In case you missed it, on March 24 the University of Colorado
announced the results of its preliminary investigation into the
questions surrounding Ward Churchill’s suitability to be teaching
undergraduates at Boulder. The University was pushed into this
embarrassing situation, you may recall, after it came to light that
the esteemed scholar wrote an essay shortly after 9/11 calling the
victims in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns” (referring to
the Nazi architect of the Holocaust). In an attempt to qualify his
remarks to those who found them offensive, Mr. Churchill noted that
he did not mean that the janitors and children who were killed were
little Eichmanns, just the corporate and Wall Street types. And
“more 9/11s are necessary.” And George W. Bush thinks that all
non-whites are “sub-human.” These remarks proved ineffective in
ending the controversy, and when further questions were raised
regarding plagiarism and Mr. Churchill’s bogus claim to be a Native
American, the University was forced to act.
Chancellor Phil DiStefano announced that the preliminary
investigation concluded “the allegations of research misconduct,
related to plagiarism, misuse of other’s work and fabrication, have
sufficient merit to warrant further inquiry.” While it is all well
and good that the University of Colorado is taking a hard look at
these allegations, why isn’t it going to touch the 800-pound
gorilla — the question of Mr. Churchill’s academic merit?
“Appropriately,” Chancellor DiStefano claims, “we in academe are
held to high standards of integrity, competence, and accuracy” but
then goes on to say that the University cannot make any judgment on
Mr. Churchill’s value to the University based on Mr. Churchill’s
writings or speeches (i.e. his “scholarship”) — no matter how
“egregious” or “as strongly as we may reject the substance of those
remarks.” That would be a violation of “academic freedom.”
Many members of the left, of course, support the substance of
Mr. Churchill’s rabidly anti-American views, if not all the
particulars. Alexander Cockburn, for instance, applauds Churchill’s
analysis of 9/11 as essentially correct, himself equating the
attacks on the World Trade Center with the bombing of a Baghdad air
raid shelter — mistaken for a command and control bunker — by
American planes during the first Gulf War. How any serious person
can equate the accidental killing of civilians during time of war
with an intentional act of terrorism — or how a serious person can
put al-Qaeda’s war on America on the same moral plane as the
American led war to drive Saddam’s invading army out of Kuwait —
is hard to understand. But Mr. Cockburn, like Mr. Churchill, has
the right to think and say what he thinks. But neither he, nor Mr.
Churchill, has a right to force students or taxpayers to pay for
his thoughts. Mr. Cockburn has enough style and demonstrates sanity
just often enough to allow him to enjoy a following and make a
living as a commentator. The pretend Indian and plagiarist, Mr.
Churchill, appears to lack these qualities so he has instead found
refuge in the Ivory Tower.
Now anyone can argue that any short quotations taken from Mr.
Churchill are “out of context” and don’t fairly reflect his
scholarly mind. Fair enough. Read him for yourself. But just how
much intellectual firepower can we assume resides in a mind that
deliberately writes the “little Eichmanns” line, and then, after
reflection, whole-heartedly defends it? We can debate whether or
nor Mr. Churchill is an idiot, or a lunatic, or something else —
or at least we should be able to. But the University of Colorado —
and most every other institution of higher learning in the country
— says we can’t. The content of Mr. Churchill’s (or any other
professor’s, or at least any other left-wing professor’s) writing
or speeches is strictly off-limits, protected by “academic
freedom.” To try to make judgments as to the value of any
academician’s worthiness to teach at our college campuses based on
what he writes and says would be “chilling” to free speech and be
“dangerous” and “oppressive.” In other words, being a moron is no
grounds to be removed from teaching at our institutions of higher
education. Indeed, being viewed by 99% of the population as a nut
seems to be a highly sought after credential in academe, always in
search of a “diversity” of views, as long as they are to the left
of Howard Dean’s. How else can one explain Colorado hiring, and
then giving tenure to Mr. Churchill who does not even hold a
Ph.D.?
THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF higher education is to impart knowledge and
wisdom. Yet rank stupidity is not only tolerated, it is protected
in the professorial class. This is like not being able to fire a
bank teller for not knowing how to add and subtract, or a
translator for having poor language skills, or a music critic for
being tone deaf. And, unfortunately, such sanctification of
“academic freedom” is not limited to our public universities.
A few years ago I wrote an article that highlighted the views of
professor Asma Barlas at Ithaca College in New York. Ms. Barlas
holds views remarkably similar to Mr. Churchill (9/11 was the
natural expression of the fact that “people everywhere are sick and
tired” of our “political economy based on their systematic abuse,
exploitation, and degradation”). Ms. Barlas, though stating that
the victims of 9/11 were partly to blame for their fate by being
Americans, refrained from calling them “little Eichmanns.”
Nonetheless, her views were expressed in a stunningly brainless
essay published, in of all places, the Ithaca College alumni
magazine. This deft bit of marketing by the geniuses at Ithaca
College resulted in a bounty of angry letters from alumni, but the
president of Ithaca College bravely stood up to defend “academic
freedom.” In a response to my piece, which was carried, in abridged
form, by the local Ithaca newspaper, she sidestepped the fact that
Barlas’s article was embarrassingly puerile, demonstrating an
analytical sophistication one would expect from an average high
school student, full of inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies,
by stating that professor Barlas’s status as a scholar was beyond
question, since Barlas had published many articles (mostly in a
Pakistani newspaper) and a book. In the modern university,
apparently, the quality of your thought and research is not all
that important as long as you can find a publisher.
That universities utilize the talents of the likes of Ward
Churchill and Asma Barlas to “educate” people is a sign of a
cancer. But what makes this cancer malignant is the fact that the
guardians of the university — professors and administrators —
devote themselves to defending the likes of Churchill and Barlas
with the shield of “academic freedom” while forsaking their
responsibility to promote intelligence and intellectual
integrity.
OF COURSE, THE IDEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY, cloaked in the magic armor
of academic freedom, engendering a free and open search for truth
is, at least outside of the physical sciences, a myth. Core
curricula have been sacrificed on the altar of the
anti-intellectual deity of political correctness, and the promise
of a free and open exchange of ideas is too often a hollow one —
especially if you are a political conservative. Indeed, in America,
the exchange of ideas is demonstrably more free and open outside of
universities than in them. Nonetheless, university professors and
administrators continue to find success in peddling the charms of
“academic freedom” to the American public.
Are we forever condemned to suffering a system of higher
education with an increasingly left-wing, anti-American, and indeed
anti-intellectual bent, perpetuated by a culture of academe where
to be critical of Western values (except for some strains such as
Marxism), and particularly American values, is the key to
acceptance and the key to be regarded as intelligent? If Americans
continue to buy in to the sanctity of “academic freedom” and to
deny themselves any role in shaping university standards and
policies, the answer is “yes.” Can serious efforts by concerned
citizens, alumni, and governments (in the case of state schools)
curb some academic excesses? That is yet to be seen.
One thing from the Ward Churchill case, however, should be clear
and incontrovertible. The rallying cry of “academic freedom” should
not be used to protect idiocy. The protection of intellectual
standards should come before “academic freedom.” University
administrators should have the courage to recognize this, and if
they don’t, a little prodding by those who pay the bills is well in
order.
