My Two Cents
I haven’t said anything about Ward Churchill yet, because I basically think the whole thing is silly. Nearly everyone thinks he should be fired, even Power Line, which surprises me. The people who don’t think he should be fired all say it’s because of free speech. That’s ridiculous. The First Amendment protects against Congress limiting your speech. Not your boss. Plus, this misses the point.
He shouldn’t be fired because that’s scape-goating by the horrible university that was stupid enough to hire him, and stupid enough to give him tenure after that. Once you have tenure, you cannot be fired, unless you’re sleeping with your students or something. If you start firing tenured professors just because they make the school a little itchy under the collar, that completely negates the point of tenure. It’s retarded.
The University of Colorado hired him, tenured him, and now they have to face the consequences. If the state legislature wants to reevaluate how much the school is getting, or move them into an abandoned prison and sell the property to Donald Trump, fine, good for them. It will teach the school and other schools to expect more from their professors, and be damned sure they’re worth their salt before granting them tenure.
And chances are the school knew exactly what they were getting when they hired him, and probably thought it was good for their reputation. He certainly got a lot of attention over the years. Otherwise they would have only been known as the school the ski bunnies go to, which is what we thought of it back when we were looking at universities. So now they’re so shocked and appalled when one of his stupid comments makes headlines? Give me a break.
Ward Churchill can quit if he wants to save the school the pain coming to them, but he should not and cannot be fired.
February 6th, 2005 at 9:48 pm
I agree with you completely. While he shouldn’t be fired for his ridiculous theories, I’d also support the students being allowed to mock and belittle him repeatedly; after all, if he has free speech, so should his opponents. The students would learn valuable creative-ridiculing skills while being entertained, which to me would be the perfect college experience.
February 11th, 2005 at 9:07 am
How many times have i heard people here in the US, notable spokespeople, no less, advocate the mass murder of Arab peoples?–more than I care to recount, both before and after 9-11.
Indeed, the people in the US that do not speak out against this type of Nazi thinking, as well as US policies that are calculated to kill innocents (ie, terrorism) all share a little bit in the events that happened on 9-11.
But it is far easier to go to the mall, shop, swallow the massive distortion/lies fed to the public by the corporate oligarchs that have a stake in manipulating the general public according to their sick, craven desires for power.
Live by the sword, die by it.
What the US public are adept at doing is avoiding their own responsiblity that has contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
Don’t get it? Pick up a history book and think. Stop being servants for an empire that thinks nothing of seeing thousands of civilians killed to advance their geopolitical goals (called state-terrorism).
This all comes down to responsiblity, and the pathological avoidance of it.