When I'm Wrong, MAN Am I Wrong

This link is in one of the comment sections below, but its important enough to be right out front. From the Rocky Mountain News: Regents should show Churchill the door

Indeed, for much of his career, Churchill has been belittling the activist left for abandoning armed struggle for various forms of non-violent protest. Without violence as a tactical option in its arsenal of weapons against state capitalism, he argues, the left ends up defending and reinforcing the same status quo it claims to oppose.

Such calls to action are given fuller treatment in Churchill's main polemical work, Pacifism as Pathology, which pays special tribute to Diana Oughton, one of three members of the terrorist Weather Underground who accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 while making bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse.

Predictably enough, the book, which was published in various forms between 1986 and 1998, evolved from a workshop Churchill delivered in the early 1980s entitled "Demystifying the Assault Rifle," the objective of which was to help squeamish pacifists conquer their fear of weapons. After two hours of handling Heckler & Koch assault rifles, participants were apprised of the "applicability of various types of guns to different situations" and "the role of arms in assorted political contexts . . ."

It wouldn't be unusual for a professor whose field is ethnic studies to decry injustices committed against indigenous peoples in the United States and elsewhere. But in his public lectures around the country, Churchill has exhorted his troops to violence. In one speech, for example, he urged using violence to prevent tourists from going to Hawaii. "You want to do something constructive for indigenous Hawaiians? Stay home. And if you have to break their kneecaps in order to get them to, do it."

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It's no small matter to rescind tenure, but there are surely times when it's appropriate - criminal behavior, for example. Or a historian of the Second World War who argues that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Academic freedom is not the same as First Amendment protection. Of course Churchill has First Amendment rights. We would defend his right as a citizen to make all the statements we have cited. But academic freedom, while it should protect a wide variety of speech, even offensive speech, has limits. Surely public officials must draw that line at someone who consistently advocates violence as an antidote to society's ills.

This is absolutely right. In more than one place in the Blogspace I said this man shouldn't lose his job, based on what I had heard. Having read the Rocky Mountain News piece I can say that I was wrong. Not really all that surprised...I called him a bastard for good reason...but clearly this man has to go. One of the reasons for being for any University is that is a place where you can have disagreements but you don't render violence upon the people you disagree with. Ward Churchill wants to visit violence upon those he disagrees with...or to put it more accurately...Ward Churchill is an Osama Bin Laden type coward who wants other people to act violently against those he disagrees with on his behalf.

A big thank you to Marc from American Future for pointing out the error of my ways.

I will also add that Left2Right has disabled posting on this subject for some unstated reason. It sort of seems a cowardly way of saying that Gerald Dworkin position on Mr. Churchill has become untenable.