Job Discussion Forums

[Paulie2003]

Well...another outspoken genius manipulates the media BIGTIME and rakes in the $$$!

He seems to think the Good Ole' USA deserved what we got in the 9-11 attacks - and who am I to disagree?

Maybe he'll get enough hate mail to sink him into a serious bout of depression...

Hey, I lost my job because I refused to teach to a couple of kids who obviously loved Jesus WAY too much...they loved doing things like swearing, yelling and disrupting, and just generally idiotic behaviour that you'd expect from pets...

Jesus will have the last word tho...

Strange situation in Latin America...sometimes its more punishment to remove the teacher from class and let the idiots have their way...I feel SO sorry for the students that were truly diligent tho...they deserve better...but who am I to argue...

WHO AM I...anyway

Ready to move on...eventually...

God's LOVE to you all...

[moonraven]

XXX

Sorry--too Luddite to remove an entire post.

[moonraven]

Ward Churchill, a Native American, was forced to resign his position as Chair of Ethnic Studies (he is still a tenured professor, for the moment) at that university in Colorado because he made the case that 9/11 should not have been unexpected given the US's history of genocide and interventionism. I said the same thing on the very day, 9/11, on Mexican television. It happened that my employer agreed with me--but it wouldn't have mattered to me anyway.

He's getting plenty of hate mail--and plenty of hassles in a racist state like Colorado, but I doubt seriously that he will doubt his convictions, or sink into a profound depression. Depression is repressed anger--which instead of being directed outward, is directed inward. If anything, by speaking his mind very directly, he probably vaccinated himself against depression.

I'm very sorry that you lost your job, Paulie--but if you were as arrogant and unconscious in regard to the messages you received in that school as you were to those that you have been given on this forum, then I would have to take a page from Ward Churchill's book and say that your dismissal should not have been all that unexpected.

In any case, good luck in your next caper!

[refazenda]

It's interesting how people get upset sometimes at reality. The reality is that there are a lot of people who do not like the US. Not necessarily the people (though we have all heard of and possibly seen the "Ugly American" out there), but certainly the US government. That's just a fact. And the US, knowing that some people hate it so much, should not have been surprised that someone blew up a major landmark and killed a lot of poeple. It is not the first time, and furthermore, if anyone remembers Oklahoma City they will realize that some American "patriots" also killed innocent children. So there should be no surprise factor.

At the same time, those people did not deserve to die. But I will say this: if Mr. Churchill is a Native American, I am sure he knows the history of the US in relation to his ancestors, and in knowing that history might simply think of this as the chickens coming home to roost.

Putting it another way (and shifting to another part of the world), some Israeli government officials who were once "freedom fighters" were also considered terrorists. Now they must deal with terrorism against them. This was more recent (events of the 20th Century), but nonetheless shows a shift in their position. The same argument can be made by some in looking at the history of the US. Tea, anyone?

Just my $.02 - analysis without any

[ls650]

The 'essay' in question:
http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=news&c=recent&view=9&long=1

It's not much of an essay - and I find it hard to have any sympathy for the man. Calling those victims who worked in the WTC (whether a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald, a receptionist, a maintenance worker, or a dishwasher at "Windows on the World") "little Eichmanns" is truly stupid.

[moonraven]

ls650:

Perhaps you only skimmed the Churchill piece--or didn't make it to this part?

"The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a number of things."

And perhaps you are not familiar with the defense of Eichmann--that he was a "good German who only followed orders"? Although I was too young to grasp the significance of the Nuremberg Trials when they were held, I do remember the Eichmann trial--and I suspect a lot of other folks do, too. To say that Churchill is "stupid" because he saw the parallel between the German people in the 30s and the folks in the US much more recently seems a bit lacking in argumentation--and implies that other folks who have written about that similarity are also "stupid"--when it seems clear that folks who do not see the connection are the ones whose cerebral matter suffers from underuse.

And perhaps you are not aware that Churchill basically said the same thing that Susan Sontag (RIP, recently) also said--and received a blast of beep for at the time--only his "stream of consciousness" technique lacked the elegance of her French-style essay?

I have personally been struggling for several months now with the painful process of writing a theater piece about one of the US's more shameful chapters of genocide in regard to Native Americans--the Nez Perce War of 1877--and I find myself very much connected to and, as a Native American, reflected in what Churchill has been saying in his articles and books for a number of years now. The piece he wrote the same day as the 9/11 incidents occurred was the springboard for a book: "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens : Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality".

[ls650]

[moonraven]

You might have chosen a different word than "stupid". Stupidity and poor taste are not the same thing.

To complain about that kind of name calling (little Eichmanns) and then to do it yourself by calling him stupid (which sounds like sandbox talk) undercut your credibility dramatically with this poster. Not that it matters, I suppose.....

[ls650]

<shrug>

[moonraven]

From today's Denver Post:

...Churchill later said he wouldn't take back his "little Eichmanns" statement. But on the day he resigned as chair of the school's department of ethnic studies, he issued a statement in which he said he wasn't comparing all the victims to Nazis, just the "technicians" who died in the attacks.

On Tuesday night, Churchill again emphasized that he was not blaming everyone in the towers for U.S. policies.

"No I did not call a bunch of food service workers, janitors, children, firefighters and random passers-by little Eichmanns," he said. "The reference is to a technical core of empire - the technicians of empire ... obviously I was not talking about these people."

� 2005 the Denver Post

[ls650]

Yeah, I've already seen that comment. It strikes me as being a "weaseling out" of the highest order: "Whoops - I only meant to insult some of the victims!"

[MixtecaMike]

[moonraven]

Hard to call it "weasling out" when he said that he is not going to back down!

