<html>
<body>
<font size=3>(in addition, old Cointelpro driven arguments are being used
by the right wing attack, citing so-called Native American sources with a
long history of attacking Ward as well as other Native leaders. Amazing
to hear them quoted on Fox, challenging whether Ward is even a Native
American. More on this soon! cm)<br><br>
</font><h1><b>The Witch Hunt Against Ward
Churchill</b></h1><font size=3>Revolutionary Worker #1268, February 20,
2005, posted at rwor.org<br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>"We're a tolerant society here, but some things cannot be
tolerated."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Bill O'Reilly, Fox News discussing University of
Colorado professor Ward Churchill<br>
February 11, 2005<br><br>
</div>
An intense battle is being fought out right now over whether anyone will
be allowed to express ideas that challenge the U.S. empire, its
operations, its motives and its official history.<br><br>
With growing insistence, rightwing "cultural warriors" have
demanded that college campuses be purged. And now this whole campaign has
been kicked onto the national political stage. Fox News is on the case,
and two Republican governors have demanded that radical professors be
fired.<br><br>
The focus of this moment has been Ward Churchill, a long-time political
activist and author. Churchill is a professor at University of Colorado
(UC) and head of the Ethnic Studies Department there. He is a Native
American who has worked closely with the Colorado American Indian
Movement and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He has written,
edited and co-authored many books, including Agents of Repression: The
FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian
Movement </i>and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the
Americas: 1492 to Present.<br><br>
</i>Last fall, Churchill accepted an invitation to speak at Hamilton
College in upstate New York on February 2, 2005,. The topic was prisons
and Native American rights. The sponsor was Hamilton's Kirkland Project
for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture and their "Class in
Context" speakers series.<br><br>
Churchill combines his scholarly knowledge with a radical perspective and
an often shocking style of delivery. And for exactly those reasons, he
has been in demand, speaking at dozens of colleges over the last few
years. His professional focus is exposing the genocide and current
oppression of Native American peoples.<br><br>
This time, however, a highly organized ideological and political assault
broke out--demanding that he be prevented from speaking. In the method of
all witch hunts, the target quickly widened, surrounded by rumors and
crude distortion: Who invited him and why? Who in high places has allowed
such things to go on? What other professors, on other campuses, share his
radical views?<br><br>
Active in the attack on Ward Churchill from the beginning was David
Horowitz, the notorious intellectual hitman for the right wing--who has
formed a network of campus brownshirts (perversely called "Students
for Academic Freedom") to target progressive professors, disrupt
their classes, record their remarks, and use the conservative mass media
to brand them as "America haters"<br><br>
This campaign is aimed at every prominent academic voice who criticizes
the U.S. system and policies. And it is aimed at the very idea of
academic ferment and dissent, which is despised </i>by the rightwing
forces as an incubator of critical thinking, radicalism, and challenges
to the status quo in every sphere of intellectual endeavor and
society.<br><br>
The stakes here are extremely high. And this is not yet well understood
by many forces who need to be intensely engaged in this battle.<br><br>
<h2><b>Up Against the Witch Hunt</b></h2>
<dl>
<dd><font size=3>"We need to train our students to listen, think
critically and speak up at these hard questions. We don't need to protect
them from things that they might disagree with."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Nancy Rabinowitz, Kirkland Project Director<br>
TV News 10, Syracuse, New York, January 26<br><br>
</div>
<dl>
<dd>"You have the right to free speech, As long as you're not dumb
enough to actually try it."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">The Clash, in the song "Know Your
Rights"<br><br>
</div>
Professor Nancy Rabinowitz was already on the rightwing watch-list when
she invited Ward Churchill to Hamilton College. In 2004, her Kirkland
Project invited Susan Rosenberg to teach a one-month course on writing
memoirs. Rosenberg is a former political prisoner who served time for
supporting the activities of the Weather underground. Rightwing forces
screamed bloody murder over this appointment, and Susan Rosenberg backed
out.<br><br>
Then, on December 14, 2004, the Kirkland Project announced that their
speakers for 2005 included Professor Churchill. And immediately a
self-appointed rightwing attack group on campus dug into his background
and writings.<br><br>
Their attention focussed on an essay Churchill wrote after 9/11, called
"Some People Push Back--On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."
