<p>Is anyone else offended by this? We knew Grinnell was extremely liberal, but we wish Grinnell would not give legitimacy to someone who mocks the people who died on 9/11.</p>
<p>On the Grinnell events calendar: Ward Churchill</p>
<p>I have just emailed my son to let him know that he should research him if he doesn’t already know of him. It is one thing to have legitimate concerns with US policy and practices, but this guy just rants and paints with such an extremist brush without regard to fact or nuance. It is hard to believe he ever was a professor. </p>
<p>To my mind, it’s not a question of the college being so liberal, but in bringing someone of either side – right or left – who expresses himself in such a way. To me, he is the left’s version of a Glenn Beck and others who use highly inflammatory depictions (aka, comparing Obama to Hitler) and come down with a hammer in their arguments. Should the college have invited him, or is there a responsibility to hear from people who represent viewpoints no matter how ill-expressed and let the students engage in discourse with them? After all, these arguments are out in the public domain, so perhaps the students should take part in debate. I guess the other question is: does the college also bring conservative speakers to campus (and one would hope that it would not only be the most extremist right-wingers, but more reasoned conservatives.)</p>
<p>I am concerned with the description of Churchill in the calendar. I don’t know that the students even really know who this guy is just from the listing, so many might not even think to attend, or might not go really armed with knowledge.</p>
<p>I know that heading into finals it is a really busy time for the students, so I don’t know if my son will even have the time to read up on him. I know that if he did, he would be very concerned and want to attend the lecture to challenge him on several fronts.</p>
<p>actually, it is the students who are bringing him onto campus. There is a list of organizations sponsoring this event. Just about everything Grinnell does has input from students – that is what self-governance is all about. The students have representation on committees that include just about every facet of college life, including faculty hiring and college budgeting.</p>
<p>I’m glad I saw this post, pasta lover, as now my son plans to be in the audience. I don’t think he was aware of this at all until I sent him the link. As I expected, he found Churchill to be repugnant, but he knows that it is important to go, so that he can rebut this guy’s thinking either that night if there is a Q&A or with his fellow students in discussion afterwards. I suppose you could argue that he should protest his appearance, but while I won’t speak for him, I do know he’s a big believer in First Amendment rights…(of course the college didn’t have to invite him in the first place, but now he’s coming so…).</p>
<p>Actually, I’m as concerned about the response or lack of it from Grinnell students; it makes me think about some of the questions from other posters about how intellectual or active students are. Each week I read the S&B, and when I read it last week, [Scarlet</a> & Black](<a href=“http://www.thesandb.com/]Scarlet”>http://www.thesandb.com/), I saw no mention of this Churchill’s coming. Given the responses controversial speakers have had at other schools, I’m surprised that Churchill’s coming didn’t evoke the kind of heated debate and protests (for and against) that I would have expected. Are the students just too involved in their last week of classes, or is there a uniformity of opinion and no one sees the speaker as problematic?</p>
<p>I wonder whether the students really researched him or not before deciding to have him. Or, if the students who organized this knew but chose not to mention it at all. Like I said, there is no indication from the description on the calendar of who this guy really is, and certainly since there are a wide variety of speakers coming to the campus at all times, and the fact that currently this is not a man in the news so that anyone unfamiliar with this name would not necessarily thought twice. I certainly would not have looked at the calendar and recognized his name the way you did. </p>
<p>Do you know whether the S&B covers most speakers in advance, or interviews them on arrival? Again, they may just not have been aware of the controversy surrounding this man, but it does seem pretty disingenuous on the part of the organizers of this event to have promoted this they way they did! </p>
<p>However, I have been wondering about the campus reaction, too, and I want to have a conversation with my son. My son is an avid news junkie, and like I said, I don’t think he had any awareness of this until I alerted him.</p>
<p>How could Grinnell students NOT know who this guy is? And then they decide to put their money into his pocket instead of toward any number of more worthwhile purposes. I’m at a total loss here, folks. Ward Churchill isn’t just an opinionated loudmouth. He’s an academic fraud and a liar. Here’s a peek at what happened when Hamilton College scheduled him to speak. [Hamilton</a> College - Ward Churchill - Ward Churchill - Information](<a href=“http://www.hamilton.edu/news/archive/ward-churchill]Hamilton”>http://www.hamilton.edu/news/archive/ward-churchill) Does Grinnell really want to expend that much time and energy on this clown?</p>
<p>There are probably many issues that go in to this. Ward Churchill I believe is part Native American and an extremely vocal critic of United States policy. He was a tenured professor within the University of Colorado system I believe, and he was one of the few people to speak out against the United States government right after the 9/11 attacks. Based on speaking out his tenure was revoked. What Ward Churchill said was neither intelligent or well thought out, but it should have been his right to say it and to let others make the argument against him rather than to villify him and treat him as a criminal (he did nothing that was a criminal act and I do not believe he should have lost tenure. Whatever was going to happen to Churchill was going to happen.)</p>
