Posted on 07/15/2006 7:13:33 AM PDT by george76
The things you hear when you have no weapons.
Not that I've heard. He's probably still teaching his 100-level "ethnic studies" classes that awe impressionable freshmen. Most will learn to see through his line of Bovine Scatology by the time they're juniors.
If Churchill had any gift for subtlety, he probably could have peddled white guilt and his own victimhood in the classroom for decades, plodding along as the kind of professor no one remembers much. But no, that didn't make enough of a splash, so he had to make an ass of himself and bring down the wrath of Godwin's Law.
All that said, Academia has its own rules, and I don't support revoking tenure for teachers because they hold provocative, contrarian, or even weird and stupid ideas. More discussion is better than less, and if students aren't confronted with dumb ideas in the classroom, how will they learn how to confront them in the wild?
On the other hand, sloppy research, plagiarism, falsification, those are grounds for revoking tenure with extreme prejudice.
At most, ethnic studies should be a one semester class...not a whole department.
All I can say is that I think you nailed it on all counts.
Good job!
Ward Churchill: another reason to be glad I believe in Hell.
It was completely filled with half-wits.
This jerk is a making a joke about women being forced into submission who have been stabbed. What is wrong with him? Who can be that vile?
I think that any tenured instructor/professor with ideas that are absurd should have tenure reviewed, and possibly revoked.
It is one thing to have opinions ... but opinions based on "facts" where the "facts" are demonstrably false is a sign of weak thinking and illogical actions - and can be cause for removal from any teaching position.
(Consider how many colleges and universities will tolerate any instructor who believes in other than a strict adherence to Evolution ... so the colleges and universities already invoke a "litmus test" where politically incorrect thinking can be grounds for not hiring or not granting tenure.)
There are Nazi sympathizers out there - just don't look for them on any faculty. The ideas/consequences behind the Nazi ideology is recognized as totally reprehesible, and any "true-believer" should never be allowed to be an instructor. Unfortunately, colleges fail to recognize that communist sympathizers should be treated the same or worse than Nazi sympathizers - since Communism is reportedly responsible for 5 times the deaths as Naziism.
Anyone who believes that the U.S. was behind the 9/11 hijackings/attacks deserves to be fired, because their beliefs are at odds with the established facts! Anything less means that they could teach any subject according to what they believe is true, rather than what is established record of facts.
Mike
The conclusion one must draw from such examples isn't that every institution has its bad apples but rather that, at least in the liberal arts in America, moral turpitude and political hucksterism pervades higher education.
Radical criminals with questionable academic credentials flourish in a milieu that bristles with hostility toward real scholars who don't toe the party line—witness the case of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
Individuals with prison records or FBI rap sheets don't get into major educational institutions because they fudge their resumes.
They get in because they share the political dogmas of those who hire them—and they flourish for the same reason.
http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=397
Are you still interested in Michele Malkin ?
If a math or English professor doesn't believe in evolution, I don't see that as grounds for denying or revoking tenure, as long as they don't drag that soap box into the classroom. It would certainly pose a problem for a professor of biology or anthropology.
My alma mater, Emory, has a political science professor named Courtney Brown. Brown is pretty much a raving loon, a regular on the Art Bell show on the subject of remote viewing. I took one of his classes. In his subject, he's pretty much in the mainstream, though he dresses strangely and comes off as a bit of an eccentric. Emory hasn't fired him, though they did insist that he not mention his affiliation with the school when he's pitching his loopy stuff.
All things being equal, I'd rather err on the side of letting profs be nutcases on their own time, as long as it doesn't intrude on what they're teaching or publishing in their chosen field. That said, I can't figure out what on Earth would lie outside the field of an "ethnic studies" professor.
Ward Churchill is a nutjob. This jerk’s ego should have its own zip code. His callous comments about the 9/11 victims are inexcusable. And he can hide behind free speech all he wants, but he is still an insensitive, egotistic, lying, plagiarizing jerk. His claims of Native American ancestry have been researched and, surprise! No Native American ancestors have been found to date. Hmmmm....wonder if he’s ever heard of Grey Owl, from the 1930s? Firing his lying, self-serving butt was the right thing to do. Maybe they saved a few future college kids from being subjected to his senseless garbage.
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.