[A-List] Fw: [URPE] Open Letter re Ward Churchill -- URGENT DEADLINE

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Send signatures to criticalthinking@xxxxxxxxxx

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The reason I'm writing has to do with the case of Ward Churchill, the
University of Colorado professor who is being hounded and persecuted for
his essay on 9/11 and has already been pressured to resign as head of
the Ethnic Studies Department. There is urgency here: the Colorado Board
of Regents is issuing its findings about Churchill's scholarship and
making recommendations about his future, sometime during the week of
March 7. We need a major intervention. The attached Open Letter makes a
basic analysis of the significance of this attack and indicates the kind
of response called for, and contains a template for emergency
resolutions by faculty bodies, departments, and professional groups.

We hope that you can distribute this Open Letter widely. Please let us
know the responses, and if people want to sign on, they should send an
email to criticalthinking@xxxxxxxxxx

Yours in solidarity,
Raymond Lotta, URPE Member

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Please forward to colleagues

DEFEND DISSENT AND CRITICAL THINKING ON CAMPUS

An Open Letter From Concerned Academics

March 2, 2005

URGENT:  The University of Colorado Board of Regents will be making its
recom-mendations about Ward Churchill in the week of March 7.

We call on all those who teach and research at colleges and universities
to raise their voices in opposition to this inquisition.  Sign and act
on this open letter.  Circulate it widely.  Inform the media.

As an immediate step, we call on our colleagues to pass emergency
resolutions in faculty and professional associations and send them to
the University of Colorado Board of Regents. We offer the following as a
template for such resolutions:

    Resolved, that the attempt, escalated by government authority, to
fire Ward Churchill and the trial by media which he is undergoing amount
to a serious assault on dissent, critical inquiry, and academic freedom,
and a heightening of the repressive atmosphere in American society
overall.  This attack is intolerable and must stop now.  The precedents
already set in this case - that a professor can be publicly pilloried
and threatened with dismissal for what he writes - must not be allowed
to stand.  The University of Colorado Board of Regents must drop any
effort to fire Churchill, cease its spurious investigation into his body
of work and repudiate its actions up to now; and all colleges and
universities must reaffirm, in word and deed, their commitment to defend
critical thinking.


The past month has witnessed a chilling turn in American political and
intellectual life.  Ward Churchill, a tenured professor and former chair
of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, has been
made the object of an unprecedented nationwide attack for an essay he
wrote three years ago.  Two governors, including the governor of
Colorado, have called for his firing.  The national and local media have
not only misrepresented his work and views, but have increasingly
vilified and slandered Ward Churchill himself.  Some of Churchill's
speaking engagements have been cancelled.  Death threats have been made
against him.  In response, the University of Colorado Board of Regents
not only "apologized" for Churchill's remarks - itself an utterly
gratuitous and inappropriate action - but initiated an investigation
into his entire body of work to search for mistakes and supposed
evidence of "fraud."  During the week of March 7, the Board of Regents
will conclude its 30-day review of all of Churchill's writings and
statements.

One must go back to the "scoundrel time" of the McCarthy years to find
anything even close to this.  And now, as an unmistakable sign of what
this portends, just a week ago the University of Colorado at Boulder
announced an investigation into campus records to make sure that every
faculty member has actually signed his or her state-required loyalty oath!

All this is intolerable and must be reversed--immediately.

To be clear: the issues here have nothing to do with the quality of Ward
Churchill's scholarship or his professional credentials. However one
views his choice of words or specific arguments, he is being put in the
dock solely for his radical critique of U.S. history and present-day
policy in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.  Apparently,
9/11 is now the third rail of American intellectual life: to critically
probe into its causes and to interrogate the international role of the
United States is treated as heresy; those inquiring can be denied
forums, careers, and even personal safety.  And now Churchill's
persecutors have gone further, repeatedly ridiculing his scholarly
argumentation that the United States committed genocide against the
indigenous people of this continent, and that the FBI systematically
attempted to disrupt and destroy the movements and leaders of the
1960s.  Rather than debate or disprove such theses, Churchill's
attackers attempt to render them beyond the pale of respectable
discourse.  Through all this, new ground rules are being established:
any criticism or even questioning of the institutional foundations of
the United States, or of the motives and interests behind its policies,
will be treated as essentially treasonous.  Left unopposed, this
trajectory will lead to a situation of uncontested indoctrination
enforced by the state.

The Churchill case is not an isolated incident but a concentrated
example of a well-orchestrated campaign launched in the name of
"academic freedom" and "balance" which in fact aims to purge the
universities of more radical thinkers and oppositional thought
generally, and to create a climate of intimidation.  While the
right-wing claim that the universities are "left-wing dictatorships" is
specious beyond belief, it is unfortunately true that the campus remains
one of the few surviving refuges of critical thinking and dissent in
this country.  This is something to defend and strengthen.

It would be hard to overstate the serious nature of what has already
happened, let alone what it would mean should the Regents fire
Churchill.  If this assault on academe succeeds, the consequences for
American society as a whole will be nothing short of disastrous.

The response from the academic world has thus far fallen short of what
is required.  Voices have been raised in opposition, but many have been
intimidated.  What is needed is an outpouring of faculty resolutions
condemning this witch-hunt. Teach-ins.  Protests.

We propose that emergency faculty resolutions be passed and sent to the
University of Colorado Board of Regents (secretary:
millie.cortez@xxxxxxxxxxxx, cc: EthnicStudies@xxxxxxxxxxxx) and major
media outlets.  We further propose that if the Colorado authorities
continue their persecution of Churchill, we mount major nationally
coordinated protests on campuses all over America - and internationally
- as soon as possible, and that we begin to join efforts to reverse this
dangerous direction in American political and intellectual life

The hour is very late; this case is nothing less than a watershed. We
must act, and act now.


Initial Signatories:

Steven P. Best, Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas-El Paso

Henry A. Giroux, Global Television Network Chair Professor in English
and Communications, McMaster University

Ruth Y. Hsu, Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Alan Jones, Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Pitzer College

Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of
Religions, University of Chicago

Raymond Lotta, author and lecturer

Henry Silverman, Professor and Chairperson Emeritus, Michigan State
University

Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University

Allen W. Wood, Stanford University


E-mail this letter to colleagues, as well as people and institutions in
other walks of life. Please get back to us with your ideas and let us
know what you are doing. Send us copies of resolutions and statements.
Add your name to this Open Letter.

E-mail to:  criticalthinking@xxxxxxxxxx