posted on February 1, 2005 08:38:14 AM new
Prof praising 9-11 terrorists
on school's chopping block
Compared Trade Center victims with Nazis, commended jihadists for 'gallant sacrifices'
Posted: February 1, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
The fate of a tenured University of Colorado professor who compared victims of the 9-11 World Trade Center terror attacks to Nazis, while praising the suicide hijackers for their "gallant sacrifices" will be decided at a special meeting of the school's board of regents Thursday night.
In the meantime, Ward Churchill, who yesterday preemptively stepped down as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department, remains a professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at the Colorado school.
The controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," written shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, he describes the thousands of American victims who died in the World Trade Center inferno as "little Eichmanns" (a reference to notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann) who were perpetuating America's "mighty engine of profit." They were destroyed, he added, thanks to the "gallant sacrifices" of "combat teams" that successfully targeted the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
The 2001 essay emerged from obscurity onto center stage when Churchill was invited recently to speak at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., near Syracuse. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims are protesting Churchill's appearance at Hamilton, which is scheduled for Thursday. However, the college's president, Joan Hinde Stewart, assured the Associated Press that "however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill's remarks," the college would honor his right to free speech and the show would go on.
To accommodate the large audience Hamilton anticipates due to the uproar, Churchill's appearance has been re-located from the 300-seat-capacity room originally planned to a facility that will seat 2,000.
On Hamilton College's website, one page is dedicated to the furor over Churchill's appearance, and features hundreds of e-mailed comments, most of which express outrage. The first letter (out of 327 as of this report), starts like this:
MS. STEWART, I AM THE MOTHER OF A FIREFIGHTER WHO WAS KILLED ON SEPT. 11, 2001 WHILE TRYING TO SAVE THE LIVES OF THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO WERE ATTACKED BY THE BARBARIANS THAT INVADED OUR COUNTRY. I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE INFORMATION OF YOUR COLLEGE ALLOWING PROF. WARD CHURCHILL TO CONDUCT A TALK OF HIS VIEWS ON THE ATTACKS. HOWEVER, HIS VIEWS SEEM TO BE SO OUTRAGEOUS AND FILLED WITH DERANGED VIEWPOINTS, I WONDER HOW YOU COULD ALLOW SUCH AN ILL-ADVISED PERSON ON CAMPUS! ... AS A FAMILY MEMBER I CAN TELL YOU, YOU ARE ALL POURING SALT IN A FESTERING WOUND
Stewart, in response to the controversy, notes on the college's website that Hamilton invited Churchill to speak long before becoming aware of his comments about Sept. 11: "However repugnant one may find Mr. Churchill's remarks, were the College to withdraw the invitation simply on the grounds that he has said offensive things, we would be abandoning a principle on which this College and indeed this republic are founded."
Meanwhile, in a statement released Sunday, the CU board of regents announced it's "taking this unusual action" of convening a special meeting of the regents' board specifically to consider what to do with Churchill.
"Mr. Churchill's comments regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2001 have resulted in substantial controversy and the Board of Regents intends to consider the concerns of members of the public and the university community at the special meeting," the statement said.
"While Professor Churchill has the constitutional right to express his political views, his essay on 9/11 has outraged and appalled us and the general public," interim CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano said, according to AP.
Some students on Hamilton's campus last week protested Churchill's scheduled appearance. According to the Colorado Daily, Regent Michael Carrigan said he and his fellow regents have been "deluged" with e-mails and messages over the Churchill controversy.
"We are hearing a lot of concern from the public and we share the public's concern," Carrigan told the Colorado paper Sunday. "That's why we called this special meeting; to discuss our options."
Regent Cindy Carlisle said she is "appalled" by Churchill's essay and insisted "something needs to be done," according to the local paper's report.
Last Friday, Isaiah Lechowit, chairman of CU's College Republicans, urged his student colleagues to protest Churchill in an e-mail titled "Oust the Auschwitz Lunatic."
The Republican student organization is holding a protest rally this afternoon, urging students to sign petitions demanding Churchill's removal.
"Churchill said what he did with confidence because he thinks he can hide under his security blanket of tenure," Lechowit told the Colorado Daily, "but even tenure has its limits." While Lechowit said Churchill deserves to be ousted from the university altogether, some students are defending the controversial professor.
