Genociding Ward Churchill for over a 20th of a century

CNews 31March06

The Professors is written as a collective portrait that is designed to reveal a set of patterns that I find troubling. Here is how I describe the result in the introduction to the book: “When viewed as a whole, the hundred or more portraits in this volume reveal several disturbing patterns of university life, which are reflected careers like Ward Churchill’s, but are neither limited to him or his specific university or his particular academic discipline. These include (1) promotion far beyond academic achievement (Professors Anderson, Aptheker, Berry, Churchill, Davis, Kirstein, Navarro, West, Williams, and others in this volume); (2) teaching subjects outside one’s professional qualifications and expertise for the purpose of political propaganda (Professors Barash, Becker, Churchill, Ensalaco, Furr, Holstun, Wolfe, and many others); (3) making racist and ethnically disparaging remarks in public without eliciting reaction by university administrations, as long as those remarks are directed at unprotected groups, e.g., Armenians, whites, Christians, and Jews (Professors Algar, Armitage, Baraka, Dabashi, hooks, Massad, and others); (4) the overt introduction of political agendas into the classroom and the abandonment of any pretense of academic discipline or scholarly inquiry (Professors Aptheker, Dunkley, Eckstein, Gilbert, Higgins, Marable, Richards, Williams, and many others).”

CNews 30March06

Alpine, Wyoming (PRWEB) March 30, 2006 -- On April 6-7, 2006, Rightalk.com will webcast live the debate between Students for Academic Freedom Chairman David Horowitz and University of Colorado-Boulder Professor Ward Churchill. The topic for debate will be: "Can Politics Be Taken Out Of The Classroom, and Should It Be?"

The debate will be held Thursday evening on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, DC. Students for Academic Freedom, Young America's Foundation and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture are the co-hosts of the debate.

Rightalk.com will also webcast live the first Students for Academic Freedom National Academic Freedom Conference on April 7, 2006. The conference will feature U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, House Leader Jack Kingston, and Colorado high school student Sean Allen whose recording of an anti-American rant by his geography teacher, Jay Bennish, created a national furor over classroom indoctrination. The conference (apart from the debate) will take place at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, DC.

Information on these events is available at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ . Audio files/podcasts will be available after the events at www.rightalk.com.

CNews 28March06

PB Exclusive: AIM Insider's Book Excerpt

The bait was set. We waited for the jackal to come sniffing around. After a few weeks, after Steve [Robideau] had boogied to Seattle when he made bail, and I was in Denver, he called me, and asked, "What's Ward Churchill got against you?"

"What? Nothing, that I know of. Why?"

"He's calling up everybody and saying you're a Fed."

"What?!"

Steve laughed it off nervously. "Sounds like a Provocateur somewhere. Yeah. Bill Wahpepah in San Francisco called me and said Churchill had called him too, bad-mouthing you. John [Trudell] called from L.A. and said he's got all the Peltier Support Groups out there suspicious of you too."

"Calling me a Fed?"

"Yeah. An FBI agent, that's what he said to me. I told him it was bullshit, but he was pretty adamant about it."

"I barely even know the guy."

"Don't worry about it. We're all getting bad-jacketed like that all the time. It's par for the course."

"Shit." I knew in my gut we'd found the covert operative posing in our midst. Unknown to Steve, I'd already set up a trap, with the help of Chauncy [Dupree] and some other elders I'd known from the old Pedro [Bissonette] days, with some of our unconfessed "crimes" that only a cop would know.

I called an emergency AIM Security meeting at Green Grass, and ended up getting interrogated all day by some bad-asses who'd also heard the rumors from colorado and california, and didn't know whether to believe it or not. I'd been involved in acts of eco-sabotage and political robbery since 1973, and they didn't know what to think about my impending arraignment and major charges of felonies. It was a very tense and terrible time. I'd already learned that jail was death. The loss of freedom, I'd learned, was my greatest fear. It loomed like the blackest cloud of my life.

"I left out one charge," I explained to the grim, dark faces glaring at me. "A bank robbery only a cop would know, and not even a local or state cop at that. Only a fed would know it. I didn't even tell my lawyer, when we went in to plead guilty to the police station and enumerate all the other charges, so they might go easy on me. I pled guilty."

"You didn't confess to this one job?"

"No. No one knew about it but me."

"But Ward Churchill knows it?"

"Yeah."

"But how does he know it? How could only a Fed know it?"

"Because they were watching the Peltier House. For criminals or frame-ups or whatever."

"Crimes?"

"And now look at this whole Nicaragua mess he's gotten involved in, along with Russell Means."

