[R-G] Churchill calls his dismissal nothing short of a free-speech witch hunt

[Anthony Fenton]

Firing Back
This week, the University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to oust  
controversial academic Ward Churchill, who famously called 9/11  
victims 'little Eichmanns.' His reaction—and his defense of those  
remarks.
Churchill calls his dismissal nothing short of a free-speech witch hunt.

Web exclusive
By Jim Moscou
Newsweek
Updated: 2:58 p.m. PT July 27, 2007

July 27, 2007 - He will go down in history as the guy who called the  
victims of September 11 “little Eichmanns”—a reference to the  
notorious Nazi bureaucrat who helped ship hundreds of thousands of  
Jews to concentration camps. Ward Churchill’s comment, included in a  
long-forgotten essay dug up by an enterprising journalism student,  
stirred a national debate about the power of unpopular words—and the  
proper consequences for those who use them.
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But the saga of the tenured University of Colorado ethnic studies  
professor grew more complicated in 2006, after allegations surfaced  
that Churchill had plagiarized, falsified or misrepresented some of  
his other scholarly work (Churchill denies any wrongdoing). An  
investigation was launched, and a panel of peers pored over his work.  
By May 2006, the panel had reached some damning conclusions, saying  
some of Churchill’s questionable writings fell into the category of  
academic misconduct. But the five-person panel was split on whether  
Churchill should be fired. That didn’t stop University of Colorado  
President Hank Brown from recommending to the school’s elected Board  
of Regents that Churchill, an extremely popular teacher on campus, be  
terminated. On Tuesday, the Board voted 8 to 1 to do just that.

Churchill calls his dismissal nothing short of a free-speech witch  
hunt. Brown calls Churchill’s criticism “a smoke screen.” The  
battle isn’t over. The morning after his firing, the professor filed  
a lawsuit in Denver district court, saying his dismissal was  
retaliatory—and a violation of his free speech. He spoke with  
NEWSWEEK’s Jim Moscou about what he calls the “conspiracy”  
against him—and explains why he still stands by the phrase that  
struck hard at the country’s soul.

NEWSWEEK: Any regrets over calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”?
Ward Churchill: No. I never have any particular regrets about calling  
things by their right name. And it’s about time we stop pretending  
that Americans are in a completely different analytical category from  
everyone else in the world, and are somehow exempt from the  
consequences of their actions.

Let’s be clear for a moment: how do you define a “little  
Eichmann”?
Exactly as Hannah Arendt did. [Arendt was a German-Jewish political  
theorist whose work included coverage of the 1961 Adolf Eichmann  
trial in Israel. She coined the phrase “banality of evil,”  
suggesting great evil emerges from ordinary people accepting and  
participating in misguided premises of the state, rather than driven  
by sociopaths and fanatics.]

And how do you think she defined it?
Well, that’s a scholar, a Jewish scholar … who very self- 
consciously (considered) the aftermath of what happened to the Jewish  
people in the hands of the Nazis. She attended the Eichmann trial.  
And she probably intimated as much that she intended in confronting a  
monster. And what she confronted was a little, nondescript mouse of  
man, a consummate bureaucrat, petty individual, who didn’t even  
necessarily agree with some of the policies he had been in a position  
to implement, but who took his identity, who took his sense of self- 
esteem, prestige, possibility of advancement—all which is fairly  
important to people—from discharging his organizational  
responsibilities in a superior manner.

(The public backlash) was just a visceral reaction. .…What Eichmann  
did was arrange train schedules, the logistic structure for the  
delivery of Jews and materials to the camps, and the transport from  
the camps, things like the gold fillings from teeth. We’re talking  
ugly business here. But he wasn’t handling the gold. He wasn’t  
killing the Jews. Not even the Israelis accused him of that. He was  
absolutely instrumental in a technocratic, bureaucratic, very sterile- 
organization sense for rendering the process efficient.

But how can you possibly compare the victims of 9/11 to that of a man  
shipping the gold fillings from murdered Jews?
Those (9/11 victims) who were engaged in the international-financial  
operations, which were the motive cause for U.S. policy … in full  
knowledge of what effects were on juvenile populations, sweatshops,  
and so forth—that’s the anchor there. Implement policy for profit,  
to maximize profit, to increase dividends, blah, blah, blah. Which  
also, by the way, increases their commission, establishes their  
stature, leads to their promotion trajectory, leads to their quality  
of life, and in full knowledge—they may suppress it—of the carnage  
that is induced in this profit-maximization profile. …Basically, I  
said you are accountable for what you do in the world. And … if you  
are profiting from carnage … you are the moral and philosophical  
equivalent of Adolf Eichmann. You don’t like that, change the  
behavior. That’s not who you want to be, stop acting like that.

So the behavior of every 9/11 victim is a moral equivalency to  
Eichmann’s support of the Holocaust?
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask what the moral equivalency would  
be of the half-million Iraqi children that died in Iraq from U.S.  
sanctions? Those children were reduced to less than no value. Now if  
you were the parent of one of those children … how are you going to  
ultimately respond? You want security from that kind of retaliation,  
stop killing their kids. Stop acting like your kids are important and  
theirs are utterly irrelevant.  Stop acting, as [former secretary of  
State Madeleine] Albright put it, that we have decided that it’s  
worth the cost of their pre-12-year-old children to convey what  
George Bush the first said, “What we say, goes.”