Ethnic studies senior Dustin Craun and other students, many from Churchill's ethnic studies department, liken the controversy to a "witch hunt," said the paper. "White men trying to get an Indian out of Boulder? That's nothing new," said Craun. "That's how this city was started." Churchill is reportedly a Cherokee Indian by birth.
In an interview Sunday with the Colorado Daily, Craun said: "I see it as an academic freedom issue." Describing Churchill's "Roosting Chickens" essay as a revolutionary scholarly discourse by an expert on genocide, Craun added: "It's a theory; it shouldn't have anything to do with fact."
posted on February 1, 2005 02:01:03 PM new
::Last Friday, Isaiah Lechowit, chairman of CU's College Republicans, urged his student colleagues to protest Churchill in an e-mail titled "Oust the Auschwitz Lunatic."::
This would be the same idiot that expressed shock and dismay at the liberal biase of the University.
Hey brain dead - before you decided to invest tens of thousands of your parents dollars did you do ANY research on the school? Eveyone knows that CU Boulder is a liberal school.
As for firing the professor... Yes, what he said was completely assinine but the fact that it was an opinion stated 4 years ago in an essay as opposed to a teaching doctrine put forth in his classes I really don't see why he should be fired.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on February 1, 2005 02:01:26 PM new
Just in case WorldNet might have accidentally put their own slant on this report, readers who'd prefer to actually form their own opinions can access the essay Here:
posted on February 1, 2005 02:16:03 PM new
Death threats lead college to cancel event
Professor had compared 9/11 victims to Nazis
Associated Press
CLINTON, N.Y. Hamilton College canceled a panel discussion with a professor who compared Sept. 11 victims to Nazis today, with school officials saying they had received multiple death threats.
Hamilton spokesman Michael DeBraggio said threats were made against both college officials and guest speaker Ward Churchill, who resigned Monday as chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado.
In an essay written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews. Churchill also spoke of the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.
The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak Thursday at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the appearance.
Administrators at first moved the scheduled appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.
Hamilton College President Joan Hinde had said that "however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill's remarks," the college was committed to his right of free speech.
Despite resigning as department chair, citing "the present political climate," Churchill will retain his teaching job.
posted on February 1, 2005 03:45:04 PM newNot that either of your links is impartial Prof, after all they have a link to a site calling Pres Bush a "International Terrorist".
The two links I posted, Bear, are links to the man's writings in his own words. Not filtered through anyone else's bias. Obviously, the rest of the site is biased. That's why I posted only links to his actual writings. You should read them.
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
posted on February 2, 2005 03:21:43 AM new
I hope they do force him to resign.
By Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BOULDER, Colo.
Calls for University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's resignation intensified yesterday as Hamilton College rescinded its speaking invitation....
Meanwhile, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, added his voice to those calling for Mr. Churchill to step down from the university faculty. On Monday, Mr. Churchill resigned as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department, but his critics said the gesture fell short.
"No one wants to infringe on Mr. Churchill's right to express himself," Mr. Owens said yesterday. "But we are not compelled to accept his pro-terrorist views at state taxpayer subsidy nor under the banner of the University of Colorado. Mr. Churchill besmirches the university."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on February 2, 2005 05:33:17 AM new
I can see why this has taken so long to come out... had this come out earlier, Churchill probably would be with his brethren in Allah land...
As it stands it is just BS like those who have written there was no holocaust... don't buy it or read it and it will pass.
posted on February 2, 2005 09:14:05 AM new
Colorado governor wants 9-11 prof out
Says state not compelled to accept pro-terrorist views at taxpayer cost
The governor of Colorado yesterday called for the resignation of the University of Colorado professor under fire for comparing the victims of the 9-11 World Trade Center terror attacks to Nazis while praising the suicide hijackers for their "gallant sacrifices."
Gov. Bill Owens sent the letter to the president of the University of Colorado College Republicans, Isaiah Lechowit, who was scheduled to read it at a rally in opposition to professor Ward Churchill.
All decent people, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, should denounce the views of Ward Churchill," wrote Owens. "Not only are his writings outrageous and insupportable, they are at odds with the facts of history."
As WorldNetDaily reported, the controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," written shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, he describes the thousands of American victims who died in the World Trade Center inferno as "little Eichmanns" (a reference to notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann) who were perpetuating America's "mighty engine of profit." They were destroyed, he added, thanks to the "gallant sacrifices" of "combat teams" that successfully targeted the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
On Monday, Churchill stepped down as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department but remains a professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at the Colorado school.
