By Seth Richardson
There’s a delicious irony in the title of ex-CU professor Ward Churchill’s odious essay, “Some people push back: On the justice of roosting chickens” as the final act in his desperate shadow-puppet play goes before a jury in Denver District Court. It seems that the taxpayers have pushed back, and Churchill’s chickens are about to roost, and justly so.
Found guilty of academic fraud by not one, but several juries of his peers, he was booted out of the university, where he had been comfortably ensconced and gainfully employed by the state of Colorado under a tenure system that protected his expression of odious and reprehensible ideas.
Now he’s getting his day in court, again, because he thinks it was unfair of people to actually scrutinize his academic work or voice their personal opinions about his published statements and character. After disparaging the victims of 9/11, evidently he expected people to accept what he said without comment, and he ignored the possibility that his entire academic career might be brought into question by the people who paid his salary. Big mistake.
The halls of academia are rife with ideological absolutists, mostly on the left, and the entire system is set up to provide academic freedom and make it very difficult to dismiss tenured professors for espousing politically unpopular opinions. But the protections of tenure are not a license for academic fraud. If a professor is going to be ideologically biased, he’s at least got to be honest and academically rigorous in his efforts. No university ought to be required to tolerate a physics professor who knowingly falsifies the results of an experiment. Nor is the state required to employ a professor who knowingly plagiarizes the work of others or misstates documented facts. And that, not his odious essay, is why Churchill was fired. It is true that he probably would have sailed along for many more years, comfortably obscure and under the radar, if he’d been more circumspect. But his ego got the better of him. And Ward Churchill is nothing if not an overblown egoist.
Churchill’s radicalism had been permeating the halls of CU for quite some time, and anybody who knew anything about him, or had ever read his work, was well aware of his predilections, and no few people have wished for a way to send him packing. It’s just that it’s very, very difficult to get academics to investigate other academics. CU is hardly an exception in that regard. Indeed, academic tenure infests every level of education, and while it does often protect academic freedom, it also keeps incompetent and flatly dangerous educators sucking at the public teat in every level of the system, from first grade to PhD. In this case, Churchill got a full measure of due process strictly according to the rules. CU was scrupulous in its investigation and tenure hearings, which Churchill lost at every turn.
But now, as the chickens come home to roost, the best he or his lawyer can do is mount a “but for” defense. “But for” a public outcry at his reprehensible comparison of the victims of 9/11 to Nazi Adolph Eichmann, “but for” former Governor Bill Owens calling for CU to fire Churchill, his attorney David Lane claims, nobody would have noticed the fraud and Churchill would still be purveying his ideology to callow and credulous students unchallenged. Therefore, because the tenure system and First Amendment protected Churchill’s expressions, he claims that CU had no authority to review Churchill’s academic record. Churchill cannot dispute the facts of his fraud, which have been carefully reviewed by his peers, so he’s attacking the messenger.
What neither Lane nor Churchill seem to be able to comprehend is that the First Amendment may protect Churchill’s right to say something odious and evil, but it also protects the right of everyone else to publicly pillory and revile him for doing so. And if you make of yourself a public figure, then everything you’ve ever said or done is fair game for review and criticism.
There’s a metaphor that applies to Churchill’s case: Way back in the dawning days of gunpowder, barrels were filled with black powder and long fuses were wrapped around the barrel. A handle was attached to an axle so the barrel could be pushed, with the fuse unwinding behind the operator. The lucky individual chosen to operate this device, known as a “petard”, would run like hell towards the gate of the castle, pushing the petard before him. As he approached the gate, his more-fortunate compatriots would light the fuse behind him, trying to time the burn of the fuse with the approach speed to the gate, in order to set off the explosives after placement, but before opposing forces could respond to put out the fuse.
Fuse technology however was not very sophisticated, so sometimes the fuse would burn too fast, causing the petard to explode before the operator delivered it to the gate and escaped. In such instances, as his body parts went flying about, his compatriots would say that he’d been “hoist on his own petard.”
The contemporary meaning of “hoist on his own petard,” as applied to Churchill, is that when thought-bomb throwing radicals decide to say something controversial, knowing it will outrage their opponents, it behooves them to first make sure the fuse doesn’t lead back to an academic time-bomb in their past.
Why should we care about an obscure professor’s employment dispute? Because it’s cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to rid themselves of an incompetent and dishonest educator, and for that amount of money, we’re entitled to celebrate the end of this sordid affair. But then again, I’m counting my chickens before they’ve hatched, and it’s possible I’ll be dining on the black bird, because civil juries are notoriously unpredictable. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Author’s note: The original version of this column was rightfully pointed out to be nothing more than an invective-filled screed using some apt and amusing (in a scatological sense) metaphors that at least one reader found offensive. After review and reflection, I must agree, and I offer my apology to those who may have read it before I withdrew it for revision. I have said that I am responsible for my words, and I appreciate the input of readers when I step over the line of good taste and reasoned argument. The beauty of this new media, unlike print journalism, is that corrections can be made, and I’ll do so whenever it’s appropriate.
© 2009 Altnews
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To Seth:
Again, I have to say that I am not aquainted with Professor Churchill’s work. Just something of the nature of his attitude.
I will have to research your claim about the NEA and the Constitution. I personally find that amazing that teachers in this country would not find it important to teach such a profound document, and the potential affect that would have on our society as a whole.
