Damn it.
I said I wasn't going to post on the Ward Churchill "controversey" any longer. but I cannot help making a couple of more points.
#1 - Any article or statement you read to the effect that Churchill is being "persecuted" because of his article saying 9/11 victims were "little Eichmann's" is a lie (an example of such a lie), pure and simple. Any discussion that ignores the facts that (as this article outlines):
Churchill stands credibly accused of ethnic fraud, grade retribution, falsification of the nature of his military service, academic fraud, plagiarism, selling other artists' creations as his own and falsely accusing Denver Post columnist Diane Carman of inventing incendiary quotations.
This doesn't even include Churchill's repeated advocation of violence against those he disagrees with.
#2 - Academia is right, there is a question of academic freedom at stake here. However, it isn't the question they are asking. The inability of academia to honestly look at the record of Ward Churchill and exert even the barest minimum of professional standards upon him bodes ill. The entire premise of academic freedom is predicated upon the principle that the academic disciplines can be self regulating. The Ward Churchill episode is pointing out that this is simply untrue. If academics are unable to appropriately handle as "no-brainer" a case as this, how can anyone have the slightest confidence in academics ability to govern themselves? I don't think you can. This invites the interference of legislatures, which is not a good thing. But academia is, to all intents and purposes, abdicating their responsibilities. If you cannot hold Ward Churchill to even minimum academic standards, like firing him for the numerous frauds he has committed, then you have fewer arguments when the legislature decides to intervene.
2 comments:
Let's see.
Professor states ridiculous opinion.
Right-wing attacks ridiculous opinion.
People defend Professors right to make ridiculous opinion.
Right-wing, realizing that making a ridiculous opinion isn't really a crime, and attacking people for having an opinion isn't really going to serve a purpose... shifts strategies.
Right-wing, now employing a thousand opposition researches digs into professors past and digs up any little thing that places doubt upon his professoral duties.
Right-wing now shifts attack, and accuses anybody of saying that this professor is persecuted of lying... because really this is about professoral standards. Which ignores the fact, that the opposition researchers wouldn't be digging in this guys garbage if not for the fact he made a ridiculous opinion statement.
The sad thing is, I've noticed nobody has actually disputed the professors statement. Instead it's turned into a big ad hominem fest. I find this dangerous, because this only serves to reinforce a notion that this opinion may "give aid and comfort to the enemy." That is, instead of attacking the idea, you are working to turn the guy into a martyr.
That's not good.
Go back and read what I wrote about this case at the start. I began with the premise that the guy's a jerk but you can't fire people for being jerks.
Advocating violence is another matter, and hardly a "little thing" as you call it. Inventing historical incidents out of whole cloth in not a "little thing." Plagiarism is not a "little thing." Lying about you racial background in order to benefit from affirmative action hiring is not a "little thing."
Maybe you think all of that stuff is (or should be) par for the course for academics. I'd like to be able to think more highly of them and expect better behavior than that.
As for spending time arguing with his comments that the U.S. is a facsist state, I've got better things to do. Dignifying it with serious comment would be exactly like taking "white supremacy ideas" seriously. Ward Churchill's ideas are shit. If you can't smell that you've got your own problems.
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