Since Ann was mentioned..she should be shown in her beauty..just sticking to the rules..;)
Posted on 02/04/2005 4:38:34 PM PST by Indy Pendance
You know a professor has run into trouble at your local university when lefty protestors are marching around campus with duct tape covering their mouths, emblazoned with the words “free speech.” Such is the scene at the University of Colorado, where flowing-tressed ethnic studies prof Ward Churchill, who claims to be some kind of Native American (dubiously, it increasingly seems), is up to his neck in controversy.
Churchill’s invitation to speak on a panel devoted to “prisons and Native American rights” at tiny Hamilton College in upstate New York occasioned the hullabaloo. In the run-up to the event, students, staff, alumni, and then Fox News and other new media outlets got wind of an essay Churchill wrote three years ago: “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” There, the Nutty Professor seemed to be saying that the victims of 9/11 deserved their fate.
As the irate calls and e-mails poured in, Churchill backtracked, claiming that people had grossly misunderstood his argument. What he really had said, he explained, was that the United States could expect to reap what it has sown—that U.S.-sponsored “genocide,” such as economic sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf war (his example), will inevitably provoke 9/11-style attacks. But it was hard to take such “clarifications” seriously when “Roosting Chickens” contained nuggets like: “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation [in the U.S. imperial complex] upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”
Hamilton has now cancelled the event (claiming concern over security), but the controversy has flown to the Mountain Time Zone, where many lawmakers, including Colorado Governor Bill Owens, have asked for the professor’s resignation from CU and the school’s Board of Regents plans to debate his fate.
But don’t hold your breath for anything consequential to happen. As CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano told the press, “While I personally find his views offensive, I also must support his right as an American citizen to hold and express his views, no matter how repugnant, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Ditto Churchill’s CU Ethnic Studies buddies: “We as faculty . . . stand in full and unconditional support of our colleague Ward Churchill’s freedom of expression and First Amendment Rights.” Hamilton College’s president Joan Hinde Steward had mouthed similar sentiments (at least until the security concerns prevailed): “However repugnant one may find Mr. Churchill’s remarks, were the College to withdraw the invitation simply on the grounds that he has said offensive things, we would be abandoning a principle on which this College and indeed this republic is founded”—free speech.
These First Amendment-based arguments miss the point: the right to free speech is not a right to be heard or a right to hold on to a job. Would these schools hire or invite to speak a biologist who claimed that alien gamma rays caused cancer—even if that someone held a Ph.D. from a prestigious school? Of course not. So why is a psuedo-intellect—who thinks that stock traders, accountants, and Windows on the World busboys are comparable to genocidal Nazis—given intellectual time and respect? Just to prove that officials at these schools have read the Bill of Rights? CU is also a public university: Why should Joe Taxpayer be subsidizing such idiocy?
Churchill’s academic allies may be defending him based on the importance of protecting free speech, even when it’s offensive, but in truth some are probably sympathetic with his out-there leftism. Consider the Kirkland Project, the Hamilton College group that invited him to the panel discussion. Kirkland’s mission statement claims that the project seeks “to provide the integrated, complex, rigorous intellectual analysis and engagement with ideas that [are] characteristic of a liberal arts education and necessary for social justice movements.” So much for the disinterested pursuit of knowledge!
So committed to this political goal is Kirkland director Nancy Rabinowitz that she attempted to hire social justice activist extraordinaire (or rather, domestic terrorist) Susan Rosenberg as an “artist/activist-in-residence” at the college a few years ago. Fortunately, the convicted felon and Weather Underground alum bowed out of the appointment before the ink dried on her contract. Undeterred, the Kirkland Project has subsequently hosted scores of activists to participate in its “Intersections of Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality and Nationality” program. Thus, it’s implausible that Rabinowitz’s desire to have Ward Churchill on a Kirkland panel merely reflected a desire to showcase her commitment to the Bill of Rights.
As public anger over Churchill’s expected Hamilton appearance grew, the college had the Kirkland Project change the panel into a forum where Churchill’s views could be “confronted.” Therefore, to the original panel—Richard Werner (a Hamilton philosophy professor and pacifist) and Churchill’s wife, Natsu Taylor Saito, a law professor at Georgia State University, whose curriculum vitae reads like a satire of elite radicalism (among other things, she has sat on the board of cop-killer Leonard Peltier’s defense committee)—Kirkland added First Amendment scholar and Nation contributor Philip Klinkner, who also teaches at Hamilton. If Hamilton really cared about free speech and the “exchange of ideas,” couldn’t it have found at least one right-of-center professor—or even just plain centrist—to participate in the forum?
Like Hamilton’s Kirkland Project, Churchill’s own Ethnic Studies department back at the University of Colorado is equally out there in lefty land. Courses such as “Native Americans and Environmental Ethics” and “Chicana Feminisms and Knowledge” are almost by definition not impartial scholarship but leftist political advocacy. In fact, until the controversy pressured Churchill to step down as chairman, the department seemed unconcerned about his hardcore anti-Americanism: “I want the state gone—transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.”
It’s probably unfair to single out Ward Churchill for pink-slip treatment, given that his views, though crude and shrill, aren’t really out of the faculty mainstream in today’s academe. But when one of these same radicals feels heat from taxpayers and outraged alumni, we should realize the “free speech” defense is a canard. Let’s not shed a tear for our pal Ward should he wind up cleaning out his office. He’ll pop up on a public access channel soon enough. Or land an Ivy League fellowship.
I wish this Judge was nominated to the SCOTUS. Although we may not all like his opinions all the time. He follows the LAW and not some whim.
BTW..when the FL Supreme Court came down with "the" ruling in the 2000 election, the Judge was FURIOUS and rightfully predicted what would happen. I can remember him saying "They are legislating!"
Youknow those sorry SOB's would back a person who would have said something remotely conservative, or possible non-PC. His butt would have been fired the next day.
Exactly. Churchill is their nutter.
Since Ann was mentioned..she should be shown in her beauty..just sticking to the rules..;)
How does someone get to the state of mind that Churchill has? I heard a talk of his played back this evening: Bush is the world's leading terrorist, the United States is a rogue state, racist to the core, a nation that has no respect for law. These statements are so opposite of the truth and facts that it is confounding as to how anyone can believe them. Getting rid of this guy is up to the students: refuse to take any of his classes in particular, and the so-called Ethnic Studies (WTF?) courses in general. Maybe CU would have to keep paying him, but no students have to listen to him.
All living off the fat of this land while proselytizing for its destruction. I despise these people!
Only because Churchill is employed by a PUBLIC university. If it were a private institution, they could can him.
It sounds like the chancellor of the school needs to get the boot.
Now *THATS* an educated response...
Churchill is a lunatic and a FAUX indian.
They might be able to fire Churchill if he falsified his credentials and his Indian heritage claims. His Indian heritage is discredited by the very tribe of which he proports to be a member. He's a fake and a lunatic.
The speech from a lunatic is always free...of lucidity.
No disrespect to Hannity or Coulter- but in a debate with this man I'd like to see (someone like) Ted Olson. Hannity and Coulter are fine for TV and radio partisan debates- but to put this evil character in his place requires an agile intellect that won't react with name-calling and emotionalism.
Dennis Prager could make him look silly.
Well, the students could withdraw from the school - walk out protest.
Parents could demand return of tuitions which they saved up for so many years so their kids could receive a "liberal education". Nothing more irking than Alumni pressure.
Unrelenting public ridicule is the best medicine for Churchill's "problem" and the problem of Churchill.
His PhD was apparently from a very radical Illinois university where the grades were nonexistent and the degrees were jokes. That university has since been absorbed in the Illinois State University system.
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