Genociding Ward Churchill for over a 20th of a century

CNews 29January07

“There is a perception in the university environment or in the university culture that freedom is under attack generally. …There is a perception in the university community that they feel they are besieged or under siege often… How did we get into a position where our public universities, these are the taxpayer owned institutions where every single person working there is a government official, that many of our public institutions have begin to view themselves more as a revolutionary cell than a body of scholars? … It seems like in many public universities faculty and administration have begun to characterize themselves as something other than what they should be which is a body of scholars which is teaching the next generation. Instead they look at themselves as a group of activists acting in opposition to a dominant culture. That is not the role of the public university faculty. I am sorry. It is simply not the role and it leads to an enormous amount of repression. Because if you are running a revolutionary cell instead of an actual English faculty there is no value for dissent. Dissent harms the purpose of the activists. Dissent distracts from activism. Activists want to get on with their business and not deal with all of this pesky dissent and so it leads to dramatic amounts of censorship within the university.”

“The thing about Ward Churchill is it is beyond debate that the guy has no respect for free speech. People often lionize the individuals who are subject to censorship. Ward Churchill is a bad champion for free speech. Here is a guy who argues for censorship through as I noted just hysterical interpretations of the 9th amendment. A guy who as the evidence seems to indicate has committed multiple academic offenses and he is being feted throughout the land. In criminal law you don’t see someone who gets off an armed robber who escapes conviction on the grounds of an illegal search or seizure being toasted throughout the land and being given huge speaking fees.”

CNews 28Jaunary07

CNews 27January07

"The Faculty Assembly of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) deplores the decision of the University of Colorado at Boulder to fire tenured Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill. He is being unfairly punished for having expressed unpopular and controversial views in a book and at public forums. We view this as an attack on critical thinking, which ought to be protected on campuses everywhere, and ask that the University of Colorado at Boulder rescind this decision immediately."

"This motion of support will be sent to the American Association of University Professors and to the University of Colorado at Boulder."

CNews 26January07

CNews 25January07

CNews 23January07

Looks like Churchill, et al, may get a preview of the revolution (which of course, will be televised; what isn't?) when the Democrats hold their national convention in Denver next year. According to Colorado Confidential, protesters registered a number of DNC-related domain names—all of which redirect the unsuspecting browser to Recreate68.org, a "Virtual Activists’ Convergence Center" designed for "people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party."

Colorado Confidential reports:

Both national political conventions in 2004, in Boston and New York City, included a massive police presence, with concrete barriers, barbed wire fencing and what one Boston judge described as "a brutish and potentially unsafe place for citizens who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights." [Glen] Spagnuolo [yes, that Spagnuolo] was among an estimated 600,000 protesters at the Republican National Convention that year.

"I don’t think the message will come down to crack skulls," he said of Denver’s ’08 convention. "We’ll try our hardest to negotiate, but we won’t be having protest zones — you can’t cage democracy."

Spagnuolo places early estimates at the number of protesters who could be at the ’08 convention at 100,000.

"How many more Vietnams, Nicaraguas, El Salvadores, Haitis, Somalias, Afghanistans, Iraqs, Guatemalas and Chiles do we need before we realize that imperialism keeps marching on?" he asked. "You always say vote for the lesser of two evils; we don’t want to vote for the evil anymore."

(via Slapstick Politics)

Vince Carroll checks in over at the Rocky Mountain News with what we'd guess will be the Rocky's only acknowlegement of Benjamin Whitmer's alter-superego:

Would it surprise you to learn that the founder of a viciously abusive Web site is a part-time instructor in CU's ethnic studies department? I didn't think so.

Suffice it to say that Benjamin Whitmer, like the academic hero he defends and apes (you know who I mean), has a weakness for fantasized violence. Here, for example, is a post on his site from last year, targeting, as it happens, me: "F--- him with every ghastly medieval torture device known to humankind. . . . Had we our way, we'd stake his lower intestine to the ground and make the motherf----- take a half-mile walk."

Whitmer shut down the site (whose name I won't give him the satisfaction of printing) when Ward Churchill critic Grant Crowell exposed his identity in December. But after expunging the offensive content under the excuse of protecting the identities of other contributors, Whitmer resurrected his creation this month.

"We were a satire site," is how he explains the ugly content he pulled down, proving that his honesty may rival that of his idol.

Oddballs with violent imaginations and an inability to engage in serious debate may be a dime a dozen, but most of us like to assume they will not be rewarded with jobs lecturing at public universities. But then most of us never imagined the sort of intellectual slum that CU's Ethnic Studies Department turned out to be, either.

CNews 22January07

Grant Crowell makes available some audio, video, and partial transcripts of Ward Churchill's visit to Canada last October.Our favorite professor shows he's as much an expert on any number of topics as he is on Mandan smallpox epidemics.

OCT 28 – WESTMORE: Audio, video outside the event
OCT 30 – UNIVERSITY OF SUDBURY, Audio Part I, Part II, partial transcript
OCT 30 – LAURENTIAN UNIVERSITY: audio, partial transcript

Crowell also has some interesting audio from Churchill's SnowStar Institute gig, wherein Churchill continues to link himself with the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee (despite that band's rather strenuous repudiation of him a while back).

