If the powers that be do not severely discipline Ward Churchill, I call on the citizens of Colorado to demand the resignation of "Ward Churchill" as his racist bile and billingsgate has no place in a place of higher learning any more than incitement to rape, pornography, violence and sexual harassment has a place in the any classroom, particularly one that purports to be one of "higher education".I call on the citizens of Colorado to demand the resignation of "Ward Churchill" as his racist bile and billingsgate has no place in a place of higher learning any more than incitement to rape, pornography, violence and sexual harassment has a place in the any classroom, particularly one that purports to be one of "higher education".

There is room for diversity of opinion. There is room for intelligent, informed civil dialogue. But as Justice Holmes once said, "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
I recall now Thomas Jefferson's statue for religious freedom (1786). I was re-reading it the other day and I essentially agree with it in its entirety as it is fair and reasonable. However, I was made to think. Jefferson said " to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical....it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order. and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself....errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

The real problem with the academy is that years of PC, ethnic studies departments and affirmative action quotas for offically designated "ethnic minorities" and " psuedo-minorities" (women et al ad nauseum) have created a politcal spoils system that tilts dangerously to the left as far as the universities of Nazi Germany tilted to the right after 1933. This is a clear and present danger. The people have a right to denounce such academic demagogues and charlatans. They have a right to demand equality and justice and high ethical and academic standards at their public universities. They have a right to DEFUND, DESOLVE AND RECONSITUTE colleges and universities of higher learning.

As far as the odious, bigoted and ignorant Ward Churchill is concerned and the man is clearly an "Anti-Churchill" as well as an evil demagogue.
A few years back we could claim such outbacks of ignorance and racial bigotry, the 'ethnic studies departments' as "ethnic playpens" without any real intellectual merit and scarcely belonging to the academy. We "bought off the barbarians" by letting them in the academy and now we are paying the consequences. The question is not should the so-called professor Ward Churchill resign from being the department chair of Colorado University but should he resign or be forced to resign from teaching.

Moreover,the true issue is we, the people, should seriously consider in states like California, Massachusetts, Arizona and Colorado whether ETHNIC STUDIES DEPARTMENTS SHOULD BE EXPUNGED FROM THE UNIVERSITIES, DEFUNDED AND RECONSTITUED entirely by PUBLIC REFERENDUM AND INITIATIVE if our elected officials and the trustees of the university do nothing but appease such a villain who declares himself openly to be an enemy of the Republic in a time of war. Lucky for him this is a free country and the standard for treason is very high but historically, in most countries, his behavior besides being morally reprehensible would be treasonous. He has a right to say virtually treasonous things all he likes BUT NOT AT THE PUBLIC EXPENSE!!!

Ward Churchill must be 'defrocked', denounced and repudiated for the sake of freedom and for the sake of honor as well as the sake of the integrity of knowledge and institutions of higher learning.

If you are a minority, I think you should be especially outraged by Churchill's comments. I am quite sure that the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who fought bravely, killed as ruthlessly as any white, and are proud of their nationhood would feel that his portrayal of them as inactive victims in his less-then-scholarly books are inflammatory statements. I doubt Geronimo or Crazy Horse or most Native American scholars would agree with his assessment of their cultures and communities.

I think it is guys like him who stand behind the first (and his oft quoted 9th) amendment when they are under fire, while insidiously silencing anyone with a more conservative point of view in forums where they can exert their authority. I envision guys like Churchill sitting on the hiring committees at universities just to make sure that the future Don Kagan's of the world don't make it. I think it supercedes hypocrisy for a man who can take a 94K salary from the public treasury, living a lifestyle that is only open to a tiny minority of people in this country, to claim that he is "defending the undefended" or "giving a voice to those without a voice." How the hell does he know what it is like to live in a ghetto, not get enough food, or to have to sleep twenty to a bed, day in day out?

He may visit the poor, but he does not live with them. The respite offered by the green lawns of UC Boulder, the 90+K salary are just too comforting and tempting.

From my perspective, it seems very irresponsible.

More then that, there is a level of professional responsibility that any historian must have and a level of objectivity about his subject; I find all of this is conspicuously absent from the bulk of his work.

I wonder if he would like to come live with me for a few days, in a relatively poor largely minority neighborhood with Latinos and mixtotec Indians who do indeed have very little. I wonder if he would listen to their stories of personal growth to get out of poverty and join the rest of us "technocrats." Could he really be attentive to their struggles without lavishing his liberal, condescending sympathy or smug pretension on them with impunity?

Whatever you do, do not make the mistake of thinking that his point of view is not uncommon on the modern campus-he is just an extreme case of the same post-modern malaise that would distort much of what we understand to be accurate history. When one student can get a grant to study "gays in porn" but many bright students cannot get the necessary funding to study classical architecture and art, there is a problem. When the Vagina monologues get priority billing in the Ivy league and The Merchant of Venice gets booted for its racial stereotypes, there is a problem. For an example of what I mean you can check out the SUNY Stony Brook History Homepage, look at their research interests. One of the primary “research clusters” is "race, body, sexuality, and power"....What about the Depression, World War I, WWII? No Span. Am. War? No Renaissance? I must be missing something.

