The report seems to have assembled its data based on faculty members' self-reporting, leading to some odd figures. (I find it hard to believe that natural science professors at doctoral institutions spend almost twice as much time on teaching as they do on research.) I was particularly struck, however, by the field breakdown: only Fine Arts professors say they devote less time to research than Education faculty. Maybe that explains how we got dispositions theory.

In the roundip, IHE also reports that the Homeland Security Department"adamantly denied" the claim of a UMass-Dartmouth student that he had been interrogated after requesting Mao's Little Red Book via ILL. This story is looking more and more like it could be a hoax. (Incredibly, the original story was published without the reporter even having talked to the student or his parents; the reporter relied simply on the word of two professors.) While Wisconsin professor Uli Schamiloglu uncritically accepted the professors' version of events and lamented that"we are on the path to becoming like the totalitarian countries studied in the course taken by that poor student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth,” the comments in IHE's original story raise some pretty strong questions about the anonymous student's claim. The professor who originally publicized the claim, Bryan Glyn Williams, has a quite interesting website, and has implied that the alleged interrogation was part of an attempt by the government to discourage him from teaching a course called"Critically Assessing the Historic Roots of Terrorism in the Middle East (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, Islamic Jihad, Harkat-ul Mujahideen)." While this assertion doesn't exactly enhance Williams' credibility, the syllabus for the course doesn't seem to be on-line; I'd be curious to see exactly what Williams means by" critically assessing."

If, in fact, the story is untrue, what action will UMass-Dartmouth take?