<p>
[quote]
dmd77 writes: Is there a link to the entire speech?
[/quote]
You can see his full remarks at <a href="http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=news&c=recent&view=9&long=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=news&c=recent&view=9&long=1</a> It wasn't a speech, BTW, they were written remarks.</p>
<p>BTW in his diatribe he also aclaims the "gallant sacrifices of the combat teams", eg. those who hijacked the planes</p>
<p>'If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some <strong><em>penalty befitting their participation</em></strong> upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.'</p>
<p>I also agree with Marite that someone in Ethnic Studies who ignored the varied ethnicity of the people who died is suspect.</p>
<p>Finally, the utter refusal, even four years later, to acknowledge that the Iraqi children were as much starved by the incredible corruption in the UN oversight of the Oil-for-Food program, and by the theft of so much of the money by Sadam Hussein, as anything else, proves, I believe, that this is diatribe and not speech deserving of a hearing <em>in this context.</em> I believe, as I have said over and over, in free speech, so let him babble and drool all over the place. I'd just prefer that a college choose a more reasonable person. Having the right to free speech doesn't imply that one has any right at all to any PARTICULAR venue.</p>
<p>Well, I read the whole piece. Yes, there were some true facts and sentences here and there, as there were in the articles written by the Unabomber and in the recent articles I've read by convicted serial killer Michael Ross of Connecticut. But they are in the midst of so much vicious name-calling, so much truly bad reasoning, so much abysmal ignorance (among other things, of the history of the Israel/Palestinian conflict and of the Middle Ages/Crusades) that I wouldn't waste my time giving it to a student to read, other than as an example of pathology in academia. </p>
<p>I don't even want to get started on the false presumption that "desperation" drives the terrorists. This has been proven wrong repeatedly, and someone teaching at a university should know that. If anyone was more desperate than Black Americans in the 50s and 60s or Black South Africans under apartheid - people who could be killed without reason and their killers got off scot-free, I'd like to see them. They didn't resort to mass murder of the innocent to make their points. Besides, even a cursory study of the issue of the Wahsabe (sorry, I don't have the spelling in front of me) cult (read Bernard Lewis, for example) will show that these people are NOT motivated by desire to protect innocent children. And it's a delusion to imagine they'd be mollified by any of their demands being met.</p>
<p>I don't know how many times people have to repeat that he has a right to say what he says, but that discernment (as nedad said) is in order when choosing what to read and what to present as part of a college debate. No one is censoring him.</p>
<p>Newsday.com is reporting that the talk was cancelled due to 'multiple death threats'.</p>
<p>Mikemac: thanks for the link. Fascinating reading.</p>
<p>Nevermind. GBPH</p>
<p>from an interview he gave 04/04 .
"One of the things Ive suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary. This seems like such a no-brainer that I hate to frame it in terms of actual transformation"
<a href="http://www.satyamag.com/apr04/churchill.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.satyamag.com/apr04/churchill.html</a></p>
<p>Yes, I read the Satya Magazine article this morning and was speechless.</p>
<p>I have had a myriad of emotions since I read this thread. I lost friends in the 9-11 attack, and I think that Churchill's statements were outrageous, no, disgusting. Hamilton's faculty made a poor choice with insufficient oversight by administration, and it was picked up by the news media. </p>
<p>However, Hamilton is not the only school to make bad decisions in extending invitations to speakers. Please read the link below. Duke University hosted the 4th annual conference of Palestinian Solidarity in October, and did receive some backlash, but not to the degree that Hamilton did for it's bad decision.
