For more on the issues David raises in his post, see the cover story of the Nov. 10 Chronicle of Higher Education. A link for non-subscribers is available on ACTA’s homepage.
Here is a snippet regarding the Barrett business:
Deciding what belongs in the classroom and what doesn’t, Mr. Bowen [of the AAUP] argues, is not as easy as Ms. Neal [of ACTA] believes. “Anne has never taught a class, and she doesn’t know the dynamics,” he says. For example, the council has criticized the AAUP this year for failing to come down hard on professors in Wisconsin and New Hampshire who have endorsed September 11 conspiracy theories in the classroom.
But Mr. Bowen says sometimes such a discussion is relevant. “What if you’re teaching a psychology course? I think you could make the case that conspiracy theories are an interesting aspect of mass psychology. Thus far the evidence for these theories is lacking, but does that make discussion of that out of bounds? I don’t think so.”
And there is more.