As for the past misdeeds of our predecessors, I would not see that as an important issue, if it were not for the fact that some of these misdeeds continue to take place. Fortunate for us that they are not exercised with such extremes.
The advent of the reasoning associated with the nuclear age is such a series of misdeeds. Major insecurity associated with knowing that our distant shores could no longer protect us caused great fear, rightly so, but paranoia, unnecessarily. Keeping the Russians in tow was appropriate, but going after young people in this country for challenging the authority used to justify going to war in Vietnam was not.
Failing to learn the lessons of Prohabition in the face of this ongoing War on Drugs, has created powerful cartels that are more arrogant and dangerous than any alleged comunist conspiracy. And, inside this country the laws that are being established to fight that war have effectively depleated our finacial resources and effectively undermined the credibility of law enforcement.
Cartels are rich and powerful because our laws only succeed in helping them become richer and more powerful. Legalizing drugs and taxing the proceeds would go a long way toward reestablishing the finacial markets across the country. And, I believe would weaken they very cartels that now threaten our borders.
Going to war in Iraq, regardless of the success we now seem to enjoy, does not avoid the fact that no weapons of mass distruction were never found. That fact has been effectively used to recruit more terrorists than focusing on Afghanistan would have. And now, even they are tired of us. George Bush dropped the ball.
“…his entire body of scholarship is a diatribe against the white man and European culture, which he would like to see extirpated from this continent. His goal is to restore the indigenous tribes to their glory and give them control of the entire nation, and to make subjects of the white man, if not to expel him entirely”: I would expect you to support this charge. Point by point.
“The abysmal state of education in this country is not an accident, it’s a deliberate program of indoctrinating public school children with radical Marxist propaganda to turn them into obedient socialist proletarians, fomented and supported by the members of the NEA, who are either knowing leftists or, in some cases, useful idiots for Marxism who don’t even understand how they are being used to destroy the foundations of this nation.”
OK…
The American Right in gereral and the Far Right in particular hate and fear any kind of education other than fundamentalist Christian indoctrination. “Book larnin’” can lure children into critical thinking, and critical-thinking skills can lead them to challenge the reactionary nonsense they were taught at home and perhaps to oppose the Fascistic, theocratic, “Pax Americana” global empire still dreamed of by neoconservatives, funded by racist cabals, and promoted to the sheeple via talk radio.
I think that balances the ledger. And with that, I will be awaiting more testimony & a verdict.
Arthur:
This nation, like every other nation on the planet, is founded in blood and oppression. There is no culture or nation that has not abused some ethnic or political group in the process of civilization, so singling out the US is somewhat disingenuous. Such periods of conquest and violence are regrettable, and should be object lessons to society so that we can avoid them in the future, but I absolutely disclaim any liability on the part of any person now alive, or our government, for those past wrongs. The victims and perpetrators are long dead, and so no liability remains on the rest of us.
The ideological pastime of assigning ancestral guilt is a pernicious evil that has done absolutely nothing whatever beneficial for any society that has engaged in it. All ancestral guilt does is to prolong the evil and foment yet more violence and discord. The Balkans have been doing it for hundreds of years. Serbs, Croats, Muslims all at each other’s throats for generation after generation. The same is true of Sunni and Shia. Such ethnic, racial and religious ancestral hatred is the bane of human society and I absolutely refuse to participate in perpetrating it here in the US.
Whatever happened to the blacks, the Chinese, the Indians or any other oppressed group in the past is relevant only insofar as it is a lesson for us not to engage in such behavior. But no person subject to such oppression lives today, and it’s time to forget those past wrongs and forgive each other and move on, for the good of society.
This is the real evil of Churchill’s “scholarship.” He’s not satisfied to study the wrongs done to Indians and advocate not repeating the wrong, his entire body of scholarship is a diatribe against the white man and European culture, which he would like to see extirpated from this continent. His goal is to restore the indigenous tribes to their glory and give them control of the entire nation, and to make subjects of the white man, if not to expel him entirely.
But I’ve got a clue for Churchill: I’m a Native American. I was born here, as were my parents and their parents before them. I have every bit as much right to be here as anyone else, and I deny the inherent superiority of any man based on his ancestry, which is, in fact, blatant racism. No matter what was done to the Indians (who themselves perpetrated innumerable evils on whites and other indigenous tribes), that is behind us, and we are all now Native Americans, and we all enjoy equal rights in every regard. The various domestic dependent Indian Nations in this country in fact enjoy rights that the rest of us do not, and I find that to be unfair favoritism and unequal protection under the law based on ethnicity, which ought to be illegal under the Civil Rights Act.
As for Churchill’s students, many of them came to his defense, but that’s hardly remarkable, given that students in his classes had to have been well indoctrinated in left-wing radicalism in order to be ignorant enough to be persuaded to take his classes. It’s my recollection that the few conservative students who admitted to taking his classes complained of discrimination by their fellow students for espousing opinions critical of Churchill’s claims, and I recall one or two complained they felt they had been mis-graded by Churchill for not towing the party line. I’d have to do some research to confirm this, but that’s my recollection from the news reporting of the period.
I agree that the state of education in the US is shockingly bad, an you have the National Education Association and the Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School dialectic to thank for it, and for people like Churchill and other radical left ideologues like William Ayers who infest education at every level.
The abysmal state of education in this country is not an accident, it’s a deliberate program of indoctrinating public school children with radical Marxist propaganda to turn them into obedient socialist proletarians, fomented and supported by the members of the NEA, who are either knowing leftists or, in some cases, useful idiots for Marxism who don’t even understand how they are being used to destroy the foundations of this nation.
