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moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

For those who have attacked me because I have called for a defense of academic freedom and free speech:

Published on Sunday, February 13, 2005 by The Progressive
In Defense of Ward Churchill
by Matthew Rothschild

Ward Churchill is under attack.

But it�s not about him.

It�s about free speech and academic freedom.

And it�s about the ability to criticize U.S. foreign policy in the context of 9/11.

As you�ve probably heard, Ward Churchill is a professor at the University of Colorado who wrote some regrettable words in an essay after 9/11, comparing what he called �the technicians� in the World Trade Center to �Little Eichmanns.� That unfortunate comparison was outrageous and insensitive, and I wish he hadn�t made it.

But that doesn�t mean he didn�t have the right to make it.

He has the right that all Americans have: the right of free speech.

And he has the right that all tenured faculty have: the right to express themselves and their ideas freely so that in the free exchange of ideas, truth will eventually win out.

Now, more than three years after his essay, the snarlers and growlers of the right have come after Churchill, led by Bill O�Reilly and the editors of The Wall Street Journal.

Churchill has received many death threats, his car has been vandalized with swastikas, a Denver talk show host said he should be executed for treason, and now Churchill�s job is on the line.

The Board of Regents is undertaking a 30-day review of all of Churchill�s writings and statements.

The governor of Colorado has called for his dismissal. �No one wants to infringe on Mr. Churchill�s right to express himself,� Governor Bill Owens wrote on February 1 in an Orwellian throat-clearing. But then he got the muzzle out. �We are not compelled to accept his pro-terrorist views at state taxpayer subsidy nor under the banner of the University of Colorado. Ward Churchill besmirches the university. . . . Mr. Churchill�s views are not simply anti-American. They are at odds with simple decency, and antagonistic to the beliefs and conduct of civilized people around the world.�

The Colorado House of Representatives on February 2 said his essay �strikes an evil and inflammatory blow against America�s healing process.�

I have read Churchill�s offending essay, � �Some People Push Back�: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.� (To read it and Ward Churchill�s response to the controversy, go to www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html.)

And there is much in there that offends me: his indelicate and imprudent and historically inaccurate comparisons to Nazi Germany, his callousness to those who lost their lives on 9/11, his romanticized treatment of the terrorists and their motives on 9/11, his lack of appreciation for the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, and his disdain for pacifists.

But my strong disagreements with Churchill are beside the point. As are Bill O�Reilly�s or the editors� of the Wall Street Journal or the regents� of the University of Colorado or Governor Owens�s.

Ward Churchill has the right to express himself freely.

And his method of writing and speaking and teaching is to shake people up, to provoke a reaction, so that people will reexamine their beliefs. This provocative style may have the opposite effect, sparking emotional reactions and stiffening psychological defenses, but he�s entitled to his speaking and teaching style.

�I go for the gut,� he explained to the Boulder Weekly on February 10. �That�s my speaking strategy. I go for the gut to provoke a response.�

He�s succeeded this time.

And now he�s in trouble for it.

He rightly identifies the attack on him �explicitly as political repression,� adding: �This is a book-burning exercise. It�s a stifling of political discourse.� And he believes he is but the first of many. �I�m the kick-off. . . . It�s the opening round of a general purge of the academy of people who say things they find to be politically unacceptable.�

We�ve been down this ugly road before.

We need to defend Ward Churchill.

We need to defend free speech.

We need to defend academic freedom.

And we need to defend the right to criticize the U.S. empire.

For the attack on Churchill is an attack also on anyone who dares to question the myth of American imperial innocence.

That was at the very heart of Churchill�s essay. And he is right about the American people�s unblissful, immoral ignorance of, or complicity with, the crimes that our government has committed since its very founding, crimes that have killed innocent people in the tens of millions. Churchill, a Native American professor, knows a thing or two about those crimes.

Churchill delineates those crimes and puts 9/11 on the scale with those crimes. And there is nothing wrong with that, though the Governor of Colorado assailed him as �anti-American� for doing so.

And Churchill warned in his essay that if the United States doesn�t change its policies, it can expect more attacks. The age of impunity is over, he said. And Americans don�t want to hear that.

�The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9/11-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law,� Churchill wrote on January 31.

Everyone who values free speech, everyone who respects academic freedom, everyone who wants U.S. foreign policy to finally obey international law must come to the defense of Ward Churchill.

