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| What Kind Of People Are Teaching Our Children | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 31 2005, 11:11 PM (2,973 Views) | |
| CalRed | Jan 31 2005, 11:11 PM Post #1 |
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![]() But Churchill will retain teaching job By Howard Pankratz Denver Post Staff Writer Post file / Glenn Asakawa University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill in a Jan. 25 photo. University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, under fire for comparing victims of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack to Nazis, resigned today as chairman of CU's ethnic studies department but will continue on as a teacher. Denver Post It's not bad enough the University is facing problems with their sex and alcohool problems in their recruiting but when they continue to keep teachers like this it really shows how far we have come. Article Published: Monday, January 31, 2005 CU hiding behind tenure By David Harsanyi Denver Post Staff Writer If you're unfamiliar with Ward Churchill, consider yourself lucky. He's a professional revolutionary and America-hating activist who, when not agitating, chairs the Ethnic Studies Department at University of Colorado at Boulder. While Churchill has made a career of trying to deny Denverites their First Amendment rights, last week we found out that it wasn't personal, just a widespread contempt for freedom. You should understand, when I say "America-hating," I don't mean to suggest it in a flippant, love-it-or-leave-it, knee-jerk, right-wing sort of way. I think it's fair to state that a majority of reasonable Americans find Churchill's contention - that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were justified and the victims weren't innocent but rather Nazis - reprehensible. At least, I hope so. His right to make these vile remarks - masked in the guise of intellectual discourse - are guaranteed. No one wants to take that away. The problem is, as with all tenured professors, Churchill doesn't have to answer for his actions. That brings us to a delicate matter: How do we balance the need to protect diversity and academic freedom with the need to protect impressionable students from hate-filled ideologues? "Call me an old-fashioned guy," U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez says. "But I was raised by an old-fashioned guy who didn't mind calling right right and wrong wrong. This guy (Churchill) was clearly way out of line, way out of touch." If we all, or most of us, agree that wrong is wrong in this case, what are our options? "I will defend his right to free speech," Beauprez says of Churchill. "But speech has consequences. This guy is just leveraging political correctness against academic freedom for his own betterment. Most people, if they go overboard in this way, would not have kept their jobs." What would my career prospects be if I suggested a group of murdered civilians, "little Eichmanns," deserved to be slaughtered? I'm fairly certain my next public statement would be: "Would you like fries with that?" Churchill, on the other hand, is teaching your kids. Fortunately, I have the perfect karmic solution: the market - a concept Churchill detests more than any other. Wouldn't it be heartening to see all the little Eichmanns who scraped and saved to send Johnny and Alice to CU start calling, sending letters and applying some concentrated pressure. Sure, guys such as Churchill hover cheerfully above the result-based reality that gives parents and students little precious extra time for activism. But Beauprez believes it's the right way to go. "Parents and students can put enough public pressure on this guy. Most people, after a certain amount of pressure, get the message," he says. Churchill won't. But others might. CU president Betsy Hoffman? She saw fit to suspend football coach Gary Barnett for disparaging remarks about the kicking abilities of a female player. Does accusing Sept. 11 victims of being Nazi technocrats qualify for some similar punishment? How about Phil DiStefano, CU's interim chancellor? Though he "may find Churchill's views offensive," he "also must support" his right "to hold and express his views." Are you as tired as I am of these spineless, cookie-cutter statements? We all know Churchill has a right to free speech. What rights do students, parents or CU have? Any? Maybe one day we'll see a release with some backbone. If I may: "Though Ward Churchill has the right as an American citizen to express himself, even in a morally indigestible and intellectually vacant manner, his comments have embarrassed CU and are out of touch with even the most liberal definition of mainstream thought. "Consequently, we ask that Mr. Churchill do the honorable thing and step down." Copied in it's entirety but source is here: Source This is a real tragedy, keeping this guy on. But watch---someone will defend him... |
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Something instead of Nothing? "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Alan Sandage | |
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| TexasShadow | Feb 1 2005, 02:55 AM Post #2 |
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Jane
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don't the students have the right to choose or reject this teacher's classes? there are probably other classes they could take as alternates. |
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| cmoehle | Feb 1 2005, 04:57 AM Post #3 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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"But watch---someone will defend him... " poisons the well of discussion, doesn't it? It appears on the face of it indefensible. What did he say now? All we get is a paraphrase of what the prof may have said out of context so to not show intent. Like Jane I also have to ask, don't students have a choice? The one op-ed author seems to think these are kindergarten students: "the need to protect impressionable students from hate-filled ideologues". Finally, why are we to think one teacher is representative of "What kind of people are teaching our children?" Again, these are not kindergarteners. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| pulsar | Feb 1 2005, 09:46 AM Post #4 |
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I must admit that the title of the thread got my dander up. Here is a link to the essay by Churchill that apparently caused the flap. "Some People Push Back" On the Justice of Roosting Chickens It is a long essay and I have not read it all, so I will refrain from further comment at this time. Tom |
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| sylley2000 | Feb 1 2005, 12:25 PM Post #5 |
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Sylvia, Grand Bend ON
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To be fair, one should balance that article with: Ward Churchill Responds to Criticism of "Some People Push Back" In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been. * The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences. * I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable." * This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government." * In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths. * Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies. * It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them. * It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name. * The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else. * These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country. Ward Churchill Boulder, Colorado January 31, 2005 http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/wa...l_responds.html *** Most of the links I've seen so far are opinion-based. Sylvia |
