LUCY PEMONI / STAR-BULLETIN Protesters made their opinions known last night outside the entrance of the auditorium where University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill delivered his speech on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. Posted on 02/23/2005 1:28:51 PM PST by leaning_libertarian
Starbulletin.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"I never wanted to be a poster boy for academic freedom. You can't give an inch. If you let this one down, you've lost it all."
Ward Churchill Visiting University of Colorado professor
LUCY PEMONI / STAR-BULLETIN Protesters made their opinions known last night outside the entrance of the auditorium where University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill delivered his speech on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus.
Churchill attacks essay’s critics University of Colorado president calls for calm
By Craig Gima cgima@starbulletin.com
Ward Churchill, the outspoken Colorado professor who created a national uproar by comparing 9/11 victims to Nazis, told an overflow crowd at the University of Hawaii last night that he is the target of a right-wing strategy to attack academia.
"I was targeted because they thought I would be an easy target," Churchill told the crowd of about 800. "That was a mistake.
"It's not just an attempt to purge me," he said. "It's a purge of the academy."
The crowd was mostly sympathetic to Churchill, a University of Colorado ethnic studies professor. He was applauded more than a dozen times and was greeted at least three times with standing ovations.
Before the speech began, about a dozen members of a UH college Republican group protested.
"I never wanted to be a poster boy for academic freedom," Churchill said. "You can't give an inch. If you let this one down, you've lost it all."
Much of Churchill's speech was devoted to explaining and expanding on his essay written on Sept. 11, 2001, that called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns."
LUCY PEMONI / STAR-BULLETIN University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill drew about 800 people to his speech at UH-Manoa last night -- plus a dozen protesters like these.
He said the theme of his essay and a later book was that the United States has been involved in violating international law and killing innocents and should not be surprised that some people would want to kill Americans -- the "chickens coming home to roost," as his essay is titled.
He argued that the World Trade Center could be considered a legitimate target because it is a symbol of the financial power that allows the United States to flex its military might.
He said if you read his essay, he called the "technicians" in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who actually did not kill any Jews but made it possible for the trains to run on time and for the Holocaust to take place.
It's obvious, Churchill said, that he did not mean to say children, janitors, firefighters and innocent bystanders were part of that group. Instead, he said, he was referring to investment bankers and others who make the killing of innocents by the U.S. military and U.S. policy possible.
Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American.
"Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting those he called his "white Republican" critics.
"Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said.
His pedigree is "not important," Churchill said: "The issue is the substance of what is said."
He went on to explain that the issue of whether he is Native American has been blown up by sloppy reporting and reporters quoting other reporters.
His speech drew mostly positive reaction from those who attended. But Tyrone Hogenauer said he was disappointed.
"I thought he was going to talk on free speech," Hogenauer said.
Instead, Churchill talked about himself and attacked his critics the way they are attacking him, Hogenauer said: "It's a sad thing."
UH student Kirsten Chong said her professors assigned her to listen to the speech.
"He was humorous and he certainly didn't pull any punches," she said, adding that because she is native Hawaiian, she agrees with much of what he said.
University of Hawaii www.hawaii.edu BACK TO TOP | University leader urges calm in professor decision By Steven K. Paulson Associated Press
DENVER » University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman warned lawmakers yesterday against rushing to punish a professor who likened some Sept. 11, 2001, victims to Nazis, saying a misstep could land the university in court and make the embattled teacher "a very wealthy man at our expense."
Furious lawmakers threatened to take state funding away from the university over an essay by Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, who wrote that some "technocrats" killed in the World Trade Center were like Adolf Eichman, who orchestrated the Nazi holocaust.
Gov. Bill Owens has said Churchill should be fired, but Hoffman told a caucus of Republican legislators that the professor's future has to be handled the right way.
"If we approach this issue wrong, not only will every regent be sued personally, but every administrator will be sued personally and professor Churchill will win his lawsuit with triple damages and be back on the faculty, a very wealthy man at our expense," Hoffman said.
The university has launched a review of Churchill's writings and speeches to see if he overstepped academic freedom and should be dismissed. But Hoffman said public debate about firing him only clouds the issue.
"The more talk there is about the need to fire him, the more difficult it becomes for us to do that, if that's what we decide to do," she said.
Republican Sen. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, who introduced a resolution last week urging the university to fire Churchill, did not return a message.
Lamborn said he had been meeting with regents to discuss the resolution because he wanted to avoid any "unintended consequences."
Hoffman said the law protects public employees' right to free speech, "no matter how odious it might be."
