Ward Churchill: Academic Freedom Denied | Black Agenda Report

Ward Churchill: Academic Freedom Denied

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

15 Jul 2009

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

An anti-imperialist ethics professor has no rights that his university is bound to respect. That's the lesson from a Denver District Court that refused to reinstate Ward Churchill, despite a jury's finding that he was fired from the University of Colorado because of his political statements. “There is no such thing as academic and political freedom if you can be fired for exercising it.”

Ward Churchill: Academic Freedom Denied

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“His real crime was in declaring that U.S. society, as well as the U.S. government, was no innocent victim.”

Academic freedom has long been more of a myth than a reality in the United States. Like so many “freedoms” Americans celebrate, it tends to fail the test when confronted with the larger public’s freedom to exact vengeance against those it hates, and the freedom of large institutions to exclude those who question the role of those institutions, from within.

The political activist and ethics professor Ward Churchill’s freedoms were negated earlier this year by a Denver District Court that ruled he was not entitled to get his job back at the University of Colorado, even though a jury had earlier decided Churchill had been fired for his political views. There is no such thing as academic and political freedom if you can be fired for exercising it.

Churchill’s crime was in writing an essay the day after September 11^th, that tried to put the attacks in the context of U.S. foreign policy’s effects on other peoples in the world. He used the term “little Eichmanns” to describe some of the people who died in the World Trade Center – not a very politic thing to do, but certainly not as harmful as what George Bush unleashed on the world in the aftermath, or the wave of racist, fascist-like assaults on anybody vaguely Middle Eastern-looking that continue to this day.

Ward Churchill was made to pay for his impolitic political statements, despite his disavowal of organized terror and his admission that families of 9/11 victims might have been hurt. His real crime was in declaring that U.S. society, as well as the U.S. government, was no innocent victim – that imperialism is a system based on crimes and terror and sometimes the superpower criminal gets terrorized back. In much, if not most, of the world such opinions are thought to be self-evident. In the United States, they are broadly considered a kind of treason, beyond the pale and beyond the protection of the Constitution.

“Ward Churchill was made to pay for his impolitic political statements.”

Certainly, the Denver District Court mangled the Constitution in finding that Churchill did not deserve reinstatement or compensation for his lost professorship. To justify their decision, the court ruled that the university’s board of regents had acted as judges in dismissing Churchill, and therefore, their decision was beyond challenge. If that were true, the regents constituted a very strange court, indeed, since they had collectively denounced Churchill before even formally examining his case.

The District Court also dismissed the fact that a real, legally constituted jury had agreed with Churchill, that he had been fired for political reasons. But, since the jurors only awarded him $1 in damages, the court believed it could get away with giving Churchill nothing.

The law can’t get any flimsier than that. Which shows that academic freedom isn’t just a fragile thing, in America – it’s broken.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Clau O'Brien Moscoso
One Year Anniversary of Coup Regime Marks International Day of Solidarity with the Peruvian People
06 Dec 2023
On the anniversary of the Monroe doctrine, the struggle against the repressive Boluarte coup in Peru regime enters its second year. National Strike, Day 364
Jon Jeter
Fifty-four Years Later, Fred Hampton’s Martyrdom Looms Large Over Palestinians’ Freedom Struggle
06 Dec 2023
The thread connecting the struggles of Black and Palestinian liberation makes itself known in the propagandistic attacks on the Palestinian resistance. The assassination of Fred Hampton helps…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Black People Won't Be Silenced About Israel
06 Dec 2023
As the US continues to conflate every criticism of Zionism with anti-semitism, the predicable happens once again. Black people are used as an avatar of anti-Jewish sentiment. This tactic will not…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
MESSAGE: The Palestine National Liberation Movement AL-FATEH to Africa
06 Dec 2023
Al-Fateh’s communique at the 1969 Festival of Pan-African Culture offered a brilliant analysis of the overlapping histories of European colonialism and white supremacy in Africa and Palestine.
Maurice Carney
D.R. Congo’s Challenges: Elections, Rwanda’s War of Aggression and Critical Minerals for Green Transition
06 Dec 2023
The ongoing crisis is a result of converging forces determined to pursue their own interests by controlling the affairs within the Congo and subjecting the masses to inhumane conditions.