The resistance to teaching the Constitution among NEA members is so strong that Congress had to pass a law mandating that public schools must teach the Constitution ONE DAY A YEAR. Even at this, the NEA dupes and shills wept and wailed about “academic freedom” and complained about “political pressure” being put upon teachers.
If I had it my way, schoolchildren would be taught the first part of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Beginning in middle school, students would be required to recite the Declaration of Independence from the beginning through “their future security”, from memory, in its entirely every day, as a substitute for the pledge of allegiance. Students would not be allowed to graduate from one grade to the next without being able to recite all of the material verbatim, individually, before their peers. Fail the recitation and you don’t even get to take your finals, much less graduate.
There’s a place for rote learning. The fundamental precepts of this nation are one, and math tables are another.
To Mr. Guffman:
It is a fundimental fact of recorded history, that this country was established at the expense of many peoples. The American Indian, who’s sovereign status in this country, is not much better than a joke when you consider how many treaties were made and then broken in the name of progress. The black man who help establish the Southern States of America, as the kings of cotton. The Chinese that help build the Western Railroads. All in the name of progress and all done ultimately at their expense as non-humans.
What would the Warren Commission have thought about conspiracy, if they had been aware of the fact, that the CIA was using the Mafia to kill Castro, while investigating JFK’s assassination.
Generous yes!
But, what is shocking to me, is that childeren educated everywhere around the world, have a better understanding of the Constitution of the United States than our own children do.
As I asked Seth, what did his students think of him, and should they have had a voice in this?
To Seth:
I would be curious to know how Professor Churchill’s students felt about their instructor, and whether or not his rhetoric was actually teaching them something?!? I have seen nothing that suggests that his students had any kind of voice in this process.
It’s not just that President Obama is an intelligent man, it is amazing to me that with our education system as it stands, he as a black man was able to become The President of the United States, regardless of the shameless disregard focused on public education, since Brown v. The Board of Education.
Making Civil Rights law had very unfortunate consequences both politically and historically.
Politically, because LBJ was right, when he said that Civil Rights will lose the Southern Democrats to the Republican Party, which it did and continues to do. I believe that our education system has suffered from that fact, because the country spends more energy on a broken justice system, than they do on the fact that we are losing our standing as great educators in the world.
Historically, because the the greatest single concept for the rights of man, “All men are created equal”, is losing touch with it’s potential, because there are those who saw and still see Civil Rights as socialist propaganda.
This public outcry over this Churchill essay, that would result in his termination as professor, was a wasted opportunity to establish an effective public dicourse over this war on terror. Govenor Owens lead the charge choosing to foster outrage over an honest debate over how right or wrong, our forgeign policy is iffy at best.
Guffman:
I guess I should squarely address the question, which as I see it is “Did the Regents resist to the utmost pressures or interference from without in regard to the 9/11 essay?”
The answer to that question is yes, they did. They firmly upheld Churchill’s right to write the essay and they firmly resisted punishing him for doing so.
On the other hand, they did properly bow to public pressure when it came to reviewing allegations of academic fraud which came to light as a result of the public outcry over the essay.
Guffman wrote:
“That one law of the Regents looks like a pretty strong statement. Again, it says faculty ‘should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.’ Do you think that happened in the case of the 9-11 essay?”
Seth wrote:
“The question is whether the dictate of the Regents supersedes the right of the people to oversee and seek redress.”
I’ll take that as a “no.” Thanks.
Guffman:
The question is whether the dictate of the Regents supersedes the right of the people to oversee and seek redress. The University of Colorado is an institution chartered by our state Constitution. It’s governance is independent of the Executive Branch, but it is still subject to the will of the people.
I understand why the University wishes to resist public pressure or pressure from within, but that desire cannot be permitted to denigrate the right of the public to demand accountability and responsiveness from its state academic institutions.
Academic freedom is an important concept, but it is not plenary, and is, and must be subject to the public will. Like any government entity however, there are checks and balances in place to prevent the University from being driven on the shoals of public opinion by the gales of public whim and caprice.
This does not mean, however, that the University may not be required to change its tack as the winds of public opinion change direction. The University is a creature of the people, and as such has a responsibility to the people it serves, not a place above and apart from their needs.
So, I disagree that the Regents had authority to ignore this controversy once it became a matter of public interest. As a result of the publicity, the Regents were saddled with the burden of protecting the reputation of the University as against one of its own. This is not the first time this has come up. Former professor Igor Gamow was terminated for “moral turpitude” for his sexual misconduct with research assistants.
Had Churchill’s academic work been up to par, he would still be employed. It wasn’t, and the protectionist atmosphere at the University had in fact protected Churchill from sanction long after his chickens should have been roosting. What Churchill got was several “freebie” years at the taxpayer’s expense because of the propensity of academics to cover for their own, even in the face of evidence of misconduct.
Therefore, I have no issue at all with the public outcry and opprobrium that eventually brought Churchill down. It’s an expression of the public’s right to subject its governmental entities to strict scrutiny and require them to uphold the standards set forth for employees.
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Seth,
“I would expect you to support this charge”: I’m not making the charge, so I pass. The charge is Churchill’s, I think. You offered a characterization (unsupported) of his whole body of work, and I offered an alternative.
