CU professor Ward Churchill is in hot water over his analysis of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
In a paper called “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” Churchill wrote: “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”
[…] He also asserted that the nearly 3,000 people killed at the World Trade Center worked for “the mighty engine of profit” but chose to ignore their role. “True enough, they were civilians of a sort,” he wrote. “But innocent? Gimme a break.”
[…] Churchill said Eichmann was a technocrat who “crunched numbers” and made the trains that carried Jews to death camps run on time. And likewise, he said Thursday, those in the Trade Center were technocrats whose work was just as deadly.
The full essay also compares the defeat of the Iraqi army in 1991 to the attack on Russia by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the American public who cheered that rout as being the same as the Germans who supported Hitler until he started losing in 1943. And … well, here’s the “money paragraph”:
There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center … Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire — the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved — and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance” — a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore” ? counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in — and in many cases excelling at — it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.
And those are some of the less inflammatory bits from the “stream-of-conscience” essay.
Churchill subsequently backed down — a bit — from his position, granting that the janitors and food service workers at the WTC probably were innocent. But he’s not backed down from his general thesis, that the 9/11 attacks were a justified and understandable response to American evil. Indeed, reaction to him has, he says, demonstrated it:
Churchill told his students Tuesday that people making threats against him in the name of Sept. 11 victims and their families are proving his initial thesis; that people who feel they are being victimized and degraded will naturally respond with terrorism and violence. “The dynamic is exactly the same. So they’ve proved my point,” Churchill said.
Because of the brouhaha, he has resigned from the chair of the Ethnic Studies department (which, he claims, he never wanted), but various pols and protesters want him fired from the university. Churchill seems to relish being bloodied but unbowed:
“I’m not giving an inch. I don’t have to,” he told his students. “This is my vocation. This is what I’ve done my whole life,” he said. “My intent is to remain here, and, in legal terms, I expect to be here, now, next year, and the year after.”
Meanwhile, a college he was scheduled to speak at had to cancel his appearance due to death threats.
My two cents:
- Ward Churchill is an asshole.
- Death threats — against him or against others providing him a forum — are unacceptable behaviors. Protest, threats to withhold alumni donations and other support? No problem — that’s the marketplace of ideas at work. Death threats? That’s reprehensible.
- Should he be fired? I’m reluctant to start down a slippery slope of deciding which ideas ought not to be expressed by a university academic — though had he uttered a racial slur, an ethnic slur, a gender slur, etc., I suspect that a lot of his “academic freedom” supporters would be equally out for his blood.
The question is not about the First Amendment here, except as a convenient label. Churchill is not about to be tossed in jail for his comments, nor would I in any way support any such effort. That CU is a public school does not, I think, change that equation.
The question is, whether an academic institution can or should directly punish someone who makes comments found offensive, outrageous, or disgusting by the general public. In particular, a tenured someone — tenure, after all, being designed in part to insulate academics from being punished for offending the school administration or those who can put pressure on same.
If we are to support those who might be persecuted for expressing beliefs that we hold dear, then we must support — at arm’s length, at least — those who express beliefs we consider repugnant. As Woodrow Wilson put it, “I have always been among those who believe that the greatest freedom of speech is the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”
Does that mean there should be no consequences for what you say and do in public? Certainly not. There are other channels by which disapproval can be expressed: social snubs, peaceful protest, direct debate and discourse against his positions, and repeated public assertions that Ward Churchill is an asshole. (The latter does indeed constitute an ad hominem attack, but not only did “he start it!” but it’s greatly satisfying.)
So would I hire him to my own hypothetical university? Would I invite him to speak? Would I ask him over to the house for a few beers? No, no, and hell no. But firing him now would simply be wrong, regardless of how much of asshole he is. Better to ask how he got tenure in the first place and go from there. All that further saber-rattling now causes is celebrity martyrdom for Churchill himself, which, I suspect, he’ll enjoy immensely. Better to let him drift off into richly-deserved obscurity and be done with him.