Tomorrow night, the university's board of regents will have a special meeting to discuss the tenured professor's fate.
Wrote Owens: "Not only are [Churchill's] writings outrageous and insupportable, they are at odds with the facts of history. The thousands of innocent people and innocent they were who were murdered on September 11 were murdered by evil cowards Indeed, if anyone could possibly be compared to the evildoers of Nazi Germany, it is the terrorists of the 21st century who have an equally repugnant disregard for innocent human life.
"No one wants to infringe on Mr. Churchill's right to express himself. But we are not compelled to accept his pro-terrorist views at state taxpayer subsidy nor under the banner of the University of Colorado."
Owens, a Republican, said the professor's views are more than just anti-American, but are "at odds with simple decency, and antagonistic to the beliefs and conduct of civilized people around the world. His views are far outside the mainstream of civil discourse and useful academic work."
Concluded Owens: "His resignation as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department was a good first step. We hope that he will follow this step by resigning his position on the faculty of the University of Colorado."
Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., near Syracuse tomorrow, but yesterday officials at the school canceled the appearance, citing security concerns and death threats they had received.
posted on February 2, 2005 09:40:50 AM new
As far as I know, freedom of speech has not been rescinded in this country. Do I like what this man has said? No. But I support his right to say it--as should everyone who claims to support the American way.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on February 2, 2005 10:23:37 AM new
Freedom of speech is alive and well. And I believe it was reamond who once stated that our Constitution right to free speech was put there so we could freely speak out against our government. Not that could say anything...like incite riots, hate speech, yell FIRE in a threater...etc.
Taxpayer money supports this college. Thus I agree with the decision not to pay him to promote is anti-American agenda at this college. He CAN, however practice his 'speech' rights on a public street....but not in a college where our young people are put at risk by the threats of violence that were coming in. NO WAY, jose. That's like inciting a riot to me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on February 2, 2005 06:57:37 PM new
Bunnicula, he has every right to say those things. However, he wll have to face the repercussions for what he said, just like everyone else.
Freedom of speech means you have the right to say nearly anything you want without government censure. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that you can do it without repercussions from your fellow citizens.
And if it's a state school, then he's a state employee. The state has every right to fire him if they want.
--------------------------------------
Replay Media - The best source for board games, card games and miniatures on the web! http://www.replaymedia.com
posted on February 2, 2005 07:17:31 PM new
::Thus I agree with the decision not to pay him to promote is anti-American agenda at this college.::
I guess we are just going to ignore the fact that that is not what he is doing. We'll ignore feedback from his student for the past four years that state that these opinions were not part of his teaching and we'll ignore that as far as anyone can tell, the only time the opinion was expressed was in an obscure paper written in 2001.
Linda - listen to someone other than Hannity on this one. Fox isn't exactly giving an accurate picture.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on February 2, 2005 07:18:25 PM new
Tsk tsk, Let's see how far tenure will take this #*!@.
He's not necessarily wrong about U.S. policy, he just demonstrates what is wrong with the extreme left. He needs to take lessons in the appropriate usage of highly negative words and phrases.
posted on February 2, 2005 07:49:53 PM new
Bear, I find it interesting that you haven't copied any of the man's own words, only what WorldNet says he said. Why is that?
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
posted on February 2, 2005 08:43:17 PM newAnd if it's a state school, then he's a state employee. The state has every right to fire him if they want.
Actually they don't. The man isn't using this essay, which he wrote 3 years ago BTW, in his classroom. He is part of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder which has classes on Afroamerican, Asian AMerican, Chicano, and American Indian (Churchill's area) studies.
There is also the fact that much of the media has distorted what he actually said.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on February 2, 2005 08:49:48 PM newThere is also the fact that much of the media has distorted what he actually said.
Exactly right bunni. See my post to bear above. I'll bet he hasn't even read what the man actually said. It's easier to take WorldNet's words as gospel. Sad...
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
posted on February 3, 2005 07:27:57 AM newWhat I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns."
Prof, in Churchill's own words above, calling anyone "little Eichmanns", IS the EQUILIVANT of calling them "NAZI's", being as Eichmann WAS a NAZI.
There is also the fact that much of the media has distorted what he actually said.
What? The media distorting someones words? So now you lefties are complining when the media turns against you,,,
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
[ edited by Bear1949 on Feb 3, 2005 08:03 AM ]
posted on February 3, 2005 08:07:35 AM new
I couldn't have said it better, thanks Doc....