“To say that the Board of Regents should not be pressed by the public, or by the governor, to review cases of alleged academic misconduct is to say that the University is to be assigned a place above criticism and above responsibility to the taxpayers”: Deliberately missing the point. Owens wasn’t on the O’Reilly show to talk about academic misconduct. The law-school dean wasn’t angry about misplaced quotation marks when he called for Churchill’s head. Alums weren’t threatening to quit donating because of his descriptions of the General Allotment Act of 1887….
That one law of the Regents looks like a pretty strong statement. Again, it says faculty “should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.” Do you think that happened in the case of the 9-11 essay?
Arthur:
I cannot disagree with you about the level of political rhetoric today. It’s abysmal.
The only thing I like about Obama is that he is capable of stringing more than five words together in a coherent way. It’s just a great pity he does it as a left-wing demagogue.
I’ve often said I’d vote for Tony Blair for president just because of his eloquence.
Guffman:
I strongly contest the allegation that Americans have treated indigenous people all over the world “like non-humans.” This is a serious charge against a people who voluntarily donate the largest amount of aid to foreign nations of any nation on the face of the planet.
I would expect you to support this charge.
The distinction between Mr. Churchill and an op-ed columnist is that he was a tenured professor at a public university. Tenured professors at public universities are generally held to a higher level of scholarship than op-ed columnists. Which is not to say that he’s not entitled to opine. My statement was that his argument was not valid as presented, not that he had any obligation to present it differently.
I do not dispute Owens’ ire, or his pandering to public opinion. He was Governor after all, and the controversy had exploded and enveloped him as he was being called upon to do something. I was no pleased with what he did either. Like many others, at the time I said that I defended his right to say what he said while reviling what he said.
I was actually very pleased that the University took the stand that it did, and that it was extremely careful in its investigation of the allegations of misconduct, which, it must be noted, it did not begin sua sponte. The investigation was begun after allegations of plagiarism were presented to the University by others. The University has a duty to investigate such allegations whenever they come to light. What’s significant here is that the University had prior knowledge of some of these claims, but had declined to investigate. I find that to be highly suspect and an impeachment of the dedication to scholarly excellence the University claims.
In short, it took this egregious inflammatory episode to get the University to actually investigate allegations that should have been done years before, when first reported.
To say that the Board of Regents should not be pressed by the public, or by the governor, to review cases of alleged academic misconduct is to say that the University is to be assigned a place above criticism and above responsibility to the taxpayers. I find that to be a ludicrous idea. CU is a public university, and the public has a perfect right to demand that the university follow its own rules of conduct when malfeasance is discovered. The university should not be pressured to make excursions outside of its rules and regulations when dealing with such matters, which is what Owens initially called for (and then later retracted as I recall), and I see that as the import of the citation you provided, not as a call for utter imperious independence from all public scrutiny.
The Regents of the University of Colorado are responsible to the People of the state and must act when the public brings complaints to it. That’s exactly what happened, and it happened in strict compliance with the requirements of the laws of the Regents.
Mr. Guffman:
What was Hilter’s rhetorical weapon of choice, if it was not to enflame peoples passions to irrational and irresponsible extremes. To enrage people to action.
Governor Owens, like every other political persona of the modern day picks and chooses only what issues seem capable of feeding emotional political passions. If not just a nixonian mentality, clearly a Rush Limbaugh disinformation specialist mentality, that in my view, based on this discussion about Professor Churchill, a small fish in a very large pond of political horse-pucky.
When Rush Limbaugh is called to task, he calls himself an entertainer. But, there is no doubt in my mind, that he applauded himself for having single-handedly ended Hilary Clinton’s run on the White House. And, then salivated at the prospect of undoing Obama.
People used the Lincoln Douglas Debates to characterize the issues in this election. But, without having any idea of what they were saying. Those were to men clearly passionate about what they believed knowing that nothing was going to stop the Civil War. And, the fact is, they respected each other. Douglas held Lincoln’s hat at his Inauguration. I would say a clearcut sign of that respect.
Modern day political rhetoric, is trash talk. And, Governor Owens trashed a penny-ante professor who happens to believe he is native-american.
Seth,
- Re “Nazi” name-calling, I’ve been called “Commie,” “pinko” and “n****r-lover,” so I can sympathize with your disgust. (“Socialist” apparently is the new euphemism for all of those.) Words like “Nazi” and “Fascist” are convenient bricks to throw when you’re in a rhetorical street-fight with right-wing morons who call you names. Problem is that people on all points of the political spectrum just won’t put those bricks down.
- “…viewed as a whole, his entire body of work is a racist rant that denigrates non-indigenous Americans to less than second-class status”: Have non-indigenous Americans not treated indigenous people ALL OVER THE WORLD like non-humans? Maybe you don’t think so. Indigenous people all over the world do. This is worth noting, whether you agree or not, and it might be a more accurate summary of what Churchill’s body of work is trying to say.
- “His claim is invalid because he elides the justifications for going to war in Iraq…”: The piece isn’t scholarship. It’s not debate. It’s an op-ed piece. Since when does an op-ed writer have to argue his opponents’ case as well as his own? Do YOU have that obligation?
- “War cannot be waged ‘civilly’ so as to avoid inconvenience to civilians…”: Yes, and 9-11 was an example…. “…Think of Dresden and the Blitz in Britain”: Yes, deliberate attacks on primarily civilian targets, neither of which we describe as “terrorism” today, because history is written by the winners…. “…Churchill doesn’t care what the provocation or justification is, he merely uses the dead Iraqi children as pawns in his anti-American screeds. He does not appear to really care about them…”: Not to get all lit-crit in this discussion, but that’s some awesome reading-between-the-lines there, Seth….
