Sunday, March 6, 2011

Open Letter to the Chancellor

Note: The Richard Gage/AE911truth event referenced in this letter has been moved to Room 1310, Sterling Hall, 475 N. Charter St., just south-east of the intersection of Linden and Charter. (Time: 7 pm Thursday, April 7th). The reason for the move is that the previously-assigned room actually holds fewer than 150 people -- not 200 as the organizers were told, much less the 500 capacity originally requested. 1310 Sterling has a capacity of 262.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Dear Chancellor Martin, and All Faculty of the University of Wisconsin:

The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 were used as an excuse to increase U.S. aggression abroad and erode our civil liberties and Constitutional rights at home. Every day the "war on terror" is used to justify continued assaults on the U.S. Constitution and foreign wars which have caused the deaths of countless innocent people. This perpetual "war on terror" has enabled blatant abuses of power at the highest levels of government, yet few people question the validity of the purported threats to our security.

After nearly a decade of reviewing all publicly available forensic evidence, 1450 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth are formally questioning the government's official story about what destroyed the three high rises at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and calling for a new, independent investigation. Their concerns, echoed by hundreds of scientists, professors, senior government officials, aviation professionals and others, are based on strong evidence for explosive controlled demolition of the buildings. (See www.PatriotsQuestion911.com.) These brave people, whose love of country is greater than their fear of ridicule, risk their reputations, their jobs, and their livelihoods in attempting to bring this evidence to light.

There is a plaque at Bascom Hall which reads:

"Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Yet this esteemed institution did trammel inquiry when a political opportunist, Wisconsin Assemblyman Steven Nass (R), assailed the credentials of Dr. Kevin Barrett, an instructor of Islamic Studies, and called for his removal from the U.W. Dr. Barrett's political views on 9/11 were the focus of this personal attack and ensuing media attention, which featured mischaracterization of his actual course curriculum. In spite of being a highly qualified and competent instructor, he was refused re-hire and apparently blacklisted with no debate. Not one academic from the U.W. accepted the History Club's request to debate Dr. Barrett. Lost in this debacle was the concern for truth and academic freedom necessary for the survival of a healthy democracy.

This is an urgent plea to the UW faculty to research and debate these issues. Please attend the presentation by architect Richard Gage on April 7th to see evidence which has been ignored by mainstream sources. And please continue dialogue by sponsoring a series of debates to critically analyse this information. Additionally, please investigate whether there was unjust discrimination involved in any hiring decisions. It's time for the University to take its rightful place as a bulwark defender of academic freedom, this "fearless sifting and winnowing" on which we pride ourselves. Show us that the plaque at Bascom Hall is more than a wall covering, or please take it down.

This plea is dedicated to all those with the intellectual honesty and moral courage to continue searching for truth, no matter how that inquiry challenges their fundamental beliefs.

Sincerely,

Mark Wollum, 1987 U.W. Graduate, 2008 Candidate for Congress, Wisconsin's 6th CD;
special dedications to my dear late twin brother Scott Wollum, a U.W graduate who had a brilliant mind for mathematics, valued intellectual honesty and moral integrity above popularity and material gain, always had more cajones than I did, and who remains my inspiration;
and to the late Mark Wolfert of Lone Rock, a Fearless Sifter and Winnower.

Co-signatories:

Lynn Margulis

Distinguished University Professor
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
MS Zoology&Genetics University of Wisconsin, 1960

Joel Hirschhorn
Professor of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1965 - 1978.
Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment 1978 - 1990.

William B. Willers
Emeritus Professor of Biology, UW-Oshkosh

Howard Ross
Former Dean of L&S, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Kevin MacDonald
Professor of Psychology, Cal State - Long Beach
UW-Madison B.A. Philosophy, 1966

Robert Bowman
Ph.D., Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Cal Tech; former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force

Paul Craig Roberts
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy,
Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, former Wall St. Journal columnist

John Perkins
Activist, former economic hit man, economist, and NYT bestselling author

John Cobb
Founder, Center for Process Studies, Claremont School of Theology

Niels Harrit, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Chemistry
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

William Pepper
Attorney for Martin Luther King Jr. family; author, Act of State

David Ray Griffin
Professor of Philosophy of Religion & Theology
Claremont School of Theology & Claremont Graduate University
Author of 37 books, one of which was Publishers Weekly's "Pick of the Week"

Anthony J. Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies, University of Lethbridge

Alan Sabrosky
Ph.D. University of Michigan, former Director of Studies, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College

A. K. Dewdney,
Computer scientist and science author,
University of Western Ontario

Graeme McQueen
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, McMaster University (ret.)