"Yeah, we know Russ is dirty, since he skipped out during Wounded Knee and went ass-kissing in Washington D.C."

"Yeah, they're screwing up the Bros down there, in Central America, big time. I was going back and forth between the Peltier House and the Black Hills Alliance office all the time, in Rapid City. You know that. I'm on the BHA board of directors, and editor of both newspapers 'Paha Sapa Report' and 'Crazy Horse Spirit'. I've also used the stolen money to publish my book 'The Powwow Highway' because no one else would publish it, to get out the truth of what we're doing here."

"Yeah," they smiled for the first time. "That's a decent book. You published it yourself?"

"With contraband. Anyway, I'm also writing a big novel 'Thunder Nation' right now, and this Churchill character up in Boulder, at the University of Colorado I guess, must think he's a bigshot writer or something, and jealous maybe. I don't know."

"No one even knows him," another guy realized, also softening up a little, "not that I know of."

"He's no one. No one knows him, except Rascal Means."

"Shit."

What Horowitz and Churchill Should Agree On

CNews 22March06

CNews 21March06

HERNDON, Va., March 21 -- Embattled Professor Ward Churchill has agreed to engage bestselling author and sought after speaker David Horowitz in a series of formal debates organized by Young America's Foundation and Students for Academic Freedom. The series of debates will kick off at George Washington University in Washington D.C. on April 6 in the Continental Ballroom with the other campus locations yet to be announced.

CNews 15March06

CNews 14March06

While the public occasionally hears about weird rantings by some teacher or professor, what seldom gets any media attention is the far more pervasive classroom brainwashing by people whose views may not be so extreme, but are no less irrelevant to what they are being paid to teach. Some say teachers should give "both sides" -- but they should give neither side if it is off the subject.

Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things -- teach chemistry or accounting the way you think chemistry or accounting should be taught. It is also freedom to engage in the political activities of other citizens -- on their own time, outside the classroom -- without being fired.

Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections or foreign policy.

Despite the fact that about 85 percent of the class is white and it's being taught on a campus that has had its fair share of racial strife, senior Curtis Love said the class offers them an opportunity to talk openly.

"As a class it give [sic] you that space to address what you have to say," he said.

Sometimes the discussions are blatant, such as a conversation about whites' general option to be able to write a check at the grocery store without having to produce all kinds of proof of financial solidness. Other times the discussions are more subtle, such as a mention of the privilege of whites to be able to get bandages that match their skin.

"We do try and not hurt anybody's feeling and try to be honest," student Alexandra Carrillo said.

"It's not, 'I'm white, I'm horrible person,' but rather, 'I'm white. What can I do to realize that and make a better world,'" Carrillo said.

"Whiteness studies is not about white-bashing, and it's not about white supremacy," said Duncan Rinehart, who will teach CU's fourth whiteness-studies course this semester.

"As long as whiteness is invisible, it's contributing to inequality and injustice. There is a fair amount of just flat-out denial, not malicious, but denial nonetheless."

Students are not little lumps of clay, waiting for you to mold them into neo-hippies or YAF activists. Students are human beings with their own minds, their own backgrounds, and their own beliefs. And it is our duty to respect them, not treat them like idiots.

When is Free Speech Too Free?

CNews 11March06

I eagerly await Bennish’s balancing lecture (required by school policy) on how Bush is ‘not like’ Hitler. That should be really good.

CNews 10March06

Social studies teacher Jay Bennish told Cherry Creek school leaders Thursday that he should have used a different dictator when comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler in a geography class, his lawyer David Lane said Thursday.

Bennish also told district officials that he should have balanced each lecture "contemporaneously" on controversial issues rather than over the course of the term, Lane said.

"When he gives the yin, give the yang right there," he said. "Don't wait a week."

Fewer than a dozen complaints to the school have surfaced, Lane said, since the "national turmoil" has unfolded about Bennish, who was recorded giving a lecture critical of the president by one of his Overland High School students.

"He wishes he would have picked a different dictator," Lane told a pack of reporters after the closed-door talk with Cherry Creek school administrators Thursday, referring to comments Bennish made comparing Bush to Hitler.

CNews 8March06

[UC Ethnics Studies professor Emma] Perez also questioned Horowitz’s authority to write [The Professors].

“Horowitz has no PhD, has never been through a tenure system, has no academic papers, and no precise understanding of how we operate,” Perez said.

