Gay-bashing church pickets GI funeral - damages $11 million (almost)

[The_Professor]

Being a tenured professor myself, I can assure you that Tenure does not make one immune from being removed, it only makes it more dififcult. At my current institution, for example, the Provost (Vice President for Academic Affairs) is pretty heavy-handed and folks are scared to say ANYTHING, even tenured folks. So sad...

[Xavier_Onassis]

Being a tenured professor myself, I can assure you that Tenure does not make one immune from being removed, it only makes it more dififcult. At my current institution, for example, the Provost (Vice President for Academic Affairs) is pretty heavy-handed and folks are scared to say ANYTHING, even tenured folks. So sad...

Tenure SHOULD mean that they should not be able to fire you for expressing your personal opinions, period.

As a rule, opinions that matter most, such as those concerning global warming, corporate fraud and deception, government abuses of right, stem cell research, and the like are often the ones that would get a professor fired.

Refusing to discuss controversial issues is never a solution: Congress had a ban on discussing slavery for a long period before the Civil War, and that was one of the main causes of the War: both sides felt rightly that the government was unresponsive to their major issue.

Administrators are NOT the superiors of professors: they should be nothing more than paper pushers, and should not be allowed to dictate anyone being removed or chastised for their beliefs.

If a professro does not come to class on time regularly, or not at all, or gives grades in irrational ways, those are grounds for dismissal.

The best professors are those who think for themselves. If professors are censored for their beliefs, then what results is a faculty of uninspired drudges.

[Cynthia]

Who wants a professor accused of plagiarism to teach the future of America.

Cheaters never prosper.

Goons always loose in the end.

Ward is a Goon.

[Xavier_Onassis]

You have no proof that Churchill is guilty of plagiarism. Anyone who writes a scholarly paper can be accused of this. All you have to do is cut out the footnotes and the bibliography.

No one even tried to accuse Churchill of any of this until he made the crack about the victimized WTC pencil pushers. That gave the establishment the opportunity to attack him on every front. He is a professor, His job is to make people think. Not agree with him, necessarily, but just to think in a coherent and logical manner. And he did just that.

By the way, Martin Luther King seems to have plagiarised his dissertation. He was not a great scholar, but that did not mean that he taught more about equality and fairness than most true scholars ever will.

Teddy Kennedy was booted out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish test, and went instead to the U of Virginia. That did not prevent him from being an effective legislator.

The goons are Rush, Hannity and the rest of the rightwing talkshow shills.

When any tenured professor is railroaded for his opinions, scholarship suffers everywhere.

[Cynthia]

"When any tenured professor is railroaded for his opinions, scholarship suffers everywhere."


I think Scholarship will survive the loss of one goon.

[Cynthia]

Professors outside the arts at major research universities are supposed to have Ph.D.s. The phantom Ward Churchill does not. How he was hired, promoted, and tenured without a doctorate is a mystery ? the equivalent of a high-school teacher credentialed with an AA degree, or a medical doctor operating without an M.D.

Ward Churchill proclaimed that he is a Native American of various tribal affiliations; he is not. Even his ridiculous costumes, occasional threats, and puerile rants cannot disguise that fact.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200503240801.asp


The panel produced a 20-page report that said Churchill intentionally falsified his work and copied work done by others. He also, the panel concluded, engaged in ghostwriting pieces that he then cited in an effort to bolster his writings.

After the panel's revelations, it was hard to believe that Churchill was ever hired to begin with. A closer look exposed questions about that process as well.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6444994

[Xavier_Onassis]

The National Review dislikes Ward Churchill. Somehow I am not surprised.
Next you will be telling me that the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute does not like him, either.



I suggest that you have not read his articles. He is a good writer, a very good one.
He makes people think, which as I said, is rather hard to do. Most professors do very little of this.

[Cynthia]

XO,

I had googled more articles on W-C-hill's legacy early today and I have to say that the NR isn't the only one who finds disdain and "issues" with the professor.


Ok...you make a good point. I have not read Churchill's essays, articles, etc. Since this is a debate board and I find the silliness of sound bite fights as old as the old dead horse saloon days, I am going to read his works. I am going to spend some evenings doing just that, Xavier. I will get back to you with my thoughts and feelings, but in all good things...time will have to permit.
I return to work tomorrow after a two week vacation, so it will be a while, but I plan to return to this subject soon.

 XO, You have shown the ability to "debate with me" as it were, using a bit of grace and challenge.
Obviously, I dont' know you in this forum and I will have to take the chance that this issue can be truly discussed in more depth.
 I have to say that there have been times when the idea of a true debate has lost all its weight with down right ugliness, as is the case in most debate forums I'm sure...... due to the nature of the human being's need for landing on the "right(correct)feet".
 

