain both views, but he's biased. I don't feel like he's presented enough info on the other side."
In other words, Barrett hates America. It is amazing that the UW Board of Regents allowed this kind of insanity being taught in classrooms at the state's most prestiguous university. I'm glad this insanity hasn't made its way up to UW-Green Bay.
Labels: UW System
