AP story:
Harvard dean defends Khatami invitation
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government defended the decision to invite former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to speak on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Do we listen to those that we disagree with, and vigorously challenge them, or do we close our ears completely?" Dean David Ellwood said in an interview published Thursday in The Boston Globe.
This is an excellent example of what passes for rational thought in the academy.
What Dean Ellwood says, in effect, is this: We should listen to an armed thug who is preparing to attack us because if we listen we might learn something. Right! What we'll "learn" is that the armed thug really isn't preparing to attack us -- just before he does that very thing.
It should come as no surprise to academicians of Ellwood's ilk (which seems to be most of them) that non-academicians take them for deluded fools, dupes, and Leftists who prefer despotism to freedom. For that is what they are.
