Posted on 02/12/2005 2:42:48 PM PST by NormsRevenge
DENVER (AP) - Academic freedom has never completely protected professors who make unpopular statements. One was fired in 1960 for suggesting that premarital sex among students could be a good thing. Three decades later, a department chair was demoted for saying a Jewish conspiracy denigrated blacks in the movies. Now experts say the Sept. 11 attacks have put new fire in the battle over just where academic freedom ends and misconduct - or even treason - begins.
University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill could be fired pending an investigation prompted by his 2001 essay suggesting some World Trade Center victims were toiling away like efficient Nazi bureaucrats.
There are no exact figures on attempts to fire or discipline professors since Sept. 11, but experts say they have probably increased. The fight is especially fierce at state universities, where some question whether taxpayers must pay the salaries of professors they find unpatriotic or outrageous.
"We have never been free of the issue of professors coming under intense scrutiny or attack for having written something somebody finds utterly loathsome," said Jonathan Knight of the American Association of University Professors in Washington.
Knight said firings are relatively rare, with 50 or 60 losing their jobs each year for a variety of reasons out of some 800,000 tenured and untenured professors nationwide. Tenure, a protection normally granted after several years of probation, is designed to allow teaching and research without fear of political reprisals.
Overall, challenges to American professors today are mild compared with the attacks academics suffered during the anti-communist investigations spurred by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, said Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Va.
But he said the intensity of attacks on academic freedom have increased since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Churchill's case has ignited furious debate with no shortage of students and teachers defending his right to speak, even though few have endorsed his comments.
His essay said some of the trade center victims were "little Eichmanns," a suggestion that white-collar "technocrats" who died that day were no better than Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann because they are furthering U.S. policies harmful to Arabs and indigenous people worldwide.
It drew little attention until last month, when Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Relatives of the Trade Center dead and the governors of New York and Colorado denounced Churchill, and Churchill's speech was canceled because of death threats against him.
Since then, other Churchill speeches around the nation have been canceled and the Hamilton professor who invited him to that campus has stepped down as program director, fed up with the "political and media fight that the current climate requires."
The University of Colorado has launched a 30-day review to determine whether Churchill can be fired. Media outlets are exploring his scholarship - one Denver radio show claims school documents prove he lied about being an American Indian to land his job - and state legislators are considering making it easier to get rid of tenured professors.
Churchill has refused to apologize and has threatened to sue if he is let go over the controversy.
O'Neil said universities have handled most post-Sept. 11 complaints about professors properly by submitting them to formal review, as Colorado is doing with Churchill and as the University of New Mexico did for Richard Berthold, a former history professor.
Berthold told students hours after the Sept. 11 attacks: "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote." The university resisted enormous pressure to fire him, instead conducting a review and eventually issuing a letter of reprimand after he apologized.
Berthold says the discipline system worked only because he caved in under pressure.
"I look back on it, and I just ate too much crow and apologized too much. I'm ashamed," he said. "It wasn't, 'Let's applaud the killing of innocent people,' it was my expression of my revulsion for the leadership of this country."
He retired two years later.
"Bitter? Oh yes, I'm bitter," he said. "I thought I served the institution and my society very well for 30 years."
WHERE DO WE START?
Ironic that "Academic Freedom" is a crutch for the same people who, forty years ago, routinely intimidated University administrations into changing unpopular policies.
So dancing on the graves of innocent terrorism victims and trashing your country is an "academic freedom"? Yeah, right. University "intellectuals" advancing this argument shows just how far higher education has fallen.
Regretably, if academic freedom is curtailed, the first victims will probably be the few remaining Christian and conservative professors. The liberals will protect their own.
Churchill is not an academic freedom case. It may have started out that way, but it has now turned into a case of false credentials and lies. Academic freedom doesn't protect that sort of behavior. So he might have gotten away with calling the WTC victims little Eichmans, but he shouldn't get away with pretending to be an Indian in a department where being an Indian is one of the basic requirements.
Pretending all sorts of other things is less critical, but the fact is that his scholarship is shoddy and his record is a lie.
Here's some newly minted proof (courtesy of FReeper Soliton) that at least part of Churchill's CV is entirely fraudulent. This is the link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1341938/posts
It's getting to be like living in a dream. Everywhere I look some Leftwing slimeball is getting trashed, media titans are going down in flames and ordinary useful idiots are committing suicide. Either last year's Christmas stayed late or it's wa-a-a-ay early this year. Yipee!