<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15091%5B/url%5D">http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15091</a></p>
<p>Apparently this is not the first, nor the second time that Duke has invited terrorists to speak on its campus. Why has there not been a bigger outcry? Is it somehow more acceptable to host a conference of people who shout "kill the jews" behind closed doors than to host a speaker who makes a mockery of the 9-11 victims? I am extremely disappointed at Duke's choice, and that it didn't catch wider media attention. That said, I haven't yet chosen to protest the Duke TIP program, as others have. Has Duke's choice disappointed me, absolutely. Will I damn all the programs supported by the institution, I just don't think that is the answer. I'd rather see people engage in a dialogue as to why this was inappropriate and use it as an opportunity to educate them and, hopefully, reduce the likelihood that they will do it again. But alas, the Palestinian Solidarity Conference will likely find another host for next year, and Churchill will probably find another forum from which to speak. I find his statements disgusting, but I have to admit, (and I fear I will get flamed for this, so please hear my point before you get upset with me), I don't see Churchill's passion about Columbus bringing ruin to the Native Americans as all that different from Mini's passion about the damage that some US corporations have done to India. He (Churchill) just chooses a different forum, and behavior, for expressing his views, some of which have obviously exceeded the bounds of decency.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a thin line between freedom of speech and spewing propaganda. Colleges and universities are supposed to teach us critical thinking. But, this isn't the 60's anymore. Militant messages should not, and hopefully will not, be tolerated. Will schools continues to show bad judgement? Probably. Should we condemn them for it-- That is an individual decision.</p>
<p>If you do a google search for "Ward Churchill" you'll see he's spoken at many college campuses (including my own alma mater). I'm curious why his 2001 article is only coming to light now?</p>
<p>My mother always said, "Never argue with a fool. People might not who is who."</p>
<p>The rationale behind that sage advice is that as soon as you deign to argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin you have de facto accepted the premise that angels care to dance. The far left Trotskyites like Churchill advance their cause any time anybody debates them for the simple reason that they have staked out territory so outlandish that one is forced to accept a number of false or insupportable arguements just to get to the starting line. You cannot debate the morality of killing people in the WTC without de facto accepting that somebody had a right to be angry about something. In Churchill's case he argues that the WTC was retribution for 500,000 Iraqi children starved to death because of the USA inspired UN sanctions on Saddam's regime. That nicely ignores that fact that there is not a single shread of evidence to support the fact that even a single child starved to death in Iraq. A cursory glance of any random news photos out of that country will show you that there are no shortages of 42" waistbands in the country and that food shortages have never been a problem.</p>
<p>For decades now, colleges and universities have been providing nurturing forums for extremist politics as a virtual mandate of their charters. Surely, Hamilton is not the first school to host this particular anal orifice. Incendiary rhetoric of the sort Churchill espouses is not unusual either. It's just that, usually, this sort of vitriol is voiced by humanities professors within the confines of a much smaller forum (the classroom) where the fallout, if any, is minimal.</p>
<p>As an aside, when I was a freshman at Hamilton in the late seventies, the Root-Jessup society invited the South African Ambassador to America, Stephen DeVoss, to speak on campus. Among other things, he insisted that blacks in the townships were well content with the current social and political system in South Africa (at that time, Apartheid, of course), and that we Americans had no right to interfere or criticize that of which we obviously had little understanding---thank you very much! When those of us from the Black and Latin Student Union insisted on challenging his assertions, we were shouted down by a strong student contingent in the audience. Hmmmm...I wonder how such rhetoric would be met by the student population of Hamilton today. William F. Buckley was also a very well received speaker, as I recall. The BLSU, invited Dick Gregory to speak, and the only ones who showed up to hear him were members of the BLSU and a handful of professors...</p>
<p>College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Disparaged 9/11 Attack Victims</p>
<p>By PATRICK D. HEALY</p>
<p>Published: February 2, 2005
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/education/02hamilton.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/education/02hamilton.html</a></p>
<p>CLINTON, N.Y., Feb. 1 - Over the last five days, tiny Hamilton College in upstate New York has been barraged with more than 6,000 e-mail messages full of fury, some threatening violence. Some donors have canceled pledges to an ambitious capital campaign. And prospective students have withdrawn applications or refused to enroll.</p>
<p>Then, on Monday night, a caller to the college threatened to bring a gun to campus.</p>
<p>"On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" Isn't that a Malcolm X reference? Another profound thinker.</p>
<p>I think everyone is getting a bit carried away in this thread by some stupid remarks by Churchhill. As someone said, the guy had some good points. I also think Churchhill is correct in that many in America do act act as "good Germans" while our policies kill and maim people in the third worl, including Iraq.. </p>
<p>Kudos to Mini for his remarks about Dow recruiters , tiger prawn sludge pits next to starving kids etc.</p>
