Posted on 03/16/2005 6:02:42 PM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
As the just-resigned president of the University of Colorado said, there’s a “new McCarthyism” alive in America. But it’s hardly what was gnawing at her.
Her expressed fear was that critics of Ward Churchill, a professor of sorts at her institution, now feel “empowered.” Wow.
Churchill, in case you forgot, is the guy who as much as said that all of those killed in the Pentagon and most of those killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 had it coming.
He hates America. He advocates violence or whatever it takes to change things. He seems to have received tenure on the basis of an apparently false claim he is an American Indian. His scholarship is phony: He cites sources as evidence of points that the sources debunk.
According to Churchill, America is a fascist state. If it were, of course, the secret police would long ago have arrived on his doorstep and he would now be cooling his heels in a cell somewhere. Instead, his hateful blather has earned him stardom among leftist students and stirred protective fervor among many fellow faculty members, 199 of whom signed a newspaper ad saying that even an investigation of this falsifying nitwit would infringe on academic freedom.
Churchill may ultimately be fired because of a recklessness that exceeds the bounds of honesty and the rules of tenure, but, in the meantime, he is sitting comfortably on a $94,000 salary while any number of stories reach the press showing us what the new McCarthyism really is.
It is what happened to Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, after he suggested a possible reason women weren’t more represented in the sciences at universities was that women tended to be less gifted in math than men.
His point was a respectable one backed up by considerable evidence, but the reaction was anything but respectable: widespread anger among the faculty, withdrawn alumni contributions, hints of censure, suggestions that he resign.
Summers could obviously be wrong, as he himself suggested at the outset. But it is an anti-intellectual dogmatism of the worst kind that would approach the question as settled once and for all and treat those on the other side as disgusting pariahs. What’s at work here is the religion of political correctness, the unreflective and arrogant conviction that only certain perspectives and policies concerning race and sex are permissible, and that any divergence is an act of moral thuggery.
The new McCarthyism aims to deter thought from what certain elitists deem appropriate, to corral supposedly errant expressions in the name of peace and compassion but in the spirit of despotism. Just as the old McCarthyism could be hurtful in its search for Stalinists infiltrating Hollywood, government and beyond, the new McCarthyism can cost people in their lives. Consider, for instance, Thomas Klocek, a professor at DePaul University who made so bold as to debate students who were maintaining that Israel was Hitler-like in its treatment of Palestinians and was later suspended without a hearing.
The most politically correct of our universities seem airless places, closed off from much of the energy and vigor of the rest of this rambunctious, heterogeneous, frontier-fostered continental nation of ours, and thus we see them prohibiting free speech by students, denying aspirants tenure because they might entertain a conservative thought or two, or practicing a form of affirmative action that is nothing less than a quota system of racial preferences.
The new McCarthyism makes itself felt in places outside of universities, of course.
And not all universities — or all faculty members or administrators within any given university — are practitioners of the evil art. But universities are among the places where the leftism-infected are often in considerable control, and it’s there that you are most likely to see the new McCarthyism in action along with complaints about a new McCarthyism that doesn’t exist at all.
The president of the University of Colorado, Betsy Hoffman, had more problems than Churchill. There was also a scandal about recruiting football players with sex and booze, for instance. The university has to fix itself, but so do any number of other institutions of higher education that have forgotten that the splendor of free inquiry involves the risk that someone may occasionally say something that challenges your political faith.
This Churchill bloke should change his name immediately. He's not fit to wear the moniker.
From the standpoint of Right To Life people, America is pretty fascistic when it comes to the question of slaughtering the innocent, denying the people voice in the matter, and using government funds to subsidize the great corporations responsible for abortion.
Was it not the case that the Senate held hearings against McCarthy, and not McCarthy dragging people in and accusing them of being communists?
As for Dr. Klocek, he's getting even less support because his story is not well known. But thank GOD for Free Republic!
Suspended DePaul professor gagged and bound at news conference (Prof challenged Muslims' views)
Professor protests suspension (Adjunct DePaul Univ. prof. made anti-Muslim statements--Free Speech?)
If you don't like McCarthy then you can't like Bobbie Kennedy.
McCarthy had strong ties with the Kennedys. There really were communists, I suppose in those days parties worked TOGETHER when it came to national security.
Don't forget Dem. Senator Scoop Jackson, also a strong anti-communist.
Why don't we call it Ratherism?
I agree. Still, we're supposed to use the orig. headline when posting. But while we're at it, Whittaker Chambers was right about Alger Hiss. Too bad Chambers died in 1961.
I am starting to think that PC came from Europe. At any rate, they have it there, too.
And she wants to play ole Joe, as she has understands her own cliche, and attack the critics of the great 'painter', Ward Churchill?
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