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| tomdrobin | Feb 1 2005, 09:20 PM Post #6 |
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Ahhh Acadamia! Isolated from the real world where productivity is the measure of accomplishment. Many prevert their postions by questionable ideology. I once had an American Government professor who espoused that socialism was better than our current system, rather openly in class. I was older than the rest of the class, having completed my education compliments of the GI bill. I dismissed him as a nut case. But, wonder how many of the young people in class took him seriously. Perhaps the answer is not to fire the Ward Churchills of acadamia, but hire some professors with opposing views, and then let the students decide for themselves. |
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| cmoehle | Feb 1 2005, 09:31 PM Post #7 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Not many conservatives, fiscal, political conservatives want to teach. The stigma attached to being intellectual in any way in contemporary "politics" has had an unintended consequence. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| cmoehle | Feb 2 2005, 06:19 AM Post #8 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Here's a recent study: All grown up at 25?: "Since children today reach puberty earlier than previously, about age 13, and the brain's reasoning center doesn't reach maturity until the mid-20s, Steinberg said, "this period of recklessness has never been as long as it is now."" |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| irongoat | Feb 2 2005, 06:48 AM Post #9 |
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For another perspective - it's dimensional. Students Rate Professors |
| "In matters of style, swim with the current, In matters of principal, stand like a rock". Thomas jefferson | |
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| CalRed | Feb 2 2005, 10:03 AM Post #10 |
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The rating shows just how effective his anti-American message really is. This is a comment of one of his students: "Ward is brilliant. He's an expert in his field. You will learn so much about Native American issues. If this class doesn't change the way you see the world, you weren't paying attention. Go to class, pay attention, and you'll get an A. " That makes the point that he doesn't have any business teaching. Why don't we just send out kids to Iran to learn how to hate Americans? |
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Something instead of Nothing? "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Alan Sandage | |
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| Colo_Crawdad | Feb 2 2005, 10:15 AM Post #11 |
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Lowell
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Do note that there is no voice of any student having agreed with his comments about 9 - 11. |
| "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US." --- Pogo | |
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| CalRed | Feb 2 2005, 10:17 AM Post #12 |
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From the NY Times: College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Disparaged 9/11 Attack Victims By PATRICK D. HEALY Published: February 2, 2005 LINTON, N.Y., Feb. 1 - Over the last five days, tiny Hamilton College in upstate New York has been barraged with more than 6,000 e-mail messages full of fury, some threatening violence. Some donors have canceled pledges to an ambitious capital campaign. And prospective students have withdrawn applications or refused to enroll. Excerpts: Stunned and frightened, Hamilton leaders sought to end the turmoil on Tuesday by canceling the event that set it off: a planned speech by a Colorado professor who was invited to talk about American Indian activism but whose earlier essay on the Sept. 11 attacks fueled the criticism and threats. The professor, Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote disparagingly of the victims inside the twin towers and referred to them at one point as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. Hamilton, a campus of 1,750 students, has always had a reputation for accepting divergent voices. In November, the same program that invited this speaker - the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture - hired Susan Rosenberg, a former member of the Weather Underground, after her release from prison on explosives charges. She later withdrew in the face of protest. Mr. Churchill - who had planned to give his remarks Thursday in a flak jacket with two bodyguards in tow - was originally scheduled to speak by himself, but Ms. Stewart and others added three people to the panel and changed its focus to free speech. One of those added was Mr. Churchill's wife, who is also a scholar. The Churchills were to be paid $3,500, but volunteered this week to forgo the money because of the complaints. Quotes from the article: In his original essay, Mr. Churchill wrote that "the thousands killed at the World Trade Center had played a role in American sanctions on Iraq that "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," he wrote. As Hamilton was trying to contain the outrage on Tuesday, political and university officials in Colorado were criticizing Mr. Churchill. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, called on him to resign from the university, while Representative Mark Udall, a Democrat, said in a statement that the professor was "factually inaccurate" about the terrorist attacks and owed the families of victims an apology. Mr. Churchill gave up his chairmanship of the ethnic studies department this week, and a spokeswoman said that the university's governing body, the nine-member Board of Regents, would meet Thursday to discuss his future. Entire article |
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Something instead of Nothing? "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Alan Sandage | |
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| cmoehle | Feb 2 2005, 11:31 AM Post #13 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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"If this class doesn't change the way you see the world, you weren't paying attention. " Every class should do this to some extent. Otherwise, teacher's not teaching and student's not learning. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| abradf2519 | Feb 2 2005, 12:02 PM Post #14 |
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I think everyone is missing the point. This guy is a moron, but the educational community doesn't seem to notice! Either he has no idea what Eichmann did in Germany or he has no idea what the accountants that died in the WTC did. He couldn't possibly make the analogy if he did. Somethimes I think the whole consept of tenure is wrong, and this guy illustrates why. |
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Alan Milan, New York, USA | |
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| cmoehle | Feb 2 2005, 01:25 PM Post #15 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Is he a moron because you disagree with a biased third party news editor's distortion of what he actually said? I may not agree with his views but wouldn't call him a moron--I would call the editor a moron for knowingly distorting facts. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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