Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

Ward Speaks Again … To an Enthusiastic Crowd, Despite Paid Provocateurs

Students at the University of Colorado – whose tuition dollars pay his salary – may not get to take classes from Professor Churchill, but students around the U.S. and Canada are flocking to hear him speak.

After rousing talks at a rally for political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal in Philadelphia and an evening of solidarity with attorney Lynne Stewart in New York City on December 9, Ward Churchill spoke at the New School on December 11.

As reported by the New York Sun:

An ethnic studies professor from the University of Colorado, Ward Churchill, received a standing ovation last night from a crowd of more than 200 New School students after blaming the 2001 World Trade Center attacks on America’s support of Israel and its sanctions against Iraq in 1996.

In a two-hour speech at the New School titled “Sterilizing History: The Fabrication of Innocent Americans,” delivered without notes, Mr. Churchill traced what he called a pattern of mass murder as American foreign policy from the time of the country’s inception to the events of September 11, 2001. . . . read more.

Sponsored by the Women of Color student organization, the event was packed and over 100 people were turned away for lack of space. As usual, the crowd included a few provocateurs – in this case, solicited by Grant Crowell, who claims to be making a “documentary” and who recruited on craigslist, offering payment for illicit recordings and for asking pre-scripted questions. For details, see here.

Professor Churchill’s New School talk, preceded by a prayer and songs by Tiokasin Ghosthorse of First Voices Indigenous Radio, was recorded in full (with permission) by WBAI radio, and can also be heard here.

Academic Freedom Declines Across the United States

From Arabisto.

Please note: This piece was written by Ithaca College professor Terri Ginsberg and New York-based journalist Rima Abdelkader.

Historian Tony Judt, Professor of European Studies at New York University , was scheduled to speak on the Israeli Lobby and American Foreign Policy at the Polish Consulate in New York City in October.  Due to pressure from two Jewish American organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, his talk was cancelled.  Judt had also been scheduled to speak on the same topic at Manhattan College, but that speech was canceled due to similar pressures.  The ADL and the AJC believe that Judt, a Jewish American, is too critical of State of Israel and as such, should not be allowed to speak publicly on that topic.

In September, University of Colorado’s Chancellor Phil DiStefano announced that his university would consider firing tenured Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill for his criticism of the Bush Administration and its handling of the events of 9/11.  Churchill is currently being subjected to university censure for research misconduct by an appointed outside faculty review committee comprised of faculty members from chosen campuses around the country.

The Judt and Churchill cases are not unique.  Since the events of 9/11 and the subsequent U.S.-led military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq , U.S. campuses have become a battleground for an increasing number of publicly scrutinized attacks on professors whose teaching and research entail criticism of Zionism and of U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East .  Each attack has involved blatant violations of academic freedom that have gone largely unchecked despite protest from faculty, unions, and scholarly organizations.

Perhaps more troubling is the case of Professor Douglas Giles.  Unlike Churchill, untenured adjunct Giles was fired from Roosevelt University in Chicago in November 2005 for using the concept of Zionism as a demonstrative example in his Comparative Religion course.  Giles was told by his dean that no classroom discussion of religion is permissible that may be construed as offensive to students of a particular faith.

More recently, University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole was denied a Middle East Studies position at Yale after pressure from neoconservative donors and media pundits who expressed objection to Cole’s public criticisms of Israel.  Cole is former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

The most notorious of these cases occurred at Columbia University in New York in Spring 2005.  Professors Hamid Dabashi, Rashid Khalidi, and Joseph Massad, among others, who teach at Columbia’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) Department, were investigated by a university-appointed non-faculty committee after The David Project accused them of anti-Semitism, and media pundits, elected officials, real estate developers and wealthy donors began demanding that Columbia dismiss them.  In the end, Columbia’s investigative committee was unable to substantiate the accusatory claims.

In the U.S. , academic freedom is a constitutionally guaranteed right meant to protect the role of the university as a site for producing knowledge where its aim is to serve the public good.  As citizens or residents of the U.S. , academic scholars are endowed with the right to speak publicly, outside the academic sphere, on issues that may or may not pertain to their fields of disciplinary expertise.  In addition, academic freedom stipulates that scholars, not elected officials, private interests, or media pundits, are the ones authorized and entitled to make collective decisions about academic knowledge, and about what may or may not be published and professed. 

Regrettably, we are in a time and place where scholars are being intimidated from openly discussing subjects they teach or topics about which they feel strongly unless their ideas align with particular schools of thought, especially with regard to Zionism and to U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East.  As we write, academics and university employees in the U.K. are being encouraged to spy on students who appear South Asian or Middle Eastern and who the British government suspects of supporting Islamic extremism.  In addition to this, attempts are being made by neoconservatives to block both the hire of Wadie Said, son of the late Edward Said, by Wayne State University Law School in Michigan , and the tenure of anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj, author of a book that criticizes Israeli archaeology at Barnard College in New York .

If it is truly contributive to the public good, academia must be responsive to public issues and concerns and must treat scholars who speak publicly in accordance with accepted, usual and customary norms of scholarly practice.  Political litmus tests should not be used as criteria for academic appointments, tenure, or promotion, nor should accusations of anti-Semitism be made indiscriminately against scholars who articulate legitimate criticisms of Zionism and of U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East .  If elected officials, university administrations, mainstream journalists, and responsible citizens do not speak out and take action against these draconian measures, they will become guilty of facilitating the death of free speech in what may be its last bastion, academia.

Ward Speaks

Sorry, Bill O’Reilly and Bill Owens, but Ward Churchill has not been silenced.   He continues to be a popular speaker on campuses around the country and in Canada. 
 
In late October, Professor Churchill was the keynote speaker at the Fifth Annual New College Conference on Racism and National Consciousness at the University of Toronto.  He also spoke at Laurentian University and the University of Sudbury in Ontario, with organizers reporting strong positive responses in both locations.  

The event at Laurentian was sponsored by the Department of Native Studies, Native Human Services, the Departments of Sociology, Political Science, Geography and Women’s Studies, the Students General Association, the Laurentian University Faculty Association, and in the community by the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty.

The Sudbury Star reported:

Be very suspicious of anyone who uses the intellectual term “post-colonial” to describe the present state of Canadian society, a prominent North American indigenous scholar and activist told a packed lecture hall at Laurentian University on Monday. . . . read more

On November 15, Ward Churchill was the keynote speaker at an enormously successful commemoration for the late Vine Deloria, Jr., organized at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, by “indigenous and settler students across disciplines at UVIC in the spirit of academic activism and freedom.”  Despite the now-familiar attempts to subvert such gatherings, students, faculty and community activists in Victoria created a stirring tribute to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s legacy, building on Ward Churchill’s 2003 statement: “If we as a species are to have a future, much less achieve liberation from the condition imposed by the collectivity of our blinders, it is because Deloria has forced us to see things in new ways, equipping us with the minds to free ourselves from a fate that had come to seem preordained.” 

Crossing the continent to Atlanta, two weeks later Professor Churchill joined King Downing, the ACLU’s National Director of the Campaign Against Racial Profiling, in a discussion about New York City’s “hip hop police,” the surveillance of hip hop and rap artists, and current attempts to undermine a new generation of activists.   Sponsored by the Sankofa Society, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and KTM Asen, students and faculty enthusiastically embraced this exposure to aspects of their history which, for the most part, has been suppressed.

Contact wardspeaks@gmail.com if you’d like to schedule an event.