Former UC staffer Robert Hayes at “Let’s Try Freedom” receives an internal university message and from the subtext concludes Ward Churchill will likely be shitcanned.
My thoughts here.
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update: I take it Ace and I disagree.
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update 2: Bryan S. at AWS corrects certain misconceptions about tax payer entitlement with regard to professors and universities.
At first, I really wanted the scumbag to get fired. But after thoughtfull consideration and listening to the viewpoints of citizen journalist Goldberg, fence sitter Pete Boyles and the overbearing O’reily I think you have a point.
As Boyles has suggested, the most effective way to terminate his employement is to prove he’s a fraud which is something that only CU can do by looking at his hiring application record and determining if that was missrepresented by his admission of race. I can find very little information about this college he got his bachelor and masters from but from what I can gather it was a self admitted “radical” university (whatever that means). A university that attempted to be different by not giving grades etc…
Anyway, the question that I want to know is what can a tenured professor say that will get him fired? Is there anything they can say that would get one fired as long as it wasn’t done under criminal intent? Could you be fired Jeff if you in all seriousness gave a lecture on why scantly dressed women deserve sexual harrasment and suggested they should be molested? I respect the slippery slope but I also don’t understand where the line is drawn. I mean it’s a strange world where a TV commentator can get canned for mentioning that boobs inhibit the back swing of a female golfer, yet a scholastic leader suggests to his kids that Amercians should die and he’s plated with teflon.
Well, I believe that because s/he’s in an academic environment (which, granted, doesn’t always function like it should), a professor should feel free to float ideas and have them vetted—if indeed his or her study on the matter leads to a hypothesy that is worthy of being entertained.
I don’t think professors should should have to mirror the popular sentiments of a culture at large or risk being terminated. That defeats the purpose of advanced education, if you ask me.
He should be fire because he’s a moron. And morons shouldn’t be professors.
He is a perfect example of the fraud that is Ethnic Studies ( aka Thug Studies ). Were I Hoffman, ( god, that’s a disgusting thought ) I’d put him back as chair to emphasize that fact together with a press release that said:
“Since Ethnic Studies is a joke, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to be head clown than Churchill”.
I’m tempted by the free speech arguments against firing Churchhill, but in the final analysis they don’t hold water. High profile professionals in all careers are held to standards of behavior that transend their professional duties into their private life. The justification for these arrangements is simple; what they do or say in their private life can impact the reputation of their employers.
Churchhill’s idiotic statements, and his refusal to repudiate them, put the credibility of any University that would hire him into question. Indeed, his tenure is subject to minimum standards of professional behavior. If CU cannot relieve him of his duties for his Eichman comments then what will it take?
The good professor is more than welcome to he rights to free speech. He just needs to learn that with rights come responsibilty, and as we all know, payback is a bitch baby.
Pursuit —
You’re skipping over the obvious point and so begging the question. To Churchill (and many like him) the statements aren’t idiotic, and so calling for his dismissal on the objective fact of idiocy problematic.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Churchhill’s argument is just another iteration of the “blowback” article so predominate right after 911 that it cost CNN and ABC a ton of viewers (who moved to FOX) and the MSM in general a ton of readers (who moved to blogs).
I’m sure Churchill would agree that rights come with responsibility—and to an educator, that responsibility is being able to argue and support your claims, which I’m willing to give Churchill the benefit of the doubt that he believes he can do.
Therefore, again, the way to defeat him is to defeat his arguments, not to have him turned into a martyr for conspiracy theorists and First Amendment activists.
[x-posted on my site]
Let’s untangle things.
Maybe the univeristy tenure system is established to protect untrammeled free speech. But let us not confuse that with the actual first amendment. In other words, if universities have stronger protections than the 1st A guarantees, fine. But I abhor the claim that the 1st A ITSELF should guarantee stronger rights to some—academics, reporter—than to other citizens.
If that’s the case, then everyone must immediately submit an article to a local paper to become a “reporter” in order to claim that stronger 1st A protection.
But even if we say the tenure system is a special, stronger protection of free speech, there are still exceptions.
You could not write a paper stating that women, because they dress provocatively, deserve to be r@ped, and expect to keep your job.
And that is what Churchill did. Jeff, you’re obviously a principled guy and a “blog friend,” but I think you sweeten your argument a little too much when your claims that Churchill merely trafficked in the ho-hum “blowback” theory of terrorism.
