AZIZ POONAWALLA ON THE BARRETT AFFAIR:

This is an affront to me on multiple levels of identity – as a muslim, sure, but also as a proud Badger alumni . . . My beef isn’t with Barrett’s comments – hey, free speech, whatever – but rather that they reveal a mentality that is very dangerous for a professor teaching introductory Islam. Barrett has a clear agenda and is going to use his class as a vehicle for it. Rather than be taught about the great history of jihad, the critically differing interpretations of it between (as an example) the Umaiyyads and the Fatimids, the students will be taught a bland version of the concept that ultimately takes away the power of jihad as a principle of Islam.

This is my beef with progressivism in general – it seeks to neutralize the power of faith and the vibrancy and potency of its ideas. Islam is not easy. It isn’t meant to be distilled into coffee-cup aphorisms or worn on the sleeve. It’s not a pet cause to be trotted out in service of political posturing. It means something, it has a real depth and a real heft, but people like Barrett (and bin Laden) cannot allow that wondrous complexity to distract their audience from their own petty agendas.

Perhaps the University of Wisconsin should hire Aziz. It would have to be an improvement!

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up!

So is the Carnival of Liberty, and the Carnival of Homeschooling. And there’s now a Carnival of Children’s Literature. Lots more carnivals at BlogCarnival.com.

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY: “Is There a Correlation Between Scholarly Productivity, Scholarly Influence and Teaching Effectiveness in American Law Schools?”

ALPHECCA’S WEEKLY ROUNDUP of media gun coverage is up.

And I notice that Michigan has adopted progressive views on self-defense: “People in Michigan now will be allowed to use deadly force — with no duty to retreat — if they reasonably think they face imminent death, great bodily harm or sexual assault. The law also protects people from civil lawsuits if they have used force in self-defense.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON ACADEMIC BLOGGING from me and from some other academic bloggers, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I’m sorry to see some people say that their Deans don’t appreciate blogging — my Dean has been very encouraging, and in fact says that he thinks it counts as scholarship, which surely makes me — on a word-count basis, at least — one of the most productive scholars around. . . .

MARC COOPER looks at Democrats and Israel. And Paul Caron looks at tax policy in the next Clinton administration.

UPDATE: Plus, Kos vs. the Clintons. I know who I’d bet on. Blogometer has more hot Kos-on-Clinton action.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, Republicans are in trouble over stem cells.

MORE: Bill Bradley has further thoughts on Democrats and Israel.

JASON LEOPOLD: Forgotten, but not gone, apparently. More here.

THIS IS INTERESTING: “Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both ‘substantial’ and ‘surprising’ in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.”

Apparently, trust in “persistent press reports” isn’t what it used to be.

AN ARMED CITIZEN STOPS A KNIFE RAMPAGE — but in the news coverage, the gun disappears.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Barone’s latest on immigration, a new edition of his The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again. He makes a case for fairly open immigration, but with strong pressure toward assimilation, as in previous waves of migration. The question is whether that combination is possible. Excerpt:

The main threats to assimilation come not from the immigratns themselves, but from American elites who flinch at the mention of Americanization and who find European-style multiculturalism more appealing. There are educational elites, who support so-called bilingual education — which in practice is often neither bilingual nor education — in which children are taught in bad Spanish and kept from mastering the English language, the first rung on the ladder of upward mobility. There are the political elites, who persist in requiring foreign language ballots even though immigrants who wish to become citizens are required to show that they have learned English. There are the governmental elites, who allow Wahhabi imams to serve as prison chaplains and preachers of terrorism to teach in Middle Eastern studies programs. There are the academic elites, who pride themeslves on admitting as a studet at Yale a spokesman for the murderous Taliban regime. There are the highly educated moral-relativist elites, who regard our civilization as a virus, and hostile immigrants and multiculturalism as the cure. But America has better traditions and a history of proven merit in assimilating immigrants.

I think the immigration debate will heat up again in the fall, and I hope that this book sparks some discussion.

UPDATE: In a related item, Cathy Seipp has thoughts on the media, immigration, and Islam.

AN ARMY OF DAVIDS APPROACH to intelligence analysis:

The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos. Snow said the administration had “known of these plans for some time.”

I think we’ll see more of this kind of thing.

SOME ADVICE ON DEALING WITH political disagreements on vacation from the Insta-Wife, inspired by some horror stories we heard on our trip.

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS ON ALTERNATIVE FUELS: A podcast at Popular Mechanics. Plus, a postmortem on an exploding laptop!

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY OPPONENT HANK JOHNSON is guest-blogging at Winds of Change. “My opponent’s record speaks for itself.”

