This witch hunt to get Ward Churchill is obscene.  Glayde Whitney, up
until his death (too long delayed in my humble opinion) was a
professor of psychology at Florida State where he was allowed to
spout his pseudo scientific theories about African-Americans and
other people of color for years.  This neo-Nazi wrote the
introduction for a book by David KKK Duke.  Arthur Butz,
engineering-Northwestern, is a well known holocaust denier.  He is
still gainfully employed.  Arthur Jensen was paid handsomely
prestigious universities to sling his racial pornography.  The list
can go on...

If Churchill is fired, we are all at risk.

alfred joseph


>for your information...
>>>>  <[log in to unmask]> 02/17/05 10:21AM >>>
>
>Battle Heats Up Over Academic Freedom
>
>By DAN ELLIOTT
>.c The Associated Press
>
>DENVER (AP) - Academic freedom has never completely protected
>professors who
>make unpopular statements. One was fired in 1960 for suggesting that
>premarital sex among students could be a good thing. Three decades
>later, a department
>chair was demoted for saying a Jewish conspiracy denigrated blacks in
>the
>movies.
>
>Now experts say the Sept. 11 attacks have put new fire in the battle
>over
>just where academic freedom ends and misconduct - or even treason -
>begins.
>
>University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill could be fired pending
>an
>investigation prompted by his 2001 essay suggesting some World Trade
>Center
>victims were toiling away like efficient Nazi bureaucrats.
>
>There are no exact figures on attempts to fire or discipline professors
>since
>Sept. 11, but experts say they have probably increased. The fight is
>especially fierce at state universities, where some question whether
>taxpayers must
>pay the salaries of professors they find unpatriotic or outrageous.
>
>``We have never been free of the issue of professors coming under
>intense
>scrutiny or attack for having written something somebody finds utterly
>
>loathsome,'' said Jonathan Knight of the American Association of
>University Professors
>in Washington.
>
>Knight said firings are relatively rare, with 50 or 60 losing their
>jobs each
>year for a variety of reasons out of some 800,000 tenured and untenured
>
>professors nationwide. Tenure, a protection normally granted after
>several years of
>probation, is designed to allow teaching and research without fear of
>political reprisals.
>
>Overall, challenges to American professors today are mild compared with
>the
>attacks academics suffered during the anti-communist investigations
>spurred by
>Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, said Robert O'Neil, director of the
>Thomas
>Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in
>Charlottesville, Va.
>
>But, Knight said, the intensity of attacks on academic freedom have
>increased
>since the Sept. 11 attacks.
>
>Churchill's case has ignited furious debate with no shortage of
>students and
>teachers defending his right to speak, even though few have endorsed
>his
>comments.
>
>His essay said some of the trade center victims were ``little
>Eichmanns,'' a
>suggestion that white-collar ``technocrats'' who died that day were no
>better
>than Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann because they are furthering
>U.S.
>policies harmful to Arabs and indigenous people worldwide.
>
>It drew little attention until last month, when Churchill was invited
>to
>speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Relatives of the Trade
>Center dead
>and the governors of New York and Colorado denounced Churchill, and
>Churchill's speech was canceled because of death threats against him.
>
>Since then, other Churchill speeches around the nation have been
>canceled and
>the Hamilton professor who invited him to that campus has stepped down
>as
>program director, fed up with the ``political and media fight that the
>current
>climate requires.''
>
>The University of Colorado has launched a 30-day review to determine
>whether
>Churchill can be fired. Media outlets are exploring his scholarship -
>one
>Denver radio show claims school documents prove he lied about being an
>American
>Indian to land his job - and state legislators are considering making
>it easier
>to get rid of tenured professors.
>
>Churchill has refused to apologize and has threatened to sue if he is
>let go
>over the controversy.
>
>O'Neil said universities have handled most post-Sept. 11 complaints
>about
>professors properly by submitting them to formal review, as Colorado is
>doing
>with Churchill and as the University of New Mexico did for Richard
>Berthold, a
>former history professor.
>
>Berthold told students hours after the Sept. 11 attacks: ``Anyone who
>can
>blow up the Pentagon has my vote.'' The university resisted enormous
>pressure to
>fire him, instead conducting a review and eventually issuing a letter
>of
>reprimand after he apologized.
>
>Berthold says the discipline system worked only because he caved in
>under
>pressure.
>
>``I look back on it, and I just ate too much crow and apologized too
>much.
>I'm ashamed,'' he said. ``It wasn't, 'Let's applaud the killing of
>innocent
>people,' it was my expression of my revulsion for the leadership of
>this
>country.''
>
>He retired two years later.
>
>``Bitter? Oh yes, I'm bitter,'' he said. ``I thought I served the
>institution
>and my society very well for 30 years.''
>
>On the Net:
>
>American Association of University Professors: http://www.aaup.org
>
>Thomas Jefferson Center: http://www.tjcenter.org
>
>
>02/13/05 09:47 EST


--
********************************************************************************
When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint.  When I asked
why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist.
--Dom Helda Camara, Brazilian Bishop
********************************************************************************
Alfred Joseph, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept. of Family Studies and Social Work
110 D McGuffey Hall
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
phone   513 529 4902
fax     513 529 6468
********************************************************************************