Posted on 02/10/2005 9:36:59 PM PST by neverdem
BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 10 - Prof. Ward L. Churchill has made a career at the University of Colorado out of pushing people's buttons, colleagues and students say, clearly relishing his stance as radical provocateur and in-your-face critic.
Whether it is getting arrested by the Denver police for trying to disrupt Columbus Day, which Professor Churchill has described as a "celebration of genocide" because of the deaths of Indians that resulted from European colonization, or ruffling feathers in the faculty lounge, hyperbole and bombast have always been ready tools in the Churchill kit bag, people here say.
Now many of the offended are pushing back. The storm of controversy that has blown up around Professor Churchill over his essay about the Sept. 11 attacks, with its reference to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann - the "technocrats" at the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns," Professor Churchill said - has turned the professor into a talking point and a political punch line. On conservative talk radio, on campuses across the country, and especially here in Boulder, debate about Professor Churchill means debate about freedom of speech, the solemnity of Sept. 11 and the supposed liberal bias of academia.
Many people here say that the professor - with his scholarly record under investigation by the university l and with Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, calling for his dismissal - has become a symbol of academic expression under fire. Others worry that subjects like Sept. 11 have become "sacred," and cordoned off from unpopular analysis. Some say that the vitriolic debate itself is the message and that people have been transformed into mirror images of the man they love or loathe - little Churchills, as it were, who are just as entrenched, over-the-top and, apparently, eager to offend as he himself.
"Two sides are being presented without a lot of people listening," said Joe Flasher, 24, a graduate student in astrophysics. "You already have your opinion, right. So it's one person saying what they think and then the other person saying the complete opposite. It seems very polarized. But I guess it is the ultimate exercise in free speech."
Student organizations like College Democrats and College Republicans have skirmished over Professor Churchill, a member of the ethnic studies department. The Democratic group began a petition this week saying, "The attacks on Professor Ward Churchill are attacks on the academic freedom of the university." The Republicans, in calling for his dismissal, said that alumni should freeze donations and that parents should send their children elsewhere until political balance is brought to the professorial ranks.
"It's probably in their best interest to get rid of guys like that, but why hide what this place really is: a bunch of lunatic leftists," said Matthew Schuldt, senior vice chairman of College Republicans.
The undercurrent of the debate, faculty members and students say, is anxiety about how the outside world regards the university. A football recruiting scandal and several alcohol-related deaths among students over the last year created waves of bad publicity for the institution. Now some people fear that everyone will think the university is full of people like Professor Churchill, whose essay, which drew little attention at its publication after the attacks, gained notoriety when he was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York last week. It suggests little emotion about the deaths of thousands of people on Sept. 11 and a cold logic of foreign policy analysis salted with terms that seemed calculated to enrage rather than enlighten.
"If he had just been a little more thoughtful, nothing would have happened," Uriel Nauenberg, a professor of physics and the former chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said. "He did not have to say these things in the manner that he did."
Nonetheless, Professor Nauenberg said he did not believe that Professor Churchill should be forced out because of the essay, though he added that he personally found the expressions in the essay obnoxious.
Professor Churchill, 57, a Vietnam War veteran who became a lecturer at the university in 1978 and was granted tenure in 1991, has claimed affiliations over the years with many vociferous left-wing groups, including the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society and the American Indian Movement. He said in an interview that winning peoples' attention often meant not being nice. The United States' foreign and domestic policies, he said, are brutal, and the words to describe that can be painful.
"I don't believe in the theory that we get to treat people like dogs, but you have to talk to us in a polite way," he said.
Faculty members say that an objection to his writing style or opinions, however outrageous or unpopular, is not enough to justify firing him. The 30-day review of his "writings, speeches, tape recordings and other works," that was announced last week by the university's governing body, the Board of Regents, must find evidence of outright academic dishonesty, said R L Widmann, a professor of English and the chairwoman of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Boulder Faculty Assembly.
" 'I published a falsehood and I knew it to be untrue' - that's what they'd have to find," Professor Widmann said.
But the passions have led to some dishonesty. University officials said on Monday, for instance, that they were canceling a speech by Professor Churchill because of security concerns. The student organizers of the speech had received death threats because of their support for the professor, university officials said, and safety could not be guaranteed.
The students, whose names were not released, admitted on Tuesday that the death threats were embellished.
"They said, 'We were just being political,' " Ron Stump, the vice chancellor for student affairs, said. "We expressed our disappointment."
The speech came off without incident - and without any apologies from Professor Churchill.
Many students interviewed on campus in recent days said they feared that the lines being drawn around Professor Churchill were also creating boundaries about what could be freely and safely talked about in the United States.
"I think it's no longer about free speech - it's turned into this kind of thing that we can't talk about Sept 11, that it's kind of become a sacred issue," said Erin Langer, 22, a senior humanities major from Naperville, Ill. "People forget we're in a university setting, and the way ideas are challenged is by looking at an extreme view. The fact that he is so extreme challenges people to think more."
Michelle York contributed reporting from New York for this article.
