[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [leftalliance] How Churchill's old essay became an issue - CHE

[Alfred Kagan]

FYI

Begin forwarded message:

> From: MCR <iskra at earthlink.net>
> Date: February 10, 2005 8:57:33 AM CST
> To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
> Subject: [SRRTAC-L:15835] Fw: [leftalliance] How Churchill's old essay 
> became an issue - CHE
> Reply-To: srrtac-l at ala.org
>
>
>
>
>
> This is from today's Chronicle of Higher Ed. , and purports to detail
> how Churchill's old essay suddenly got such publicity -- through
> right-wing Internet and talk-show, basically.
>
>
> * * * * *
> Thursday, February 10, 2005
>
> Anatomy of a Free-Speech Firestorm: How a Professor's 3-Year-Old Essay
> Sparked a National Controversy
> By SCOTT SMALLWOOD
>
> Hours after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Ward Churchill
> compared the victims to the Nazis. A professor of ethnic studies at the
> University of Colorado at Boulder, he wrote in an essay that those
> killed at the World Trade Center were not innocent civilians but 
> "little
> Eichmanns."
>
> The analogy is so outrageous, one thinks, that surely he immediately 
> got
> into trouble. Surely it prompted angry letters and calls for him to be
> fired. But it didn't.
>
> Instead, for years the comparison just sat there quietly. Mr. 
> Churchill,
> by contrast, rarely stays still. He has spoken on more than 40 college
> campuses since the 2001 attacks.
>
> He traveled to elite liberal-arts colleges like Williams and 
> Swarthmore,
> to big public universities like Arizona State and Michigan State, and 
> to
> prestigious private universities like Brown and Syracuse. He spoke at
> community colleges in New York and Utah. Generally, he spoke about
> genocide and American Indian issues, but some speeches focused on
> foreign policy. Yet other than a brief mention in The Burlington
> Free-Press during a December 2001 visit to the University of Vermont,
> the essay never made the news.
>
> Then this winter, as he was about to speak at Hamilton College, the
> "little Eichmanns" time bomb went off, sparking hundreds of stories,
> denunciations of Mr. Churchill by governors and legislators, canceled
> speeches, and an investigation by Colorado administrators into his work
> that may threaten his tenured job.
>
> So why now?
>
> The answer lies in the power of Bill O'Reilly, Weblogs, and the 
> families
> of September 11 victims. But before all that, the seeds of this
> controversy were sown not with Nazi references in an online essay but
> with a 1981 armored-car robbery that Mr. Churchill had nothing to do 
> with.
>
> Once Bitten, Twice Shy
>
> On October 20, 1981, robbers connected with the Black Liberation Army
> and the Weather Underground struck a Brinks armored car while it sat
> outside a bank near Nyack, N.Y. One guard was killed, another wounded.
> Two police officers were later killed at a roadblock when robbers 
> jumped
> from the back of a U-Haul truck, firing automatic rifles.
>
> Susan Rosenberg, a 1970s leftist radical, was indicted as an accessory
> to the robbery, but remained free until she was arrested in New Jersey
> in 1984 on charges of possessing 740 pounds of explosives. She was
> sentenced to 58 years in prison, but the charges in the Brinks case 
> were
> dropped.
>
> Then in 2001, just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton 
> granted
> her clemency, and she was released from prison. Now a prisoner-rights
> activist and writer, Ms. Rosenberg was hired in the fall by the 
> Kirkland
> Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture to teach a
> one-month course on writing memoirs at Hamilton College, in Clinton, 
> N.Y.
>
> That appointment created a public-relations mess for Hamilton, drawing
> protests from professors and negative editorials in newspapers. Ms.
> Rosenberg then backed out, citing "the atmosphere of such organized
> right-wing intimidation from a small group of students and faculty."
>
> The Rosenberg debacle raised the antennae of Theodore Eismeier, a
> government professor at Hamilton. So when the Kirkland Project sent a
> message on December 14 highlighting its spring schedule, which included
> a February 3 speech by Mr. Churchill on prison issues, he checked out
> the Colorado professor.
>
> After a little Internet searching, Mr. Eismeier discovered "Some People
> Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," the essay in which Mr.
> Churchill made his now-infamous "little Eichmanns" comment. Mr. 
> Eismeier
> says he immediately sent the essay and "other troubling writings" to
> college administrators, urging them to cancel the event.
>
> The storm clouds were gathering.
>
> Three days later, on Friday, December 17, Joan Hinde Stewart, the
> college's president, met with Nancy S. Rabinowitz, director of the
> Kirkland Project, to discuss Mr. Churchill. The following Monday, the
> president and David C. Paris, vice president for academic affairs, met
> with Ms. Rabinowitz and members of the project's executive committee.
>
> "They were saying this is going to be as bad as Susan Rosenberg," Ms.
