Limits of Academic Dissent: Ward Churchill, David Graeber and Norman Finkelstein

This was originally a reply to a post regarding tenure in another thread, but I thought it was important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American writer and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. His work primarily concerns the United States and its historical treatment of political dissenters and of American Indians. In these subject areas, he has made numerous controversial and provocative claims, often in a confrontational style.

In January 2005 Churchill was widely discussed in the mass media for a 2001 essay in which he claimed that people killed in the World Trade Center attacks were involved in provoking the attack. In March 2005 the university began to investigate allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so. The university fired Churchill on July 24, 2007.

Churchill has contested the finding of misconduct. Some observers infer that the investigation and these actions were in retaliation for Churchill's controversial statements about the World Trade Center attacks because it began in the midst of national media coverage of his statements, with one stating that Churchill's writing was "subjected to a line-by-line review for evidence of academic malfeasance solely as a punishment for his political statements." Eleven CU professors have signed a complaint against the investigation and its findings, claiming the Committee's research violates standard scholarly practices by using biased information and suppressing information favorable to Churchill's.<40> CU Professor Margaret LeCompte views the Churchill case as a "key precedent that could lead to curtailing academic freedoms."<41> In addition, scholars and organizations including the ACLU, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Drucilla Cornell, and Immanuel Wallerstein, have issued statements objecting to the circumstances of Churchill's firing.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2007liberals-churchill">The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill

The shameless trashing of Ward Churchill from the left side of our political setting was perhaps the most grotesque of all the attacks faced by the tenured University of Colorado professor after his essay "Some Push Back" began making headlines in early 2005. It was predictable that right-wingers like David Horowitz and pundit Sean Hannity would blather about Churchill being un-American, but the liberal loathing of the radical academic came with an extra unexpected fervor. Let's take Marc Cooper, contributing editor to The Nation magazine, whom, on his personal blog, responded to Churchill's 9/11 thesis:

"Move over, Mumia. The Left has a new cause celebre that's a guaranteed loser: Ward Churchill I saw the essay at the time and was nauseated by it. I have been tempted over the years to write something about it, but have always decided not to. Only because I consider Churchill to be an irrelevant and clearly deranged loner on the edge of the looniest left.

"Now I regret not having denounced him. Too bad others on the left also didn't quickly hurry to divorce themselves from this guy.

"Churchill, as you know, surfaced in the news last month when he was invited to speak at an upstate New York university and some conservatives raised a ruckus ­ as they damn well should. If this guy can hang on to his tenure at CU<,> fine. But damned if student funds from somewhere else should be used to host him as some sort of guest speaker."

It was the kind of cheap jab Cooper is famous for. He's spelled out all sorts of ad hominems over the years -- from the bashing of Mumia to the castration of Hugo Chavez -- Cooper claimed to have reread Churchill's essay, only to find "it more offensive than when I originally saw it right after 9/11." If one only read Cooper's grotesque distortions of Churchill's fiery analysis (thinking a liberal would at least give Ward a fair crack), they would most likely believe the professor deserves the filthy muck that has been shoveled all over his career.

Select quotes from Ward Churchill:

"When you knowingly accept the collateral effects of business practice as usual, projected by the United States into the rest of the planet, and even if you don't agree with it, contribute your expertise, your technical ability, your proficiency to furthering the process of extermination of masses of children, for your own personal gain and benefit, to fit into the structure, without challenging it, you are, in the Hannah Arendt metaphysical sense of Eichmann, Eichmann."

"Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly."

"If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

"White domination is so complete that even American Indian children want to be cowboys. It's as if Jewish children wanted to play Nazis."

- Ward Churchill

Related videos:

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=15.html">Ward Churchill: Perpetual War, State Terror, Limits on Academic Dissent

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=26.html">When They Came for Ward Churchill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

David Graeber is an anarchist and anthropologist. He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007. On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a senior lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He began teaching there in September 2007.<1> Graeber has a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the radical labor union Industrial Workers of the World.

In May 2005, the Yale anthropology department decided not to renew Graeber's contract. Pointing to Graeber's highly-regarded anthropological scholarship, his supporters (including fellow anthropologists, former students, and anarchists) have accused the dismissal decision of being politically motivated. Critics argued that Graeber's dismissal was in keeping with Yale's policy of granting tenure to few junior faculty and Yale has given no formal explanation for its actions. Graeber has suggested that his support of GESO, Yale's graduate student union, may have played a role in Yale's decision.

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=11.html">David Graeber on Charlie Rose

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist and author, specialising in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. A graduate of Binghamton University, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein

In a decision which aroused widespread controversy, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul in June 2007, and placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year, his single course having been cancelled.

Finkelstein made his reputation with his meticulous examination of Joan Peters's best-selling From Time Immemorial. A "history and defense" of Israel, Peters' book had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote that:

"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein in his doctoral thesis, by minutely examining all of the sources Peters harvested and the way she used her evidence, concluded that the book, elsewhere acclaimed as a breakthrough into a balanced perspective on Jewish-Palestinian demographics, was nothing more than a what he now calls a "monumental hoax".<11> However, according to Finkelstein, whereas Peters' book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

Of the 30-odd people Finkelstein sent a draft of his preliminary findings to in the U.S., only one, Noam Chomsky, responded, warning him of the probable consequences of his research:

"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

--snip---

Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". Asserting, during a joint interview by Amy Goodman, that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book, Finkelstein also speculated that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. In an interview with a Dutch newspaper Finkelstein said: "In September 2003 I had a TV-debate with him. The notes in his book showed that he had worked on the manuscript until June 2003. However in September he had no idea of what was in the book. He didn't know names of people he cites. ... But it is true that I couldn't prove my thesis, I withdrew it."

In June 2007, following a 4-3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), a decision affirmed by the University's President, the University denied Finkelstein tenure. The political science department of the university had praised Finkelstein and recommended tenure by a 9-3 vote (a recommendation endorsed by a 5-0 vote by the College Personnel Committee), but according to university president Dennis Holtschneider, Finkelstein's "unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration." The university denied that Alan Dershowitz, who had been criticized for actively campaigning against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. At the same time, the university denied tenure to international studies lecturer Mehrene Larudee, a strong supporter of Finkelstein, despite unanimous support from her department, the Personnel Committee and the Dean.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul’s faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/17/1327203&mode=thread&tid=25"> Democracy Now!: Noam Chomsky Accuses Alan Dershowitz of Launching a "Jihad" to Block Norman Finkelstein From Getting Tenure at Depaul University

-personman

Doesn't pull his punches, and has the intellectual chops to back it up. :)

Also, he seems to make all the right people's heads explode.

:)