In my own profession, I try to teach students to "argue the negative", to question and question again.....for the sake of knowledge, not pride. It's a difficult thing to do.


So, in this case, I shall look into the issue in more depth.

(I would rather read Chompsky in more depth ,but I will turn my attention to the man who calls his academic home north of my border.) I want to understand his Native American life, as well.


....It's not enough to bash and gang up on someone who's only calling is to teach based on his own "truth" in a particular matter. That's what we have done here. I surely have.

I will also find out more about just how far an educator can take his or her ideals, truths into the classroom. 



I look forward to my own understanding of the issues in depth.

Cynthia

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have been teaching, mostly the Spanish language for the past 35 years. I don't think I would say anything like Churchill. Comparing anyone to Eichman is inflammatory, and that is not usually all that conducive to getting people to think. For every person who seriously considers what you have said, you will have alienated a dozen more. But it is one thing to make inflammatory statements oneself, and another to defend the right of a professor (tenured or not) to say what he thinks is an effective statement to get people to think.

Being as I am a very small part Indian myself (Choctaw), and not resembling an Indian in the least, or so they tell me, I can sympathize with anyone whose claim to Indian/Native American/ First nations heritage is denied by others.  What Churchill has said about Indians in several articles I have read, mostly in Z magazine seems accurate to me. At least one of the nastiest Indian massacres (at Sand Creek by a guy named Skiffington, I think) happened in Colorado. A large portion of the Arapahoe population, mostly women and children took place not far from Denver).  think Churchill was quite eloquent in defending Leonard Peltier, sentenced for killing an FBI guy at Wounded Knee as well.

The way that tenured professors are dismissed usually takes the form taken by this firing of Churchill: a professor makes a number of anti-establishment statements, and then says something that a majority of the public opposes. Then all sorts of charges are brought against him: they drag out the big guns and  pull out all the stops. Right wing organizations and magazines always seem to join in the fray.

I lost my chance at tenure at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, when I did an intermester seminar on Latin America. I pointed out some of the nastier crap that the CIA pulled in Uruguay and Chile, and it turned out that one of the Board Members was an ex-OSS clown. They simply assaulted my teaching, and since I was not tenured there wasn't anything I could do. They gave me a year to find another job, which I did, but the word got out that anti-CIA views were not welcome at this semi-elite college.

This is not really the free country that they claim it is. It is freer than many, but not so free as some.

[hnumpah]

At least one of the nastiest Indian massacres (at Sand Creek by a guy named Skiffington...

His name was actually Chivington, a colonel who led a group out of Denver after supposedly 'hostile' Indians. When asked by one of his subordinates, just prior to the massacre at Sand Creek, if the troops should spare the women and children, Chivington replied, "Nits make lice."

[Xavier_Onassis]

Chivington was, in any event, NOT a nice guy.
I have read a book Peltier wrote in prison, He seems like a nicer fellow than Chivington.

Custer led a massacre once with a band playing "Garryowen" as the bluecoats slaughtered the Indians. I am reminded of the helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now, with Wagner's Das Valkerie playing at a high volume.

[Plane]

"...some of the WTC employees were bureaucrats who made decisions that resulted in people in Third World countries dying (which is undisputably TRUE, by the way), ..."


No, I think it is disputably untrue.

The Human world is energeticly exploiting the Planet Earth ,and so a greater number of persons live now than at any previous time.

The human ability to support its numbers on resorces that are not increaseing as rapidly as our number depends on effecient organisation of trade.

The destruction of the system of world trade , in which the Woirld Trade center was a part would not make it easyer for anyone to make a living on the contrary many people live, who without the globalisation of trade, would die.

[Cynthia]

I have been teaching, mostly the Spanish language for the past 35 years. I don't think I would say anything like Churchill. Comparing anyone to Eichman is inflammatory, and that is not usually all that conducive to getting people to think. For every person who seriously considers what you have said, you will have alienated a dozen more. But it is one thing to make inflammatory statements oneself, and another to defend the right of a professor (tenured or not) to say what he thinks is an effective statement to get people to think.

Being as I am a very small part Indian myself (Choctaw), and not resembling an Indian in the least, or so they tell me, I can sympathize with anyone whose claim to Indian/Native American/ First nations heritage is denied by others.  What Churchill has said about Indians in several articles I have read, mostly in Z magazine seems accurate to me. At least one of the nastiest Indian massacres (at Sand Creek by a guy named Skiffington, I think) happened in Colorado. A large portion of the Arapahoe population, mostly women and children took place not far from Denver).  think Churchill was quite eloquent in defending Leonard Peltier, sentenced for killing an FBI guy at Wounded Knee as well.