He did more than that. He claimed that the secretaries, janitors, traders, analysts, and etc. working in the WTC were legitimate victims who deserved to be killed because they were “soldiers” of some sort in the cryptofascist industrial-military machine of the US.
He didn’t merely suggest that US government had invited “blowback” through its aggression– a tired, though non-fireable (of course) claim. He specifically stated that the victims of 9-11 deserved to be killed.
That’s a little different, wouldn’t you concede?
[x-posted in Ace’s comments]
Ace —
You, like me, are quite aware of the power of using a shocking bit of rhetoric to create a controversy and get your argument talked about. Churchill insists he was talking about the government employees in the buildings, not the janitors, children, etc; I don’t believe him, but that is beside the point. He was using extreme—and poorly crafted—rhetoric to draw attention to the underlying thesis, which is that US foreign policy is to blame for 911: blowback.
As for the First Amendment argument: I’m no lawyer, but I do know that here in Colorado we are getting competing interpretations. Churchill is an employee of the state, so he can’t be fired for his speech. The University imposed its own restrictions on his firing by granting him tenure. So we’re dealing with two different issues here, it seems to me.
For what it’s worth, Judge Andrew Napolitano (a pretty strict reader of the Constitution) came down on the side of Churchill and the ACLU.
There are doubtless other things Churchill can be fired for. But for arguing an unpopular (and to us, odious) political hypothesis should not be one of them. In my opinion.
So it would be tenure-protected if another professor on campus said he would consider it justified “blowback” if an angry student waited in the bushes for Churchill and blew off his fucking head with a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with buck and ball? Academically speaking, of course. Because, you know, people do get angry, even some of those not in the boobwaszee.
Here’s something that’s gotten lost: If Churchill had been a mechanic or a truck driver running his mouth in a saloon, no one would be talking about firing him for his political speech. And if he were a math or physics professor? Same deal, I think—he’s clearly ranting “on his own time.” WC isn’t a Ved Nanda (int’l relations)or anything of that sort—he’s just an ordinary race-hustler. And even if a professor “speaks for” the University in his field of specialty (that’s arguable), this doesn’t make him a spokesman on all subjects. It’s a sufficiently dangerous precedent to punish academics for “incorrect” speech in their own fields; it would be lunacy to punish for speech in fields they know nothing about.
Well, you’re talking about two different tenses here. Churchill can be described as “explaining” an event that had already occurred. Whereas your hypothetical professor is talking about a conditional based upon an event that hasn’t yet happened—and so could conceivably be charged with incitement should his scenario come to fruition as a result of his suggestion to his students. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know.
But once again, the tenure system is the University of Colorado’s guarantee to Churchill and is a separate guarantee than the First Amendment, which is the government’s guarantee.
The Professor, and I use the term loosely is a vile, hateful, digusting maggot!
He should be fired immediately!! Why should my tax dollars pay for his Salary?? Why should our children be subject to such Hate??
We all too often get caught up in “Freedom of Speech!” This is not prohibiting Free Speech, he is free to go to the Student Union, get on his “Soap Box” and Free Speech, just do not ask me to support this Mad Man!!
Shame on anyone who would condone such and evil, hateful person teaching our young!! They are a Captive audience!!
Think About it!!
BTW Jeff, I forgot to add that I am a Colorado attorney, and I can fill you in on the legal end of all this if you really wanna know, but it’s boring so I won’t post it here.
Mike —
I don’t mind you commenting here, but please read the previous comments. I’ve addressed your concerns <a href=”http://www.celluloid-wisdom.com/pw/index.php?/weblog/entry/17866/#70838″>here.
Part of “teaching our young” (leaving aside for the moment that these are college students, and are not in fact “captive”) is teaching them that some things people think will disgust you. But if you really want to teach them a bad lesson, teach them that the way to deal with such situations is to simply force such people out of the marketplace of ideas.
Think About it!!
Jeff,
While your point is interesting, I think you take it too far with the “blowback” theory. Further, I have no inherent desire to “defeat” the arguments of the other side because this is more than an excercise in debate. If the other side, in this case Mr.Churchhill, is right then by God we ought to know that we’re part of the Christian-Demo-Capitalism machine, and as responsible citizens join in the fight to stop it.
The unfortunate fact for Mr. Churchhill is that his arguments are in fact an afront to the educated. Contrary to his position, those “Eichmans” were hard working citizens of the country that has done more to defend Islamic people worldwide than any other soveriegn state. You are aware of U.S. actions to defend these people over the past two decades, so I won’t list them here.
