UW Instructor Defends Plan to Teach 9/11 Conspiracy Theory in Class
Kevin Barrett
Mon 07/03/2006 - "Why would our government do this? To trigger a War that will not end in our lifetime." Says Kevin Barrett, a lecturer for UW-Madison who will teach a course on Islam this Fall.
Barrett is the founder of a group called the Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance for 9/11 truth, that has about 1,000 members worldwide. He says after three years of studying the evidence, he came to the conclusion 9/11 did not happen the way the government says it did. He believes the Bush Administration planned and exucuted the attacks on the World Trade Center.
''The physics of those collapses clearly could not have resulted from plane crashes and jet fuel fires with office materials.'' Barrett says jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, and says recent tests on melted steel from the building prove his theory that it was wired to collapse, by the Government.
Barrett says the Bush Administration is fooling the American public with the Adolf Hitler 'Big Lie Technique'... ''Tell them a little lie and they'll wonder about it - weapons of mass destruction in iraq was a relatively little lie - and people are getting called on it.'' Barrett says. ''Tell em a big lie like 9/11 and they have a huge resistance to questioning it.''
Barrett quotes from Hitler's book ''Mein Kampf'' in which he writes ''In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility becasue the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily. It would never come into their heads to fabricate collosal untruths and they would not believe that others would have the impotence to distort the truth so infamously.''
That theory is now part of the curriculum for an Introduction to Islam class Barrett will teach this Fall at the UW. He says 14 of the 16 weeks will have nothing to do with politics, but in the remaing two weeks, he will cover what he calls the ''so-called war on terror''.
''And I will present different interpretations of the war on terror, In I think a pretty detached way and encourage students to debate those interpretations and to support whichever one they personally find most persuasive and let them make up their own minds.'' Barrett says.
Governor Jim Doyle questioned whether someone with 'this total irrational idea'' should be teaching students at UW, and Rep. Steve Nass called for Barrett to be fired, but Barrett says his students don't have to agree with his theory about 9/11.
''Of course not!'' Barrett says, ''I certainly wouldn't expect them to... At least not all of them. On the other hand I would expect some of them would once they look at the evidence because the evidence is overwhelming.''
Barrett said he is not surprised, or concerned about the UW's request to discuss the curriculum of his class.
''These people (his critics) are welcome to their opinions, but we have a tradition of academic freedom here in Wisconsin of sifting fearlessly in pursuit of truth becasue our motto has it- The truth will set you free. '' Barrett says.
Barrett says a meeting with Provost Patrick Farrell and two others from the UW went well. He says the University officials said they were not interested in his opinions outside of the classroom, just what he planned to teach in it. Farrell will release the UW's decision about the class in about a week.
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