> Rabinowitz says. "And I said, Let's take a strong stand for freedom of
> speech." According to Ms. Rabinowitz, the president told her to fold 
> Mr.
> Churchill's speech into a planned panel discussion and change the focus
> to his offensive positions.
>
> Then in January, Mr. Eismeier and three other Hamilton professors wrote
> two opinion pieces about Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Churchill. He sent them
> to the campus newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, along with a copy of
> "Some People Push Back."
>
> In the essay, Mr. Churchill argues that those killed at the World Trade
> Center were not truly innocent. "Let's get a grip here, shall we? True
> enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break." He
> adds: "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way
> of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little
> Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd
> really be interested in hearing about it."
>
> On January 21, the campus newspaper reported that Mr. Churchill was
> coming to the campus and highlighted some of his more controversial
> statements. Mr. Eismeier was quoted as saying that the event would not
> create a useful discussion. "It seems akin to inviting a representative
> of the KKK to speak and then asking a member of the NAACP to respond,"
> he said.
>
> Five days later, the news was picked up by The Post-Standard, a
> newspaper in nearby Syracuse, N.Y. The pressure on Hamilton would only
> grow over the next seven days. Administrators had been wrong: It wasn't
> going to be as bad as Susan Rosenberg. It was going to be a lot worse.
>
> Faster Than a Speeding Blog
>
> In the Internet age, that report in the Syracuse newspaper quickly
> reached far beyond upstate New York. A link to the article was posted 
> on
> Little Green Footballs, a widely read conservative Weblog, at 9:40 
> a.m.,
> Eastern time.
>
> Eleven minutes later a reader posted a comment, saying Mr. Churchill
> deserved to be shot in the face. And then just before 10 a.m., a
> different reader provided the professor's e-mail address. Before 11
> a.m., another reader announced that she had just called the Colorado
> governor and had written letters to The Denver Post and the Rocky
> Mountain News. She followed up a few minutes later with contact
> information for the newspapers so that others could do the same.
>
> Linking to a simple article from Syracuse had unleashed the power of
> hundreds of individuals, all using Google to add little bits of
> information. Within hours, 500 comments about the matter had been 
> posted
> on Little Green Footballs alone. Readers linked to old news releases
> about squabbles between Mr. Churchill and the American Indian Movement.
> They linked to Hamilton news releases about alumni who were killed in
> the attacks. Someone requested the name of a September 11 widow from
> Colorado who might have political clout.
>
> The blogs reached beyond the water cooler. Many readers wanted to do
> something -- even if it was just sending a message of protest or making
> a phone call. Over the next week or so, Hamilton would receive 8,000
> e-mail messages about Mr. Churchill.
>
> Two days later, on January 28, as the story continued to gather
> momentum, readers of Freerepublic.com, another conservative Weblog,
> continued to talk about Mr. Churchill. One poster suggested calling
> Hamilton to tell officials that he would not contribute any money if
> they allowed Mr. Churchill to speak on the campus. Another poster
> replied: "Screw that! I say we cost them money. Their 1-800 admissions 
> #
> should never stop ringing."
>
> That night, the Churchill saga became a prime-time event when Bill
> O'Reilly led off his talk show on the Fox News Channel, The O'Reilly
> Factor, by calling Mr. Churchill "insane" and saying that Hamilton had
> no justification for giving him a public forum.
>
> Mr. O'Reilly interviewed Matthew Coppo, a Hamilton sophomore whose
> father was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Mr. Coppo's
> personal story, some now say, helped the Hamilton event get the
> publicity that the dozens of other speeches by Mr. Churchill never got.
>
> The closest thing Mr. O'Reilly could find to a defender of Mr. 
> Churchill
> was Philip A. Klinkner, an associate professor of government at
> Hamilton. Only one problem: Mr. Klinkner was one of the professors who
> had told the Kirkland Project that Mr. Churchill should not speak.
>
> "Going on O'Reilly is a kamikaze mission," Mr. Klinkner acknowledges. 
> "I
> went on to defend a principle. Colleges, if they choose to be a
> marketplace of ideas, have to be willing to bring in people who say
> pretty repugnant things." Nevertheless, he adds, "If I want to have
> someone come to class to talk about problems with the Treaty of
> Versailles, I don't have to bring in a Nazi."
>
> Mr. O'Reilly ended the segment about Mr. Churchill with advice for his
> viewers. "I don't want anybody doing anything crazy to Hamilton
> College," he said. "I don't want any threats going in there. I don't