One cannot expect to hold a position of authority in a free society without the corresponding requirement to act responsibly. This is especially important when one’s position is to educate future generations. In this position, Churchhill is supposed to help them develop the skills of independent thought AND critical thinking. Sadly he seems to focus solely on the first with no regard for the second.
That said, I do want to thank you for hosting this debate, and I appreciate all the thoughts above. Lord knows, they give Mr. Churchhill more respect than his maniacal rants deserve.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, Napolitano on Fox is seriously oversimplifying the applicable constitutional law. There are circumstances where the state as employer can fire an employee for speech where job related. One can certainly argue the applicability of the relevant principles to this situation but Napolitano’s opinion is not something that should be taken as gospel.
I don’t believe I’ve taken Napolitano’s opinion as gospel. Clearly there wouldn’t be a debate if there weren’t multiple ways to look at this situation—both from an ethical and legal standpoint.
Yes, there are circumstances “where the state as employer can fire an employee for speech where job related.” But as I’ve argued elsewhere, in academics, your job IS speech—so I’m not sure how the state could fire Churchill based on an opposition to his speech without violating his first amendment rights—particularly when he was making an academic argument that is pretty common among Marxist theorists.
The Athenians knew how to deal with this: Hemlock.
A lot of people would have been very upset if Glendale Community College would have fired Walter Kehowski for his unpopular views.
Law, morality, values, an open and free exchange of ideas…..no, not the UC—this blog.
My initial reaction to this story was a dismissive, “what a jackass.” Now, by reading through the comments from Jeff, Ace, and various commenters on both sites, I’ve gone through some interesting rambles through employment law, free speech, the marketplace of ideas, and academic responsibility. Of course, while I’ve been following these various threads of discourse, nothing’s changed the essential state of asininity involved…
…but it’s been an heckuva ride!
Jeff, I still get the feeling that you are conflating the academic freedom purpose of tenure with the First Amendment. They are two different things. If speech is this clown’s job, then that means that his First Amendment rights are less in this circumstance, not more. You are saying it is his job function to speak – all the more reason that his employer should be able to fire him for unsatisfactory job performance aka speech they didn’t like.
The real issue in the First Amendment sense is how much Churchill’s speech touches upon matters of public concern. And that is the strongest argument for First Amendment protection. That factor is balanced against the effect of the speech upon the mission of the government agency.
An amusing recent Supreme Court case that discusses relevant case law.
Robin: From my comment in this very thread:
In my estimation, public outcry over an unpopular position does not equate to poor performance vis-a-vis his funtction as an academic (which is speech).
Way late to the party here, and it may have already been intimated in this thread or the earlier one, but treating this as a First Amendment issue, or even as a contract issue (tenure) between the state and Churchill misses the point. As was clearly stated elsewhere:
With apologies to all who are deeply offended Churchill’s oral flatulence, I couldn’t agree with Jeff more.
Along a similar vein, young Prince Harry’s swastika problem, and the EU’s reaction to it (Ban Nazi symbols!) makes for interesting comparison: How can an idea be discussed, debated, and ridiculed for the pap it is when it’s simply “taken off the market”? Are those who disagree with crap like Churchill’s so insecure in their ability to argue it, or so faithless in their fellow man’s ability to see it for crap, that they wish it to simply be hidden from view?
Gad, I hope not.
Patton—I don’t mean to rehash old points but, as I pointed out in Jeff’s previous thread on this subject, firing Churchill is in no way tantamount to taking his ideas “out of the market.” If he wants to spout off, let him get a blog like the rest of us chumps.
Jeff, you wrote:
Should newspapers and magazines adopt a tenure system for their op-ed columnists?
“Should newspapers and magazines adopt a tenure system for their op-ed columnists?”
That’s up to them, I guess. But it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. As privately owned ventures, they can hire and fire who they wish, so long as they don’t violate the law. Universities, too, can hire and fire who they wish (within the bounds of the contract, and without violating the law). The university offered Churchill tenure, and under that system, he can only be fired for a limited number of offenses. And under the First Amendment, he can’t be fired by the state for his unpopular speech if he can claim (and I believe he can) that his arguments are legitimate academic arguments.
And yes, firing Churchill is tantamount to taking his ideas out of the academic market, which was devised to be the place where these competing ideas were discussed, debated, and tested.