CNews 6March06

"Capitalism: If you don't understand the economic system of capitalism, you don't understand the world in which we live. Ok. Economic system in which all or most of the means of production, etc., are owned privately and operated in a somewhat competitive environment for the purpose of producing PROFIT! Of course, you can shorten these definitions down. Make sure you get the gist of it. Do you see how when, you know, when you're looking at this definition, where does it say anything about capitalism is an economic system that will provide everyone in the world with the basic needs that they need? Is that a part of this system? Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It's at odds with human rights."

CNews 5March06

Colorado State University professors are calling a tenure-related bill before the state Legislature a knee-jerk reaction that would erode academic freedom, hinder their students' ability to learn and deter other professors from coming to the state.

CNews 4March06

Instead of producing inquisitive, independent thinkers, public schools have largely descended into indoctrination and groupthink. That is, before children are old enough to spell "tree" and grasp certain complex ideas and issues, they are schooled in environmentalism, multiculturalism and moral relativism.

Now observe that individuals who disagree with these teachings must nevertheless finance them. Government has monopolized education, mainly by financing schools through our taxes. Moreover, religious to racial pressure groups join hands with bureaucrats to enact laws that, for example, demand that school curriculums conform to their particular ideologies. Then when schools fail, public education proponents’ knee-jerk reaction is to pour more money into them, courtesy of your tax dollars.

An Overland High School teacher whose recorded statements about President Bush and U. S. foreign policy sparked a national debate about classroom speech on Friday backed away from plans to sue the Cherry Creek School District.

The attorney for social studies teacher Jay Bennish said his client held off on the lawsuit after district officials made clear that Bennish was free to talk to the media.

"Today he was told he could talk to the media," said David Lane, the attorney for Bennish, who has been on paid administrative leave since Wednesday.

However, Lane said, for the time being Bennish will not comment on the case.

Lane said Bennish was initially told by an administrator that "if you talk to the media, we will view this as insubordination."

But district spokeswoman Tustin Amole said she told Bennish "he had a First Amendment right to speak to whoever he wants to." She said she was present when another administrator told him the same thing.

As the controversy moved into its third day, Bennish got some advice from an unlikely source - embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, under fire on a number of fronts and the subject of an ongoing investigation by a school committee.

According to Lane—who also represents Churchill—the CU professor told Bennish that in dealing with reporters "make sure you know exactly what you're going to say before you say it; don't come out and just start talking."

CNews 3March06

The story, which was first reported by The Conservative Voice (“Anti-US Taped Teacher Hires ACLU Attorney”), has now gained national attention. [Jay] Bennish is said to have been teaching his students that the real enemy in the world is the United States of America and made comments including: “The American flag is the same as the Nazi flag”, capitalism is "at odds with human rights", President Bush’s January State of the Union address included "things that Adolph Hitler used to say”, Israel is a “Zionist state” and appeared to defend terrorist Hamas when he asked a student "Who is defining what is a terrorist?" Bennish was taped by student Sean Allen, who said he regularly taped Bennish’s lectures for later review.

David Lane, Bennish’s attorney and the same lawyer who represented self-avowed anti-US University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, said that he is filing the lawsuit under “freedom of speech” contained in the US Constitution’s First Amendment clause.

CNews 2March06

CNews 1March06

Several professors spoke yesterday, Feb. 21, as part of the discussion, "Connecting the Dots: Racism and Academic Freedom." They wrangled with the notion that racism, activism and academic freedom are undeniably linked.

“You can take your degree from a prestigious university, get yourself a good job and become part of the system that is violating your human rights,” said Reiland Rabaka, an assistant professor of ethnic studies.

Moderated by professor Adrian Gaskins, the speakers said they wanted not only to enlighten the University of Colorado of the educational injustices it is facing but also to provoke change in what many outsiders see as a party-oriented student body.

Quoting Malcolm X, Rabaka said, “Young people should learn how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself.”

He called out for students not to gloss critical thinking but to realize the power it puts in their hands.

“We must connect the theory of education to liberation. In the midst of current struggles, we find a struggle against academic freedom is also a struggle against human rights," he said. “Students must be active agents in education and liberation.

"The struggle is ongoing. We are living in the American Revolution, because revolutions are permanent. All of us have the right to speak up and speak out, and it never ends and nobody can take that right from us.”

CU President Hank Brown continued to push diversity as the life source of CU during his state of the university speech on Feb. 28.

Brown also touched on financial issues, the future of the university and the vital need to sustain an environment that listens without rebuke.

Students "have a right to have their own view and not be punished for that view,” Brown said.

One audience member, a local father, accused the university of promoting hate by paying speaker Al Sharpton and supporting Ward Churchill. Brown responded by respecting the right of free speech and opinion.

“I have a deep respect for the people’s right, even if I profoundly disagree,” Brown said.