</i>In that essay, Churchill argues that the attacks on the Pentagon and
the World Trade Center could not be separated from what the U.S. had been
doing in the world. In particular, he talks about the horrors of the
U.S.-enforced embargo against Iraq that caused the death of 500,000
children. In a now-famous passage, Churchill likens many who died in 9/11
to the "good Germans" who kept silent in Nazi times. He argues
that many 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."<br><br>
</i>And in a now famous passage, Churchill describes these technocrats as
"the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin
towers." </i>(This is a reference to Adolf Eichmann, a leading Nazi
responsible for organizing the death camps during World War 2.)<br><br>
Clutching this three-year-old essay, Theodore Eismeier, a government
professor at Hamilton, rushed to threaten the college administration with
a public relations scandal. Nancy Rabinowitz said that when the college
president came to ask her opinion, Nancy responded, "Let's take a
strong stand for freedom of speech." Hamilton College refused to
cancel the invitation to Churchill. They decided to have Churchill appear
on a broader panel, together with opposing, conservative
speakers.<br><br>
The right wing was furious over this idea of engaging in opendebate.
Standing reality on its head, Eismeier denounced the panel idea saying:
"It seems akin to inviting a representative of the KKK to speak and
then asking a member of the NAACP to respond." And public attacks
started--first in the local Syracuse newspaper (on January 26), and then
on the internet's influential rightwing blog-sites, like "Little
Green Footballs" and "Free Republic."<br><br>
Two days later, Fox News' commentator Bill O'Reilly denounced Hamilton
College and labeled Ward Churchill "insane." He called on his
listeners to target Hamilton College. A spokeswoman for Hamilton College
said, "When the segment stopped, the phone just started
ringing." Hamilton was flooded with over 8,000 e-mail messages (many
ugly, some supportive). Within days of O'Reilly's rants on Fox, Churchill
had received over 100 violent threats.<br><br>
(O'Reilly's coverage included extended clips of Ward Churchill
speaking--which prompted one Hamilton professor to point out that
O'Reilly believed Churchill's words shouldn't </i>be heard in reasoned
campus discussion, but should </i>be heard in hysterical TV
broadcasts.)<br><br>
In the firestorm that broke out, Ward Churchill, his writings and
politics have been taken completely out of context and reduced to a
one-liner: "He compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis."
Churchill fought to be understood (Counterpunch.org, February
3):<br><br>
"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. 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."<br><br>
</i>But in the roar of the rightwing offensive, and in the absence of
organized resistance, such clarifications have rarely been heard.
Churchill's views are being portrayed as "pro-terrorist hate
speech" and then declared outside the bounds of legitimate public
debate. The argument has been, quite simply, that someone (anyone!) who
had ever written such things should never</i> again be allowed to speak
on any</i> subject--not even in the context of an open debate of opposing
views.<br><br>
The broader mass media "picked up this story"--meaning: they
adopted and broadcast (almost word for word) all the distortions,
overheated outrage and fascistic demands emerging from the rabid
rightwing forces.<br><br>
And it must be said, unfortunately, there was not the necessary timely
counter-offensive by progressive forces--</i>to defend those under
attack, to defend the right of professors generally to hold radical
views, to defend the right of students to judge different political
analyses for themselves, to counter the incredible allegations being
spread, and to expose the crude fascist agenda behind this
campaign!<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Public Persecution for Open
Discussion</b></h2><font size=3>What followed was the painful public
breaking of Hamilton College and its resolve.<br><br>
At first, college president Joan Hinde Stewart tried to take a clear and
principled stand in favor of free speech and academic freedom.<br><br>
On January 26, she wrote: "Hamilton, like any institution committed
to the free exchange of ideas, invites to its campus people of diverse
opinions, often controversial. The opportunity to encounter and respond
to people from outside the college community in their intensity and their
immediacy is among the key attributes of a liberal education. The views
of speakers are their own. We expect, as a matter of civil discourse,
that the members of this academic community, as well as visitors, respect
the dignity of reasoned and principled debate. It is in this setting that
the substance and credibility of a speaker's views are established as
being worthy of support, or not. We expect that many of those who
strongly disagree with Mr. Churchill's comments will attend his talk and
make their views known. This is the process of both academic freedom and
freedom of speech."<br><br>
On January 30, as the full force of the rightwing campaign hit, President
Stewart wrote: "There have been calls for me to rescind the Kirkland
Project's invitation to Ward Churchill and cancel the event. But there is
a principle at stake, for once the invitation was extended by the
Kirkland Project and accepted by Ward Churchill, it became a matter of
free speech.. On Thursday [when the panel discussion was to take place]
we will have the chance to demonstrate the power of
democracy."<br><br>
What followed demonstrated that the so-called democracy in the U.S. is
based on a dictatorship--that is more and more rearing its ugly head in
academic and intellectual life.<br><br>
On January 31, George Pataki, governor of New York State publicly
denounced Hamilton College for inviting Ward Churchill. In fluent
double-speak, he said: "There is a difference between freedom of
speech and inviting a bigoted terrorist supporter."<br><br>
On February 1, President Stewart announced that Churchill would not be
allowed to speak. Stewart said Hamilton College had tried to "
protect what we hold most dear, the right to speak, think and study
freely" but that the threat of physical attack made this impossible.