I’m right there with you, Allah – the two aren’t the same. But my point is that firing him, as an alternative to responding to his ideas, doesn’t cut the mustard. Admittedly, the same tendencies which cause him to say easily ridiculed things might also make him a bad educator, and if that’s the case, he shouldn’t be an educator.
But while the act of shunning him might make some folks feel better for a while, the act of refuting him, and letting him lose his job for other, better reasons, seems as though it would serve much better the purpose of stopping such tripe. Don’t shoot the messenger – save the bullets and let him shoot himself; refute the asinine idea.
Is this the reviewers reviewing the reviews of the reviewed reviewers? Or could it be that maybe I’m on the wrong thread?
Hemlock.
Came here by way of ACE’s Blog. Jeff Goldstein – I heard Judge NapaValleyVino give his intellectually lazy line “the state cannot suppress free speech – ergo – no state employee can be fired for epressing themselves under the 1st”
You repeat it: Churchill is an employee of the state, so he can’t be fired for his speech.
OK, lets say I was a Colorado State Cop and I pulled over a black couple for speeding. And was accused of pulling them over because he hated blacks. Then the officer felt the need to engage in protected political speech governing his carefully thought out racial theories. “No sir, I don’t hate black people. I have studied all the statistics and in my considered opinion, blacks get pulled over more frequently because you are stupider and more impulsive than white or Asian drivers. In fact, in a reversal of the gender role I have noted in other races on patrol, male blacks are actually worse in motor vehicle law-breaking and general crappy driving than female blacks.”
Now, Mr. Goldstein – is the cop, a state employee, similarly protected under the 1st?
How about a vegan elementary schoolteacher telling the kids that people that eat meat are evil and murder animals? Free speech protected??
Second example first: Analogy doesn’t work. Of course her speech is protected, but she can be fired for other reasons, like teaching outside the curriculum, etc.
First example: Officer’s speech is protected, but he, too, can be fired for exceeding the boundries of his job.
[update to this comment: turns out Cedarford is a vile little Nazi bastard who blames me because his mother likes to be fucked in the ass. See some of his other comments here.]
All this talk about the importance of academic freedom would be just fine if the academy were free. It’s not. Taxpayers support these institutions and not voluntarily, either.
I’m flatassed sick and tired of the only freedoms ever considered being those of these blowhards. What about the poor clowns out there busting their humps paying the taxes? What about OUR freedom? I have better uses for that money, instead it’s taken at the (usually once or twice removed) point of a gun. If you don’t believe the point of a gun argument, try NOT paying your taxes, soon enough the guns will come out.
I’m sick of hearing about the University’s responsibility to the professors. They have a bigger responibility to the taxpayers and it’s way past time they figured that out.
Fine. If the University is obliged to pay this clown, fine. Let the University use it’s own money. Oh, sorry, it doesn’t HAVE it’s own money, does it? It has the taxpayer’s money.
You figure out a way to pay assholes like this on volunteer money, then it’s academic freedom. Pay him, and enough like him, with taxpayer’s money and you’ll find the taxpayers locking the doors.
Freedom? On whose dime?
Which taxpayers should they listen to? You? Me? Michael Moore? Noam Chomsky? Pat Buchanan? Or pehaps we can come up with a scheme wherein these “blowhards” (university research has never done anything for society, I suppose?) act according to some schedule based on the demographics of tax payers broken down into ideological percentages. Or wait—maybe those who pay MORE taxes should have more of a say as to how a professor teaches.
Hell, let’s just scrap it all and hire robots. Those we can program. Stepford Education! Whoopeeeee!
Let’s try this from a less lofty perspective. Joe Blow, citizen poster, does some Marxist rant at Demo Underground. Fine, no biggie. But then our crack investigative citizen journalists discover that Joe Blow teaches auto repair at the local community college; so: “He must be fired, NOW!! My tax dollars . . .[etc.]†What the f*** is that? My apologies to any real educators out there, but seriously: “I’m a CITIZEN PROFESSOR, thus my rants are controversial and consequential!!†Is that why this is so topical? Come now. Traditional authority is in retreat, and academia is no more immune to the blogosphere-BS-detector than the MSM has proven to be. This shouldn’t be about the 1st Amendment, academic freedom, employment law, or other such lofty things. It’s about someone on a soapbox getting hit with a tomato (as I’m about to be).