Damn, two excellent entries in a row today. You’re on a roll, Dave. Well said. I’ll probably be linking to this and the Fighting Randomness entry after lunch. 🙂
Aha. My Cunning Plan to Keep Increasing My Readership Via SEB continues to work! The secret is obvious — posting excellent entries!
I pretty much concur with your analysis as well.
I would have one question for Mr. Churchill though. Are the passengers on the planes used in the attacks also guilty in his eyes? Several hundred of them died as well and had nothing to do with the financial establishment he rails against.
Clearly, he is an extremist in his viewpoint so I would not expect a rational answer.
Well, you can’t strike back with an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Though, of course, the blood of the innocent collateral damage is on the hands of the Evil Amerikkkan Empire, too. Though maybe they weren’t so innocent, given how they were flying greenhouse-depleting, supporting-Middle-East-tyrant-fueled jet aircraft, like the technocratic fiends that most Amerikkkans are.
One problem I see with Churchill’s analysis is that the analogy with Eichmann suggests greater culpability on the part of those in the WTC than he can support. If I remember correctly, Eichmann was a real NAZI in the sense that he accepted their ideology and knew that he was sending people to their deaths. I have no reason to think that those killed in the WTC accepted such an abhorrent ideology or that they believed that through their work they were sending people to their deaths. Even if Churchill is right in suggesting that Capitalism is abhorrent and that employees of capitalist corporations help to kill innocents, most employees of capitalist corporations are not analogous to Eichmann since they do not accept anything like the NAZI ideology.
Churchill might disagree, arguing that anyone who accepts capitalism accepts an ideology as abhorrent as the NAZI ideology, and suggesting that ignorance is no excuse. But capitalism is not so clearly abhorrent as Naziism, and it arguably is far better. While many people give no thought to their support of capitalism (and therefore may be morally culpable as W. K. Clifford suggests in his famous essay “The Ethics of Belief”), I would say that anyone who has examined the foundations of capitalism and consciously chosen to work within that framework could argue that the there is good evidence to support the claim that capitalism is not so heinous as naziism, and that Churchill is the one who has gotten his facts wrong.
I’ll have more to say later about the academic freedom issues (being an academic, that’s a subject dear to my heart), but that’s an independent question from my evaluation of Churchill’s view, which I think is clearly wrong.
I agree on all your points, David. And Churchill clearly, in his essay, notes that ignorance (which he asserts comes from “ignore,” implying a true action) is no excuse.
I’ve read more than one of Churchill’s semi-allies on the CU faculty comment that he enjoys being “provocative.” Interestingly enough, the subject came up at lunch today with folks from the office — and politics is *never* a topic of discussion in that crowd. To a person, they all opined that Churchill is an arrogant asshole, basking in the flames he’s thrown gasoline on.
Many professors enjoy being provocateurs, and the fact that Churchill is one of them is an important point when you consider the issue of academic freedom. In various news reports I’ve read (including this one from the New York Times): Churchill was asked to apologize by some Colorado State legislators, CU was asked to fire Churchill by Governor Owens, some Colorado Legislators have proposed to reduce the budget of the CU department in which Churchill teaches, Churchill reports more than 100 death threats, Churchill reports vandalism of his truck in the form of a swastika painted on it, and a panel discussion at Hamilton College in which Churchill was to take part was cancelled due to death threats against Churchill. It’s clear that Churchill has struck a nerve, and if anyone succeeds in getting him fired or otherwise affecting his job, he will claim that both his 1st Amendment rights and his academic freedom have been infringed.
Academic Freedom, in my opinion, is a policy that allows unpopular opinions to be expressed in academic classrooms, academic journals, and other academic forums, and prohibits any sanctions against academics who express unpopular opinions. One reason to allow unpopular opinions to be expressed is pedagogical. Professors will sometimes express an unpopular opinion in order to provoke students to criticize it and to provoke them to think more carefully about their own opinions and why they hold them. It does not appear that this applies to Churchill in regard to his controversial analogy between those who died at the WTC and Eichmann.
