Ann Althouse of the University of Wisconsin law school reports that UW has hired a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to teach introductory-level “Islam: Religion and Culture” this fall.

Kevin Barrett is active in the 9/11 conspiracy movement, co-founding a major conspiracy website, Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth (more on this below) and writing for Milwaukee Indymedia.

What’s astounding is that he plans to introduce the “conspiracy” into a survey course. According to Wisconsin talk radio host Jessica McBride, the syllabus shows that one of the five required books in the course will be “9/11 & American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out”. Conveniently coauthored by Barrett, is described this way at Amazon:

… While the question of of the Bush administration’s and Us military and intelligence leaders’ possible complicity in 9/11- and the moral implications of facing that possibility-is at the forefront of the book’s agenda, it also addresses the way 9/11 has been used to expand the US empire’s “global domination project”-raising profound moral questions that confront all of us, whatever our views on 9/11 complicity and whatever our faith, worldview, or national/ethnic identification.

At the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth site, Barrett wrote

Either we discuss the compelling evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, or there is precious little to talk about …

… (9/11) was just a minor special effects extravaganza, put together by Hollywood specialists to manipulate audience emotion and pave the way for war—a slightly more realistic version of Wag the Dog. For them, the deaths of a few thousand people mean very little—after all, these top Pentagon strategists spend their lives contemplating nuclear exchanges in which losses of 20 or 30 million people would be “acceptable.”

… Did the architects of 9/11 really think they could tell the whole world what they were going to do—in Brezhinsky’s The Grand Chessboard and PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses—pretend to train the “hijackers” at phony CIA-drug-mob “flight schools,” set off explosions in the WTC right in front of dozens of witnesses who would survive to tell the tale, confess on national television to demolishing WTC-7, have the Secret Service leave Bush dallying in a known location for an hour during an alleged surprise attack, prevent the Air Force from intercepting the attack planes, and then give three equally absurd, utterly contradictory stories explaining that “failure”?

Then shall we say, offer a preposterous story of an alleged jetliner attack on the Pentagon, while confiscating and concealing videotaped evidence—then only to prevent any investigation for two years after the event, belatedly offering an insider-dominated “commission” with a budget adequate for probing malfeasance at the local dog pound. And finally, present a grotesque tissue of obvious lies and omissions, completely lacking in documentation and written in B-grade thriller style…and expect anybody with a three-digit IQ to buy it?

Inside Higher Ed reports that “Barrett, a temporary instructor, received his Ph.D. from Madison in 2004 in African languages, literature and folklore. He has taught one other course at Madison, but it was not about Islam.”

If this guy wants to write books about his bizarre conspiracy theory, fine. People will pay for them, or they won’t. But what’s he doing bringing this nuttiness to a large intro-level class at a major state university?

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H/t: Instapundit

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 12:39 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.