[News] Ward Churchill and Death of Academic Freedom

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Ward Churchill and Death of Academic Freedom (part I)
09.07.2009
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Source: <http://english.pravda.ru/>Pravda.Ru
[]
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/108027-Ward_Churchill-0

By David R. Hoffman

There is a popular adage that states: “Only two 
things are certain­death and taxes.”

Now there is a third: “It is certain that the 
constitutional rights of the individual will 
always be sacrificed to appease a governmental 
and/or economically powerful entity.”

In a recent Pravda.Ru article entitled 
“<http://newsfromrussia.com/opinion/columnists/17-06-2009/107786-academics-0>A 
tale of two academics”, I analyzed the 
diametrical situations faced by two tenured 
university professors: Ward Churchill and John Yoo.

Churchill was fired from his position at the 
University of Colorado (hereinafter CU) after 
writing a controversial essay shortly after the 
9/11 attacks, comparing some of those killed in 
the World Trade Center to Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann.

To avoid the appearance that Churchill was 
terminated for exercising his first amendment 
right to freedom of speech, CU instead accused 
Churchill of engaging in plagiarism and other forms of “research misconduct.”

Yoo, by contrast, remains a tenured law professor 
at another university even though, while serving 
in the “Justice” Department during the 
dictatorship of George W. Bush, he authored 
controversial memoranda that endorsed the use of 
torture, extraordinary rendition, and the denial 
of due process of law, while also claiming that 
Bush, as president, had the authority to void the 
Constitution and Bill of Rights, deny Americans 
their fundamental freedoms, and detain them without charge or trial.

In “A tale of two academics”, I argued that even 
though Churchill’s actions seemed to cause more 
outrage in America than Yoo’s, there are three 
reasons why Yoo is more deserving of 
condemnation: 1). Yoo’s memoranda possessed the 
power to influence governmental policy. 
Churchill’s essay did not; 2). Churchill 
expressed his views openly, while Yoo hid behind 
a wall of government secrecy and bureaucracy; 3). 
Yoo was surreptitiously working to murder the 
Constitution and Bill of Rights, while Churchill 
was breathing life into them by exercising the 
very rights these documents were created to protect.

Shortly before I finished writing “A tale of two 
academics”, a Colorado jury concluded that 
Churchill had been fired from CU for expressing 
his political views, and not because of any 
alleged “research misconduct.” In San Francisco, 
around the same time, federal district court 
judge Jeffrey White ruled that Yoo could be sued 
by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was 
victimized by Yoo’s policies of torture and detention without charge or trial.

Thus, for a brief time, it appeared that American 
justice was working. But, having witnessed 
throughout my legal career how fleeting this 
so-called “justice” really is, and how the 
American power structure tends to reward those 
who promote injustice while penalizing those who 
fight against it, I also wrote that “anyone 
familiar with American jurisprudence knows that 
such victories are fleeting in a legal system 
that labors harder to rationalize injustice than it does to produce justice.”

It appears my statement was prescient: Two 
significant developments are now underscoring the 
sociological ramifications of the Churchill/Yoo dichotomy.

First, the world of academia recently embraced 
another war criminal and torturer when Texas Tech 
hired Alberto Gonzales­attorney general of the 
United States under the Bush dictatorship­to teach political science.

This is the same Alberto Gonzales who allegedly 
used the “Patriot Act” to illegally spy on 
American citizens; who so zealously sought to 
continue this spying program that he attempted to 
dupe his predecessor, a hospitalized and 
disoriented John Ashcroft, into signing an 
extension order; who tried, while serving as 
attorney general, to present a public façade of 
“morality” while he privately endorsed the use of 
extraordinary rendition and torture; who answered 
“I do not recall” at least seventy times when 
testifying before Congress about the 
circumstances that led to the politically 
motivated firings of eight United States 
Attorneys; who was suspected of committing 
perjury when the Senate Judiciary Committee 
questioned him about the illegal spying program; 
and who resigned in disgrace in 2007.

I hope that others, besides myself, can 
appreciate the hypocrisy of Yoo and Gonzales 
teaching law and politics when the foundations of 
these subjects are the Constitution and Bill of 
Rights­the very documents they made every effort to destroy.

Second, despite the jury’s finding that Ward 
Churchill was wrongfully terminated from CU, 
Denver district court judge Larry J. Naves 
refused to reinstate Churchill to his 
professorship position or award him any financial compensation for lost wages.

In reality, such an outcome was predestined. 
Blaming American foreign policy for spawning acts 
of terrorism automatically made Churchill a 
pariah in the eyes of the legal system, just as 
Malcolm X’s “chickens coming home to roost” 
statement in the wake of the John F. Kennedy 
assassination made him an outcast during the early 1960s.

So, despite Judge White’s ruling in the Padilla 
case, it is a sure bet that Yoo will never have 
to pay Padilla a penny in damages, largely 
because of the same specious reasoning used to 
deny judicial relief to Churchill.

Not surprisingly, CU’s president Bruce Benson 
lauded Naves for “appropriately applying the 
law.” But what “law” did Naves actually apply? 
Obviously the only one that truly matters in the 
United States: the “law” decreeing that the rich 
and powerful must always work to protect the 
interests of the rich and powerful.

To be continued...

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