UW’s sponsorship of Mr. Barrett’s lecture ... lends his views instant credibility by being hosted by a top-flight research university. To be sure, UW in no way endorses Mr. Barrett’s views, but by facilitating the speech, the university did give tacit approval of his theories as a matter of serious academic debate.I don't quite understand this argument. If the subject can be covered in the course, why is it beyond the pale for a lecture? The argument may be that the problem comes when you reveal that you believe in something. But the students in his class know he believes the theory. So perhaps the important line is drawn when the teacher openly says what he believes. But take your example of a geography department hosting a lecture about how the earth is flat. That would, of course, make the geography department look ridiculous. But, in your argument, it would be fine for a geography teacher to take up the students' time with the theory that the earth is flat.
One is left to wonder what standards UW applies when determining which lecturers are to be allowed the use of taxpayer-funded facilities to voice their beliefs. Would the geography department allow a speaker to present his opinion that the world is flat? Would the history department sponsor a speech by someone that denies the Holocaust occurred?
Ultimately, it is UW’s duty — as an institution of higher learning funded in part by taxpayers — to promote scholarly research and vigorous academic debate. Mr. Barrett’s conspiracy theories thus far have failed to flirt with either principle.
If his conspiracy theories were published in an academic journal, instead of existing solely on a crudely constructed website, perhaps the lecture would be appropriate. Until then, UW should promote discussion rooted in scholarly analysis, not the grassy knoll.
October 2, 2006
"UW should promote discussion rooted in scholarly analysis, not the grassy knoll."
The Badger Herald -- one of the UW student newspapers -- reconsiders its position on Kevin Barrett (the part-time teacher here who believes that the government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks). Initially, the paper supported the UW's decision to allow him to teach here, based on his assurances that he would have open debate as he covered the 9/11 conspiracy theory in his introductory course on Islam. Although the editors still believe he won't use his course to indoctrinate students, they are "troubled" by a lecture he gave on campus this weekend, sponsored by the UW Folklore Department.
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Yeah, Ann, this sort of seems backards to me. If anything--and this is my quickie react, not something I pondered--it seems to me that it would make more sense to worry more in the classroom context and less in the lecture one.
Can't an argument be made that ("open-to-the-public, I assume) lectures are exactly the forum for airing controversial ideas? Getting those ideas and the people who support/advocate them right out there, open for all to see and evaluate? To me, the answer would be another lecture, of an opposing point of view.
Back in the day, for a number of years, my university sponsored a speakers forum which could get very controversial. (Perhaps it still does, for all I know). In fact, I rather think that was the point.
I remember the furor when William Shockley came to speak. He was a Nobel-prize winning physicist and the father of the transistor, but later became obsessed with eugenics and thus became known for his racial views. He was asked to speak at the university at around the height of the furor over his eugenics advocacy--but certainly not because the school approved, much less advocated his views.
The arguments against his appearance at lecture, as I recall, were similar to those in the article you reference here.
You know, I though Shockley's views were noxious before and after the lecture. But I have to say that the experience--the lecture itself, the protests leading up to it, the teach-ins/discussions in response, the fallout--was quite illuminating. And, to my way of thinking, part of the value that universities offer to the community.
In short, and simplistically put, it was a rather marvelous example of how the "the answer to offensive speech is MORE speech." It depends on how the larger university community responds, what it DOES (and I don't mean shut down the noxious speech).
Now I will say that I consider a general and public lecture or forum a substantially different context than an ongoing class. But I won't go into that.
The Badger Herald is waking up to the notion that UW’s sponsorship of Mr. Barrett’s lectures suggest its content had been vetted by UW Madison and then approved for an Intro to Islam course.
This tacit approval is increasingly being seen as an embarrassment, no doubt. The students make a poorly-argued stab at rejecting the lecture but not the topic. Or something; it's hard to tell. More importantly, they are discomfited, and find their school at risk of becoming a joke.
The wound to UWM is now an ulcer.
UWM is UW-Milwaukee.
It's too bad there aren't any students of Barrett's here -- no one here really knows the complete content of the class. The Provost's office is apparently satisfied that the content is appropriate.
I agree with iam -- the presentation as part of the Folklore Department's forum is tailor-made for the UW-Madison. To use that to argue against a person teaching a class is distinctly odd.
