Killing the Messenger: Ward Churchill’s Sins Against the Empire

[Freedom_from_Chains]

I am not in agreement with all of the author’s perceptions but nonetheless he makes some good points.

By Steven Best



“The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.” -Ward Churchill
Academic free speech and the First Amendment once again are under intense fire in the midst of a political and mass media witch hunt on Ward Churchill, Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The controversy erupted over objection to Churchill’s participation on a panel at Hamilton College in upstate New York once a controversial essay he published on the Internet the day after 9-11, entitled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” was unearthed and transformed into fodder for a lurid media spectacle.

Churchill was tarred and feathered as demands for termination of his tenured position grew to a roar. The attack shifted from the words of his essay to the body of his writings and even to scrutiny of his professed Indian heritage. It immediately became clear that the Right was hunting far larger game than just a radical critic of US imperialism named Ward Churchill. They were exploiting the controversy in an effort to advance their ongoing Culture Wars whereby they seek to demolish free speech rights, liberal and left values, and the academic tenure system which in their view protects an army of crazed radicals corrupting the minds of youth.

Churchill’s essay argued that 9-11 was inevitable blowback in response to US global terrorism and imperialist policies against Islamic nations. Harking back to Malcolm X’s quip that the assassination of President Kennedy was an example of “chickens coming home to roost,” such that leaders of a violent system themselves are victims of violence, Churchill applied the same analogy to the US system as a whole. According to Churchill, 9-11 was the long-delayed but inexorable moment when the US paid a small fraction of the political costs it has incurred in its ruthless assault on nations and peoples around the globe. Churchill emphasized that unless it drastically changes its imperialist policies, the US will be struck again, likely in a bigger and more destructive way.

(cont) http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/best02102005/