The article that has suddenly sparked all the media attention (read harrassment by neoconservatives) was written on Sept. 11, 2001--more than 3 years ago. Since then Churchill expanded on its theme and published a book. Something smells that all of a sudden he is being targeted--if what he wrote was all that controversial, why has it taken almost 3 and a half years to get folks' attention?

If Mike had "bothered" to find out about Churchill, or had "bothered" to read my previous posts on this thread before rattling his keyboard, he would have been aware that Churchill is a Native American, and therefore hardly your typical gringo. It amazes me that folks who routinely shoot from the hip from a position of arrogant ignorance have managed to weasel their way into teaching positions....

[moonraven]

Many of us in TEFL jobs have never had much of an awareness of the concept of "academic freedom" (libertad de c�tedra), given the tenuous nature of many of the positions that we are hired for.

Some of us still believe in the concept, however. And it has always been something we struggled for--did not take for granted.

I can remember back to the spring of 1970. I was teaching in the English department of a large state university in the US Midwest. Kent State in Ohio was not all that far away from us--and the Ohio National Guard had recently fired on and killed some students who were protesting Nixon's unauthorized attack on Cambodia. All around the country faculty senates were considering strikes in support of the protest and to protest the actions of the Ohio National Guard.

In our city the folks who placed barricades in the streets in protest were mostly our students--and they had also been the targets of Guard repression and police arrests. I had spent most of the night arranging bail for arrested students, so was sleeping in the back of the English Department meeting room and woke up when I heard my name mentioned. My department chair had just said that I was the only professor in our department of 135 who truly believed in and practiced and HAD academic freedom. (His comment might have been influenced by the fact that I controlled one of the unions on campus, and therefore was the one who negotiated the funding for our department....)

Those of us who have insisted on our right to academic freedom have always been a significant minority. And that's sad.

With that in mind, here's an article on point:

Academic Freedom? What Academic Freedom?
by Dave Lindorff

Amid all the controversy over the observations of University of Colorado professor and leftist Indian political activist Ward Churchill concerning the military justifiability of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, it's easy to overlook the fact that freedom of academic expression on American university campuses is already virtually dead.

Churchill, who holds a tenured position at his university, is actually in an unusually strong position. With his tenure, the only way that the lynch mob out to fire him can get rid of him without facing a huge damage suit in court for breach of contract would be to prove a case of moral turpitude or dereliction of teaching duties or something equally heinous.

But for many teachers on American campuses--indeed for most teachers on some campuses and all at some--tenure is a thing of the past. Increasingly, universities large and small, famous and unknown, are turning to contract hires to do the teaching. These virtual professors are only offered "folding chairs" that carry a contract--one year, two years, three years, or maybe five years. At that point, they have to be renewed. They cannot be considered for tenure. Many other teachers are simply adjuncts, hired on a year-to-year or semester-to-semester basis to teach one or two classes. They have no contract at all to protect them.

Clearly, a person who has no job security has no freedom of expression. Such professors and adjuncts are no better off than the worker in a Wal-Mart or a General Electric factory--which means they have no more freedom of speech than a 12th century serf. They speak out at their own risk. If any adjunct or contract-hire teachers spoke out politically the way Churchill did and roused the wrath of the unwashed masses and the loofahed and lathered Bill O'Reilly, they'd be gone in a flash--if not the next day, then certainly at the end of the term.

At Temple University, a unionized urban institution here in Philadelphia, for instance (where teachers have been working almost a year without a contract because of management intransigence and demands for givebacks in the area of faculty governance), increasing numbers of professors are working on a contract basis. At Alfred University, where I taught journalism for a year, tenure is a bad joke. Although awarded after a typically exacting process of peer review, it has to be renewed every five years following a new peer review, thus providing as much academic freedom protection as a felt body-armor vest.

There is no question that the lack of tenure makes for less outspokenness, iconoclasm and strength of conviction. I remember when I was working as an adjunct journalism instructor at Cornell University back in 1989, going to an assistant professor colleague who was on the tenure track, looking for support for a proposal I wanted to make regarding the department's minority students, whom I had found were having trouble with my and other teachers' coursework and were then being asked to leave the school, instead of being offered remedial or preparatory assistance. He said, "Oh, that's a controversy I can't get involved in until I get my tenure."

With the bloodhounds of the right getting into full McCarthy lynching mode these days, including organized groups of student yahoos who monitor their teachers' lectures and backed by a phalanx of right-wing media mouths ready to amplify any complaint about non-mainstream viewpoints expressed by teachers in or outside the classroom, the fight for academic freedom has become more than academic. Yet instead of working to strengthen this important and historic tradition not just of tenure but of the very culture of free expression on campus, administrators are caving in to political pressure and undermining both.

Ward Churchill is a fighter, and will go down slugging. Most academics, I'm afraid, will just shut up and become conventional thinkers.

(Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 30 years. A regular columnist for CounterPunch, he also writes frequently for In These Times and Salon magazine, as well as for Businessweek, the Nation and Treasury&Risk Management Magazine. In the late 1970s, he ran the Daily News bureau covering Los Angeles County government, and in the mid-'90s, spent several years as a correspondent in Hong Kong and China for Businessweek. www.thiscantbehappening.net

[Paulie2003]

Churchill smurchill...there's more to life than this Vietnam vet (native American?)...and sure...he's smart - he says he's not working for the State of Colorado...nor the Governor...but 'for you - my students'...

Sure does come in handy that the 'students' have $90,000 to give back to him for his service...

He made about $400,000 on a boggled sexual harassment suit a few years ago - so he's not worrying a bit...

Totally immersed in my artwork at the moment - expecting a BIG show in the >Spring with rave reviews!!!

SO GLAD to be away from about ten or so very loco ninios - don't shed a tear for me...

God love is there for ALL...just reach out and grab hold...and don't let go!