Additionally, here's a pic of the audience at SnowStar, which seems rather less than filled-to-capacity (the reason given to Crowell by SnowStar for why he could not attend).

CNews 18January07

University of Colorado President Hank Brown will leave his post on Feb. 1, 2008, he announced this morning at the conclusion of the Board of Regents' meeting.

Brown, 66, said he was leaving because the university "has become more transparent and accountable" than when he was brought in on the wake of several major scandals.

"The reason to leave is because you've completed the job," Brown said[....]

CNews 17January07

CNews 12January07

Playing it close to their vests, here's a little squib (upper right, news briefs) from the Silver & Gold re: Ward Churchill's dismissal hearing (ht Leah):

The dismissal hearing for Ward Churchill of UCB ethnic studies got under way on Monday and was scheduled to last all week, Privilege and Tenure Committee Chair Weldon Lodwick of UCDHSC mathematics confirmed on Wednesday. After the hearing process, the P&T dismissal-for-cause panel will have 30 days to send its recommendations to President Hank Brown, who then has the option of asking the panel to reconsider its recommendations before he decides whether to submit the dismissal to the Board of Regents for its approval

CNews 11January07

In a wide-ranging commentary, the always sensible Victor Davis Hanson spends the first chunk of his column wondering what happened to the American university.
Excerpt:

The level of knowledge of the today’s graduate is the stuff of jokes, exactly what one would expect once a common shared instruction in science, history, literature, languages, and mathematics largely disappeared, replaced by a General Education potpourri of specialized classes in gender, race, class, and politics masquerading as knowledge-based?

CNews 9January07

CNews 5January07

As Drunkablog notes, tryworks is back, minus the libel (thus far, that is. With only two posts up, Whitmer/Moredock seems rather subdued).

BTW: While we were sleeping, TDS added several more useless idiots to the "Unfire Ward Churchill " petition (mostly the perennial "independent scholars" and somebody from something called "Fundacion Fedreico Engels Mexico"—we can only guess that they mean "Fundacion Federico Engels Mexico", which publishes and distributes Marxist and socialist tracts, one would hope with better proofreaders than TDS appears to have). The FFEM also publishes the Militante weblog ("Marxist Voice of of the Workers and Youth") where they're presently bitching about not being allowed into the Madrid Book Fair). We'll have our Usual Suspects list updated later today, after we clear five miles of dirt road of what the morons in Denver imagine to be recreational material.

Update: The seven new signatories to the TDS petition have now been added to our Usual Suspects list. It's of interest to note that our last update to the Usual Suspects list was on October 29th—over two months have passed and TDS had to find a socialist publisher in Mexico and a professor in Beirut (plus a recent grad of CU, and—we're guessing here—that recent grad's wife) to get the count up. Tack on Val Fitzgerald (who was not satisfied with the "independent scholar" moniker; he lists himself as an "independent Ethnics scholar") and you've rounded out TDS's newest useful idiots.

CNews 2January07

Drunkablog continues to shake the Whitmer fiasco like a dog with a dead rat. Be sure to read the lengthy comment section, wherein Erin Rosa, erstwhile tryworks co-author (and apparently the only one such with the guts to use her real name) makes several appearances.

A dismissal-for-cause hearing is being scheduled for early January for Professor Ward Churchill of UCB ethnic studies, Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee Chair Weldon Lodwick of UCDHSC mathematics confirmed this week. Lodwick said Churchill also has filed a grievance with P&T, but a report from the level-one investigation of that grievance has not yet been issued to Churchill. Churchill told S&GR that he has agreed to participate in the dismissal process, despite being turned down for the $20,000 in legal assistance that is outlined in the Faculty Senate bylaws, but which was never approved by the Board of Regents. Churchill said that while he has been "placed at a great disadvantage," he will represent himself in the proceedings, without an attorney. Lodwick had told Faculty Senate on Nov. 30 that there are two dismissal-for-cause processes under way, and while he would not identify that other faculty member's rank or home campus this week, he confirmed that a faculty member other than Churchill also is undergoing CU's dismissal procedures. Lodwick added that the P&T Committee voted unanimously on Monday to support the preservation of P&T as a systemwide process, instead of moving it to the campus level as outlined in a proposal endorsed by Boulder Faculty Assembly on Dec. 7.

In related news, a UCB group called Students for Academic Freedom held a press conference on Dec. 16 on the steps of Norlin Library to protest the "politically motivated" investigation of Churchill, and to call for him to receive the UCB Alumni Association Teaching Recognition Award that he won in 2005 but which was withheld pending the outcome of the investigation into claims that he committed research misconduct. "We are prepared to take organized action against the administration between now and the month of February to ensure that our demands are met," the group said in a press release. "If this process goes forward, it would set a precedent that, despite the traditional peer review process, and despite tenure, professors must always censor the conclusions of their research to popular acceptance, or face harsh repercussions. This threatens the nature of academia. This precedent should send a shock wave of fear to all professors nationwide."