As the review board noted, CU knew Churchill was a “controversial public intellectual” when they hired him, & as such he likely sees it as his job to be provocative in order to stimulate debate. So to speak.
- “Owens was notable only because he was the Governor, and he called for Churchill’s dismissal”: He leaned on CU administrators privately and threatened the university’s funding on national television. Do you dispute that? Do you agree generally with the Nixonian logic of using the power of your office to scr*w your ideological enemies? Because regardless of how the jury rules, that’s exactly what Owens did. And there’s also this, from the review board report, p. 4:
“…the formal complainant in the charges before us is the Interim Chancellor of the University, despite the express provision in the Laws of the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado that faculty members’ ‘efforts should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.’”
I see no sign that the Board of Regents did any of that.
Your point is well taken.
At this point I am at a loss to argue for the Professor, because I am not familiar with his material. I cannot say whether his demeanor is or is not consistant with his profession. So, until I am better aquaited with his writing I will not speculate.
However, I still think that Govenor Owens behavior sets a bad example of leadership. We live in a world these days where legislation seems to be dictated by a fundimental lack of the pragmatic and indepth study of all sides of an issue. Legislation is governed by intimidation in the form of emotionally charging public passions. Who in turn force the issue and subsequent legislation into existance.
On issues like imigration, it’s an issue that drags on with no resolution in sight. But, the discourse, is both irrational and irresponsible, with the ultimate goal that someone will get stepped on no matter what happens with this issue. And, I have yet to see anyone of our leaders step forward to establish a sense of rational calm and accountibility.
Another example is sex offender legislation, which affects me personally. There is no voice of reason to calm the tide of enflamed public opinion, just a constant feeding on the part of advocates to feed those fears, and legislate that is coming dangerously close to establishing something consistant with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 In Germany, that lead to the “Final Solution”.
Govenor Owens regardless of his passion and outrage is a leader, and I believe he used his position to ignite into action a fire that was already burning, if what you say about public opinion was already in an uproar. He could just as easily calmed passions and still advocated an investigation.
Arthur:
The beauty of the First Amendment is that it protects the freedom to say controversial things while at the same time preserving the freedom to rebut them.
Governor Owens was no more controversial or irrational than Churchill himself in his response to Churchill’s calumnies. In both cases it was an expression of a firmly held opinion. Had Owens’ position as Governor been one of direct control over the hiring and firing of Churchill, I would be in agreement with Churchill that his rights were infringed. But that’s not the case here. Owens was merely expressing his constitutionally protected opinion about a reprehensible attack on the US. It doesn’t matter that Churchill is a state employee, Owens has ever right to speak out.
More importantly, Owens was hardly the only person to brace Churchill for his diatribe. It became news not because Owens got involved, it was news before he did so, and no few state legislators and newspaper columnists opined on the event, calling for an investigation of Churchill’s credentials before Owens weighed in.
Owens was notable only because he was the Governor, and he called for Churchill’s dismissal. This may have been intemperate of him given Churchill’s position as a state employee, but Owens knew that he had no direct control over the tenure process.
Many other people called for his dismissal too, and many defended his right to say what he said while still wishing for him not to be in a position of teaching our college students. All of this is perfectly legitimate protest and debate. While the First Amendment protects Churchill’s right to say such things, it does not protect him from criticism or calls for his ouster.
Tenure is what protects him from ouster for expressing unpopular opinions in his academic pursuits, and the tenure system did exactly what it was supposed to do in that regard.
But tenure does not protect him from scrutiny or from investigation of alleged scholarly misconduct, particularly if the motivation is a controversy that harms the reputation of the University. The University was very careful to ensure that the free-speech motivations were excised from their investigations of his academic misconduct, and he got a fair trial before his peers.
No one is, or should be immune from the consequences of their speech. You have a right to say what you want, and society has a right to pillory you for it. The only thing that cannot occur is for the government to suppress your speech before you make it.
I have no problem with Owens or anyone else demanding that Churchill’s scholarship be investigated, because by tossing inflammatory thought-bombs, Churchill demonstrated demeanor unworthy of a tenured professor in a public university. That doesn’t mean he can be fired for being an ideological radical, but nothing prevents his employers from dismissing him if his scholarly conduct is anything less than impeccable.
If by failing to read this essay, I am missing the point to this debate I humbly appologize. My only concern here is with Govenor Owens, and his actions. I believe there is a clearcut difference between righteous anger and using anger to generate aggressively heated passion. Which in turn, has in times past been used to, as I believe was done in this case, to manipulate people to irrational and ultimately irresponsible extremes in behavior. Attacking Professor Churchill, and attempting to destroy his career.
It was, I believe, a purely psychological attempt to create ideological fervor. Not unlike what was done in Germany to justify inacting the Nuremburg Laws of 1945, which would end in the death of over six million Jews.
By taking the outrage associated with 9/11 to challenge the credibility of an American, who right or wrong, chose to say things that may very well expose his own prejudices, and/or irrational beliefs. I believe The Govenor undercut his own credibility, by choosing to be irrational himself. And, choosing outrage as a vehicle to prompt others to action, by soliciting social support through that outrage. It is as political as the day is long. And, I believe, is just as irrational and irresponsible of him, as it was the perpetrators of the events of 9/11, to pursue their jihadist agenda through acts focused on symbolism.
