[A-List] Greeley (Colorado) Checks In On Ward Churchill

["Leigh Meyers" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

CU's Brown faced a most important decision

Guest Commentary
June 7, 2007

WRITER'S NOTE: On Memorial Day, I learned of President Brown's
decision to fire Professor Churchill. At the time I wrote this column,
the decision had not been made.

University of Colorado President Hank Brown had until May 29 to decide
whether to mete out punishment to Professor Ward Churchill.

Churchill predicted Brown would fire him. He claimed this was one of
the reasons Brown was brought in as president: "He's basically a
hatchet man."(Rocky Mountain News, May 26.)

When the controversy over the "little Eichmanns" essay first erupted,
then-Gov. Bill Owens called for Churchill's dismissal. And when a
faculty committee "determined Churchill had plagiarized and fabricated
material in his writings," Phil DiStephano, who was chancellor at the
time, recommended the professor be fired. Most recently, a five-member
Tenure and Promotion Committee split on the nature of his punishment:
two voted for firing, three voted for a year's suspension and a
reduction in rank.

This committee agreed that the proceedings against Churchill were
prompted by the public furor over his essay that referred to some
Sept. 11, 2001, victims as little Eichmanns. The committee also
admitted the proceedings "were specially triggered by his exercise of
his First Amendment rights." (Denver Post, May 17.)

Please note. No review of the entire faculty was ever undertaken. This
inquisition's only target was Churchill. From the very beginning they
were determined to get the goods on him -- to find some excuse to
banish him from the campus.

To me, this whole process seems much like a bill of attainder, which
my dictionary defines as "a legislative enactment against a person
pronouncing him guilty, without a trial for an alleged crime." Our
Founding Fathers considered this practice so odious that they
specifically banned it in our Constitution.

To sift through only one professor's writings to find mistakes and
then punish him for them also violates the Fourteenth Amendment's
admonition: "No state shall ... deny any person ... the equal
protection of the laws."

Let me concede that Churchill's remarks -- coming so soon after
terrorists snuffed out nearly 3,000 lives -- deeply offended many
Americans. I, too, cringed when I first read them.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, another teacher faced a similar
predicament. Officials said he was corrupting the young men of Athens.
They gave him a choice: banishment or hemlock. Socrates drank the
poison.

Just a few years ago when a novelist portrayed the Islamic religion in
an unfavorable light, the Khomeni of Iran posted a reward for his
assassination.

Admittedly, that's pretty drastic. We certainly wouldn't go that far.
But just how should we respond to offensive statements? And specially,
how should Brown have responded to the Churchill situation?

Brown's spokeswoman, Michele McKinney, claimed that "the case is not
about free speech." (Denver Post, May 17.)

My, my, is that so? Does anybody seriously believe that Churchill
would be facing dismissal had he not written that Eichmann essay?

Brown decided that Churchill must be punished for his utterances, and
thus merely yielded to the popular clamor of retribution.

But what if Brown had stood firm on principle? What if he asserted the
First Amendment's protection of free expression? And what if he
rejected the pretense that the case against Churchill is based solely
on errors within his writings? He probably would lose the near term
popularity contest. But I believe that future historians would judge
his decision a courageous act of statesmanship.

Ray Bronson Knapp is professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Northern Colorado. He resides in Greeley.

http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20070607/READERS/106070097