------------
Ward Churchill's 'Acceptable' Hate Speech
Written by Doc Farmer
Thursday, February 03, 2005
By now, you've probably heard about a leftist professor (is there another kind, I wonder?) named Ward Churchill. He teaches - and I used the word advisedly - at the University of Colorado, apparently specializing in something called ''Ethnic Studies'' and also is a coordinator of American Indian Studies. Which is just a fancified way of saying, ''Hey, let's blame whitey!'' in such a way as to be more palatable to the average lib/dem/soc/commie.
He's made a name for himself by being a jerk, to put it bluntly. Oh, I'm sure he's got all kinds of alphabet soup behind his name, and he's got the golden fleece of tenure protecting his job, but you need only read some of his writings to know that, at the base of it all, he's simply an anti-American, pro-terrorist, self-hating, denigrating, specious, vile, nugatory, obscene, spiteful, odious, turd-like waste of protoplasm. Attend:
'If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough - and it should be noted that this sort of ''aerial warfare'' constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of ''civilized'' behavior - the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers.''
Hmmm, somebody better tell this twit that it was the UN who authorized the war in 1991, as well as the sanctions that followed. Oh, and remind him also that the UN was skimming billions off the top of that oh-so-badly-named ''Oil for Food'' program. By the way, wasn't Saddam supposed to be buying nutrients, medicines, and other materials for those toddlers he's so concerned about. Guess he was too busy building palaces and buying guns from the Rooskies, the Krauts and the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkey-Bastards to get to that part of the shopping list, eh?
'There may be a real utility to reflecting further, this time upon the fact that it was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for things they as individuals had done, bur for what they had allowed - nay, empowered - their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name. If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to Good Americans as it was the Good Germans.''
So, Americans by association are all guilty of ''war crimes'' according to this yutz, because his heroes (the terrorists) were somehow treated poorly by this country. Boo-freakin'-hoo. We weren't the ones who invaded Iran, or Kuwait. We weren't the ones with the rape rooms, or the giant plastics shredders, or the torture chambers (real torture, not panties-on-the-head stuff). In fact, Saddam has, without a doubt, killed more Muslims than any other man in the history of the planet, while the United States has saved and freed more Muslims than any other country in the history of the planet. I'm beginning to see why this ''professor'' is teaching a liberal arts course. His math sucks.
'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.''
For those of you too young to remember, or those who have had a public school education, Adolph Eichmann was the architect of the ''final solution'' in Nazi Germany. He is generally credited with the overall design of a process that slaughtered over 14 million civilians - Jews, Slavs, Romany, and any other ''ethnically impure'' group. So, Mr. Churchill (Sir Winston must be spinning in his grave over the fact he shares a surname with this jackass) has just compared over 3,000 dead men, women and children, of different faiths, nationalities and races, of being mass murderers. Uh, Earth to Ward - THEY were the folks who were VICTIMS of a mass murder, you ninnyhammer!
It kind of devolves from there. Mostly it is five thousand, one hundred and forty two wasted words (not counting the addendum), an ongoing diatribe against Bush (you're shocked, I can tell), America, Mom, apple pie, the girl next door and capitalism. Sadly what we've come to expect from academicians, professors, and other leftist dolts that parents pay hard-earned money to in order to have their children's minds ''uplifted'' and prepared for life.
Of course, the lib/dem/soc/commies are wringing their hands in abject fear that this poor, unfortunate, well-meaning teacher is being called names for having an opinion. ''Free Speech!'' they cry. ''Academic Freedom!'' they bray. ''Racism!'' they complain. Wait, what was that last one? Racism? Seems to me that this professor is the one who is being racist, in his hatred of honkeys (such as mself) and his tender love of Islamofascist bastards like the ones who murdered innocents, and continue to do so. Ah, but this vaunted professor is apparently a ''native American'' (or ''Injun'' as we used to call them when I watched TV in the early 60s) and therefore cannot possibly be viewed by any liberal mind as possibly racist. Moreover, he hates Dubya, and as we all know, anybody that does that must be a clear-thinking, fair-minded guy - like, for example, Robert Byrd (KKK-WV).