Fundimentalist extremist Muslims are not, and I repeat not, ideologists in the truest sense of the word. They are irrational children who don’t like the real world, and don’t want to grow up. They want what they want, and they don’t care how they go about getting it, or who gets hurt in the process.
And, for the likes of Govenor Owens to cater to their outrage with his own outrage only succeeds in fanning their irrational ideological flames.
The Bush Administration, by focusing on ideology instead of what I believe is clearly cognitive “irrational thinking and subsequent behavior”, has allowed credibility to the fundimentalist movement, and in some ways he effectively lost an opportunity to bring the world religious community together to fight these idiots.
There is nothing in my mind that justifies Governor Owens behavior against Professor Churchill. A witchhunt, no matter how factually based, is still…a witchhunt.
Guffman:
I agree that it’s name calling, but it’s a particularly reprehensible name to be called, and I oppose it whenever it comes to my attention.
Churchill’s essay was an ongoing bit of his overall vitriolic beliefs about America. He has long argued that the United States, and presumably all the non-indigenous members of it, should be extirpated from the planet. He’s vague about how this ought to happen, but viewed as a whole, his entire body of work is a racist rant that denigrates non-indigenous Americans to less than second-class status.
He is a firm believer in the “sins of the father” model, and misses no opportunity to heap liability and opprobrium on those who he feels are complicit in the oppression of indigenous people.
His claim is invalid because he elides the justifications for going to war in Iraq, and he mislays the responsibility for the well-being of the Iraqi children he laments so fervently. The fact is that the one responsible for the harm to Iraqi children was Saddam Hussein, who for 12 years, through 14 UN resolutions, steadfastly violated the terms of the cease-fire and used his own people as political tools and cannon-fodder.
War cannot be waged “civilly” so as to avoid inconvenience to civilians. If the US had not denied infrastructure like water, power and sewer to Saddam’s military, which was deliberately ensconced in civilian areas specifically in hopes of preventing destruction of infrastructure, our job would have been much harder and more US soldiers would have died.
Keep in mind that in war, collateral casualties are inevitable. Think of Dresden and the Blitz in Britain. War is hell, and people suffer, but the suffering of one’s own people, caused by the intransigence and warlike acts of their dictator, must be laid at the door of the dictator, not the forces seeking to depose him.
But Churchill doesn’t care what the provocation or justification is, he merely uses the dead Iraqi children as pawns in his anti-American screeds. He does not appear to really care about them, they are just convenient bodies he can lay at the feet of the US Government, just as he conveniently laid the bodies of Indians who died from smallpox at the feet of the US Army by claiming that the army had knowingly and deliberately distributed smallpox infected blankets from St. Louis to Indians at Fort Clark in 1837.
So, I disagree that he makes a good case. It’s a one-sided ideological rant, and nothing more, which ought not to have come from a tenured university professor. His anger at the US is palpable in the essay, and I think he was imprudent in publishing it.
I also disagree with the “collective guilt” rubric, either as assigned to the Germans, the US in Iraq, or US citizens today regarding the wrongs done to indigenous people in the past.
We must certainly acknowledge those wrongs, if we also acknowledge the efforts of the government to protect those same people in the face of much public hatred and racism. But no one alive today suffered under those policies, so no one today is deserving of reparations from today’s citizens.
I have never oppressed an indigenous person, and therefore I reject any culpability for the actions of others over which I have no control at a time long before I was ever alive. Churchill’s attempts to heap this ancestral guilt on Americans is a large part of the ire that the public directed against him once it came to their attention who he was, what he was saying, and who was paying his salary.
I agree this is a crap-shoot, but then again all jury trials are.
But, if he is reinstated, it behooves us to continue to scrutinize him and challenge his claims. He has a right to free speech, and so do we.
Seth,
I don’t know anything about the legal precedents for this case. Please share if you find any.
Most “Nazi” references in American political discourse are simply name-calling. When people resort to name-calling, I assume they have nothing else to bring to the discussion — no competitive ideas — & try to ignore them. (I knew John McCain’s campaign was in trouble late in the race when he & Palin started throwing the word “socialist” around as a slur.) Churchill’s essay wasn’t mere name-calling, & I suspect that’s part of why it has provoked so much howling. In spite of all his vicious rhetoric he makes a powerful point: If “collective guilt” applied to German civilians (not all of them Nazis) in 1945, it applied as well to American civilians (including Democrats) in 2001. It CAN’T be dismissed as name-calling. He makes a pretty good case for his claim, whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions.
Myself, I don’t agree, because I think “collective guilt” is an insupportable concept. If it were, then “collective credit” would also be applicable, and every German would share responsibility for the works of J.S. Bach. I don’t buy that. I don’t agree that every “good German” was responsible for Hitler’s depredations, and I don’t agree that I’m partially responsible for the horrors visited on Iraq.
“I give Owens the benefit of the doubt in this. I think he was righteously angry, if somewhat imprudent, but the fact is that his statements were in the form of a personal opinion and had no effect or legal weight in the matter, because CU’s Board of Regents is not subject to the Governor’s authority, and both Owens and the Regents knew this”: When O’Reilly asked Owens if he could fire Churchill, the governor said he couldn’t, but that he DID control the CU purse strings. Asked about the statement under oath, Owens testified that he said it because it was a fact. The Daily Camera blog shows no objections from defendants’ attorneys. Threats don’t have to be explicit to be obvious.
