I'm confused about the meaning of "academic freedom" when it pops up in cases like these. Does academic freedom imply freedom from any constraints, any basic standards and indebtedness to factually sustainable theories? Or does it mean freedom to create alternative narratives to history and pass them off to unsuspecting students as valid and worthwhile? Isn't the university at all concerned about the possibility that its graduates would be let into world with ideas of truth and accountability forever crippled by the kind of scholarship el-Haj advances?

There seems to be a struggle between two rights here, or rather a right and an ethical principle: the right to academic freedom and the principle of academic truth. Which prevails, or should prevail, when it comes to a question of tenure, the right to teach lies and distortions of history or the principle of academic truth that is opposed to the teaching of lies and distortions?

"When academia starts rewarding people who reject evidence-based scholarship, we all have an interest."

Precisely. Yet too many among academe pretend - convincing even themselves - they're engaging in nuance and abstruse subtleties when in fact they're engaging in subtle forms of guile, evasive sophistries and casuistries and the like. Vanity. And societally corrupting forms of vanity at that, at least so at the core of it, at foundational levels.

People are too often cowed by these academics. It goes without saying that anti-intellectualism and similar reactionary forms need to be resolutely avoided; but respect needs to be earned and that's true for academics no less than with other true professions.

The self-regarding Joachim Martillos of the world are merely the more blatant tips of the icebergs.

Seriously engaged academics deserve respect, but skepticism is the default position, genuine respect needs to be earned and one of the ways in which it is earned is via transparency and openness.

Shedding light on the professoriate

h/t Instapundit