Jeff,
Your 1:03 post raises some pertinent issues.
I believe the reason people want him fired is that they want all of his ilk fired, i.e., they don’t want an ES department, or a BS department, or a WS department, or any of a number of other departments or subdisciplines within yet other departments. The feeling is that such departments exist only because of the massive infusion of taxpayer funds, including federal, that has occurred over the past few decades, and that the funding itself amounts to no more than political payola. You know, “promoting the general welfare” of those who supported 40 years of Dem rule in Washington. (Not that Dems have any monopoly on that sort of thing.)
Unlike medicine, law, math, econ, biology, physics, etc., it’s not an academic thing, it’s a political thing. You want to treat WC as an “academic” because he teaches at UC. I’d just as soon treat WC as a hack because he and his buddies scammed a sinecure from his political connections.
The groves of academe became a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC a good while back. If you want something different, I with you, but not to the point where I’ll pretend that what we want is what we have, and that we should treat it as such.
Best, Philip
College Students are not a Captive audience??
What planet u from?? If they want to graduate, They are captive!!
Give me a break!!
I must admit that I cannot speak to the legalities involved here nor to the policies and procedures governing tenure, but the blanket statement that Churchill should keep his job to protect everyone’s right to free speech seems to be ignoring another important point—that is that rights carry responsibilities. It is an abdication of our moral responsibilities to claim that we cannot make value judgments against what Mr. Churchill says and extend those value judgments beyond yammering back and forth. Oh, yes, I know that we can all call Mr. Churchill a poopyhead, but that’s not what I mean. As Tony Soprano says, “There have to be consequences.” And I believe those consequences should, and must, extend beyond mere rhetorical condemnations in this case. Mr. Churchill, by virtue of his position, has a greater responsibility for his words and deeds than a trucker sitting in a bar mouthing off. The intellectual approach that would chalk up Mr. Churchill’s comments to nothing more than rhetorical excess that must be walled off and kept completely separate from his other responsibilities and privileges is beyond my admittedly limited comprehension in these matters. I remain mindful of the slippery slope, but can anyone really believe that Mr. Churchill wasn’t on the other side of the line, wherever it is that that line is drawn? Mr. Churchill isn’t going to go to jail for his words or have his property confiscated by the government, so I don’t think there is a First Amendment violation involved here. However, the First Amendment does not free anyone from the non-state sponsored consequences, which is what I believe Mr. Churchill is facing in losing his job.
I’m with Jeff on this one.
Churchill is scum, a Che wannabe whose intellectual achievement is awfully hard to find.
That said, I don’t think he should be fired for his opinions. Ridiculed, made a total fool of, fisked, exposed, trashed and generally laughed at – yes. But I really don’t want the important role of tenure in our academic system—the positive benefits it brings, as opposed to the downside which I recognize – to be shot to hell by this jerk.
I say that as someone who is currently quite content to be teaching at a place where tenure is never granted, by the way. Don’t forget that, while we are slowly dismantling the PC mind control machine on campuses, it isn’t all that long ago when someone on the right, or more libertarian (as I guess I am), could have been fired for unpopular opinions too, if tenure did not intervene.
I *do* suspect the university will find that he commited resume fraud in one or another way, a basis for removing him from his tenured slot.
Great arguments for both sides.
IMHO I think Ace is correct.
Churchill has to go.
Have mercy on MSM refugees like me who count on blogs to help them sort this stuff out. Eventually those of us who are still using obsidion knives will catch up, but until then will someone take this little bit by little bit? I am not being disingenuous.
First Amendment. Asshat can say what he wants (unless it’s going to cause a riot or make people run out of a movie theater) and the police don’t come to his door to fine him or take him away. Yes? No one has fined CW or hauled him off nor has anyone threatened to do that. Why is First Ammendment even being brought up? [CW isn’t saying this at a gathering of 9/11 survivors and their families. He isn’t threatening anything. He has the right to say this, in this context.]
UC isn’t “the State” in this case. UC is an employer. As an employer they have the right to hire and fire as they see fit. Unless there’s a contract that says they won’t fire forever and ever amen. Tenure is such a contract isn’t it?
Doesn’t tenure guarantee that asshat can express outrageous/mindless blowback theories and he can’t get fired for that?
Where’s the hitch? If UC fires him, they are going to get sued–as they should–for breach of contract and I don’t know what else. Isn’t it just that simple?