Ann,
I'm not reading the editorial in the same way you are, so I don't see the issue you do. The Badger Herald acknowledges that it supported the Administration's decision to allow Barrett to teach the Intro to Islam course. The editorial questions whether it was a good idea to allow his lecture AND, to my reading, tacitly questions whether it was a good idea to allow him to teach. You read the editorial as continuing to endorse Barrett's teaching while questioning the wisdom of sponsoring his lecture. Since all of the editorial's points against sponsoring the lecture apply equally well to Barrett's to teaching, I think my reading makes more sense. Indeed, if the editorial had explicitly withdrawn the Badger Herald's endorsement of the decision to allow Barrett to teach, I think your question about the validity of the editorial's argument would go away.
Of course, the editorial was ambiguous on this point. That may be because there are good reasons for refusing to withdraw Barrett's teaching position that do not apply to refusing to sponsor his lecture. However, it seems to be the lecture caused the light to go on in the minds of the editorial writers. If they had it to do over again, I doubt they'd endorse Barrett's being allowed to teach. It seems the change in position is not brought about by any differences between sponsoring lectures and teaching positions. The change comes from learning and from seeing the world from a more realistic perspective. Overall, that's a good thing.
Would the history department sponsor a speech by someone that denies the Holocaust occurred?
This will happen, in the US, within 10 years.
I suppose this is a trivial point, but I think it's sad that the newspaper derides the professor for having a "crudely constructed website". Having a facility with HTML doesn't mean you ideas are right, and I think it shows something about the casualness with which people reason today that they bothered to include that line.
I see their larger point, that an academic journal actually does provide some respectibility for an idea, in that it shows that others think it worthy of spreading, while a website just shows that you think it worthy of spreading. But the fact remains that good layout does not imply truth, and bad layout does not imply falsehood.
Being a strong supporter of the President, I think the real problem isn't a lone professor speaking nonsense. The real problem is the number of people who seem so cut off from reality that they believe MIHOP.
IMHO, TW Andrews has it exactly right. The oft-quoted Moynihan observation is again relevant here: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
The quandary is that Barrett and other conspiracy theorists, through myopia, narrowness of mind, bias owing to preconception, or (they might argue) special and uncorrupted insight, insist they are the only ones properly addressing those facts.
So, the issue is -- where do you draw the line? Do you effectively censor the involuntarily or willfully clueless for their own good or ours, or do you let them say their piece, confident that -- in the long run -- the truth will out, and it is our attempt to edit or direct the debate that is the more damaging?
The obvious solution to taxpayers' rights not to have to support pseudoscience and fake history is to get rid of the public university. What is it that UW at Madison does that can't be done by a private university like the University of Chicago?
The editors of The Badger Herald have come face-to-face with the real world. The public platform UW-Madison provided to Kevin Barrett to teach his conspiracy theories isn't solely a free speech issue. It's also a slippery slope that has resulted in public ridicule of the university. I think that's what this editorial finds objectionable.
As an aside, does Barrett have any credible claim to expertise in Folklore? If not, why is he giving a sponsored lecture?
His dissertation was on Moroccan legend, so folklore is more his area of expertise than modern Islam. What doesn't make sense (our snarkiness aside) is what the academic study of folklore has to do with 9/11 "truth."
Reading that editorial, my first reaction was that the editors could stand some editing themselves. What a poorly written mess, offering a string of cliches banging into each other, and the whole thing compounded by repeated invocations of the taxpayers as a kind of off-stage Greek chorus just itching to break into the drama.
The editors seem to think that silly and foolish talk should not be dignified as a university sponsored lecture. However common sensical that notion may seem, the problem is that it's a bit late in the day for standards of that sort: universities today are the natural home for all manner of silly and foolish talk, particularly on those frequent occasions when the inhabitants of the fever-swamp are engaged primarily in talking to each other. A quick scan of the symposia sponsored by the MLA is enough to prove the point.
The only significance of Barrett -- a remarkably tiresome nut even by the admittedly demanding standards of nuttiness prevalent in academia -- is that he calls attention, in a public way, to the university as the natural home of such antics. That makes university administrators anxious, and academic boosters squirm. It should. And it provides politicians with an easy target that they can rail against, without ever having to do anything useful to improve matters.
