Posted on 02/17/2005 9:05:19 PM PST by FairOpinion
University of Hawaii Professors Launch Aggressive Fundraising Effort to Sponsor Highly Controversial, Anti-American Speaker
Ward Churchill, Who Says 9-11 Victims are Not 'Innocent' and Terrorists are 'Combat Teams,' Being Invited to Main Manoa Campus; Not All Professors, Students are Pleased
University of Hawaii professors have organized an aggressive fundraising effort to bring Ward Churchill, a highly controversial professor based at the University of Colorado and activist in the American Indian Movement, to lecture at the University’s Manoa Campus, according to an internal memo obtained by Hawaii Reporter.
Churchill, who prides himself on publishing inflammatory anti-American propaganda, came into the national spotlight in recent weeks for his declaration in a recently published essay that the victims killed and injured in the 9-11 attack on America were not "innocent."
In Churchill’s essay "Some People Push Back; On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," he writes: "True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the 'mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."
Churchill writes "terrorists" who slammed their planes into the World Trade Center killing 3,000 Americans, are not in fact terrorists, rather they are "combat teams." He claims Americans got what they deserved when Americans were murdered on American soil because America has killed 500,000 Iraqi children. He says the attacks on Sept. 11 were "a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up."
See the full essay at: http://cryptome.org/ward-churchill.htm
Many of the families of victims in the 9-11 terrorist attack on America said his comments were hurtful. Matt Coppo, a sophomore whose father died in the World Trade Center attacks, told the mainland media: "His views are completely hurtful to the families of 3,000 people."
Jon Goldberg-Hiller, Ph.D., the chair of the University of Hawaii Political Science Department, says in a memo obtained by Hawaii Reporter that he is sure there will be controversy over Churchill’s visit.
Hiller says Churchill’s visit is being coordinated by "a number of his friends and colleagues across the university," and he asks the Department to help sponsor the speech by funding Churchill’s honorarium.
"As I am certain that Churchill's visit will provoke some community controversy, I am also certain that we will share some of this attention because of this donation. Whether you support Churchill or not, I do hope, when questioned, that you will speak to the issues of academic fairness, protection for controversial ideas and conservative attempts to limit the scope of political speech, indigenous rights, and identity politics that put this particular controversy in its broader context."
Hiller could not be reached for further comment.
University of Hawaii Political Science Professor Kate Zhou says she is upset that Churchill has received so much support from the University of Hawaii, when much more qualified and well respected academics and authors have been snubbed. Last year, Zhou says, she attempted to get a prominent Washington Post writer and Pulitzer Prize winner to Hawaii, but the faculty did not support this speaker, or many others who could share with students their valuable experiences. Many students also are upset about Churchill’s visit, Zhou says.
Hell, even my community college in our little redneck town (and I don't say redneck in an insulting manner), has anti-American crap going around. Our orientation featured a left-wing speaker from India who talked about the superiority of Hinduism over Western ideals and how missionaries are a barrier to world peace. Our educational institutions need to be completely reconfigured.
The report on Fox News tonite (O'Reilly's show I believe) was that Colorado U was already feeling the $$$ crunch!
FrontPage.Com has had alot of good articles relating to this sort of thing too.
The despicable Haunani Trask speaking at the University of Hawaii, October 18, 2001: 'The chickens have come home to roost.'
http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/10/18/3bce77af4e75c
Remind anyone of anyone else? As in Churchill's "The Justice of Roosting Chickens"?
Your community college could not compete with my Community college. NoT in the least bit. My school makes me so sick sometimes. I wouldn't know where to start with the guest speakers....
Wonder how the profs would feel if some haoli academic tried to pass himself off as a native and to speak on behalf of locals. Somehow I doubt that the spirit of aloha should extend to liars and charlatans.
Thanks in large part to the excess of attention lavished on him from the Right. He was a flea before we turned him into a media star.
That's what happens..There is no such thing as bad publicity..if one loves being a star.
The most important thing about this is showing what a sham it is to expect universities to check out who they promote, accept and give tenure to. The kooks get a leg up if they are anti American.