Some members of the Board of Regents have suggested reviewing the university's policy of granting tenure, essentially a lifelong appointment. Owens has said lawmakers might want to consider setting statewide standards for when tenure is granted, instead of leaving it to universities.
Hoffman told lawmakers that tampering with tenure would be a mistake that could drive away other faculty members and make it difficult to hire new ones.
"They need to know we have not engaged in a witch hunt," Hoffman said. "We're taking a careful and measured approach."
University of Colorado www.colorado.edu/
Great job, thanks for doing that.
I kow - I mean't the essay-why all the outrage over something we can't do a thing about? other than promote him
His attitude leaves me speechless. It reminds me of the line from Dylan's song: Now you realize he's not selling any alibis/as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes...
Oh, I disagree completely. If the state is funding it, the legislature should set guidelines as to what it will be willing to fund. This is a Democracy.
I, as a voter, get to vote on how my tax dollars are spent. I decide who the governor is - he's a state employee. I similarly should get to decide who is a professor at a public college. My secret love makes this all perfectly clear.
Because she's a member of the Hawaiian people, she has a particular illogic stream. Really? Maybe those people SHOULD have been eradicated by Western diseases!
UC president Hoffman said public debate about firing him only clouds the issue. "The more talk there is about the need to fire him, the more difficult it becomes for us to do that, if that's what we decide to do," she said.
Yeah, RIGHT. Because if the public quiets down, they'll DEFINITELY fire Churchill, but if they're really loud about what a jackass this guy is, UC will have a much harder time firing him. SUUUUURE. /sarcasm
Why do I hear this witch REALLY saying "STOP CALLING MY OFFICE! I CAN'T GET PAST THE MEDIA TO SUCK UP TO MY MULTICULTURALIST BUDDIES!"
Bump to that.
This is pretty easy to answer and dispose of. Let Ward debate someone with a brain in a public forum with plenty of media coverage. He should last about ten minutes.
>>>> supports capitalists should die <<<<
Did he speak for free? Hmmmm?
"rush limbaugh argues that churchill's of more value to us where he's at, on display at the university of colorado."
I agree. Let the freak show remain at the University of Colorado.
She is racially mixed, but prefers to be "native Hawaiian" to get the preferential treatment and benefits afforded to native Hawaiians. Almost all of the "native Hawaiians" are similarly racially mixed, and most of them have some haole blood, going all the way back to the earliest days of Western contact with the Hawaiians. To put it bluntly, Hawaiian women were "hos", and were actually so forward as to be a nuisance for the officers and a desireable distraction for the crews of the merchant and whaling ships which would stop in the Islands for provisions. The scene from "The Hawaiians" with the women swimming out to the ships to bed the sailors was historically accurate. In the end, STD's and other Western diseases almost wiped out the Hawaiians, who dropped from somewhere around 250,000 to 400,000 in 1800 to only 50,000 by 1860.
No, Sir. This is a republic which protects minority opinion. I do not want to reintroduce the Athenian democratic device of ostracism. If the state taxpayer funds schools - then freedom of expression and thought - however unpleasant is protected and should be allowed.
He fits right in with the other lunatic, Jose Canseco. Blame white people. What a disease we created with the white guilt complex.
Apparently the Honolulu Star-Bulletin has retracted the statement that he said he was not an Indian, in an article here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1349982/posts
You want to talk about a lawsuit Ms. Hoffman? You do nothing and some student listens to mental Ward and loads himself up with ammo and walks into Wall St., as he's suggested they do in a tape I heard from a past lecture, and THEN you're going to have a lawsuit that will shut down our entire state of Colorado..
Protesters of visiting University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill gather outside before his public lecture entitled 'Speaking Truth to Power: Academic Freedom in the Age of Terror,' at the University of Hawaii campus in Honolulu, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005. Churchill, criticized for his comments likening some Sept. 11 victims to Nazis, defended his position before an overflow crowd Tuesday night at the University of Hawaii, saying the attack on the World Trade Center was inevitable given U.S. international and economic policies. (AP Photo/Ronen Zilberman)
so he said he was an Indian before he was not... hmmm... sounds familiar for some reason...
Most standard job applications have fine print which states that 'false answers...to any question...are grounds for immediate dismissal.'
Amazing that you conclude 'all our troubles is Union Trouble.'
You make Ward Churchill look like an Aristotelian thinker.
since we moved to Colorado ten years ago we've dozens of new-age indian wannabes. They build sweat lodges, get "medicine" and "magic" from so-called Shamans (one I knew personally laughs his butt off about this and makes a good living burning sage and smoking these idiots). These hippies are a joke and can't get enough of a culture that they truly do not understand.
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