William Cook
Professor of English, University of La Verne

Davidson Loehr
Ph.D., Philosophy of Religion, University of Chicago

Allen Roland
Ph.D. psychotherapist, pundit

James Fetzer
Distinguished McNight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota-Duluth

Four Arrows (Don Jacobs)
Doctoral Faculty, School of Educational Leadership and Change
Fielding University

Rev. Dr. Richard Curtis, PhD
Educator and Author

Henry Makow
Ph.D., University of Toronto

Anab Whitehouse
Ph.D., University of Toronto

Susan Lindauer
Former CIA asset, 9/11 whistleblower
Author, Extreme Prejudice

Barbara Honegger
Senior Military Affairs Journalist
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey

Michael Keefer
Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph.

Shelton F. Lankford
LtCol. USMC (Ret.)

Gordon Duff
Senior Editor, Veterans Today

Eric Beeth, M.D.

Joshua Blakeney
Graduate Student, University of Lethbridge

Matthew Orr
Biology faculty, University of Oregon

Dorion Sagan
DS, Award-Winning Writer, Co-Director Sciencewriters Books, Chelsea Green Publishing.

Enver Masud
Former Engineering Management Consultant
World Bank, USAID

Tom Spellman
Architect; alumnus, UW-Milwaukee; Board Member, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

John McMurtry
Professor of Philosophy, University of Guelph; Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

Kaukab Siddique
Professor of English and Journalism, Lincoln University, PA

Dwain Deets,
Former Director for Research Engineering
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D.
Professor of Global Liberal Studies
New York University

5 comments:

  1. Thank you Kevin. A long, uphill battle but one you're properly educated for. Peace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If anyone wants to know why this is so, I can explain it in simple terms.

    Society is directed by its morality, and in practice this is the law. We no longer have the law, we have a legal system. No more lawyers, only attorneys directed and lead by high priests of darkness who wear black robes and who's word is absolute. Didn't this happen in history a few hundred years ago ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Methinks Dear Chancellor Martin, and All Faculty of the University of Wisconsin are chicken. They would have gone right along with the church in their persucution of Gallileo. They have tured a university from a tool of education into a tool of persecution.

    Chuck B

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great job Dr. Barrett! I hope you get an apology AND your job back! Meanwhile, here's how John Stuart Mill would view the importance of "thinking for oneself" on important issues!

    ON BEING A GREAT THINKER

    No one can be a great thinker who does not realize that as a thinker, it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. Not that it solely or chiefly to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much or even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature of which they are capable. There have been, and may again be great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been nor ever will be in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any people have made even a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread of heterodox speculation was—for a time suspended. Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed, where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable! Never when controversy avoided the subjects (which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm), were the minds of people stirred up from their foundations and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings.

    He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment and unless he contends himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts—like the generality of the world—the side to which he feels the most inclination! Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or to bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and who do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of the truth which meets and removes that difficulty! 99 in a 100 of what are ‘educated’ men are in this condition—even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusions may be true, but they might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them and considered what such persons may have to say. Consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrines which they themselves profess—they do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred!

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Great Spirits Have Always Encountered Violent Opposition from Mediocre Minds." - Albert Einstein

    I sure wish folks would simply stick to the scientific method when looking at questions surrounding the horrific events of 9/11. IF you ONLY use common sense and a critical perspective, you will know--without a doubt--that the official 9/11 story is nonsense. Of course, we need to now go further, in so far as WHO and HOW, but that's not the job of architects and engineers, but law enforcement. They had their chance 10 years ago, but were not given the resources to carry out a proper investigation. ($600,000 for the worse crime in U.S. history v. $40,000,000 for Clinton's sexual adventures and then, only after delay after delay and stalling by the last administration!--you tell ME if that seems like an administration "looking for the truth." They blamed O.B.L. with zero evidence. Yeah--some investigation.

    Anyway, I encourage everyone to think openly on this and go to patriotsquestion911 as a good starting point. Wikispooks is another good site.

    ReplyDelete