Academic Left in a bind over Ward Churchill
Why is Ward Churchill defiant and why does the academic left defend him so vigorously?
Ward Churchill's employer, the University of Colorado, has dragged its feet for months on the question of his continued employment there. In the meantime, Churchill makes use of the time by hitting the lecture and tv talk show circuit.
One could be tempted to view his defiance as courageous, seeing it as evidence of the beleaguered man's self- righteousness in the face of adversity. But it is unlikely a display of courage. Churchill's defiance is more likely based on the fact that his fellow leftist academics lurk close by, now needing to defend him at all costs.
I say "needing" to defend him, because they don't have much choice in the matter. By choosing to display a high-profile defiance, Ward Churchill has put their collective backs to the wall effectively forcing them into defending him.
Churchill's academic fellow travelers now face a serious dilemma--they know that if Churchill loses his battle to remain at U. of C., their risk of standing next to him in the unemployment line increases. But the more they defend him, the worse they look as a whole and the more attention they call to the academic sinkholes that Humanities departments they control have become.
For the campus radical left, it is clearly a lose-lose situation--one that has been a long time coming.
3 Comments:
Just out of curiosity, didn't David Horowitz say that Churchill shouldn't be fired?
And how do you feel about academic freedom? Should Churchill's tenure be revoked?
In my opinion,no American teachers should be fired strictly on the basis of their political beliefs. But when a teacher pads his resume,plagiarizes, spends class time pushing a political agenda,is convicted of a felony,threatens a student because of the student's religious or political beliefs then firing that teacher should be an option.
Academic freedom, like the independence of the judiciary, has an original basis in a flesh and blood fair-and-square-ness, but is an institution distorted beyond recognition in the radical but ubiquitous left world-view.
Academia has failed to protect the freedom of too many folks to earn a break. Even if you were ultimately to say Churchill shouldn't be fired for his politics, that needn't stop you from piling on the discredit that the academics will earn by standing behind such a loathesome creature: the needed discrediting of academia.
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