Churchill had privately said that he would be willing to risk his life to
go through with the discussion.<br><br>
Even cancellation was not enough to satisfy the raging reactionaries. And
attacks piled in from many sides on Professor Rabinowitz.<br><br>
For example, on February 3, a classic smear--in the manner of infamous
communist hunters J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy--appeared
on Horowitz's Frontpage website. In a long rambling dossier-like piece,
Frontpage writer Thomas Ryan attacked Hamilton's Professor Nancy
Rabinowitz--documenting that her father-in-law Victor Rabinowitz had been
accused of being a communist (during the early 1960s witch hunts
conducted by U.S. Congressional committees!) and connecting him with the
National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ryan
wrote that Victor Rabinowitz had served as defense lawyer for Kathy
Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground.<br><br>
In other words, the basic charge here is that Nancy Rabinowitz is related
to Victor Rabinowitz, a lawyer who is charged with defending his
clients!--i.e., accused of representing "radical individuals and
groups seeking to destroy the U.S. Constitution."<br><br>
On February 5, David Horowitz denounced Nancy Rabinowitz on his personal
blog for supposedly creating a "Terrorist Nexus at Hamilton
College."<br><br>
On February 11, it was announced that Nancy Rabinowitz had been forced
out of her position as head of the Kirkland Project.<br><br>
It was not enough that Churchill should be dis-invited. Those who invited
him had to be publicly humiliated. A college had to betray its own belief
in open debate.<br><br>
Nancy Rabinowitz asked a good question: "How many people can stomach
what we've been through?"<br><br>
</font><h2><b>The Storm in Colorado </b></h2><font size=3>Day by day, a
parallel campaign raged in Colorado. Colorado Republicans took time out
from their permanent assault on gay marriage to focus on Ward Churchill
and the suspect political climate in the state's university
towns.<br><br>
Bill Owens, Governor of Colorado, went on the O'Reilly Factor </i>and
called on the University of Colorado's Board of Regents to fire Professor
Churchill. Owens said, "I've called for him to actually be
terminated, because of his words and his actions, which I think are
inconsistent with what we stand for in Colorado and at the University of
Colorado."<br><br>
It is worth taking a second to think about what he is saying: Quite
simply, it is that someone should not be allowed to teach at a college in
Colorado unless they conform to the highly conservative governor's
political standards of "what we stand for." Apparently he
thinks he is the dictator of what the state's college professors are
allowed to think or say. This is the kind of "academic freedom"
that the Horowitzians are calling for and, if such views carry the day,
the impact on political and intellectual life would be
chilling.<br><br>
Republicans in the Colorado House of Representatives introduced a
resolution denouncing Churchill.<br><br>
Bowing to this political pressure, university authorities set to work
concocting some way to punish Churchill.<br><br>
First he was stripped of his department post: On February 2 (the same day
that Hamilton College cancelled the panel event) Ward Churchill resigned
as head of the Ethnic Studies Department at University of
Colorado.<br><br>
At the same time, Ward Churchill is a tenured</i> professor--which means
that he cannot be fired unless he has committed major violations of
ethics (like scholarly fraud).<br><br>
The American Association of University Professors weighed in
("Statement on Professor Ward Churchill Controversy," February
2): "Freedom of faculty members to express views, however unpopular
or distasteful, is an essential condition of an institution of higher
learning that is truly free. We deplore threats of violence heaped upon
Professor Churchill, and we reject the notion that some viewpoints are so
offensive or disturbing that the academic community should not allow them
to be heard and debated. Also reprehensible are inflammatory statements
by public officials that interfere in the decisions of the academic
community."<br><br>
Meanwhile, the chancellor at UC initiated a 30-day investigation into
Churchill's writings and statements supposedly looking for firing
offenses, saying Churchill "may have overstepped his
bounds."<br><br>
Enter stage right: </i>A certain Thomas Brown, Assistant Professor of
Sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, popped up on cue. On
Horowitz's Frontpage </i>website, Brown published a long polemic
challenging some details in the way Ward Churchill once (ten years ago in
a legal document) described the use of "small pox blankets" to
kill Indians. Brown writes. "Churchill's tale of genocide by means
of biological warfare is shocking. It is also entirely
fraudulent."<br><br>
This is a set-up for a political firing: the plan is to accuse Churchill
of fraud, while really targeting him for his politics.<br><br>
A number of scholars quickly rose to his defense.<br><br>
Prof. Arturo Aldama, who works with Churchill at CU, told the press:
"He's impeccable on his sources and known for his empirical and
archival-based methodologies."<br><br>
Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics and prominent researcher into
U.S. imperialism, said: "I've read a fair amount of his work, and a