Mark Leffingwell/Daily Camera, via Associated Press
Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado professor who compared World Trade Center victims to Nazis, talked with reporters after his class.
Chris Schneider/Rocky Mountain News via Associated Press
A University of Colorado history professor, Eric Love, left, made a point while debating Isaiah Lechowit, president of the College Republicans.
Howard Dean finally has some competition for leader of the DNC.
To bad they don't mean burned at the stake. What a pathetic loser this guy is.
Since the University is already hemhorraging for funds. I do believe that CU Alumni can sit on, spend, or find better uses for future contributions to their Alma Mater.
Someone's going to cave. And I don't think it's going the be the students this time.
Jack.
Interesting picture. The photographer and/or editor obviously picked a shot that makes the Republican look unattractive. But I was glad to see that he at least wasn't letting the menacing-looking leftie professor intimidate him. A sign of progress.
Don't you love the pictures which show an angle (from below) that makes Churchill look imposing and show the Republican President look like he's unhinged. No, there's no bias there!
On top of all that this guy strikes me as being a typical ivory tower putz who drips arrogance with every word.
Sorry if the link requires a subscription, just google: Churchill Boulder Speech. Oh!, wait a sec, Ingraham has a link on her site to the Denver Post story.
What a whackjob! To quote another liberal whack, Larry O'Donnell, Churchill's a "creepy liar", with demented and fruit loops on top. I'd enjoy scalping the MF.
Churchill can say anything he wants, but the fact that he's probably lived his whole life off my tax dollars pisses me off.
I've got a brother (and his wife) who are liberal and they've both lived their whole professional lives off Gubmint grants. Something about living off the taxpayer's nipple turns people liberal.
Brother and Sislaw not whacks like this guy, just birkenstock granoly Kerry voters. Really great parents and all that. Besides, they both have PHd's in hard sciences and do good work for the rest of us in their labs, so I don't begrudge them their views.
After Ingraham, Hannity had on the guy that introduced Churchill at the speech, Russell Means, and, after putting up with him for while, tore him a new one.
Hannity ended up screaming at him. I can't remember exactly, but I think Hannity kept screaming "you're a scumbag!" at him. It was great!
p.s. I'm a few years younger than you, but had an appointment to the Naval Academy (Pop was a Col. so I was halfway there, the other half came from an NJ Eyetie Congressman).
I wanted the Naval Academy because I bought a little bike in high school and had developed a "need for speed". I asked Pop, and he said the best fighter jocks in the world were Naval Aviators.
They turned me down after the physical when I failed the color-blindness test. I didn't even know I was color-blind!
I still think about how different my life would have been, if I've been able to fly jets and kill bad guys, shortened though it might have been. I really wouldn't have minded.
I wonder if this putz has a bodyguard. He may need one.
It takes more than long hair, sunglasses and maybe a beaded headband to turn an English-Swiss-German into am American Indian!
Hadn't heard that Hannity had Russell Means on. Poor guy - I can't for the life of me tolerate Means. I've had the bad misfortune to have met him a number of times. He's an arrogant (insert lots of long, drawn out, and very foul venacular here), and doesn't have the brains of the average snail.
It takes a lot of balls to be the "heap big all-knowing Injun" when you had to learn how to put up a tipi from an Irishman. (True story; Means learned how from a friend of mine.)
It's not a free speech issue. It's an honesty issue. Churchill obtained his position under false pretenses -- he has no Native American blood. And, evidently, he never saw combat in Viet Nam and he wasn't a Ranger. Seems to have been a fork lift operator...
He used the N-word back when he affiliated himself with the Black Panthers. Unfortunately, he wasn't dark enough for them. Seems that he's not red enough for the tribal folk, either. Maybe someday he'll figure out what he really is...
Free speech is a right...but no one has the right to subsidized free speech.
Check his brain for Syphilis and then check it for dope.
He looks like an unoriginal, self-centered dopehead.
In point of fact, the University of Colorado will suffer, and not because Mr. Churchill has used inflammatory speech, but because he's a fake and a lousy professor. That doesn't count for much in academia these days, but it does to anyone who's about to plunk down a life savings for an education.
Churchill is nothing but a pompous windbag.
He even advertises it by wearing his cool shades indoors.
Didn't everybody know a kid like Churchill in high school? You know - - the kid who was always first to jump on the latest "style" bandwagon, whether it be Nehru collars or bell-bottom pants or "box" haircuts? And who was, to the core, a "follower" (never a leader) and who was so painfully aware of that fact that he was often irrationally contrarian in order to affect "rebelliousness" and "self-confidence"?
That's Churchill, to the bone. The guy is still 16.
People like Churchill usually have very few (if any) truly close friends because they know that sooner or later, with growing familiarity, close friends may accidentally get a peek under the mask and then realize that the whole persona that they thought they knew was nothing but the phony facade of an insecure weakling. That realization is rarely endearing.
(I didn't really mean to psycho-analyze the little pissant, but man!, I sure wish his fifteen minutes would hurry up and be over.)
Churchill is so ugly that he even looks stupid!!
Barn Owl
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