Academic freedoms and Ward Churchill

Yes, but what other than slippery slope arguments militates against firing Ward Churchill for being a dolt and a hack.

Speaking personally, I went to law school, rather than pursuing a PhD, almost entirely based on the advice that it would be almost impossible to get a job in academia. And now I get you — nice, clever guy that you are — telling me that, “Yeah, we get morons and buffoons making a living in academia, but that’s OK cuz we don’t invite them to our parties!” No, seriously, you’re kidding me, right? No colloquia for Churchill? That’s IT? THAT’s the answer?!

Is the position really that a College/University can fire someone for being a complete moron, but that if the person is a complete and offensive moron then he is untouchable?

Am I just being naïve here?

What we seem to be forgetting here is that jobs in academia are a scarce resource. This isn’t really about the ability to say or think what you want. Quoting Bainbridge, here,
“This one of those occasions when those of us on the right need to suck it up and echo the line famously attributed to Voltaire: ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’” Yes, but I’m not sure I should defend his right to be paid for these views, especially at a place that is supposed to be about increasing knowledge. It’s been a few years since the relevant epistemology or Philosophy of Language courses, so forgive me if I muff the formulation of this little bromide, “Knowledge is not co-extensive with crap!” And that’s all Churchill is bringing; not knowledge, just crap.

Is the argument ultimately just that: 1)“Slippery Slope”, and 2) “Ward Churchill is just the tax society must pay to create a climate conducive to real academics”? or is there some distinction between the term “Hack”, as Burke uses it, and “Buffoon/Idiot/Moron”, as I use it to indicate someone lacking the will, insight, ability, or perspective to make a real contribution to either scholarship or teaching? If Churchill is really just sitting there, doing badly what others do well, then what’s the point of his staying? Since when did “Academic Freedom” come to mean the refusal to make subtle, but real, distinctions?

if – Since I posted this (or at least tried to post it), “Eugene Volokh”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_00.shtml#1107553264 has provided an argument which I think goes some way to answering your query.

The suggestion that someone shouldn’t be invited to speak just because Henry Farrell thinks of him as ‘neither a good nor thoughtful academic’ is obviously ludicrous. This whole smear is clearly reminiscent of McCarthyism, though.

Next time you write something, Henry, make sure it doesn’t sound too polemical or, god forbid, controversial – for your own sake.

Something of interest to this discussion is Fox News’ Bill O’Reily did a bit on Churchill. He discussed what horrible drivel Churchill spouted and what a bad person he was, but then went on to say that he should not lose his job. It sounds like O’Reily’s opinion matches somewhat what we see on CrookedTimber. How….disturbing.

if–but, as I think Volokh makes clear, the error was made at the error of granting Churchill tenure (and hiring him in the first place.) It’s regrettable that (and I haven’t read his work, but I truts Henry’s judgment) Churchill was hired and tenured, but that’s were your arguments about perserving scarce academic jobs are relevant. You can’t plausibly argue that you’re firing him for shoddy scholarship *now*.

I think it is a mistake to see Ward Churchill as an academic primarily, although I am familiar with his writings on the American Indian and got to know him through email exchanges after chairing a meeting for him at the Brecht Forum in NYC. Ward is primarily an activist and uses his university post to agitate for American Indian rights. He was arrested for protests on Columbus Day a couple of years ago. I think that Ward is far more interested in reaching a broad public with books like “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present,” which is ranked 1168 in sales by amazon.com. By comparison, Henry Farrell, who–judging from his cv– has never written a book in his life, contributes to obscure books that are read only by other academics. He contributed an article to “Political Economy and the Changing Global Order,” a book that is ranked 540,478 by amazon.com. So one can understand why Ward Churchill is not very interested in the opinions of people like Henry, who agitate for the status quo.

For what it’s worth, more and more colleges and universities have adopted “post-tenure review” policies, designed to provide some check on post-tenure perofrmance of their faculty. At my institution (Indiana University–the entire institution, from the research campuses on), it’s possible to lose tenure–and your job–if your performance slides into unacceptable. (There is faculty control, more or less, of the entire process, by the way.)