lot of it is excellent, penetrating and of high scholarly
quality."<br><br>
Meanwhile, the University of Colorado tried to suppress a campus rally in
Churchill's defense. On the morning of February 8 they announced that the
event planned for that evening was canceled--citing "security
concerns." Students threatened a court suit, and the administration
backed down. (Apparently: no real security danger, huh?)<br><br>
That evening over a thousand people crowded in to hear Ward Churchill
speak, and over 250 stood outside trying to get in. As the audience
cheered, colleagues and students spoke movingly in Churchill's defense,
and Churchill declared fiercely that he had no intention of retreating
from his justified criticisms of U.S. atrocities around the
world.<br><br>
Later, O'Reilly sneered on the air that Churchill had created a
"cult of personality" on campus--and that it only showed how
dangerous it was to allow students to hear radical views.<br><br>
Meanwhile at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, the school
administration has courageously insisted that they will not cancel plans
to have Ward Churchill speak on March 1. And, in a pattern that is both
chilling and now typical, members of the Wisconsin legislature have
announced that they would take steps to prevent Churchill from speaking
in their state.<br><br>
This is where things now stand--as this sharp struggle
continues.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>A Call for Campus Purges </b></h2>
<dl>
<dd><font size=3>"Given the prevailing political climate, and the
power of institutions like Fox News to stir up mass hysteria, it won't
stop with Churchill, and it won't stop with Hamilton
College,"<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Maurice Isserman, Professor of History, Hamilton
College<br><br>
</div>
<dl>
<dd>"The problem with this guy is that he sees the U.S.A. as a
country that persecutes people, a bad country."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Bill O'Reilly commenting on Ward Churchill,
February 2<br><br>
</div>
<dl>
<dd>"Churchill is typical of the hate-America academic left--a fifth
column every bit as much a threat to our survival as Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda. Sixties rioters are today's professors.They've created
universities that mirror their mindset. Women's Studies, African American
Studies, Hispanic Studies, ethnic studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies are
excuses for neo-Marxist indoctrination (where race, gender, or sexuality
substitute for "class")..Should Ward Churchill be fired? The
question is almost irrelevant. As the saying goes, Churchill is
symptomatic of a raging disease--the academic Left (a redundancy, really)
which loathes America, lionizes the killers of Americans, and longs for
the demise of our republic. In a way, Professor Churchill serves an
educational purpose for the American people. As the old World War II
posters cautioned: Know your enemy."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Don Feder, Frontpage </i>magazine, February 11,
2005<br><br>
</div>
<dl>
<dd>"Ward Churchill literally and definitively called for the
violent overthrow and destruction of the United States. By any even
remotely objective standards, his statements can be construed as nothing
else.. It is almost unconscionable that Churchill and his ilk are still
allowed to engage in seditious behavior. Sedition is on the cusp of
treason. Further, with his comments Churchill is providing `aid and
comfort to the enemy.' That is treason. Why do we, as a nation, no longer
prosecute the Left for this high crime? Why is the Left consistently
immune? Again, free speech includes neither sedition nor treason.even in
the `academic' community."<br><br>
</dl><div align="right">Sher Zieve, columnist The Conservative Voice,
</i>Christian fascist blogsite<br><br>
</div>
These quotes show what the attackers are really up to. So much hinges on
their portrayal of the U.S. as the global source of liberty and morality
that they are driven to a FRENZY by anyone who describes or discusses the
true nature of their empire.<br><br>
This situation is serious. And it is particularly intolerable that the
defense of Churchill has been so scattered and half-hearted --- and
filled with tortured attempts to clarify differences with
Churchill.<br><br>
Everyone needs to be clear on the stakes and the bigger picture.
<br><br>
</i>The powerful, well-organized, well-funded wolves attacking Churchill
intend to politically purge the campuses, chill the political climate,
silence dissent, and empower a system of thought police to enforce all
this. These are the facts.<br><br>
This is a campaign filled with hatred of critical thinking and open
debate. It is rooted in forces deeply hostile to the very idea of
critical thought--powerful forces whose vision for our lives includes the
enforcement of absolute truths and extreme conservative political and
religious gospel. And, obviously, this is a crucial part of the larger
cultural war-- which has a whole vision of how they want this society to
be.<br><br>
There is a need to step back--to see this larger picture--and then
energetically step forward to mount a vigorous defense of Ward
Churchill--and organize a much larger and powerful resistance to the
whole fascist agenda that is on the move.<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>