This isn't an issue of academic freedom, its one of incompetance. As a tenured professor you are expected to publish orginal research that is subject to peer review. Professor Churchill's rants are far from scholarly research and certainly aren't supported by any original research. It is also likely he has misrepresented himself as being a native American...that's fraud pure and simple.
http://www.cu.edu/regents/RgntsPUB0101.html
NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS AS OF JANUARY 12, 2005
Dr. Peter Steinhauer (D.D.S.)
7492 Spring Drive
Boulder, CO 80303
303-499-1278 (fax 303-543-2351)
e-mail Peter.Steinhauer@colorado.edu
Ms. Cindy Carlisle
411 Spruce Street
Boulder, CO 80302
303-444-2606 (fax 303-444-0057)
e-mail Regent.Carlisle@colorado.edu
Ms. Patricia Hayes
12575 East Bates Circle
Aurora, CO 80014
303-369-0054 (fax 303-740-8409)
e-mail Regent.Hayes@colorado.edu
Mr. Michael Carrigan
555 Seventeenth Street, Suite 3200
Denver, CO 80202
(303)-295-8314 (fax 303-975-5489)
e-mail Carrigan@colorado.edu
Mr. Tom Lucero
P.O. Box 921
Johnstown, CO 80534
970-978-1142 (fax 970-587-0920)
e-mail Tommyjclay@aol.com
* Please send communications as an attachment to his email when possible
Mr. Steve Bosley
P.O. Box 270509
Louisville, CO 80027
303-604-2313 (fax 303-604-2313)
e-mail Regent.Bosley@colorado.edu
Mr. Jerry G. Rutledge, Chair
2745 Springmede Court
Colorado Springs, CO 80906-3716
719-527-8868 (fax 719-632-7694)
e-mail Jerryrutledge@adelphia.net
Mr. Paul Schauer
7255 South Jackson Court
Centennial, CO 80122
303-770-3872 (fax )
e-mail Regent.Schauer@colorado.edu
Ms. Gail Schwartz, Vice Chair
P.O. Box 6578
Snowmass Village, CO 81615
970-925-3013 (fax 970-544-4632)
e-mail Gail.Schwartz@colorado.edu
Secretary of the University and of the Board of Regents
Milagros "Millie" Cortez
Regent 201, 3 SYS, Boulder, CO 80309
(303) 492-8203 (Fax 492-3107)
E-Mail: Millie.Cortez@colorado.edu
That's where the academic crash and burn comes from. Intelligent parents paying the hideous tuition bills should simply vote with their feet.
To add to this, Google on Churchill's wife, Natsu Saito. she had written some very interesting things. And she is not Native American; Natsu Saito is a Japanese name.
The fact that this fraud and intellectual lightweight (an overstatement of his academic credentials) was ever granted tenure in the first place indicates that there are no adults in charge.
"WHERE DO WE START?"
Yeah, really! Let's start with the bitter retired LOSER!
Ward Churchill should be fired for being something he is not. His documented lies and falsehoods about himself and his so-called accomplishments are cause enough for dismissal.
The "Free Speech" garbage hasn't stopped the Left from their hatred, sometimes violent reactions towards, and vitriholic attitudes towards anyone who doesn't agree with their viewpoint. About 50% of the current crop of left-wing university/college educators probably agree with Churchill's ultra-leftist, anti-American views and they aren't under fire.
Churchill is a liar and fraud and should be relived of his position for those reasons. If he is dismissed because of his terrorist/murder-rooting views, I will be amazed, mostly because the majority of guilt-ridden, white, left-wing, PC Administrators are too chicken to do the right thing.
I think that's a more descriptive title. Don't you?
I recall something posted a few days ago about Churchill's earlier wife who was an Indian (Ojibway?). She was hit and killed by a car while walking across a street while intoxicated, or at least that is what was reported.
McCarthy did not do any investigation of Professors or Actors.
They teach that in public school, but it isn't so.
When I ask one of these twits exactly which "US policies" are harming the Arabs and indigenous peoples, the only answers I get are muttered imprecations about oil, offending islamikaze loons, McDonalds, and that we don't recycle. I demand specifics, dammit! Anyone who can't give worthwhile specifics is just another blabbering twit.
How sad; if it is true I am very sorry to hear it.
Do you remember the thread?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.