> want any of that. Feel free to wire or e-mail the college with your
> complaints. And you alumni at Hamilton, do not give them a nickel if
> that man appears."
>
> Vige Barrie, a spokeswoman for Hamilton, was in the president's office
> as the program was shown. "When the segment stopped," she says, "the
> phone just started ringing."
>
> Anywhere but Here
>
> In the end, Hamilton canceled the event after receiving "credible
> threats of violence" against Mr. Churchill and college officials,
> including one call from a man who said he was going to bring a gun to
> the speech. Ms. Barrie says the police are still investigating several
> of the threats.
>
> But canceling the speech will not undo the weeks of negative publicity.
> At Hamilton, Ms. Barrie says, some students are going to work with
> college officials on improving the college's image. "We want to be 
> known
> for more than just Ward Churchill," she says.
>
> And other presidents and alumni offices must be asking, Could this have
> happened elsewhere? Maybe at Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, where
> Mr. Churchill was supposed to speak in March. Or at Eastern Washington
> University, where he was scheduled to appear in April. Both events have
> been canceled.
>
> The situation at Hamilton was ripe to explode into a bigger story, says
> Mr. Klinkner, citing the Susan Rosenberg case, the college's upstate 
> New
> York location, and the student whose father perished in the attacks. 
> And
> Ms. Rabinowitz, the Hamilton professor of comparative literature who
> invited Mr. Churchill, says the college was simply in the sights of
> conservative talk shows and Weblogs after the Rosenberg affair.
>
> The controversy certainly never came up at the dozens of other
> institutions where Mr. Churchill has appeared since he wrote his essay.
>
> Randall Fuller, an assistant professor of English at Drury University,
> in Springfield, Mo., says faculty members have been following the flap
> because Mr. Churchill spoke there in March 2004 without any incident. 
> In
> fact, Mr. Fuller says, Mr. Churchill sparked the "most stimulating and
> engaged discussion" of the 18 speakers invited to the campus to
> commemorate the Lewis and Clark expedition. "We knew that he was a
> provocateur, and that's what we liked about him," he says.
>
> Sharon L. Dobkin, a psychology professor at Monroe Community College, 
> in
> Rochester, N.Y., invited Mr. Churchill to speak about genocide in
> November 2002. The college's New York location did not prompt a stir
> back then. She says she had not heard of the "Some People Push Back"
> essay at the time, but she was not surprised by it. "I think he's
> deliberately inflammatory," she says. "Either you love Ward Churchill 
> or
> you hate him."
>
> Not the Floor-Sweepers
>
> Mr. Churchill's speaking engagements may dry up now, as other colleges
> back away from his fiery rhetoric. But he has other things to worry
> about -- most immediately, his job. Regents in Colorado are pushing for
> his firing, and the interim chancellor of his campus has announced an
> investigation into his work to determine whether he "may have
> overstepped his bounds."
>
> That investigation could be the first step toward dismissing him.
> Vandals have spray-painted swastikas on his pickup truck, and he has
> received more than 100 death threats. And now a Lamar University
> sociologist is charging that some of Mr. Churchill's research is 
> fraudulent.
>
> In a speech on Tuesday in Boulder, Mr. Churchill said that he would not
> retract his statements and that he would fight to keep his job. His
> essay was sparked, he said, by hearing someone call the attack
> "senseless." He added: "How can they positively know that? Do they
> really believe this operation had no purpose?"
>
> He also told the crowd that he did not mean that everyone in the World
> Trade Center was a "little Eichmann." The janitors and passers-by were
> not the people at the heart of the "mighty engine of profit" that he
> derided.
>
> Back at Hamilton, the issue has moved beyond simply Mr. Churchill's
> words. Mr. Klinkner says the controversy proves that academe cannot
> think of itself as separate from the rest of society. "You can forget
> about the notion of the ivory tower and that we can keep all these
> things in-house. Any piece of information that exists will get out. I
> don't think that's a bad thing," he says. "This was not good for
> Hamilton, but we need to acknowledge that we can no longer say, 'No,
> we're going to play by our own rules.'"
>
> For Ms. Rabinowitz, director of the Kirkland Project, the question is
> whether the incident will make colleges reluctant to invite
> controversial speakers: "How many people can stomach what we've been
> through?"
>
>
>
Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliogrpaher and Professor of Library Administration
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801

tel. 217-333-6519
fax 217-333-2214
akagan at uiuc.edu
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 15218 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20050211/752f7d8b/attachment-0001.bin