THE HIGHEST FORM OF EDUCATION

The blogosphere lit up recently with wisecracks and speculation over
some videos that show a University of Florida management lecturer,
Howard J. (John) Hall, delivering a giggly, rambling lesson on
Boston, Machiavelli, and the origins of the middle-finger salute.

Mr. Hall, who is being popularly referred to as the "apparently baked
professor," did not respond to telephone messages from The Chronicle,
and officials at the university were also understandably
tight-lipped, saying only that he was placed on administrative leave
immediately after the lecture.

Not so at the University of Toronto, which provides a ventilated
toking room to Doug Hutchinson, a philosophy professor who smokes
marijuana to treat an undisclosed medical condition.

"It's a small room in the basement that used to store a couple of
pianos that were in disrepair," says the former Rhodes scholar.

Mr. Hutchinson says he smoked marijuana on the campus clandestinely
for 10 years. In recent months he battled with university officials
for the right to openly practice his drug regimen. They agreed once
it became clear that he had the authorization of Health Canada, the
federal health agency.

Former students have lauded his pedagogy and scholarship, and Mr.
Hutchinson maintains that he is not impaired despite smoking as many
as 10 joints a day. However, he expects criticism from some quarters,
so he has invited university officials and his peers to sit in on his
course "to see for themselves whether the pothead professor is teaching well."