This will be a balancing act by the jury between the governor’s/CU’s concerted efforts to get rid of Churchill — which I think are established facts at this point — and the soundness of the review panel’s analysis of Churchill’s alleged research failings. I expect a split decision of some sort, but God knows how it will play out.
There is a much better discussion in a book titled Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany 1900 through 1945, By Burleigh, about 1995, about the thinking associated in Germany that would lead to the “Final Solution”.
It focuses on how an alleged modern society can intellecually undermine it’s own accountibility and come to extraordinary decisions about how to deal with it’s social less than desirables, handicapped, and alleged incurables.
How accountibility can get lost when outside forces can challenge the very rational means by which decisions that affect a society are made.
Having not read Proffessor Churchill’s piece. It is amazing how the onset of the nuclear reality changed our government’s involvement in the affairs of other countries after WWII.
The Shah of Iran is a case it point. He was not the popular choice among his people, and he was a despot. And, yet in the name of the Cold War, he was America’s choice. Which would lead America to fund and support Saddam Hussein against Iran in the late 70′s and early 80′s. Playing both ends against the middle had it’s potential consequences, as did changing sides in the face of an alternate threat. The First Gulf War as an example.
Right or wrong, 9/11 was a resonse to the changing motives and less than accountible practices of America foreign policy.
The Govenor’s response to Prof. Churchill was in fact, an attempt to create the need for scrutiny, by taking advantage of the potential social outrage associated with Churchill’s remarks. By play to the heat of passion and not an open opportuntiy to debate.
Guffman: I imagine you’re correct about dragging the jury along a stultifying academic pathway to boredom that makes any alleged misconduct seem trivial. The whole issue of Churchill’s academic misdeeds is so arcane and so tied up in the details of academic rigor, which nobody but a tenured professor cares about, is a pretty good tactic on Lane’s part.
What I don’t know is what the standard of review is for the wrongful termination case. I haven’t had time to do the legal research to see what the jury needs to establish in order to find against CU. If you know, I’d appreciate your input.
One thing I think may be important is whether or not the jury can substitute its judgment for that of the academic review committee insofar as Churchill’s misconduct. It may be that the jury is reviewing due process claims, not the factual determinations about the specific misconduct. I just don’t know, but if the issue is due process, it certainly looks, from the documents, as if he got plenty of that. CU was extremely careful in the academic review to set aside any allegations against the content of his 9/11 paper, and to clearly state that they supported his right to say what he said.
So do I. I don’t like it, and I think it’s odious, as is much of his “ancestral guilt” argumentation regarding native Americans, but I defend his right to write it. You’re quite right about the knee-jerk reflex to playing the Nazi card, and I happen to support that knee-jerk response.
It’s my view that the term “Nazi” and reference to Nazis must be reserved ONLY for use in connection with the actual Nazis. It’s not a slander that one should be using lightly or frivolously under any circumstances because doing so minimizes the actuality of the horrific events of the Holocaust, and it demeans the deaths of millions of people at the hands of the most inhuman, animalistic members of the species that have existed in modern times.
The other reason one should avoid making such comparisons is that in another time, using such a slander would be justification for pistols at dawn, and it probably still should be. I know that if someone calls me a Nazi to my face, I consider it an insult so grave and heinous that’s going to provoke immediate violence on my part. Anybody who is called a Nazi who is or was not part of the National Socialist Party and who did not participate in the murder of millions should sue for slander.
Arthur: I give Owens the benefit of the doubt in this. I think he was righteously angry, if somewhat imprudent, but the fact is that his statements were in the form of a personal opinion and had no effect or legal weight in the matter, because CU’s Board of Regents is not subject to the Governor’s authority, and both Owens and the Regents knew this.
Yes, Owens’ ire lead to Churchill’s academic record being scrutinized, but that’s a “but for” defense that carries little weight. If you commit a crime, and get away with it for a long time (think Bernie Madoff) that doesn’t mean that you can evade justice when it comes to someone’s attention that it might be a good idea to look more closely at you.
Churchill’s academic misconduct had, in fact, been known about for some years prior, by the University, which chose to ignore the allegations. But failure to act in one circumstance does not act as a bar to action at a later time.
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Right or wrong Prof. Churchill has a right to his opinion. And, if he is an academic fraud, so be it. What is disturbing about the whole Churchill affair, is that Govenor Owens went on a personal crusade to destroy Churchill, indifferent to his duty under the Colorado Constitution to uphold Churchill’s right to his opinion. That is the issue associated with this whole episode that should be addressed and is not.
Seth, A couple of thoughts mid-trial:
- Churchill’s legal team is going to drag the jury through the investigative committee report item by paralyzingly dull item & create “reasonable doubt” as to the credibility of the case against him. I’m guessing this is good strategy. Spend half an hour with the report, linked above, & you’ll agree. Dealing with the intricacies of, say, the General Allotment Act of 1887 & Churchill’s handling of the topic will cause 24 eyes to roll back into 12 skulls. Plaintiff’s case will appear MUCH stronger.
