All the Time He is Worth
I really don’t want to give Ward Churchill any more time than necessary, so I’m going to make this short and sweet.
Background: A tenured professor at Colorado University, Ward Churchill called 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns,” referring to the Nazi, Adolf. He wrote this on 9/12/2001, as the bodies of those killed were still smoldering in the ruins of the twin towers. Ironically, Churchill doesn’t believe that the Nazis had a policy of Jewish extermination… a policy that Adolf Eichmann authored. He says that Jews are the real perpetrators of genocide. He also claims to be a Native American, a claim that is groundless. He used this to get a position as head of the ethnic (not ethics… heh) department.
My take: Fire the stupid bastard. Not for the stupid things he said, but for the fact that he’s a fraud, and completely incompetent as an educator. It’s not a free speech issue, it’s a question of “do we want tax dollars to pay a lying, anti-semitic race-hijacker to pass on his poison to students?” He can say whatever he likes on his own time, but he can’t expect to spew that sort of filth and still keep his job as a Colorado state employee.
There, I’m done. Now if only people would stop giving this idiot air time. It is Churchill’s wet dream to get a global audience of millions to which he can preach his lies, and Bill O’Reilly seems happy to oblige.
That’s about where I’m at. He shouldn’t be fired for the words he says or the opinions he expresses, but rather for the fact that he’s dishonest. He has claimed that he is an Indian. That is a lie. He has written papers using fake quotes from real sources.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a smoking gun regardless of your stance on political or social issues.
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech
Well, right Steve. But there is no constitutional protection for people who lie on their resumes or college professors who lie in their academic writings.
If it were merely a matter of the things he said I’d say the university should keep him, but the fact is that he has lied. Period.
I am not sure what lies are involved, but if everyone who lied on the resumes were the standard, the Governor of Colorado and the State Board of Regents would be lined up behind
Ward in the unemployment line.
That may well be, Steve, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ward should be fired for his lies.
No one is telling him he can’t speak. They just want consequences for his speech.
You can’t expect to lie to your employer or be an incompetent employee (head of the ethics department saying that the Jewish holocaust wasn’t a goal of the Nazis qualifies as incompetence in my mind) and still keep your job. People aren’t trying to silence him, they are trying to fire him, so that when he continues to speak these lies, it won’t be on their dime.
Ward Churchill: The Fraudulent Professor
So, in addition to making outrageous statements about 9/11 victims and telling ridiculous lies about his own ethnicity (and military record) in order to weasel his way into the University of Colorado, Ward Churchill then proceeded to commit academic fr…