The fact of the matter is that Ward Churchill will not be punished for his racist views, his anti-American screed or his love of the enemy. He's a lib/dem/soc/commie. Hell, they elect draft dodgers, murderers, klansmen, and traitors to high office. They believe that any lie is acceptable so long as it promotes their power and influence. They hate, for hate's sake, and scream down at anybody who dares to disagree with them as haters or bigots themselves. They'll blame everybody else but themselves for their own failings, and lash out at anyone who points out their folly and their failure.
Just as Ward Churchill is doing.
Finally, a personal note: We are at war, Mr. Churchill. Not one of our choosing, nor one of our fault, despite you're insipid and false beliefs. It is a war unlike any other, with a scope and impact potentially as great and as terrible as World War II if left unchecked. If you had made such a speech or dissertation as you recently published, say, 63 years ago, you would have been tried for sedition and treason, and shot. By a lib/dem/soc/commie president, I might add. Count yourself fortunate that the worst that can happen to you now is that you might lose your job. I'm certain that you've lost any respect anyone ever held for you. Except, of course, the respect of folks like Saddam Hussein, Usama bin Laden, and your other heroes. I'm quite sure they'd happily thank you for all your help.
Before they slaughtered you for being an infidel, that is.
posted on February 4, 2005 08:33:08 PM newProf's Indian roots disputed
By Stuart Steers, Rocky Mountain News
February 3, 2005
The United Keetoowah Band Cherokee says University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is not a member of their tribe. "He's not in the database at all and is not a member of the Keetoowah," said Georgia Mauldin, the tribal clerk in Tahlequah, Okla.
In his books and articles, Churchill has described himself as a member of the Keetoowah Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. In past interviews, he's claimed to be one-sixteenth Cherokee.
posted on February 6, 2005 11:11:58 AM newIn an interview published Saturday in the Rocky Mountain News, Churchill added, "This was a gut response opinion speech written in about four hours. It's not completely reasoned and thought through."
posted on February 7, 2005 01:52:37 PM new
Hello All, talking about freedom of speech and getting paid for what one says. How can a guy get on the White House payroll and get paid to spread Bush's propaganda about his failed programs? I see the White House is handing big money to a few republican so called "journalist". Now that's another example of the republicans view what free speech is.
posted on February 7, 2005 03:50:56 PM new
Free speech doesn't mean free speech. I have said it several times in here ask George Carlin about free speech....
_________________
[ edited by Libra63 on Feb 7, 2005 04:13 PM ]
posted on February 8, 2005 01:08:28 PM new
Bias in ivory towers
By David Cowan
It seems that liberals are confused about why conservatives care so deeply about what goes on in the groves of academe. They do not get why conservatives are very vocal about political bias in the classroom, which is combined with lessons in everything from anthropology through to zoology.
2005 is proving already to be something of a vintage in this respect. First, we had the debacle over comments offered by Larry Summers at Harvard on women in science. Now we have a Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, hopefully no relation to the great statesman Winston Churchill, who wrote an essay comparing those who died in the horror of September 11 with the Nazis who perpetrated the Holocaust.
Liberals are confused about these skirmishes as well, and do not see any contradiction between their condemnation of Mr. Summers on the one hand, and their collegial support for the professor on the other. Mr. Summers is to be forbidden the defense of First Amendment rights, though he was positing an idea for intellectual debate in the best traditions of liberal academia. Meanwhile, our erstwhile professor is to have full access to the First Amendment defense for making insulting remarks in a third-rate essay.
Though perhaps not highbrow enough for his university's reading lists, the Dr. Doolittle novels featured something called the Push-me Pull-you animal. This confusing animal had a head at two ends and couldn't always decide which way to go. So he always seemed to be going in two different directions. Sound familiar?
In the debate raging across campuses up and down the country, this animal is often seen in human guise. The absurdity of academics jumping to the defense of the professor is that it now seems intellectually acceptable to call American people Nazis, but please do not call them Christians. The theological point is closer to the truth, that we all bear the fault of sin.
However, while we retain our sinful nature, we may turn to God in a denial of sin and evil. The Americans who died September 11 were no doubt true to the nature of being American, namely a people that deny a place for evil in our society and in the world. Those who killed them did so with evil intent and evil result, but out of the ashes of this assault on what is good came a crystallization of what evil is in fact.
When President Reagan talked about Russia as the evil empire back in the 1980s, no doubt the professor was in the back row sniggering. Perhaps Mr. Reagan's rhetoric had too much that was abstract for some. When President Bush talked about evil in the wake of September 11, he meant it and we saw it, and we saw what evil men can do.