BLOOMBERG CHARGED WITH GUN CRIME:

A Georgia gun dealer that Mayor Bloomberg sued as part of his effort to get firearms off the city’s streets hit the mayor with a lawsuit of his own yesterday, saying Mr. Bloomberg slandered his business and broke federal law.

Adventure Outdoors Inc., which is being represented by a former Republican congressman of Georgia, Bob Barr, filed a $400 million lawsuit in Superior Court of Cobb County.

The business was one of 15 so-called rogue dealers in five states that Mr. Bloomberg sued two months ago after an undercover sting operation. The 13-page complaint filed yesterday said that Mr. Bloomberg and several others in his administration smeared the dealer’s reputation and that its undercover investigators lied on federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco forms.

Observers say the legal action could be the first in a string of lawsuits against the city in connection with the mayor’s lawsuit.

I’m sure the Cobb County jury will be appropriately sympathetic to Mayor Bloomberg’s civic-minded goals. And hey, if he loses he can just pay ’em off with the money from his own lawsuit against tobacco wholesalers. Even better, lawyers are getting a cut of all this action!

THINGS I DIDN’T BLOG ABOUT ON VACATION:^*

(1. The Glenn Greenwald sock-puppet kerfuffle. Short summary here, oodles more at Ace, and Dan Riehl. Best take on the whole phenomenon — and at an appropriate level of seriousness — here. Sock-puppetry is, I think, a venial sin. But a revealing one. And it makes me wonder if I was unfair to Greenwald’s readers when I complained about the lame emails I get whenever he publishes my address. Maybe those emails are all really from Greenwald. . . .

(2 The “180s.” I agree with Hugh Hewitt that Bush ought to reach out to war supporters who now disdain him. (Perhaps he should let them talk to Tom Ricks.) But I think that a lot of the flipflopping is from people who feel that they have to attack Bush and the war now in order to protect their standing in the journalistic or foreign-policy establishments, so I don’t know how well it will work.

(3 Wisconsin and 9/11 denialist Kevin Barrett. What should Wisconsin do? They’ve got two problems here. No, make that three.

Problem one is that they hired a looney as an adjunct. That’s not shocking — adjunct positions pay badly and are often hard to fill. (At my law school we spend a lot more time than most places evaluating and screening adjuncts; I’ve often wondered if this extra effort was worth it, but must now conclude that it probably is.)

Problem two is that they’ve converted this into a question of academic freedom, when it’s not. At least, an adjunct who promised to teach white supremacy, or Christian supremacy, in a course on Islam would be very unlikely to retain his position. Wisconsin may claim otherwise, but I don’t believe them, and I doubt many others do. (Here’s an example of why).

Problem three is that the Wisconsin administration has responded in a very tin-eared fashion and made the problem much bigger than it has to be.

To address these, they could fire Barrett, but I think that’s a mistake and wouldn’t get to the root of the problem. They need to look at the process for hiring adjuncts, and to protect students in Barrett’s case they should assign the guy a supervisor or member of the department to co-teach the course for quality control. For justice, it should be the department head or committee chair who hired him, they should be present for every class, and it should be an addition to their regular course load. . . .

More importantly, they need to realize that people pay good money to send students to Wisconsin because it’s “branded” as a place that provides quality education from quality professors. When you respond to criticism by basically disclaiming any responsibility for what’s taught in classrooms, you also destroy the brand. Why send students to Wisconsin if that’s the case? Where’s the quality control? What does it mean to be an elite institution if you let any bozo teach whatever he/she wants in any course?

Without some reason to think that Wisconsin is better than other schools why go there?

I hope that administrators at universities around the country are paying close attention. I doubt it, though.

* With the exception of a link or two, in some cases.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse responds to my Wisconsin observations.

RICH KARLGAARD thinks I’m right about Chris Anderson’s long tail theory.

POWER LINE REMINDS US that it’s still blog sweeps month.

THERE’S AN “OLBERSPHERE?” Good lord, why?

UPDATE: Heh.

ED MORRISSEY is porkblogging at Heritage, with a post on Duke Cunningham and secret earmarks.

THE ERRORS OF ARLEN SPECTER, and the silence of the informed.

IN THE MAIL: Seth Godin’s new book, Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. Looks pretty interesting. Godin writes: “I’ve been betting on the intelligence of my readers for almost a decade, and that bet keeps paying off.”

IS THE I.R.S. GETTING BETTER? Helen had some sort of issue with her self-employment tax, wrote them a letter, and they very quickly (within a few weeks) fixed it and sent a refund check. She’s had a couple of experiences like that lately; are they getting better?

“I HAVE A CUNNING PLAN:” Bush Sends Kerry to Resolve Israel-Hezbollah War.

TOM MAGUIRE defends Erwin Chemerinsky, and offers a criticism.