Should they have hired him in the first place? No. He’s an asshat. The person who hired him should be fired for being an asshat. The mucketty muck who signed off on his tenure should be fired for being an asshat, while they’re in a firing mood. But they put their neck in the noose at the tenure review meeting and now they have to live with that or get sued.
Should we, conservatives, “use” this opportunity to clean house at UC and can the moonbat of the month? I don’t see how it’s possible. Riding popular opinion? Since when did popular opinion overrule a contract? We can call for his head all day long and it’s just not going to matter a whole lot in terms of what’s right and legally binding. Done is done. He’s a moron. Academia is full of them. This is just a wee little wake up call “Hey! Your Universities and Colleges are full of raving asshats!” that the great unwashed aren’t hearing anyway.
What have I missed?
Jeff—In response to my question about a tenure system for op-ed columnists, you wrote, “[a]s privately owned ventures, they can hire and fire who they wish, so long as they don’t violate the law.” But in the previous thread about Churchill, you told me you expect tenure would protect him even if this case involved a private university. Why should privately owned newspapers and magazines get to fire with impunity while private universities are stuck with every tenured douchebag who wanders off into crackpotville?
For the record, let me also say that I disagree with your comment on Ace’s site about the First Amendment side of this being the most interesting part. I think it’s the least interesting. The FA is what it is and there’s nothing we can do about it or the case law that’s evolved from it. But tenure? We sure can do something about that, beginning with asking ourselves whether academia really is so important to the marketplace of ideas that its members—uniquely in American society—deserve an additional layer of free speech protection. Then we can get to asking whether any lines can and should be drawn within the academy (e.g., should tenure be limited to the sciences) and whether logic dictates that the institution be extended outward to similar idea-trafficking industries, like the op-ed pages. Much more food for thought here, in my opinion.
One more thing. You wrote:
That’s the “glass half-empty” version. Here’s the “glass half-full” version: Retaining Churchill is tantamount to keeping someone else’s ideas out of the academic market. Firing him would create a vacancy on the faculty that might be filled by a serious scholar—or, at the very least, someone who has something more original to offer than a retread of the same tired old “blowback” theory you can find in any issue of Counterpunch. Indeed, considering that the blowback theory seems to be the preferred interpretation of 9/11 within the academy, if what we’re after is a vibrant marketplace of ideas, why not clear out a few Churchills and open the way for some dissident viewpoints? Blowback as an idea is overrepresented; let’s get our antitrust mojo working and break its monopoly.
Allah—
You write, ” But in the previous thread about Churchill, you told me you expect tenure would protect him even if this case involved a private university. Why should privately owned newspapers and magazines get to fire with impunity while private universities are stuck with every tenured douchebag who wanders off into crackpotville?
In the previous thread, Bryan raised the same point. My response:
You write, ”For the record, let me also say that I disagree with your comment on Ace’s site about the First Amendment side of this being the most interesting part. I think it’s the least interesting. The FA is what it is and there’s nothing we can do about it or the case law that’s evolved from it. But tenure? We sure can do something about that, beginning with asking ourselves whether academia really is so important to the marketplace of ideas that its membersâ€â€uniquely in American societyâ€â€deserve an additional layer of free speech protection.”
Well, what I was suggesting is that TENURE, in this particular case, is a done deal —Churchill is already tenured, and the tenure system is what it is—leaving UC a set of very specific conditions under which it can fire Churchill; whereas the debate about first amendment protections and whether they apply in this case, and about whether firing constitutes “punishment”—those points are not settled.
Sure, in the long-term a discussion about the tenure system may prove more interesting. But I was addressing the realities of this case.
I’m all for replacing people of Churchill’s ideological and intellectual ilk with scholars who would bring a truer diversity of thought to the marketplace of ideas (I am, as a point of reference, one such scholar). But I’m not for the scorched earth approach of doing so at the expense of the First Amendment, or at the expense of a system which also protects what few conservative scholars there are in the humanities from the left orthodoxy that would like to see conservatives dismissed.
My approach to correcting the problem—which involves pressuring university departments into hiring those of diverse thought (or else, use the market to pressure the current higher ed system) takes longer. But I believe it is the best course of action.
Mike —
You write, ”College Students are not a Captive audience??
What planet u from?? If they want to graduate, They are captive!!
Give me a break!!”
A) One question mark is plenty. Ditto the exclamation point.
