I hope and expect Ward Churchill will have the guts to stay. We live in a world where millions of people find his perspective makes perfect common sense. Most of those people, though, cannot explain their reasons for holding that view. Ward Churchill can. What? Are we too frail a society to stand the weight of that kind of criticism? And that "freedom for the thought we hate" stuff they fed us in American Government class. What? Was that bullshit?
The governor of Colorado is a politician and he pretty much had to issue such a press release. But there's a difference between doing that as a sop to public opinion and doing it because you're gunning for Churchill's job. Taking his job will chill voices of dissent at a time in our history when we badly need them, because they force those on the other side to think through their own views and policy prescriptions more carefully.
When you bear in mind the fact that Churchill's view is that of many people in Pentagon New Map's Non-Integrating Gap--for the American Indians are still in some measure within the Gap--you get a better sense of the problems that would attend efforts to use military force to shrink the Gap.
Liking Churchill or his views have got nothing to do with it. A free society--especially a free society as massively powerful as ours--needs the Ward Churchills.
I don't know if Ward Churchill speaks for anyone other than Ward Churchill. He should not be fired, but as far as other places spending money to bring him in to talk, I'm with KC Johnson at Cliopatria in thinking that Churchill's ideas are not going to foster any kind of learning experience. There are better people with better ideas out there to comment on these issues.
3 comments:
Owens' misuses of history in his brief letter are way worse than Churchill's. Sigh.
David Salmanson
I hope and expect Ward Churchill will have the guts to stay. We live in a world where millions of people find his perspective makes perfect common sense. Most of those people, though, cannot explain their reasons for holding that view. Ward Churchill can. What? Are we too frail a society to stand the weight of that kind of criticism? And that "freedom for the thought we hate" stuff they fed us in American Government class. What? Was that bullshit?
The governor of Colorado is a politician and he pretty much had to issue such a press release. But there's a difference between doing that as a sop to public opinion and doing it because you're gunning for Churchill's job. Taking his job will chill voices of dissent at a time in our history when we badly need them, because they force those on the other side to think through their own views and policy prescriptions more carefully.
When you bear in mind the fact that Churchill's view is that of many people in Pentagon New Map's Non-Integrating Gap--for the American Indians are still in some measure within the Gap--you get a better sense of the problems that would attend efforts to use military force to shrink the Gap.
Liking Churchill or his views have got nothing to do with it. A free society--especially a free society as massively powerful as ours--needs the Ward Churchills.
I don't know if Ward Churchill speaks for anyone other than Ward Churchill. He should not be fired, but as far as other places spending money to bring him in to talk, I'm with KC Johnson at Cliopatria in thinking that Churchill's ideas are not going to foster any kind of learning experience. There are better people with better ideas out there to comment on these issues.
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