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Academic Freedom 101: Can Students Think for Themselves?
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Is a university professor’s job to make students regurgitate his own views? Or is it, rather, to call attention to the most noteworthy extant interpretations, and encourage students to use critical thinking to come to their own conclusions?
My academic training favored the latter approach, perhaps because I was fortunate enough not to study under any egotistical academic superstars. (My dissertation advisor, the late Harold Scheub, was only a semi-superstar in the somewhat marginal field of African Languages and Literature.)
But plenty of people, inside and especially outside the academy, are terrified of teachers who encourage students to think for themselves. My long-time 9/11 truth colleague Prof. Anthony Hall, who spent years being hounded by the ADL over an incriminating image that someone planted on his Facebook page, knows that better than anyone.
Tony recently posted on the “Free Speech Crisis at our Universities.”
Left-wing censors want students indoctrinated with the “Canadian residential school holocaust” narrative (among other holocaust narratives). They want to silence skeptics, and fire professors who “platform” them.
Right-wing censors want students indoctrinated with pro-Israel narratives. They want to fire administrators and professors who have encouraged the on-campus critical thinking that produced the current wave of anti-genocide protests. These Zionist-financed ConInc inquisitors are pushing today’s version of Hannity and O’Reilly’s 2006 crusade against the 9/11 truth movement in general, and its academic wing in particular.
Should professors profess only approved ideas, and force students to regurgitate them verbatim? That might be a good educational philosophy at Bill O’Reilly University. Below is the still-amusing transcript of Bill O’Reilly’s unbelievably smarmy, moronic, arrogant hectoring of two of my “Islam: Religion and Culture” students on October 11, 2006.
Bill O’Reilly Interviews “Madman” Kevin Barrett’s Students
Bill O’Reilly: Impact segment tonight: You may remember University of Wisconsin instructor Kevin Barrett saying that the USA attacked itself on 9/11 and that America is behind the terrorism in Iraq. That caused a great outcry, but Barrett hasn't pulled back a bit.
Kevin Barrett audio clip: It's happening, you know, largely through this false flag terrorism. It looks to me like, not only 9/11, but also Madrid, the Bali hotel bombing, and probably most of these so-called Zarqawi-style bombings in Iraq are all false flag operations being carried out by a special wing of probably U.S. or Western military intelligence.
Bill O’Reilly: Now this is just insane. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle said the university should fire Barrett, but of course it's not happening. University Provost Patrick Farrell has retained Barrett, but has warned him to stop seeking publicity. However, the story doesn't end there. Barrett is now requiring his students to buy his book, which compares President Bush to Adolf Hitler. Joining us now from Madison is Molly Sessler, a student in Barrett's “Islam: Religion and Cult