Of course, evil is one of those embarrassing words that secularists, and many liberals, like to dismiss. It is an embarrassing four-letter word that causes more distress to them than some other four letter words that we prefer not to hear in polite company.
Like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, evil is a word that means just what it says it means, neither more nor less. Certainly, there is much to be said for a balance of ideas and opinions, and we should freely express our understanding in order to test our ideas against other opinions. The problem occurs when this process gets narrowed down to a politically acceptable set of biased views, and where disagreement is fine so long as you agree on the boundaries of what is disagreeable. In this scheme of things, many conservative and religious views are considered to be beyond the boundary.
So, here's the beef conservatives have. They care deeply that much of what is taught in universities, colleges and schools across the country is not reflective of America, nor is it intellectually rigorous. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the young students of today are being taught by the young students of yesterday, and they in turn will teach the young students of tomorrow. The system becomes self-perpetuating, with many academics having little exposure to the realities of the outside world. This enables them to entertain the most fantastical propositions, apparently without the need to test them empirically against how the world actually works.
George Orwell put it best when he explained that there are some ideas so idiotic that only intellectuals would believe them. Well, the professor has certainly proven the point.
posted on February 9, 2005 06:02:11 PM new
OMG, Doc Farmer UNDERSTANDS!
A few excerpts from his article:
Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkey-Bastards
LOL, much better than 'liberal pukes'!
Islamofascist bastards
a put-down to bastards everywhere. How 'bout Islamofascist fig-puckers? Or something like that.
They hate, for hate's sake, and scream down at anybody who dares to disagree with them as haters or bigots themselves.
In reference to the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkey-Bastards
In fact, Saddam has, without a doubt, killed more Muslims than any other man in the history of the planet, while the United States has saved and freed more Muslims than any other country in the history of the planet.
Uh, maybe we need to re-think this.
And now this limp piece of dog lawn ornamentation is defiant! Read the article:
posted on February 10, 2005 05:37:50 AM new
This is the best analysis of this freedom of speech issue.
Raise Your Voice but Keep Your Head Down
By Michael Albert
I first met Ward Churchill when I was working at South End Press twenty five years ago and Ward submitted his first book which was about Marxism and Native Americans. It was a collection of essays which revealed why indigenous people distrust Marxists' cultural politics and community norms. I found Churchill's insights very compelling and became friends with him. I haven't seen Ward for years, but every so often we publish a piece by him on ZNet, where I now work. I offer all this in case anyone might feel our ties bias my viewpoint.
I think the current controversy about Ward Churchill is a manipulative attack on free speech aimed at the whole left. I remember when Ward's post 9/11 essay came out. My reaction was to wish he hadn't written it. Ward took clear and cogent insights about the causes of international hostility to U.S. policies and weighed them down with not so clear and not so cogent non insights about the general population of the U.S. This kind of mix is always a problem, not least because astute but reactionary readers will try to dismiss the good by pointing to the bad. It doesn't matter that that is like trying to dismiss Newton's positive contributions about gravity on grounds that he believed in alchemy. When attacked with manipulative skill, tangential flaws can be used to undercut important truths.
On a larger scale, that's what people are now trying to do to Ward himself, as well: dismiss him in toto, as a person and as an employee of a university, over a single essay some key parts of which were, I would agree, worthy of criticism.
There are two problems that should not be confused with one another. One problem is that no person should be seen as only the tangential worst that he or she does, even if there is a complete consensus about the failings, unlike in this case.
Ward Churchill, for example, over the years, has contributed a great deal to the comprehension of cultural concerns and possibilities as well as to revealing the dynamics of repression and international relations. Ward is a prodigious writer and an effective speaker and organizer who has fought for just causes over and over.
I don't agree with Ward's views on some health issues, on population issues, and on certain particular cultural matters, much less on the efficacy of what we might call political trash talk about strategies of struggle. But none of that has interfered with my liking Ward the person and feeling positive about his many contributions. Ward Churchill should not be judged solely on a single essay written the day after a gargantuan calamity, whatever anyone may think of that piece. Parts ought to be criticized, yes, but not the person who wrote it. It is the difference between ad hominem and substantive argument.
