We would say rude things about him in the back of the lecture hall. He was derisively referred to as "Chairman Howe". Hell some of my fondest memories were of us ridiculing this loony. Still, I plead guilty of regurgitating his crappola and getting an A. Some people are indeed easy to fool.
We used this book at University of Missouri Columbia where I got my degree in history. It was a piece of junk, but it was scary to wonder how many of the people in the class (I believe it was a large low-level history class) took it at face value.
For the record I also had a history professor who told out class that the CIA had sold crack in inner cities to fund operations abroad. Another history professor made us watch one, possibly 2 days of a documentary about the Berkely sit-ins of the 60’s. The CIA-crack professor won an award with a cash prize that year (I kid you not) for her teaching. So anyway, that’s what I think about when I pay my loan.
Don’t feel bad. When I was getting my BS I was almost done when I was told that somehow I was one “social science” class short of graduating. I just grabbed the first class I could find to fill that out and picked up a class called “Environmental Science”
It was exactly what it sounds like. It was a class with a nutty tree-hugging Earth Firster at the helm. We were split into groups for the assignments so we had to work together.
At the time I was riding a 4.0 GPA and I told the guys in my group that I was not going to lose that because of having to put up with this idiot professor. So I told the guys in my group to follow my lead and I would get us all A’s in this class.
We were her stars. I would bring my papers into work and show them to my co-workers. They were an artistry of extremism. We were going to change the world. We were also completely full of crap. None of us bought a word of what we wrote, but we were righting to our audience. I kept my 4.0.