As I prowled the TV channels one night this weekend, I came across this guy giving an impassioned speech in front of a large college crowd on CSPAN. The guy looked about my age, though retaining his hippie hair and mode of dress, flanked by what seemed to be Indians. It looked pretty interesting. Luckily I got in close to the beginning, so I managed to pick up the thread. The guy is Ward Churchill, the school is the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder, the issue is, quite simply, free speech. Or, perhaps, specifically, academic freedom.
Churchill is a Cherokee Indian, has been the Chair of the Ethnic Studies Dept at the U. of CO. in Boulder, is an outspoken critic of, of...well, of just about everything that white corporate America stands for. Starting way back, with Native genocide in this country. I stuck with him for the whole thing, including the Q and A session at the end. This is one controversial human being. I wanted to find out more about him, so have been spending a little time researching him. It all began with an article he wrote soon after the airplane attacks on the various sites on Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody paid much attention to the article at the time, but it got dredged up recently when Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in New York State. The ruckus made it all the way to Faux News, and Bill O'Reilly took up the ball and ran with it. What I was watching on CSPAN was Churchill defending himself and his position against the board of regents of the university and the governor of the state. And, of course, Bill O'Reilly.
This is fascinating stuff, and shows what you get as divine retribution if you dare to be controversial and outspoken in today's America. Or, as we would have spelled it in my younger days, Amerika. This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education will introduce you a little more thoroughly to the whole story, and then you can go over here andread the piece itself. Read the interview with Churchill on that same website, and note the news flash announcing that he has resigned his position as Chair of the department, although he will, as a tenured professor, continue to teach. The guy was unwise to use some of the language he did during a time when emotions ran so high, but...where ARE we, people? Am I the only one who remembers when academics and others were able to speak out on issues that might spark discussion, disagreement, even - dissension and controversy? It really seems to me that much of what is going on now is a pogrom against things that began in the sixties, and have rankled in some people's souls ever since. We thought we had achieved change - but it seems to be moving backwards now.
5 comments:
I would have really liked to have seen that CSPAN.
Sue
He's really NOT Native American. He only claims it through an honorary title given to him and others including Bill Clinton a few years ago. Which have been recinded since as the Native Americans realized it wasn't such a good idea. Churchill and Michael Mooere should have coffee one day. Don't you think? Plus the fact that he can speak his mind and be televised shows is I belive an exemplary manner what Americ(k)a is all about. In Iran we might not have ever seen him...alive that is or with his head attached to his body.
gypsytrader - hello, welcome to my world. i take it you don't like churchill very much? i think he's pretty interesting, actually. he and moore would probably have a good time over coffee. i'd like to be a fly on the wall. CSPAN is not actually a TV venue where he was likely to get much exposure - and yes, that he was there at all shows that there is still a modicum of freedom in our society. for now, gypsy, for now. as my friends and relations who like to rave about their second amendment rights like to say "it's a slippery slope." by which i think they mean, once you start sliding downhill it's easy to just keep on sliding. the Patriot Act, etc., seem to me the beginning of a slippery slope.
can you send me any links to info about this honorary indian thing? he doesn't look particulary indian, but then, neither do i, and i am, at least in a small part. well, actually, i look more so than he does.
Ward Churchill came to our university about 10 years ago. He was sponsored by the American Culture Studies department. He gave a long, passionate, articulate, angry speech about Native American issues. I have read his book INDIANS ARE US? and many of us have used portions of this book in our classes in order to discuss the Native Americans/sports mascots issue. The insinuation that Churchill is not Native American came up on an e-mail circulated through our department last week. I have no idea about its verity. One thing that I do know, because I have researched it, is that there is bad blood beween Churchill and AIM because Churchill, among other things, attacked Russell Means, who was an AIM leader for various acts which Churchill felt was "selling out" to whites. An example is Russ Means lending his voice to one of the characters in Disney's POCAHONTAS. I liked Churchill, although I have always felt he is unnecessarily harsh. His blunt approach does not win him many friends. An example of his bluntness: when he spoke at our university, one of my students asked him a question pertaining to a book we were reading LAME DEER: SEEKER OF VISIONS. He told her he wished the book had never been written because it revealed too many cultural beliefs to "outsiders." This comment hurt me because, while I do not believe in the melting pot and value difference, I also believe there are universal values that connect us all--and LAME DEER was a book about connection, survival, forgiveness.
There's no such thing as "I believe in the First Amendment but...". It's either we believe in it or not.
Comparing people who died in the Tower attacks on 9/11 to Eichmann was incredibly callous because those people were not knowing accomplices in committing crimes against humanity. It was also incredibly dumb because its incendiary nature took away from the bigger message he was trying to convey, which is that pursuing hegemonic policies has dire consequences.
Still, he is free to make a spectacle of himself, even if we don't like it. After all, I don't recall the same people throwing stones at Churchill raising a ruckus when Ann Coulter said, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
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