I am sure that in the brave new world of the university "gay porn" has a laudatory place in history departments, but a bright student studying the acropolis or the temple of the Olympian Zeus, probably does not.

As unfortunate as that it is, it seems to be the way of the future, and there is a tremendous amount of pressure on young students to jump on that particular theoretical bandwagon.

If you are a minority though, god help you around people like Churchill. Especially if you are Armenian or Jewish. Then there is a horrible antipathy that vacillates between sympathy for past tragedy and hatred for preserving old-Christianity in a predominantly Muslim region, or Judaism and the modern state of Israel. What can you do? You can almost expect that at least one loudmouth sycophantic professor full of pretension and witty hyperbole will alternately lavish sympathy on your parents while they make the most derisive statements about your life in America, your country of origin and your people.

Luxis et Liscencia.

With luxury comes license.

Post Modernism is a decadent and corrupt form of intellectual pursuit that seems very fashionable to urban elites who have never had to do the hard physical work so necessary for the life of society; never packed a ton of menhaden into 55 gallon drums to sell for industrial oil, never milked a cow, never had to pull the old combine across one hundred fifty acres of soybeans, never had to work as a chicken palmer or in a hatchery; then okay, time to write your thesis on the “indirect oppression and underlying prejudice against….” Fill in the blank. No, no hardscrabble life on a kibbutz for the elite.

I imagine it is easy to say all sorts of fine things sitting behind the wheel of a new Volvo during the morning commute to Boulder.

It is very convenient to be concerned about those who do the hard work of society when you are ensconced on a campus with a manicured lawn. Without experience of life outside the walls of academia, why the hell would anyone take this guy seriously? Why the hell would anyone give someone like that an important public post with responsibilities? A guy who may have helped do some nefarious things during the 60's and has not really contributed any solutions to the perceived sense of injustice he feels.... A frontal assault on the institutions that allow you to make inflammatory comments does not help the poor, the disenfranchised, the American natives. The way I see it, it marginalizes them even more by thrusting their legitimate struggle for parity into a wacky world of pseudo-history. Rather then working through the hard compromises in the mainstream political discourse that could improve their lot, it is much easier to rant and rave from a position of lifetime employment with little fear of repercussion.

That is not to say that all American professors are not grateful for their opportunity to work in a comfortable environment, and live a life of relative comfort, but there are an increasing number who seem to have forgotten that life is much bigger then their study of Amiri Baraka’s cryptic poetry. I am sure the most professors gnash their teeth, even as they are forced to bite their tongues, every time they see this guy. It is all very depressing, but I guess that is the fashion of the time...any thoughts?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Brian,

quote:

From my perspective, it seems very irresponsible.

Indeed, Ward Churchill is a very irresponsible fellow.

However, it was written as follows in the original post:

"There is room for intelligent, informed civil dialogue."

Part of making that room necessitates that you also make room for unintelligent, uninformed, uncivil dialogue.

Ward Churchill is, to put it politely, a complete and utter douchebag.

But should he be fired?

There are relatively stringent and uniform standards for firing a tenured professor. And, under these standards, it seems the answer would be "no".

If the standards for the firing of professors should be changed, that would be a *very* interesting debate to have.

In what way are the current standards inadequate, and how should they be altered? "They should be altered to allow us to fire Ward Churchill" is fun and good teleologically, but for consistency's sake something more is needed.

I think the main issue that is at hand in whether Churchill should be fired or not is not his mindless banter, but to what extent he is upholding his ethical duty to the sanctityof academia. Churchill got his position at UC claiming that he had Native American hertigate, which to this day, he has not been able to prove. He has been accused by colleagues and by scholars to have plagerized in his works and to have falsified information which he claimed came form references, upon examining these references it has been shown that Churchill fabricated and distorted infomration so that it would help fulfill his political agenda. Churchill has for years had affiliations with terrorist organizations and had even justifued the Oklahoma City bombing as well, where we can all remember that there was a daycare in that building, so he's not only comdemning "Eichmanns" but also babies...this is beside my initial point...but still disgusting.

When are people going to say "I will not allow our country's great academic tradition be tarnished and destroyed by men like Ward Churchill!" The man is a joke, he's not teaching anything academic and he has abused his position in the University to break the law! This essay by Voegelin hits the heart of the matter: http://www.mmisi.org/ir/20_03/voegelin.pdf
this is an essay about the German University during the Nazi Era...I think it correlates what is happening on the left today...the left is moving so far left that it has gone to the far right, i.e.: it has become fascist.

I would suggest you do what one does when a child throws a temper tantrum when they do not get their own way and that is to ignore it. Name it free speech acadmic freedom etc tenure if it truely bugs you then ignore it. As long as you pay attention to someone then they have power over you espcially if they enjoy contorversy. As for calling this person a traitor etc in the end it is free speech and that is all it is speech and it in no way shape or form nears treasons. Don't buy his books, attend lectures, take his class if it bugs you. As for firing him for speech that would be absurd as for the other charges against him if those can be proven then fire him. We have a long tradition of allowing for political disent in this country and I would suggest you don't limit it because you don't like the message, because someday it could be your speech that is the message that is unpopular.