Lunchtime viewing: We’ve got another installment up at Hot Air, featuring two proud 9/11 conspiracy theorists–Dr. Debbie and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Kevin Barrett. (Jessica McBride has the scoop on Barrett).

Jeff Goldstein’s blog remains down as a result of a third DDOS attack. (update – I think it’s back up). He sends his response to the slanted Inside Higher Ed piece I linked this morning:

I received no email or phone call from anyone at Inside Higher Ed.

A few corrections: 1) I don’t believe I engage in “considerable mocking of liberal academics and ideas.” I taught English for a number of years at a private university in Colorado, in fact, so I’m not unfamiliar with the academy.

True, I have addressed issues of identity politics within the academy, but I’ve done so seriously. And for the record, I consider myself a classical liberal (I am about as far from a social conservative as one can be, for instance). so while I’ve written extensively on questions of progressive philosophical assumptions and how they lead to things like, say, free speech zones, I don’t mock liberalism. Just the opposite in fact: I think progressivism is in opposition to classical liberalism — particularly insofar as it promotes group identity over individualism.

2) Frisch’s apology was immediately followed by a walking back of that apology, and has now culminated in a desire to see rightwingers heads cracked open with baseball bats, and suggestions that I doctored her comments.

But her comments were cut and pasted as she made them, and they are recorded in Google caches in pristine condition. The suggestion that I altered them, therefore, is potentially libelous.

2) No one on my site harrassed Frisch, as a perusal of the various threads she appeared on will attest. And in my post, her school email was not included.

3) Frisch is relying on sites like this one to suggest that she is a victim. Don’t let her get away with it. Frisch was looking, by her own admission, to be banned from my site.
Not only that, but she is trying to suggest she is guilty of nothing more than engaging in a “teachable moment” — the presumptuous and self-importance of which is staggering.

But it bears noting that, even in your article, Frisch, an adjunct instructor, refers to herself as a “professor” and compares herself to Ward Churchill. Her desire for academic and leftwing martyrdom drips from her every word and claim. But I won’t be used as her dupe.

I had been prepared to let this go (something I believe I made fairly clear after my site recovered from one of the 3 DoS attacks I was under this weekend), but now that Frisch has decided to try to parlay her infamy into victimized Truth Speaker status, I’m prepared to follow through and make it clear once and for all that Ms Frisch is a very sad case indeed. In fact, the only reason she’s a “target” at all is that she has worked hard at setting herself up as one.

That is to say, rather than blaming “rabid, crazy, right-wing nutcases” for her troubles (such as they are; I happen to thing she’s quite enjoying the attention), she should take ownership of her own behavior, which throughout has been vile and manipulative.

David French at Phi Beta Cons shares another example of academic moonbattery:

I hesitate to paint with a broad brush in response to this latest example of truly bizarre behavior from a leftist academic, but outrageous personal attacks and threats are disturbingly common on campus. I am lead counsel in the Alliance Defense Fund’s lawsuit challenging Georgia Tech’s speech codes and its blatant discrimination against religious organizations. The plaintiffs, Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar, filed the case after the university had engaged in a campaign of censorship — shutting down the College Republicans’ “diversity bake sale,” censoring a protest of the Vagina Monologues, and warning Ruth against any future expression of that kind. All of this censorship was done in the name of fostering a “tolerant” atmosphere on campus.

And what happened to Ruth and Orit after the lawsuit was filed? They were immediately subjected to truly intolerant abuse (including threats). Ruth received an e-mail from a Georgia Tech address where someone threatened to “choke” her, another person started a website called “Ruth Malhotra Must Die,” lefty blogs photo-shopped swastikas on her face and clothes, and students handed out flyers on campus calling Ruth a “twinkie.” For those who are unfamiliar with the common terms of leftist racism, a “twinkie” is a person who is “yellow on the outside and white on the inside.” It’s the Asian equivalent of the calling an African-American an “oreo.”

Leftist extremists are feeling threatened. Their campus strongholds are under attack by conservatives who refuse to concede culturally vital institutions to people who hate America, hate traditional religious values, and hate virtually all of Western civilization.

Driving them wild.