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

Another point in support of free speech!

Published on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 by The Nation
Free Speech on (One) Campus
by John Nichols

As a joke some years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Ward Churchill's 1998 book Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America. In it, the University of Colorado professor, who is rapidly being turned into the nation's greatest outlaw intellectual by his right-wing critics, argued that nonviolent political activism -- in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- should not be seen as a force for positive social change. Rather, Churchill suggested, pacifism is a counterrevolutionary movement that unintentionally reinforces the very status quo its proponents claim to be dismantling.

As a Quaker, I was not about to buy into Churchill's worldview, which the friend who presented the book with a wink and a nod well understood. And as a journalist who has covered social justice struggles in the United States and abroad for the better part of a quarter century, I knew enough about how political change occurs to find Churchill's thesis wanting.

But I read the book with interest, and found it to be an engaging enough statement of a controversial point of view. It made me think. It forced me to reconsider some of my own presumptions -- although, instead of changing my thinking, Churchill's critique ultimately reinforced my faith that Thoreau, Gandhi, King and their followers are the real change agents. And, while I don't appreciate its premise any more than I do George Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war making, Churchill's book remains on the shelf of serious books to which I return for information and insight.

In other words, while I probably disagree with Ward Churchill more than most of his right-wing critics, I recognize him as a challenging public intellectual who has prodded and provoked my thinking in ways that I have to respect.

So, as a native Wisconsinite, I was pleased when University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Jack Miller became the first campus administrator in the country to resist the right-wing crusaders who have been campaigning to deny Churchill a right to speak at institutions of higher learning.

The thought police at Fox News, led by Bill O'Reilly, have sought to silence Churchill ever since conservative students at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, stirred up a firestorm regarding an essay, Some People Push Back, in which the professor asserted that the hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, had been provoked to action by vile US foreign policies.

"The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course," wrote Churchill, who went on to argue, "As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."

Churchill's argument is a troubling one, as it takes a legitimate point of view -- that wrong-minded US policies increase the likelihood that this country and its citizens will become terrorist targets -- and turns it into an argument that reads like a justification for what most people in the United States and abroad see as indefensible violence.

But, while Churchill's views are radical, and to some offensive, the movement to prevent him from expressing those views on campuses is even more troubling. Ideas that provoke debate are the lifeblood of higher education. Bad arguments get dismissed soon enough. But in the process of discarding the bad, good ideas are invariably made stronger. That is the point of the principle that, for more than a century, has guided intellectual inquiry within the University of Wisconsin system: "Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Campuses in other states, where there is less of a tradition of academic freedom and respect for the First Amendment, have caved in to the pressure from right-wing media to cancel Churchill's talks. But Wisconsin has a long history of setting a higher standard -- and the decision of the UW-Whitewater chancellor to allow Churchill to speak honors that tradition.

John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times.

Paulie2003 · Joined: 29 Mar 2003 Posts: 541

Am I a bell-ringer...or what! I NEVER expected to get this kind of reaction to a small forum post on Churchill - honestly. Well, I have been immersed in my creative bent...this guy is NOT a 'native Amerrican' (which may be just the grounds for firing him) - he is tenured tho...that system shouldda been done with before it was implemented by a bunch of power-hungry, educated elite who thought it'd be a good idea to never have to worry about losing their job...makes perfect sense, huh?

I remember back in the 60's - 70's it was the 'in' thing to have AmerIndian blood...sort of like the Jewish thing for Christians (I AM closer to GOD because, after all, JESUS was a Jew!)...

I had a little sweetheart in highschool - twas said that she DID have some Blackfoot or the like...didn't matter much to me but for the fact that she was the cutest little thing on the face of the Earth (at that time)...

I'm almost certain that GOD loves ya'll...and I might if I got to know some of ya!...

Paulie2003 · Joined: 29 Mar 2003 Posts: 541

I'm very sorry that you lost your job, Paulie--but if you were as arrogant and unconscious in regard to the messages... Shocked

Blah...blah...blah...I just know that I can sense insincerity when I see it...
Can also sense nonsense...

mikesspamlessemail · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 22

She's shifty, like a paranoid raccoon. I liken her to the guards who passed out soap at the Nazi prison camps and then expected to be forgiven after the war. Only they can approach her in terms of being stunningly hypocritical. Be careful, she'll sic the eslcafe police on you if you "fool" with her. Evil or Very Mad

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Paulie, how many different personas do you now have? At this last count, I see 4.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

Well, this thread has become useless.