Another reason to allow expression of unpopular opinions is to facilitate and promote the dissemination of good new ideas. This claim is supported by the argument that a free marketplace of ideas is the best way to discover truth, in part because those who hold old ideas and who are given the opportunity to suppress new ideas will do so, possibly preventing good new ideas from becoming widely known. When applying this reasoning, we allow any unpopular ideas to circulate (even false ones) because to put any restrictions on the free marketplace of ideas leads to suppression. This view is also supported by the idea that the circulation of bad ideas promotes the circulation of arguments against those ideas. It’s kind of an “invisible hand” argument for the marketplace of ideas rather than for the economic marketplace. This argument clearly applies to Churchill, and if it is correct, it would support the claim that the state of Colorado should not fire Churchill, nor should it reduce the budget of his department.
Because CU is a state school, I believe the 1st Amendment also comes into play. Private schools are not bound by the first amendment since they are not part of the state. State schools, by contrast, are bound by the constitution and its amendments because they are part of the state government. For example, I have been told that some state schools have been sued on constitutional grounds because they did not follow due process in disciplining a student. If this is correct, then neither the state legislature nor CU itself should attempt to restrict Churchill’s speech.
Acting stupid, in my eyes, is one of the worst things an academic can do. It appears to me that Churchill’s love of provocation has caused him to say something really stupid. Along with academic freedom and freedom of speech come the responsibility to speak intelligently and carefully. I don’t think Churchill has fulfilled those responsibilities. However, Churchill reportedly has teunre, which is not contingent on fulfilling those responsibilities. Tenure is one mechanism by which academic freedom is protected. If things work as they should, Churchill will be protected by tenure from being fired or otherwise disciplined by his school or by the state legislature. At the same time, if things work as they should, academics will recognize the stupidity in what Churchill has said, and his academic reputation will decline. As his reputation declines, fewer people will read his papers, and he will sink into obscurity. The next time he says something provocative, people will dismiss it quickly on the grounds that Churchill has already proved himself to be less interested in truth than in provocation. In the end, the marketplace of ideas will do it’s thing, and Churchill’s ideas will be of little value, suitable to be ignored rather than suppressed or given serious consideration.
I’ve prognoticated what I think will happen to Churchill. I think that course of events would be just. No suppression of Churchill’s right to speak freely or to conduct his research as he sees fit is warranted or necessary. Instead, give him enough freedom to show his true colors, and he will fade into obscurity quickly and justly enough.
I concur. And, conversely, making him a martyr would seem to play into his own ideas, and is likely to garner him (and, thus, his ideas) support beyond what they warrent.
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.
Why?
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 http://lawtv.typepad.com/en_passant/2004/a_question_of_l.html) 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?”
What are you willing to do?
Huh. You don’t say …
That “Kaplan, SEC, etc.” BS is showing up on a lot of blogs recently, in posts of totally different content. Yet another bit of comment spam, I’m afraid.
Dave: Good analysis. First, Churchill is an asshole. Second, even though I think he’s an asshole and I disagree with him doesn’t mean that he should somehow be “muffeled” (there’s that First Amendment thing at work). But the part of your analysis that is the most spot on is the recognition that, while the government can’t shut you up, that does not insulate you from the public’s reaction to any stupidity you may choose to exercise under the label of free speech. The best example of this was the public’s reaction to the dimwitted Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, who chose to voice her anti Bush administration views during a concert for the assuredly tone deaf in London. No government body sought to sanction her. But when people stopped buying her musical swill and radio stations quit wanting to play it, she suddenly started whining about the violation of her First Amendment rights. Obvioulsy, she was too busy learning how to not sing during high school. Had she bothered to attend her 10th grade civics class, she might have learned that the Bill Of Rights applies only to govermmental action. The dummy actually thought the First Amendment guaranteed her the right to ensure the sale of her crappy music. To the point, I guess that Mr. Churchill now gets the opportunity to find out that, in this great country, he has the absolute right to act like an asshole…and thankfully, we have the right to treat him like one.
Agreed. The right to speak and associate freely doesn’t imply the right to speak without criticism, condemnation, or social shunning. I may be pleased by that, or displeased, depending on the how I feel about the person being so treated, but that’s a social matter, not a legal/Constitutional one.