B) I’m from the planet University Teaching Experience, and you are simply incorrect in the majority of cases, if what you mean by captive is students must fall in line with the professor’s ideological worldview or risk failure. Such a scenario is the exception.
Here is a current case where tenure is protecting (or may do so, the case is active) someone on the other side from Churchill.
Again, I think there is a lot to criticize about life tenure. Both my husband and I teach at a well-known undergraduate school which does not offer tenure, so we know it can be done and done well. But in the meanwhile, it’s worth keeping in mind the ways that tenure is valuable, so that when we move to change it, we do so wisely.
Jeff, Bryan S.’s post is also interesting because he shows that basic fraud of Churchill’s academic work outside of his turd-in-the-punch-bowl 9/11 essay.
I’m convinced that Churchill should not be outright fired because I don’t want to see him made into a martyr by the rest of the thug studies crowd. I’d prefer that CU announce that a review of the Ethnic Studies department found poor academic standards and shoddy scholarship and then hire a new ethnic studies chair who would make sure that Churchill is given solely Remedial English courses to teach from now on.
Wishful thinking I know.
Manufacturing a weak integrity argument to justify free speech violations…
It started in a federal Court in Pittsburgh and has moved quickly to Colorado Universtity and Iraq. It’s a stretch, but political hacks have besieged first amendment free speech protections.
They attempt to combine a provacative essay comparing victims of 911 with Nazi criminals and an emotionally charged General’s comments on war, questioning whether such is permissible when the comments may cause damaged to an institution’s integrity.
Churchill was a relatively unknown professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, until Bill O’Reilly reported a piece about him and requested his audience to make a fuss.
Why did O’Reilly target Ward Churchill?
Because in a Pittsburgh federal court a well connected corporate crony has suggested the novice argument, and the legal question is waddling without any legal precedent in need of an activist court.
Thus the current unexplained campaign against “free speech†appears to be little more than a Madison Avenue scheme to control any discussion of the President’s desire to privatize higher education.
That is, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries, lawsuits and other actions calling into question the way they inflate enrollment to mislead/increase the value of their parent company’s stock.
In the last year, the Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. In addition, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems.
But in a Pittsburgh federal court there is a bigger can of worms.
Kaplan, Inc., is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. For-profit postsecondary education has turned the company around and individuals far more powerful than Martha Steward have made millions. However, there is a nominal “Watergate†styled federal court proceeding (scandal) involving campus “free speech,†that could expose the administration’s violation of public trust
In short, I provided the S.E.C., Department of Education, and federal courts information that appears to prove Kaplan inflated the Concord School of Law enrollment, telling investors that the “flagship†of its higher education division has as many as 600 to 1000 or more students.
I also provided evidence to prove apparent violations of sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder.
However, in an attempt to protect important icons of the Washington and New York financial/political circle, hacks have been hired to stir a free speech controversy.
But even Stan Chess (En Passant)innocently questioned the obvious – a clear violation of the federal securities laws.
“Kaplan’s Concord School of Law says it’s one of the largest law schools in the country, yet for each administration only about 25 of its graduates sit for the bar exam. What happens to the hundreds of other students in each class?â€Â
What are you willing to do?
Well, you can borrow one of my Zoloft tablets. How’s that for starters?
Jeff, *pssssst*. One ain’t gonna do it.
Nope. He needs your whole couch.
Heck, never mind the couch or the Zoloft: I’m still trying to get Sean Connery’s heavy-brogue enunciation of the same question out of my mind.
“You’re skipping over the obvious point and so begging the question. To Churchill (and many like him) the statements aren’t idiotic, and so calling for his dismissal on the objective fact of idiocy problematic.”
Sorry, I’m not buying it. Academia has selective processes designed to filter out idiocy from credible academic inquiry, such as hiring committees and ongoing peer review. For academia to feign intellectual rigor and then turn around and claim it can’t distinguish depraved and indefensible rhetoric from serious academic inquiry is untentable—and perhaps confirms one’s suspicions that the selective gatekeeping process is one of ideological rather than academic design. If academia is so incapable of making distinctions, by what authority do they act as institutions of credible academic inquiry?
“Therefore, again, the way to defeat him is to defeat his arguments, not to have him turned into a martyr for conspiracy theorists and First Amendment activists.”
Frankly, academics shouldn’t have to waste their time defeating arguments that axiomatically defeat themselves, and nobody owes a moral imbecile like Churchill a platform or a thoughtful rebuttal. Time spent addressing idiots like Churchill is time that could have been spent on a topic of actual academic merit.