But second, and in this case more important, there is the little matter of free speech. Criticizing what someone says is not the same as writing them death threats and trying to terminate their career. The right-wing thugs who are after Ward Churchill are stalking horses for more astute and sober folks in the rear. The troops in the field are Ward's proximate problem, but the powers that be--at the University of Colorado, in the Colorado state government, in major media from Fox to The Wall Street Journal and from ABC and the New York Times, through to the halls of Washington DC--are ultimately far more important.
Are reactionary elites going to coercively remove Ward Churchill from U.S. academia? That needs to be prevented by all of us, including people annoyed at having to wage the free speech fight over words they do not like. Raise your voice.
Why is it so hard for people, often on both sides of the left/right divide, to understand that what free speech means, if it means anything at all, is freedom to speak what others do not like or even cannot stand to hear?
Tolerating what you like is hardly a major achievement. Hitler tolerated what he liked. So did Stalin. Idi Amin did too. So did Genghis Khan, the Shah, and Henry Kissinger. Free speech only becomes an issue when someone says what others don't want to hear. Ward Churchill did that and so free speech is now an issue. If the wrong side wins, the precedent will be dangerous.
This dynamic is not new but it is growing bolder. A recent report in the New York Times relayed how teachers in many states and counties in the U.S. are avoiding evolution by natural selection as a topic in their public school classes. The teachers fear fallout from fundamentalist parents, scared school board members, and even politically cowed principals. Ward's fight and the fight of these teachers are logically of one cloth. The difference is that so far Ward has more guts.
Ward used to tell me, after a visit, "Keep your head down." He had seen war at home and abroad and he knew what he was talking about. Now Ward is in another kind of war. I doubt any of these right-wing thugs will come after him bodily. But the harm they can do institutionally is bad enough. Keep your head down.
Why Ward Churchill? I think Ward would probably say it is because what he is doing is very effective. Ward may even see the attacks on his essay as evidence that the essay had great dissident merit. I think Ward would be wrong in that. Ward is being attacked not because he is the strongest possible target, but because he is one of the weakest possible targets. His essay is featured not because it was seriously threatening, but because it is easily ridiculed. Ward provided right wingers fodder they could manipulatively use. The right wingers are hoping that Ward has sufficiently irritated those who would otherwise defend him so that he is left without defenders. We can't allow that. The right is a long way from going after stronger targets. Everyone on the left has to be sure no targets they do go after are vulnerable.
Since 9/11 at public talks I often compare George Bush and Osama bin Laden. I note that if you could have been a fly on the wall of the inner circle meeting rooms of the U.S. government leading up to the bombing of Afghanistan, I believe you would have heard no discussion, not even a minutes worth, taking into account the well being of the Afghan people in the face of possible massive starvation induced by our assault. Mass media at the time reported (on back pages only) that bombing Afghanistan could lead to five million deaths. No mainstream paper had a headline "U.S. contemplates killing millions to prove we are tough," though all knew it was true.
I also indicate in the public talks that if I were to now have the opportunity to ask bin Laden how he could possibly have chosen to undertake the assault on the Twin Towers, despicable as this act was, I think he would probably understand the question and would reply, roughly, that he thought the gains (in trying to propel the U.S. into reactions that would provoke fundamentalism throughout the Mideast) were worth the price in human loss. Bin Laden, as evil as his designs surely were and are, would understand, that is, that there was something untoward that occurred on 9/11, piles of corpses, and that the negative deaths had to be weighed against what he saw as positive political gains. Sane people will reject his moral calculus, of course, but I am guessing that at least he had one.
On the other hand, I say in these talks that if I were to now have the opportunity to ask Bush and Cheney how they could possibly have chosen to undertake the bombing of Afghanistan, I think they would not even understand the question. They would not see any need to weigh off benefits against costs because they saw no costs. For them the general estimates made by all responsible parties that literally millions of Afghans might suffer starvation if bombing were to commence counted for naught. For them, Afghans are like bugs outside our front door are for the rest of us. To Bush and Cheney Afghans are expendable. Bush and Cheney have no moral calculus. They reduce humans to the status of fleas.
And then I say in these talks, if there is a deep hell for sinners surely Osama bin Laden is headed for at least its seventh floor down, but George Bush and Dick Cheney are going to ride an elevator even further down to a deeper basement. Everyone at talks like this given in the U.S. understands these images and few have any problem with the harsh tone. When I have given talks like this in Europe, however, I have been asked why I am alive. I was confused the first time I heard this question in France, and then in Belgium and Italy, and then I realized what they meant. "If the U.S. is as bad as it seems, why don't Bush and Co. eradicate people as radical and militant as you? That's what our really bad guys did here in Europe, after all."