I think it’s worth remember that while tenure is a pretty strong form of job protection, lots and lots of other industries and professions have talent-challenged hacks who are inexplicably successful. To the extent that this is academia’s problem, it’s hardly academia’s problem exclusively.

Faculties are full of dead wood, but does anybody seriously think that attacks on tenure will address that problem? Anyhow, the graver failing of American academia isn’t that we have too many abraisive associate profs but that we don’t have enough.

As an anthropologist studying the relationship between Indians and academics (especially anthropologists, of course), I’ve found some of CHurchill’s work useful, and not just for the outrage. But, too, let’s keep in mind that being an academic is not all, or even mainly, about one’s published work (despite the importance such things take on in tenure review, for instance). Churchill was hired, tenured (I assume), and ultimately *made chair* of his department — reflections that *someone*, at least, felt his work and professional demeanor were appropriate to the topic he is expected to teach. These processes don’t occur in a vaccuum — other, ostensibly well-informed, academics are present at every step of the way.

The bottom line is, does Churchill contribute to the goals of his department which, I hope, are primarily about teaching and promoting research? His fellow department members thought so, his Uni admin thought so (at least until last week), and whatever academics made up the search committee that hired him and the tenure committee that tenured him thought so. This isn’t to say that these are perfect systems, but people are speaking about Churchill as if he just popped full-blown into a department chairship, even though he’s “just a hack”. The emerging academics who write for and frequent this site know how hard it is to even get a crappy academic job — do they think the system puts up a billion barriers to smart folks like us but allows a “hack” like Churchill to just waltz in and take over a department?

As I said, written output isn’t necessarily indicitive of classroom teaching skills. I think I’m a pretty good teacher (even great, from time to time) but I am only just now getting ready to get my first publication. My best professors had published little or nothing past their dissertations — even though they were in their 60s.

I’ve written more about CHurchill and academic freedom at my site: http://www.onemansopinion.org/pivot/pivot/entry.php?id=350 I’d be pleased if anyone would visit.

asq, yep this site does indeed spend an awful lot of time Glenn Reynolds dissing and, like you, I’ve often wondered why.

Where does the Instapundit vilification come from and what drives it?

Is it his traffic or his views or both?

Ward Churchill has a response to the media uproar at Counterpunch. You may not find it completely convincing; however I think that substantive further engagement/debate with Churchill, including invites to conferences, speeches, etc. would be all to the good.

Most left-leaning academics (which is to say most academics) may not share Churchill’s extreme politics, but it seems that virtually all have been willing to give him a pass on them. It took commentators outside the academy to raise a stink.

Here’s another outrageous example of an extremist academic who was given a pass. Thank God for J Edgar Hoover for keeping an eye on him.

FBI.gov File Summary:

An investigation was conducted by the FBI regarding the famous physicist because of his affiliation with the Communist Party. Einstein was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with thirty-four communist fronts between 1937-1954. He also served as honorary chairman for three communist organizations.

Here’s another outrageous example of an extremist academic who was given a pass. Thank God for J Edgar Hoover for keeping an eye on him.

There is an enormous difference between secret government surveillence and public dissemination and discussion of the published writings and public statements of a scholar (especially one who also happens to be a government employee).

That said, my impression is that Einstein did not hide his communist sympathies, and so they were generally known by the public as well. He was treated as a white-haired ‘secular saint’ at the end of his life, but fortunately his political views were not much listened to…

“People who use their academic positions to spout self-evident nonsense shouldn’t be fired”

Err…yes they should.

Depending of course on what is meant by self-evident nonsense. Political opinion is obviously debatable, but issues of basic competence are another matter. If you have someone either teaching or writing that, I dunno, Paris is the capital of Antarctica, or Rabelais wrote The Tale of Genji, or pineapple is good on pizza – well that someone shouldn’t be teaching nursery school, let alone tertiary.

Here’s a bit from an LA Times article –

“One argument that could be made is that his writings and speeches have degenerated to a point where they are representative of professional incompetence,” said Paul Campos, a law professor at the university and a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. “In the same way, a college would not tolerate a member of the history department who said the Holocaust didn’t happen.”

