[Right Wing Professor]

She didn't lose her professorship. She lost her position as head of department, a purely administrative title which may or may not have affected her salary, and certainly didn't affect her tenure. If my department chair put himself in the position of teaching obviously fallacious nonsense in a field in an area in which I am qualified and he is not, I would question his fitness to lead the Department.

[ican'tbelieveit]

Again, you are missing something here. She was presenting alternate theories to an honors class. These are discussion groups. And you know what she presented was fallacious? How so? The fact that she was told to resign her chair position over this is ridiculous.

[VRWC_minion]

If my department chair put himself in the position of teaching obviously fallacious nonsense in a field in an area in which I am qualified and he is not, I would question his fitness to lead the Department.

I gave this some thought by relating this issue to an area that I am knowledgable about, namely income taxes. Since taking courses in income tax at school and since studying it extensively while practicing accounting, I became aware of the various theories put forth by tax protestors that attempt to establish there is no income tax. They are of course totally bogus. However, I do believe it is helpful to learn these theories on a couple of levels.

The first reason is that it is a great way to learn the various assumptions and premises that the income tax is based on, something that is really not taught because its "obvious". When I took it upon myself to study these theories it gave me a better, stronger foundation for my over all knowledge about income tax. I could better see how the various parts of law and history of taxes comes together. There is no doubt in my mind that I am a better tax researcher because of my study of tax protester arguments.

A second reason it that it helps by observing these discredited theories in that one can see mistakes in logic, the misreading of the language and the errors in construction made by the theories. Its a great way to not only think critically it gives one the ability to apply critical thinking. This is helpful to me as a researcher because it is great case studies of the kinds of mistakes that are possible to make especially when you appear to be yielding the result you want.

A third reason it is helpful to study these theories is to simply be aware of them and the basis on which they are formed. What is interesting is that even though the theories don't work they each have some small amount of truth at their core.

So, upon looking at a comparison of this issue in my field, I would think a special forum to discuss the tax protestor theories at college would be a good thing and not something I would be afraid of and certainly not something I would fire someone from any posistion from.

The defensive nature of the person who fired this person makes me think they are too insecure in their own beliefs.