- Whatever the jury’s thoughts about his academic failings, this isn’t about that. It’s about the 9-11 piece. Re-reading the original essay I was struck by something: In a ham-fisted polemic, Churchill made his main point too subtle. His allusions to “good Germans,” Eichmann and “Evil – for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept”, were gestures toward Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Eichmann trial and her use of the phrase “the banality of evil.” A quick & fair summary of the concept:
“…Arendt’s book about the Eichmann trial presents both a continuity with her previous works, but also a change in emphasis that would continue to the end of her life. This work marks a shift in her concerns from the nature of political action, to a concern with the faculties that underpin it – the interrelated activities of thinking and judging.
“She controversially uses the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to characterize Eichmann’s actions as a member of the Nazi regime, in particular his role as chief architect and executioner of Hitler’s genocidal ‘final solution’ (Endlosung) for the ‘Jewish problem’. Her characterization of these actions, so obscene in their nature and consequences, as ‘banal’ is not meant to position them as workaday. Rather it is meant to contest the prevalent depictions of the Nazi’s inexplicable atrocities as having emanated from a malevolent will to do evil, a delight in murder. As far as Arendt could discern, Eichmann came to his willing involvement with the program of genocide through a failure or absence of the faculties of sound thinking and judgement. From Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem (where he had been brought after Israeli agents found him in hiding in Argentina), Arendt concluded that far from exhibiting a malevolent hatred of Jews which could have accounted psychologically for his participation in the Holocaust, Eichmann was an utterly innocuous individual. He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities were not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.
“Arendt concluded that Eichmann was constitutively incapable of exercising the kind of judgement that would have made his victims’ suffering real or apparent for him. It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. This amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgement, the faculty that would have required Eichmann to exercise his imagination so as to contemplate the nature of his deeds from the experiential standpoint of his victims. This connection between the complicity with political evil and the failure of thinking and judgement inspired the last phase of Arendt’s work, which sought to explicate the nature of these faculties and their constitutive role for politically and morally responsible choices.”
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/arendt.htm
That is the parallel Churchill was trying to draw, the crux of the piece: Americans weren’t thinking about the ramifications of their deeds, any more than Germans were during WWII. Had he drawn the point more clearly for those who weren’t in a position to catch his oblique references, I wonder whether much of this furor might have been avoided. Probably not. Mention Nazis & you get a Pavlovian response, from all sides of the American political spectrum. Even so, it’s the heart of his argument, and he totally underplayed it. Odd.
Guffman: Thanks for the links.
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I’m not looking for solace. Or gems.
Some actualities about the case, for those just catching up –
The “Roosting Chickens” essay:
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html
The CU Investigative Committee report:
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/download/WardChurchillReport.pdf
Churchill’s lawsuit, first amended complaint & jury call:
http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/pdf/complaint.pdf
Live trial blog by the Boulder Daily Camera can be accessed here:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/news/
Discuss. Debate. Enjoy.
* * * * * * *
“Churchill cannot dispute the facts of his fraud, which have been carefully reviewed by his peers…”: Perhaps. “Lane told the jurors he would prove to them during the trial, which is taking place in Denver District Court, that his client (Churchill) never falsified, fabricated or plagiarized anything in his academic works.”
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/mar/10/ward-churchill-trial-university-colorado-opening/
Guffman: I’ve edited a bit, but I doubt you’ll take much solace.
We do have some common agreement however. There’s at least ten or twenty seconds of “Howard the Duck” that are well worth watching.
Guffman: You’re right, this is invective. But it’s well-deserved invective. You may not like my imagery, but it makes the point that he put himself where he is, and since he’s currently trying to argue that he’s been put-upon by the government, I felt compelled to rebut in the strongest possible terms.
Churchill deserves to be pilloried, and that’s part of the job of the press. He’s wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and far more time that he’s ever been worth.
I have my foibles and faults, that’s certain, and every post is not going to be a gem, but I’m not alone in pillorying Churchill today, even the esteemed Vincent Carroll of the Denver Post was moved to nail his sins to the door. At the same time, Mike Littwin of the Post was pillorying CU and Bill Owens and playing the apologist for Churchill.
Of course, as Carroll points out, I may be laughing from the other side of my mouth if the jury finds for the plaintiff, which is possible, as any litigator will tell you.
Sometimes, a spade needs to be called a spade, not a shovel. Ward Churchill’s situation is one of those situations.
However, I take note of your comments and I’ll do a bit of editing to tone it down.
This is the “enlightening conversation” Wayne Laugesen promised us when he introduced the Broadside Blog on Feb. 24.
This is “the sharpest debater I (Laugesen) have the privilege to know.” This is the forum that “will inspire civilized and intelligent discourse in pursuit of knowledge and truth.” This is where we will stay “away from name-calling and smears.”
Talk about smears. I’ve been reading mainstream-media editorials for 45 years, and I do believe this is the first one in which the imagery made me sick to my stomach.
“(I)t would be difficult to find a topic he can’t address in an intelligent, thought-provoking manner,” Laugesen wrote. Maybe Ward Churchill is the exception that proves the rule.
“(M)y true interest lies in debate, in the interaction of ideas that lead one along the course of knowledge through reason, logic and argument,” Richardson wrote in February…
http://www.gazette.com/opinion/richardson_48796___article.html/broadside_media.html
…but this piece is nothing but invective. There aren’t even any IDEAS, much less reason, logic or argument. Are you angry at his Eichmann piece? At his plagiarism? Do you just disagree with him, hate him on general ideological principles?
Whatever. You can’t debate with invective except with more invective, so this is the best I can do, and it’s not very satisfying, so I’m out. My time is better spent watching “Howard the Duck.”