I’m a little tired of all the emphasis being placed on the word “freedom” in the phrase “academic freedom.” It’s as if people forget the first word of the phrase is “academic.” Academic freedom is not a carte blanche to attach the credentials of the academy to any stupid theory, belief or utterance no matter how untentable. To give equal weight to Churchill’s brand of self-indulgent navel-gazing as to credible academic pursuit defeats the whole purpose of selective academic inquiry and compromises academia’s authoritative claim to act as its agent.
If on the other hand Churchill and, say, Milton Friedman, truly are equals in the eyes of academia, then can we at least drop the pretense of the university as an academically selective institution?
Lookit – he’s GOT tenure, and the rules under which he can be turfed are likely to be closely defined. So let’s pretend there’s no way to fire him, even though it sounds as though he’s got other skeletons in his closet.
The larger issue here, I think, is that the guy made some indefensible statements, without regard to what he does for a living. Should he be fired for having done so? No. Not as a substitute for actually rebutting his inanity. Properly rebutted, he wouldn’t have to be fired – he’d resign in embarrassment, but getting him fired, should not be the goal. Proving him unworthy of further attention is a much more useful goal. And that’s only possible by responding to what he said.
In my observation people like Churchill lack the humility to actually be shamed into re-evaluating their drivel, much less into resigning. People who are capable of saying such things in a public forum typically do so with such righteous certainty of their own correctness that they are impenetrable by common decency or counterarguments based on factual evidence.
I believe the reputation of universities suffer by keeping people on board whose primary function is to be ignored by serious academics. In addition to being a waste of resources, this defeats the purpose of higher learning—which is to separate the academic wheat from the chaff, not to pretend like there is no distinction between them.
Drover —
Your argument is that Churchill is sooooo wrong—and his arguments soooooo unworthy of being addressed by the rightness of your own—that for academia to truly live up to its purported aims, it would see Churchill’s argument for what it is (an argument unworthy of academic discussion), and so fire him for wasting academia’s time.
Or, in other words, there is some objective criteria through which it is possible to judge how one—in this case, a Marxist revolutionary Indian rights activist—is allowed to interpret what happened on 911, and that you (acting as the judge of acceptable parameters) have decided he’s failed your test, because to your mind what he argues is academically untenable.
I disagree, and would suggest, once again, that you beg the question. Whether his thesis is tenable or not can only be determined and decided because it is introduced and debated in the first place. And as I’ve said umpteen times now in these threads, Churchill’s thesis is simply another iteration of a fairly standard narrative for “explaining” 911 (written immediately after the fact). That Churchill used sensationalistic rhetoric to draw attention to himself is hardly unusual—and in fact can be taken as evidence that the “blowback” narrative he was arguing for was already so common as to need a rhetorical punching up to make it controversial, and so to get people talking about it.
The argument itself has been largely discredited, but only BECAUSE it was addressed and, to my satisfaction, defeated in the marketplace of ideas.
Jeff:
I’m also not buying your dismissal of his statement to merely an expression of “blowback” with controversial rhetoric for good measure. His claim implies that the victms of 9/11—indeed, every citizen of the United States—is actively pursuing a campaign of genocide. That goes far beyond the hoary but reasonably debatable claim of blowback.
Nor do I subscribe to the reductionist view that holds we must be able to identify objective standards or else have no standards at all. Academic standards are fluid as consensus and understanding of truth and epistemology evolves. But if we are not to bother with standards until they can be objectively identified, universities should drop the pretense of being authoritative institutions of selective academic discourse and every academic charlatan and every vapid thought should get a full hearing in their halls until “objective” standards are identified.
It seems to bear reiteration that no institution is obligated to lend its credibility to the twaddle of this morally obnoxious brat—or of anyone else for that matter. You and I can disagree to the end that Churchill’s statement deserves thoughtful academic scrutiny—and it appears that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But through it all, CU retains its freedom to determine its standards of academic conduct. If it exercises that freedom to disassociate itself from this contemptable jerk, good riddance. In my opinion it will be no loss for the cause of academic inquiry.
Drover, Jeff is speaking on behalf of this mythical “academic freedom” which has never been actually found anywhere yet. Like unicorns, its probably because we don’t have any virgins left to go hunting for it.
Certainly, CU isn’t the most likely place to find it.