The way that tenured professors are dismissed usually takes the form taken by this firing of Churchill: a professor makes a number of anti-establishment statements, and then says something that a majority of the public opposes. Then all sorts of charges are brought against him: they drag out the big guns and  pull out all the stops. Right wing organizations and magazines always seem to join in the fray.

I lost my chance at tenure at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, when I did an intermester seminar on Latin America. I pointed out some of the nastier crap that the CIA pulled in Uruguay and Chile, and it turned out that one of the Board Members was an ex-OSS clown. They simply assaulted my teaching, and since I was not tenured there wasn't anything I could do. They gave me a year to find another job, which I did, but the word got out that anti-CIA views were not welcome at this semi-elite college.

This is not really the free country that they claim it is. It is freer than many, but not so free as some.

Your personal response to the issue brings the debate for me to a higher level. I will step into the debate on this issue with a new approach.... An approach that brings more questions and honesty about our "system" and the hidden issues at hand. There is so much more to the issues we all find interesting or outrageous. Seems that debate has taken on a 3D look of its own.

Thanks for your personal insight, XO.

Good post.
I live in NM. Native people are a vital part of our very spirit here.....and I hold much compassion for the Native American culture.

First day back to the chalkboard for me today....I will post here as I find the time. I look forward to learning more. Thanks

[hnumpah]

Custer led a massacre once with a band playing "Garryowen" as the bluecoats slaughtered the Indians.

The Seventh Cavalry adopted 'Garry Owen' as its regimental marching song shortly after it was formed, and became known as the Garry Owen Regiment. While they probably didn't play 'Garry Owen' at the Little Bighorn in 1876 in order to preserve their element of surprise (fat lot of good that did them), it was reported to have been played before the 'Battle' of the Washita in 1868, under Custer, and during the attack at Wounded Knee, which was long after Custer had departed this earth, and may have been partly in reprisal for that loss some twenty years before.

If I remember correctly, units of the Seventh Cavalry were attached to the Americal Division in Viet Nam. Think Lieutenant Calley and My Lai.

In 1950, the regiment slaughtered hundreds of defenseless civilians near the village of Nogun-ri, South Korea, a massacre covered up for many years.

It would seem that, in addiition to playing 'Garry Owen', slaughtering natives, including women and children, was a grand old custom of the Seventh.

[Cynthia]

I have been reading the works of Ward Churchill tonight...online. I have to say that he is a brilliant writer, this is true.
My assessment of his rants about the recent wounded "leg" of 9-11 were  inaccurate and unkind. He has a sense of anger that is real and worth a listen, however...but his reaction was not as intelligent as the intelligence has to offer.

Because I understand that those who are in the "tenure" placement are protected by the system, and the system is the grandfather of us all, I realize that there are those who are equally as brilliant as Churchill  but who also do not have the luxuary of the public's ear.

Churchill suffered in his early childhood it seems.   His psychology is the underlying factor of much of what he writes, imo.

His anger is deep and his passion is ripe...if not rich and spot on..."at times".

While I agree with his writings, thus far, I see that he is also a man of conflict and pain. ONe would have to understand the Native American.....as I am sure others do more than I....But having lived among the Pueblo people, I understand a lot more than most.

There's nothing worse than injustice and the rape of rights.

Churchill apparently has the right to bitch.....and the gift to put the "bitch" to pen.

I am not going to be able to read and reflect on his work in as much depth as you have, XO, but I have to say that I will not dismiss his conflict as

a bad ass boy gone wrong.

There has to be room for more understanding of the American male.....female.....

but in this case, male. . . be he Native American or 4th generation Brit.

There's more to any story. . . and I have to say that Ward Churchill's story is out there somewhere. I think the only way we will ever really "know him" is to meet him and listen to his side of the story. I hate public bashings. I will not let the media guide my view and lose my sense of the world.

From what I have googled, there is so much trash and controversy surrounding the man, that it's very difficult to sort out what is truth.


The bottom line is:

The point of pain that we feel from the man has been from his statement of the "American wounded knee" of 9-11. Somehow we can not accept his assessment of that event. I don't either. He was angry. 

As for his profession and his field.......He has a track record from 1990 -2007 as  a professor and he is not to be thrown out with the bathwater, in my final opinion.





More later.....
Cynthia