<p>Pat Robertson and Falwell and some other promient evangelical preachers more or less said the US deserved 9/11 due to gays, the ACLU and secularism. Are their remarks really that different? These guys are still considered respectable speakers and are regularly on respected nation- wide talk shows and campuses. Doesn' t one of them practically own a university. Bet he isn't banned there.</p>
<p>Posters cite 9/11 and their relationship to it or people who died for their extreme emotional reaction. Well maybe Churchhill should be given a break if he really is a tribal Indian. There was a genocide there that almost rivals the Holocaust. By many accounts Leonard Peltier has been treated abysmally as a political prisoner. What if any is Churchill's relationship to this outrage? Many who would perhaps have some sympathies for disruptions of Nazis parading in Skokie seem willing to hang Churchill for a protest at a Columbus Day, an event many Indians find very offensive, without having many facts. (I know Nazis and Italian are not an exact analogy.)</p>
<p>People should just chill and not jump on the ban free speech bandwagon. Though I have never heard of the guy, I'm willing to bet that Chruchhill has done some good academic work and there is a reason he was chairman of a department and was considered worthy of an invitation.</p>
<p>I know when a thread gets this long it is hard to wade through every post, but it's been repeatedly said, over and over and OVER, that this is NOT about banning free speech; it's about whether every babbling, badly educated fool deserves certain forums; about whether decency counts for anything in choice of speakers.</p>
<p>I have REPEATEDLY stated that I (a former ACLU member) vigorously defend free speech. But that doesn't mean every single venue MUST give every single crackpot a place to speak! <strong>This is an entirely different issue.</strong></p>
<p>Churchill is doing some really sickening spin control today, claiming that he was "simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned" (reported in the daily email from the Chronicle of Higher Ed). That sounds like a reasonable statement, even if can be argued. HOWEVER - reread the sickening paragraph in the very first post. He was not arguing reasonably there. He is trying to do damage control.</p>
<p>There are PLENTY of well-educated Native Americans who can do critical thinking and speak about these issues. No one needs Churchill.</p>
<p>As for why he hasn't been protested this vigorously before - apparently very few people had really read his writings. They just heard he was head of Ethnic Studies at a university and wrongly assumed he was an educated, reasonable person.</p>
<p>nedad-
Texdad is entitled to his right to free speech. And we are entitled to completely disagree with him. "Carried away by some stupid remarks"? That's like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground. I guess its just a matter of perspective.</p>
<p>Native Americans routinely mount protests on Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth, MA (and elsewhere), and no one argues against their right to do so; in fact, there is a great deal of sympathy for their cause, though no one can rewrite or erase the past. There was as well a lot of controversy around the Columbus commemoration in 1992--all of it reported and some of if leading to changes in the commemorative plans, at least in some communities. </p>
<p>One can argue about the condoning of crimes and misdeeds through silence. One can try to bring these crimes to the public by various tactics. On college campuses, in particular, there are intermittent campaigns to boycott some corporation or some product (my college days were devoid of grapes because of boycott, for example). But that is different from claiming that innocent victims of crimes deserve death, or worse, that they were little Eichmanns. </p>
<p>Churchill was fortunate in that he did not happen to be in WTC on the morning of 9/11. If Churchill feels survivor's guilt, fine; but let him not lay a guilt trip on others, and especially not on those who are dead and cannot defend themselves against accusations of complicity in their own death. How many times can they die?</p>
<p>This is an entertaining blog about Churchill, running in Denver. <a href="http://www.walterindenver.com/archives/001053.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.walterindenver.com/archives/001053.html</a>
One poster notes that Churchill is a registered Republican. Go figure.
As an aside, while I am disappointed that Hamilton selected this guy to speak in the first place, I am more disappointed in UC Boulder for giving this guy an air of legitimacy. And they have masters level, not doctoral level folks as chairs of their departments?? It is not Hamilton we will scratch off any college search list, it is UC Boulder.
I am still on the fence about my feelings towards Duke's choices. Did anyone take a look at the article above about Duke (post #69)?? Any thoughts??
PS-- well said, Marite!</p>
<p>Oh so we have the right to free speech, but we should go around trying to prevent anyone whose speech we like from having forums such as a university? It is sort of like the idea of being for free speeh, but only allowing those who can pay enough get on major media.</p>
<p>Why do we have the double standards with respect to Falwell and others?</p>
<p>If the guy is just saying it might take more 9/11's to make America actually wake up and tune into the suffering and have more interest in people and international affairs , I might agree with him-- sickening as it might be to contemplate that. </p>
<p>I think it is unfair to try to crucify the guy for a few sentences that I think can have a relatively benign interpretation. I havent seen that he is calling for or planning for more 9/11's. Calling the pilots who flew the planes "brave" in not inaccurate, though as we see you can be a brave moron or terrorist.</p>
<p>This is a possible and fair interpretation of what he said IMHO. Calling the working people of the Twin Towers, even assuming they are uninterested in the plight of other peoples, "little Eichman's" is very inflammatory language. Doesn't mean to me he should be banned from college campuses and anyone who invites him is in serious error.</p>