Actually, having perused the original offending screed, what was most offensive about it was its self-appointed pose as moral spokesman for the oppressed. That there has been massive colonial/imperial violence perpetrated by the U.S. and other Western powers on weaker, non-Western peoples is very little in doubt, and the technological sophistication of the means is hardly a mitigation. But by what political reasoning or logic of political action or organization his screed was supposed to count as effective opposition to that violence is a mystery to me. It struck me as another instance of “leading with your chin.”

Two thoughts: First, it’s terribly interesting that discussion of Churchill’s writings have revolved around the media spin on them. I haven’t seen any actual, y’know, refutation of his central assertion. I don’t recall red herrings (identity politics!) or ad hominems (incivility!) qualifying as evidence.
Second, is it any wonder that Churchill (and others) are militant in their rhetoric? There’s a commenter above denying his “Indian-ness”, for goodness sake! How many Jews (including me) can claim non-miniscule-fraction blood-based connection to Jewish people living in Israel 6,000 years ago? Why should we have to? It should be obvious that the same argument holds true for Churchill and his ethnicity. And this type of argument about who gets to be Indian helps to prove some of Churchill’s points.

Just to be clear, when I remarked about what was most offensive about Churchill’s screed, I meant that much else in it was scarcely offensive: much of its points are susceptible to rational reconstruction. I find the readiness to take offence at Churchill’s remarks still more suspicious than Churchill’s desire to give offense. Something of the same sort of point was made by Sontag in the New Yorker immediately afterward,- the only objection being to the superciliousness of her tone,- and still better by another writer in the same issue, who had extensive experience touring the world’s war zones. The randomness of the violence of the 9/11 actrocity,- an objection to all terrorism,- is mirrored in the randomness of the much more extensive violence in “the other”. That would not, however, constitute a brief for setting up non-random violence as a rationalist ideal. Still, the idea that academics in their cubicles should be solely dedicated to the disinterested search for truth belies the larger context in which truth unfortunately is to be found. Churchill’s inauthenticity is perhaps the lesser instance.

I think though that this present furore is pretty harmless compared to what happened then. The person involved has not lost his job, and neither is he the subject of govt investigation. However, I believe that this is indicative of a general trend among many right-wing circles to use straw men to attack anyone who disagrees with them.

Straw men? Ward Churchill seems flesh & blood enough to me. I don’t see any problem with those who are offended by Churchill’s writings in:

1. Calling public attention to them.

2. Protesting his occupying a position of authority at a state university or being honored with speaking invitations by other universities.

I have a hard time seeing a problem with either of these activities. They are nothing like secret government surveillance nor being called to testify before the HUAC.

Einstein could not really be touched because of his pre-eminence. One does not openly persecute the greatest physicist after Isaac Newton, for basically harmless political views, unless one is a Nazi.

Well, it depends on the meaning of ‘touch’. According to reviews of The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist

From 1933 until 1955, the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiled a 2,000-page file on Albert Einstein, hoping to “destroy” his immense stature by linking him to Soviet espionage activities. At one point, not long before the scientist’s death, a serious attempt was made to have him deported.
…
Accusations of subversive activity ranged from the surreal (mind control and death rays) to carelessly recycled Nazi propaganda. Hoover’s only hope lay in exposing Einstein as a Soviet spy, a task he fruitlessly pursued from 1950 to 1955 (when Einstein died).
…
It was part of Hoover’s secret, 23-year campaign to undermine Einstein’s influence, a campaign that included illegally opening the scientist’s mail, monitoring his phone, trying to link him to Soviet spies, and trying to take away his American citizenship – a campaign detailed for the first time in The Einstein File.

During this week, academic freedom has not only been under assault at the University Colorado but also at UNLV. In many ways, this case is even more troubling.

For more on Hans Hermann-Hoppe, see here

Ward Churchill should be fired if it is proven that he is either incompetent, or that he got his postion under false pretenses (in which case I would support firing the committee that fell for those pretenses.) Barring those two reasons, why should UC get rid of him?