The editorial ends, as it begins, mired in cliche: "If his conspiracy theories were published in an academic journal, instead of existing solely on a crudely constructed website, perhaps the lecture would be appropriate." The editors are evidently casting around in desperation for anything to provide content to their preferred standard -- the duty of "an institution of higher learning funded in part by taxpayers [is] to promote scholarly research and vigorous academic debates." If it's silly and foolish nonsense that the editors want to target, however, they are on the wrong track in suggesting that publication in an "academic journal" serves the purpose of distinguishing the serious from the idiotic. While the MLA can always be counted on to mistake the one for the other, it is hardly alone. Almost any academic journal of sociology can provide hours of unintended humor on a rainy day, for example.
Perhaps it is symptomatic of the real problem that, in seeking to protect UW's brand from being diluted by insultingly dumb lectures being given with its sponsorship, the editors never take their own subject seriously. They evidently think the university should sponsor only serious efforts to get at the truth, through close and careful observations of the world around us, made without a determination to force those observations to fit or support some preconceived agenda. To separate efforts of that sort from Barrett-like exercises in the opposite requires judgment and discernment. Who will provide it? If you're looking to university administrators, get ready to be disappointed -- their highest objective is the avoidance of controversy, thus their devotion to political correctness come what may.
The university is usually portrayed by its supporters as a community of serious scholars engaged in pursuing and transmitting knowledge and a shared cultural heritage. It would be nice if that community took its own standards seriously. A convenient place to start would be by getting rid of the fraudsters and jargon-meisters in their midst. As members, albeit junior ones, the editors would have done better to trust in their own ability to bring judgment and discernment to bear, rather than seeking to dodge the issue by invoking "academic journals" as the touchstone here.
Will the Department of Animal Husbandry allow a speaker the opinion that Barrett is a turd..... and that he is flat?
Daryl Herbert
I would suggest that it be broken into three categories:
1) Research
2) Classroom teaching
3) Everything else
The problem is with both #1 and #2, but I think #3 should allow both Barrett and Shockley.
#2 should depend on context: Barrett's theory should be fine for folklore, but not for history, geography, or civil engineering (unless it was used as a case study on how the discipline can be misused).
The problem in #2 is that esp. in state supported institutions like this, the taxpayers are a bigger (IMHO) stakeholder than the profs are - after all, they are the ones footing part of the bill. And the other big stakeholders are the students, who may be harmed by totally misleading information.
Free Speech has a place here, but unfettered Free Speech by the faculty, regardless of relevance and context, in a classroom setting, puts one stakeholder, the employees, above the others, who pay for it.
I find a big difference between an Ann Althouse playing devil's advocate on one side or another in her Con Law classes, and someone teaching fiction as fact.
And if Barrett wants to publish his theories, then fine. I would back that up in many cases. My problem with him is his use of the classroom.
Indeed, one of the positive experiences of law school was finding that some of the profs who had pushed everyone's buttons on the left (like questioning Roe v. Wade) turned out to be quite liberal in their publications. They had been able to keep their own biases out of the classroom, and put them into their legal research. Note though that legal research seemingly has more room for politics than do many other disciplines because to some extent, law review articles seem to be a vehicle for activism.
Um, that would be the "top-flight research university's" Folklore Department, yes? Hmmmm. Wonder if we'll see the Vatican host a symposium on rewriting Genesis based on Darwin's theories in the near future.
Actually, Chomsky is quite knowledgeable about both politics and history
Pity he never let any of that knowledge make it into his books, articles, or speeches.
But then again, had he done that he wouldn't have been able to get rich telling gullible left-wingers what they want to hear. So maybe he really IS as smart as people say he is. :)
and, to top it off, he was a math major undergrad, before turning to linguistics.
I'm sure that bit of information has some fascinating relevance that you will eventually get around to discussing with us. But in any case, math and generative grammar have a lot in common, so it is hardly surprising that Chomsky has degrees in both math and linguistics.
As long as the University makes clear that Barrett's talk is presented under the auspices of the Folklore Department, what is there to complain about? Barrett's theories can take their rightful place alongside the Yeti, the Tooth Fairy, and the Great Pumpkin. Free Speech combines with Truth in Packaging, and everybody goes home satisfied.
But if a prof had racist views, berating students in the classroom in a racist manner would be totally out of bounds.
Berating students in the classroom should be totally out of bounds regardless of the professor's views and motivations. It is unprofessional and interferes with the professor's ability to teach.
"Actually, Chomsky is quite knowledgeable about both politics and history"
Buck
"Pity he never let any of that knowledge make it into his books, articles, or speeches."
Revenant
Good one Revenant, although Chomsky should get some credit for his voiceover work for Beavis (or was it the other one?)
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