Following Protocols

There's controversy brewing at the Volokh Conspiracy, where Eugene Volokh and David Bernstein have been investigating an alleged case of professorial anti-Semitism at Berkeley. (A prof apparently opined to a class that the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion were authentic.) Commentators on a variety of other blogs have been ripping on the Conspirators for being insufficiently hard on the prof in question. We report, you decide: Start here and scroll down.

Comments

[Apu Upa]

So what? Why is debating that Protocols might not be a fake and actually were written by the Jews be controversial? This seems like a legitamate topic for Higher Education.

[Julian Sanchez]

Because there is no real debate. It's the equivalent of a professor claiming that the Holocaust was a fraud. Granted, at a public university, I don't think he should be disciplined for having that view. But there's no real question here.

[Anonymous]

Julian,

Sounds like all of this could be just a misunderstanding.

[Anonymous]

"Granted, at a public university, I don't think he should be disciplined for having that view."

I dont know. Would Berkeley allow a Professor to get away with teaching creationism or the flat-earth theory ? Doesn't this at least qualify as incompetence ?

[Julian Sanchez]

Well, it was a language class, not a history one, if I'm recalling correctly, so probably not.

[Plutarck]

Could it just have been a silly little mistake? You know, people do learn typically through the realization that something they think or say is not correct, often by it being pointed out to them (all too often in less than kind and understanding ways); kind of hard to speak or think without being wrong mighty often.

[SM]

The good Professor is being awfully slippery in his response, if one is to by the material on Volokh's site. If its a "silly little mistake" then he can eaily clear it up by saying that he knows the Protocol to be a hoax instead of decontructing the narrative context of the classroom.

[Anonymous]

if one is to judge by the material on Volokh's site.
Sheesh.

[Plutarck]

Well yes, now from having done all the requisite reading, I take to wondering whether or not the Professor thinks them authentic or not. I am vehemently against assuming something based upon a failure to condemn, or even the principle of "to fail to condemn is to support" or anything like that; rather than rely on a technical or complicated argument, one need only simply consider that we can actually determine things positively without needing assume anything or take anything as implicit.

Investigation, good; assuming an acuser correct and judging someone evil, or otherwise guilty, because he didn't much answer one of the more pressing questions or failed to clarify or condemn something he otherwise should have, bad.

It will be an interesting spectacle, for all sorts of reasons.

[Jean Bart]

SM,

His answer was an adequate response to the accusation. This is a clear example of PCism run amok. Kind of fun when PCism bites the right in the arse.

[Total Information]

As Prof. Henry Makow said:
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Whether this document is a fraud, whether Jews, Jesuits or Illuminati are behind it, a plan for world tyranny is taking effect and it bears an eerie similarity to this one.

A network of British aristocratic families, Rothschild and Rockefeller oil and finance, and satanic secret societies organized in "think tanks," foundations and intelligence agencies is behind it. They have been creating havoc for a long time and using mind control and the mass media to keep us in the dark.

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This is all that is important.

[Mr. Paleo]

Of course this is a smear campaign against the Professor by the far-right zionazis. Everyone knows that the Protocals have a hint of truth.