<p>My guess is that Churchill is being brought to campus by students as an excercise in free speech, which I found to be one of the most important issues at Grinnell when I was there. A group of students probably made the argument (to their fellow students) that we have never really recovered our free speech after 9/11 and campuses such as Grinnell are the places where this discussion needs to start. I doubt there will be much talk about 9/11, and I think Grinnell students can hold their own if there is. Grinnellians have never been afraid of dissent and they have never been afraid of free speech and I am very happy to see that tradition is being kept alive.</p>
<p>The bringing of Churchill to campus is also extremely poignant considering the villification that is going on right now of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and I am sure that will be a discussion on this topic. While you can make the argument that Churchill brought his pain on himself, I think it is much harder to make that case about Assange.</p>
<p>Don’t question the students, but applaud them for keeping Grinnell a bastion of free speech where we debate rather than villify.</p>
<p>^^
You make a good point about free speech, but the problem with Churchill is, like you said, his opinions are neither intelligent nor well thought out. Based on what I saw of his website, he looks like an academic lightweight, someone who (like, say, Ann Coulter, or Holocaust denyers) makes remarks more for provocation and self-promotion rather than for serious exploration of the issues. Seems to me it wouldn’t be hard for Grinnell to find someone who could give a more weighty, credible, and supported attack on U.S. policy.</p>
<p>I also wonder what is Grinnell’s track record on bringing controversial conservative speakers to campus. I mean, it’s easy to claim to champion free speech when you invite speakers who tout the party line. But can someone like, say, Ann Coulter be invited to speak at Grinnell without being villified? I have my doubts. Given Grinnell’s liberal leanings, seems like she would provide a much better test of Grinnell’s devotion to free speech than Churchill.</p>
<p>Having said that, I think that one of Columbia’s finest moments was a few years ago when they invited Armadinejad to speak on campus. He won few if any converts and his remarks (i.e., “we don’t have gays in Iran”) showed him for what he is. The marketplace of ideas in action.</p>
<p>Based on the link posted above, it appears that Churchill’s talk at Hamilton was cancelled due to threats against him and others. To me, that is disgraceful, and a real black eye against Hamilton. I wouldn’t have invited Churchill in the first place, but no one invited to speak at any serious college or university should be silenced due to threats of violence.</p>
<p>Churchill is not part Native American. He falsely claimed to be, and based a good bit of his career on that lie. After he equated 9/11 victims to Nazis, Colorado started asking around, and the Indian tribe Churchill claimed to be a member of said they never heard of him. He didn’t get the boot because his views on America were unpopular, he got the boot because he was a proven academic fraud. CenterUSdad, you really ought to look into this a little more before you defend the guy. I’m still amazed that Grinnell students would choose to give him their money when there are so many far more worthy speakers they could have chosen.</p>
<p>To me your comments bring out the biggest problem with Churchill’s appearance. We, who are mostly parents, employees or prospectives, should not be having this debate here. Instead, the debate should be going on on campus.</p>
<p>Centerdad,
Were it true that the Grinnell students brought an inflammatory speaker to Grinnell to prove a point about free speech, they would, or at least should, have publicized the controversy surrounding the speaker and encouraged public debate about the right of free speech vs the responsibility of a college to spend its money on such controversial speakers. </p>
<p>SDonCC and others,
I find Churchill’s appearance repugnant, but more problematic to me is the absence of any significant response for or against on the part of students and faculty, as far as I can tell. Arguing that students just don’t know who he is and that is okay because some of the adult posters here did not know either just doesn’t cut it. I mean, Grinnell is supposed to be a college filled with intelligent, engaged thinkers, and information about Churchill is easy to find. At least some students studying development, policy, government or history should have recognized the name as associated with inflammatory speech and been able and interested enough to find out more, diverse enough to have different opinions, and engaged enough to share what they found despite this being near the end of the term.</p>
<p>The stuff on Wikipedia is pretty well vetted. Not only that but my guess is pretty much every student is going to look up this article before they go see him and make up their own minds. We live in a different age - one in which our students are much better informed than we ever were. I think it’s right that the debate should be on campus and not among parents and alumni. Grinnell belongs to its students.</p>
<p>I agree with you, CenterUSdad. I don’t think I know enough about Churchill or about how the students are responding/have responded to him to even comment about this, much less make a judgment. I have a lot of faith in Grinnell students and in my son and in the college. I feel like we can leave things on campus to them.</p>
<p>I find the link helpful for two reasons: it gives some picture of campus response, and it shares primary source information. </p>
<p>I like those sort of posts because they are like the poster is saying “This isn’t just my opinion or experience, this is what the school is wants to have as in its newspaper that people within and without read.” It’s useful for everyone to have that type of information as well as people’s feelings.</p>
<p>pasta lover, i’m assuming from this that you have a son or daughter at the school. Did he / she have any response, reaction, input on campus him/herself?</p>