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Agreed. I officially drive a stake through it's heart.

Paulie2003 · Joined: 29 Mar 2003 Posts: 541

Yeah...like after you suck the life blood out of it...or it you!

Count your own 'personas' - I wonder if you can find ONE!!!

So far...you've come across as a rather wet balloon...

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Paulie, haven't they deported you yet?

Paulie2003 · Joined: 29 Mar 2003 Posts: 541

If they do...it's Canada or nothing!

I've always thought it'd be neat to be a Canuck!

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

Before Paulie and his Multiple Personality Disorder pack it in to Siberia, a couple of follow-up comments on the Ward Churchill flap:

1. Two different people--both from the UK--initiated conversation with me very--and I do mean VERY--early this morning in regard to the shockingly fascist witch hunt being conducted against him.

2. And this is the latest from the Denver Post, from a FOOTBALLER who has more sense of free speech than folks who call themselves teachers on this forum:

ublished on Friday, February 25, 2005 by the Denver Post
Our Fragile Nation
by Reggie Rivers

I sometimes forget how fragile America is.

When I think about our 9.6 million square-kilometer landmass, our 280 million population, our $10 trillion economy, our enormous military, unique constitution, and our long-heralded commitment to the rule of law, I foolishly believe that we would be hard to destroy.

But many Coloradans, including Gov. Bill Owens, believe that our nation is so fragile that the words of Ward Churchill literally have the power to destroy us. Owens said recently, "Churchill has clearly called for violence against the state, and no country is required to subsidize its own destruction. That's what we're doing with Ward Churchill."

This fear has been repeated on talk radio and on the streets by people who sound extremely agitated and fearful that Churchill's words are effective. Generally, I don't think it's fair to cherry-pick small quotes from someone's statements and act as if that represents their complete thoughts on an issue, but since that's exactly what Churchill's detractors are doing, it seems fair to wonder what people mean by "destruction."

Words are powerful. The childhood retort, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me," isn't entirely true, because words can do great harm - but only when they're targeted at a particular person or a particular group, or if they slander, libel or incite immediate violence.

But words that are aimed at an entire nation or at past events are only harmful if they're tied to an action. As a professor, historian and commentator, Churchill makes observations based on research and his own biases. Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong, but he's just one source of information. There's no need to silence him, because there are many other sources.

Churchill's accusers seem to be most concerned about his words that are aimed at the future. They say Churchill wants to destroy the United States and, apparently, they believe that he has the power to do so. They believe that if the taxpayers continue to finance him, we will be destroyed.

If Churchill actually has this power, it isn't apparent. Unless I missed something, he hasn't been accused of committing acts of violence. In fact, when he was arrested with dozens of other protesters at last year's Columbus Day Parade, he was committing nonviolent civil disobedience. And, as far as we can tell, his words haven't inspired anyone else to commit violence, either.

If his words are not connected to an action, then they're just words. In 1748, French philosopher Montesquieu wrote, "Speech does not form a corpus delicti: It remains only an idea ... . How, then, can one make speech a crime of high treason? Wherever this law is established, not only is there no longer liberty, there is not even its shadow ... . Speech becomes criminal only when it prepares, when it accompanies, or when it is followed by a criminal act."

No one is talking about charging Churchill with a crime. His accusers just want to see him fired from his job at CU. Isn't that interesting? Here's a guy who the governor and countless others honestly believe is in the process of destroying us, yet they don't want him to be arrested or thrown in jail. They merely want to kick him off the state payrolls so that we don't have to finance our own destruction.

We need to remember that we're not defined by our population, our landmass, our military, our leaders or our critics. We're defined by our ideas. We hold dear the idea that people should be free to think and speak without fear of state retribution. When we lose sight of our ideals and start to persecute people because they say objectionable things, that's the moment at which we're financing our own destruction.

Former Denver Broncos player Reggie Rivers writes Fridays on the Denver Post op-ed page.

� 2005 Denver Post

Paulie2003 · Joined: 29 Mar 2003 Posts: 541

If America could be destroyed that easily, then Clinton would have done it a long time ago...Churchill is just that...cold to the church - that's all...

He is about as far as a man can get from faith...and faith seems to be avoiding him as well...

Now...concerning some of his 'fans' on this forum...

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Faith has many faces