Well, the answer is that things in the U.S. are not that bad. Our fundamentalists can only pick on targets that are relatively weak and effectively repress them in states that are relatively congenial to right wing thuggery, and even then they can do so only in relatively limited ways, at least so far. But if we let our fundamentalists get away with that much, which is already more than bad enough, then it will be just an opening act. If they succeed at first, their efforts will expand.
So why do O'Reilly and the Wall Street Journal pick on Ward? I think it's because his words can be made to seem indiscriminate, and indeed arguably were indiscriminate, and because as a result they felt he would have a hard time fighting back. Pick Ward off, then work on all those teachers still having the gall to tell students that Darwin knew what he was talking about, and then move on from there.
I don't want to rally around Ward Churchill's specific words. They aren't my cup of freedom. I want to rally around Ward Churchill's right to write whatever words he chooses. More, I want to fight for our need to have institutions and social conventions that respect and support dissidence rather than institutions and social conventions that try to extinguish dissidence at every opportunity. Indeed, when we attain that level of free and supported speech, we might have reason to claim a degree of civilization.
P.S. There are plenty of historical instances of individuals being judged for more than one dimension of their lives and writing, even when one dimension had no redeeming logic at all. Here is another comment from W. Churchill (compliments of Mickey Z): "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
Whoops, that wasn't Ward Churchill, it was Sir Winston Churchill, the man U.S. News and World Report called "The Last Hero." Sir Winston also said: "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes," and asked British scientists to cook up "a new kind of weather" for the citizens of Dresden.
I wouldn't recommend taking Winston Churchill out of the library, but I would recommend strongly criticizing his vile words that had far fewer redeeming features than the worst things Ward Churchill has ever even fantasized saying.
posted on February 10, 2005 09:14:56 AM new
And then here comes helen....one so quick to argue for the 'innocent' of other countries against her own country's actions. Now she's defending an anti-American leftist who has blamed our OWN innocent 9-11 victims. Do I ever expect different from her and other progressive/socialists? No...no surprise here at all.
Then we have the ACLU who stepped up to defend this professor who has longed spouted his distaste for America and it's actions. Now he's regained his backbone. Now he's got support from this group who doesn't believe in 'free speech' when it comes to anything religious....but will and is supporting anti-American retoric as his 'right'.
He was dis-invited to speak at another college too. I hope the public 'voice' will be heard loud enough to encourage his removal from our colleges. Our tax dollars, I believe he earns $100,000 a year in his present job, doesn't need to be wasted spouting anti-Americanism. [The voice being the donors to those colleges, the alumni donors and the parents who decide they don't want to spend what took them a lifetime to accumulate....their childrens college funds on such nonsense.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on February 10, 2005 09:41:09 AM new
Oh The sky is falling the sky is falling ....somebody said something we , the herd, don't agree with!
Big Damn deal.....America is so weak this guy is going to bring it to it's knees??????????????????????????????
These parents who spent their hard earned money to send their kids to college(college tuition has gone up HOW MUCH with Republicans in office?)
probably wouldn't want their hard earned taxes going to PAY radio personalities to illegally promote bush's POLITICAL agenda as news.......but it's happening anyway....
posted on February 10, 2005 10:25:50 AM new
Obviously, linda... you haven't read the article. Otherwise, you would know that the author of this article is not defending what Churchill said but rather his right to say it.
"I don't want to rally around Ward Churchill's specific words. They aren't my cup of freedom. I want to rally around Ward Churchill's right to write whatever words he chooses. More, I want to fight for our need to have institutions and social conventions that respect and support dissidence rather than institutions and social conventions that try to extinguish dissidence at every opportunity. Indeed, when we attain that level of free and supported speech, we might have reason to claim a degree of civilization."
posted on February 10, 2005 11:48:03 AM new
I'll make my point again helen. You and others like you seem to ONLY defend our freedom of speech when it's something YOU agree with. But when it comes to the issues you don't agree with...then it should be 'banned' from the entire school system.
And now they're checking into just how this anti-American was able to be hired in the first place, as the head of their Ethnic [Indian] department, when the Indian tribes are saying he's also lying about being an Indian.
But it sure doesn't suprise me that you don't mention a word about his statements about our own innocent 9-11 victims. Could it be that you agree with him?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Four More Years....YES!!!
