conclusions one drew from history, but the importance of studying it. Alterman has said, "To me, Walter represents the ur-notion of what it means to be a disinterested scholar. There's a willingness to follow the scholarship wherever it leads, even if it's in politically inconvenient directions." Nonetheless, LaFeber has sometimes stated his views quite publicly, especially his prediction that the 2003 invasion of Iraq would end up poorly, saying that the Bush Administration's foreign policy belief that an invasion would help democracy spread throughout the Middle East "flies in the face of everything we know about Iraqi history." Academic positions and honors By early 1966 LaFeber was publicly critical of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War, saying that the country's policy reflected "the dilemma of American liberalism" with policy objectives that were contradictory and paradoxical. In general, LaFeber was in sympathy with many of the student causes of the 1960s, including opposition to the war, the quest for racial justice, and the desire for a political system that better represented democratic ideals. He later said that "academic freedom means the freedom, indeed means the requirement (otherwise what is tenure for?) to criticize American society when evidence accumulates that society has gone off in the wrong direction." But the occupation of Willard Straight Hall by African American students, who eventually became armed, as well as some other physical and verbal threats made against university officials and faculty at the time, greatly dismayed him. Many of the younger and more progressive faculty members on campus supported the actions of the campus Afro-American Society and considered that traditional notions of academic freedom were secondary to larger questions of human rights and that a university's greatest responsibility was to eradicate racial and other injustices. But LaFeber was one of only a few liberal professors who strongly disagreed with that stance. To LaFeber, academic freedom was paramount; decades later, he reiterated his view: ... what a university is all about is rational discourse. What these people were doing was essentially raping the major principle of the university. Once you introduce any kind of element of force into the university, you compromise the institution. To me, that is totally unforgivable. ... We have to make a distinction between procedure and politics. What I am talking about is procedure. I'm a relativist in terms of object and conclusion. I don't think I am necessarily right. What I