Thanks in large part to the excess of attention lavished on him from the Right. He was a flea before we turned him into a media star.
So what... when Churchill gets fired from CU he will no longer have a platform from which to spew his hate... at least not one where you have assumed credibility.
"Uncovering" Churchill is going to be a disaster for other whacked out professors in this country. Putting the spotlight on someone like Churchill has raised the issue of who is really teaching our students to a new level of awareness.
At the University of Colorado they have already realized a 30% reduction in student interest from out of state. These marketplace forces will leave the CU Regents with no choice but to fire Churchill.
Hawaii is not part of the US. Same with Kalifornia, NY, and Massachusetts.
Be sure to pass on to them the article and link I posted in post 19 -- tenured professors can and were fired before at the U of C.
They already have that info. They discussed a number of these cases at CU on the air. If you have any newly undiscovered info Craig will appreciate an email at:
craigsilverman@clearchannel.com
and cc: Dan at:
dancaplis@clearchannel.com
I am glad they are going after Churchill. He needs to be made an example, that the American people won't tolerate to have their children brainwashed into anti-Americanism and hate by a bunch of hateful frauds.
Pardon me, but it's "haole", not, "haoli."
Did you hear Sean Hannity's idea on radio today. He was talking to a young college student about liberal bias when he came up with the idea of his listeners bringing tape recorders into the classroom during lectures so he can expose these types of professors. Your "ENEMY PROFESSOR" idea might turn into www.enemyprofessor.com with all those leads from Sean if he really gets this off the ground.
In fact... I just checked... that URL is available. Reserve it right away!
This is the bio of the guy pushing this.
Jon Goldberg-Hiller
Backround: I completed my BA in political science at Reed College (1979) and my MA and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1991) with emphasis in public law, comparative politics, and Marxist theory. Prior to graduate school, I had the opportunity to live and teach in West Africa, and subsequently I taught at Reed College prior to joining the faculty at UH.
Research Interests: I have recently been studying the ways changing forms of identity, nationalism, political authority and political economy have modulated the mobilization of rights in various contexts. By starting with these dimensions of social life rather than with rights discourses themselves, I have tried to understand how rights are resisted and how they retain relevancy; in this vein I have researched such contemporary phenomena as the conservative reaction against same-sex marriage, opposition to the political recognition of indigenous peoples, and efforts by labor unions to boycott legal regulatory machinery. I am presently embarking on a study of the means by which indigenous peoples in the Pacific have mobilized rights that lack constitutional or jurisdictional authority and how these ideas about rights have traveled across space and time, altering indigenous identities and redirecting political demands.
Selected publications:
“Rights as Excess: Understanding the Politics of Special Rights,” Law and Social Inquiry, forthcoming (with Neal Milner). download pdf copy
“‘Subjectivity is a Citizen’: Representation, Recognition, and the Deconstruction of Civil Rights,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Forthcoming. download pdf copy
The Limits to Union: Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Civil Rights,. University of Michigan Press, 2002
"Reimagining Rights: Tunnels, Nations, Spaces." Law & Social Inquiry, forthcoming (with Neal Milner.) download pdf copy
"Rites, Rights and the Right: Conservative Christian Politics in the United States," Theory and Event 5.2, 2001 (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tae/).
"‘Making a Mockery of Marriage’: Domestic Partnership and Equal Rights in Hawai‘i," in Sexuality in the Legal Arena, Edited by Didi Herman and Carl Stychin, Athlone Press, 2000, pp. 113-131. American edition to be published by University of Minnesota Press.
"The Status of Status: Domestic Partnership and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage" 19 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 3-38, 1999
Entitled to be Hostile: Narrating the Political Economy of Civil Rights," 7 Social & Legal Studies 517-538, 1998
"The Boycott of the Law and the Law of the Boycott: Law, Labour and Politics in British Columbia", 21 Law and Social Inquiry 313-351, 1996.
That's a good idea, but my plate is full. Go reserve it and work it.
Maybe they can take the new mass transit system nobody uses.
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