Looking for a job in public relations? Maybe you should try working for the University of Colorado. In the last few years they've endured the tragic, alcohol-related death of a student, a football recruiting scandal that involved "sex parties" (I wouldn't know, I've never been invited to one) and, most recently, the vilification of one of their professors, Ward Churchill.
The controversy around Churchill began when he was scheduled to make an appearance at Hamilton College. That visit was canceled due to "death threats." The outrage was sparked by an essay he wrote on a dark day in September that is highly critical of American foreign policy and concludes that 9/11 victims deserved their fate for being part of a technocratic military-industrial complex that has caused the Iraqi people harm. He likens them to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann and terms the terrorists' actions a "successful operation." No matter how many times he claims that the media has distorted or exaggerated his message, a cursory examination of the essay will tell you that is not the case. His words are obscene and stomach-churning.
And he has every right to say them.
In an interview last Friday, CNN's Paula Zahn did her best Bill O'Reilly impression, asking Churchill questions and then barking new ones at him (although, to be fair, it's hard not to interrupt someone who never shuts up). Speaking of Bill, it was his fair and balanced approach to framing the issue that allegedly led to the death threats that forced Hamilton College President Joan Stewart to fold. Bill's tactics remain, shall we say, as vibrant as ever.
Bill and I agree on one thing though: Churchill's essay is really bad. Aside from being incredibly offensive, Churchill writes with all the thought and grace of a masked teenager throwing a chair through a Starbucks window because the WTO is, like, the establishment. But no matter how offensive Churchill is to me, I can't ignore the fact that the University of Colorado Board of Regents is on the verge of firing him for having an opinion. And as that university is a public institution, the First Amendment is very much in play.
In the last few years, the political noose has tightened around the First Amendment to such a degree that issues of censorship are threatening to define this decade. During the Iraq war's major combat operations, every American television network relegated itself to PG-rated coverage; we were even shielded from seeing flag-draped coffins.
More recently, we saw it in the overkill response to Janet Jackson's breast, in ABC affiliates refusing to air Saving Private Ryan on Veterans Day because it was "too violent" and in the new secretary of education decrying a PBS cartoon that had the unmitigated gall to show on television that some families consist of two mothers. You don't have to approve of Janet's breasts, Omaha Beach or lesbian couples. That's why our creator endowed us with the ability to change the channel.
After all, who watches the watchers? Where do we make the distinction between provocative rhetoric and grounds for termination? Some Hamilton College students most bitterly opposed to what Churchill had to say still wanted him to come. They would have confronted him, dragging him kicking and screaming into the arena of intellectual debate. And who knows? They might have even changed his mind about a few things. But now we'll never know. That debate has been stifled before it saw the light of day, and that goes against everything any institution of higher learning should stand for.
If you need a more pragmatic reason why Churchill shouldn't be fired, look at it this way: the more we heap self-righteous criticism on the man, the greater the hype for his next book will be. This isn't the first time someone has come up with a reason why America had it coming on 9/11: for Jerry Falwell, it was abortionists, gays and feminists. Falwell's comments sicken me just as much as Churchill's, but he too has every right to make them.
As an intellectual and as an activist, Ward Churchill is a joke. He's not even an American Indian; the tribe he claims to be a member of, the United Keetoowah Band Cherokee, long ago made that clear. Churchill later claimed to be one-sixteenth Cherokee. But if Colorado fires him, it will be doing a great disservice to its students and all who value free and open debate. And that will cost it far more dearly than keeping a controversial figure on its faculty.
The best thing the University of Colorado can do is weather the storm and wait for someone else to make a widely criticized verbal gaffe. Judging by the elapsed time between Larry Summers' and Churchill's comments, they shouldn't have to wait too long.
Eliot Sherman is a senior English major from Philadelphia and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Diary of a Madman normally appears on Thursdays.
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