The University of Colorado Regents voted 8 to 1 to fire you. Your  
reaction?
Perfectly predictable.

You saw it coming?
Oh, since about February 2005. I was teaching when [the little  
Eichmann essay revelation] occurred, in the spring of 2005—the  
spring I was voted the best undergraduate teacher on campus by all  
the students. …(By spring 2006), I was placed on administrative leave.

What have you been doing since then?
I’ve been doing research and work. That’s my life, man.

Were you surprised to see a lone vote against your dismal?
Somewhat. I actually figured there may be as many as two votes of  
purported liberals who, in full knowledge of how it was going to turn  
out, could then posture. ... I’m not saying that’s totally cynical  
on Cindy Carlisle’s part [the C.U. regent who cast the sole vote not  
to dismiss Churchill]. I think she actually believed what it was she  
believed; that the penalty was too severe. … Being a regent  
doesn’t qualify you for any scholarly authority and frankly being a  
former Republican senator and professional administrator—just like  
[being C.U. president and former Colorado senator] Hank Brown  
doesn’t qualify you for having a particular competency either.

But it was essentially a 2006 review of your work by faculty—a  
committee of your peers—that the regents based their decision on.
Let’s cut to the heart of this. They spent over two years building  
up this illusion that there is a competent, scholarly authority,  
which was the basis of this set of investigative findings; that I  
engaged in falsifying, misrepresentation, blah blah blah. ... Well,  
it seems that there is a whole litany of research-misconduct  
complaints that have begun to emerge about the nature of the report  
itself, which begins with the fact they have not made any of the  
primary evidence available so it can be compared to their  
interpretation of it.

The committee’s review of your work was unflinching. They said they  
found deliberate examples of plagiarism and fabrications that were  
“not a matter of occasional careless error.”
They can say whatever they want. …They will not let it be subjected  
to scholarly scrutiny, which means it’s vacuous assertions.

Setting aside your issue with the committee, as an academic, don’t  
you believe the committee’s conclusions amount to a dismissible  
offense?
No, no, no, no, no. We’re not going to play that game. These are not  
my issues. … (What) they are saying … will be held to the same  
scholarly standard and scholarly integrity that they say they are  
enforcing, or it is an absolute sham. That’s not “my issue.”

So you question the scholarly integrity of the committee review?
What I’m saying is you can say whatever you want. Anybody can.  
Including people with PhDs. It either passes scholarly muster or not.  
It’s either true or its not. … If that’s true, it should be  
subject to the same scrutiny as any other scholarship. If not, then  
it’s not scholarly and it’s a sham, because they have presented it  
as scholarship.

Are you saying there is fraud?
I’m saying it’s fraudulent. I’ve been saying it since day one.  
… It’s about time someone mentions the fact they will not allow  
scholarly scrutiny of the supposedly ironclad positions that they  
have advanced as facts to the public.

Do you believe was there a conspiracy to fire you?
I believe there was literally a conspiracy within the administration,  
a strategy that was hatched by virtue of devising a plan to create  
certain appearances. … I’m not simply tossing out rhetoric when I  
say “sham” and “fraud.”

How could the administration control the findings of your peers?
This was as much of a jury of my peers as the (1950s) all-white  
juries in the southeastern states in regard to black defendants. … 
These were not my peers and they were handpicked. You’ve got the  
chair of the committee who was writing to people—and I’ve got the  
e-mails—referring to me as a most unpleasant individual, although we  
have never met; comparing me, and this is a quote, to celebrity-male  
wrong doers, are your ready for this, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson  
and horror-of-horrors, Bill Clinton. …These were not peers. I’m  
saying the committee was handpicked.

On Tuesday’s high-profile hearing you wore an American Indian  
Movement T shirt. Why are you connecting your firing on misconduct  
charges with the Native American struggle?
Do you know anything about my work?

I do.
I don’t understand your question then. Virtually everything I write  
about, the whole focus of the scholarship, has to do with American  
Indians. I’m an American Indians professor.

Are you saying that they fired you because of your Native American  
work and positions?
Because I reflect a native understanding of the nature of the  
interactions that have occurred since a lost Italian seamen washed up  
on a beach in the Caribbean half a world away from where he thought  
he was, and was called a great navigator. We don’t say that was  
necessarily a great navigational accomplishment. We’ve got a  
different understanding in our histories, in our societies, in our  
communities. Those are reflected in my writings. That’s my job.

Does that also reflect in what happened to you?
Sure.

How?
They are looking to repeal the whole interpretive line that I’ve  
advanced! … I’m considered—rightly, wrongly or indifferent—at  
the forefront of this particular line of historical interpretations  
of indigenous understanding. That is to be completely discredited.

Will you stay in teaching?
I’ve been teaching all my life. And I guess you can say in a way  
that I’m engaged in teaching right now.

Do you think you did anything wrong at all, or are you just a victim?
I’m not a victim. Never, ever call me a victim. OK? Don’t call me  
embattled either. I’m beginning to think that’s my first name  
(from its use in press reports). It’s ridiculous. I’m a target,  
not a victim. And you may notice, I don’t tend to roll over and get  
stepped on.
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