[R-G] Bill Ayers on CU's firing of Ward Churchill: 'It was a political witch hunt'

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2009/feb/24/bill-ayers-ward-churchill-weatherman-boulder-cu/

Bill Ayers on CU's firing of Ward Churchill: 'It was a political witch  
hunt'
Ex-Weatherman to appear on campus on behalf of fired prof

By Lance Vaillancourt

Originally published 11:12 p.m., February 24, 2009
Updated 09:35 a.m., February 25, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — When it comes to being an academic under fire, ex- 
Weatherman Bill Ayers can empathize with fired University of Colorado  
professor Ward Churchill.

Currently a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, Ayers’  
22 years of teaching did little to prepare him for the media firestorm  
that enveloped him during last year’s presidential election.

Conservatives — and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in  
particular — made much of then-candidate Barack Obama’s links to  
Ayers, who co-founded the violent leftist group Weather Underground in  
the 1960s.

Ayers, who’s coming to CU next week to appear with Churchill at an  
academic-freedom rally, still finds himself explaining his radical  
past — although he stops short of apologizing for his actions.

“I did break the law,” Ayers said in an interview with the Colorado  
Daily on Tuesday. “I did take account for breaking the law. I was  
punished in the ways that the law found appropriate.

“And there it is — it’s done.”

Yet for some vocal critics, it’s far from over.

Many continue to label Ayers an “unrepentant terrorist” because of the  
Weather Underground’s bombing campaigns in the '60s and '70s —  
accusations the onetime fugitive dismissed, saying they merely reveal  
his critics’ own political agendas.

“It wasn’t that I was ‘under scrutiny,’” Ayers said of the campaign  
attacks. “It’s that there was a profoundly dishonest narrative being  
created and then being repeated constantly. The dishonest narrative  
was manufactured for a political reason ... to bring down Barack Obama  
by saying he hung out with shady characters.

“That wasn’t an honest portrait of either me or our relationship, and  
yet it was serving a very small and very disgusting political purpose.”

Perhaps that experience is what promoted Ayers to accept an invitation  
from three CU student groups to appear alongside Churchill on March 5  
at an event dubbed “Forbidden Education and the Rise of Neo- 
McCarthyism,” to be held in University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller  
Ballroom.

Churchill, an ethnic studies professor, gained national attention in  
2005 when news surfaced of an essay he’d written three years earlier  
about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In it, he referred to  
World Trade Center workers as “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Nazi  
Adolf Eichmann, the so-called “architect of the Holocaust.”

Following the outcry over Churchill’s remarks, CU began probing his  
work. He was fired in 2007 for academic misconduct after officials  
concluded he plagiarized and lied about historical facts in his  
writings.

Churchill sued the university to get his job back; that case goes to  
trial in Denver on March 9.

Last week, after news of Ayers upcoming visit emerged, CU spokesman  
Bronson Hilliard reiterated the university's stance: “Academic freedom  
does not protect academic misconduct. (Churchill) was not dismissed  
for anything he ever said — either as a faculty member or as a citizen.”

Churchill has not responded to e-mailed interview requests.

“I don’t think anybody can raise a question that Ward Churchill was  
singled out and gone after because of his comments after 9/11 —  
because of his politics,” Ayers said. “It was a political witch hunt.  
That’s what happened to him.”

There are numerous cases of historians and scholars committing much  
greater academic errors in their scholarship than the Churchill  
investigation uncovered, Ayers said, and they were allowed to be  
corrected and move on with their careers.

The only difference in Churchill’s case, Ayers insisted, was the  
professor’s outspoken political leanings.

“The university is a particular space in a society like ours where we  
have to not only entertain, but expect the widest diversity of ideas  
that go way outside what’s conventional,” Ayers said. “Without  
teachers who are willing to raise alternative views, investigate other  
possibilities, think beyond the box of convention ... we’re doomed as  
a society and we’re going backwards rapidly without (them).”

Hilliard, the CU spokesman, again refuted the contention that  
Churchill was fired because of what he said about 9/11.

"The university ruled his free speech was protected, but accusations  
made by academics from Nova Scotia to New Mexico alleging academic  
misconduct are not charges the university can ignore simply because  
Churchill is a controversial, outspoken public intellectual." Hilliard  
wrote in an e-mail.

The pattern of repressing such free thought in the university creates  
a ripple effect throughout the rest of academia, Ayers said.

“If Ward Churchill can be brought down from his accomplishments and  
successes, what chance do I have if I’m a teacher in Denver?” Ayers  
said.

In the end, Ayers defends not just Churchill’s writings and ideas, but  
the very notion of dissent.

“I’ve lived a kind of life of dissent my whole adult life,” Ayers  
said. “I think dissent is essential to democracy and I think that in  
order to be an active citizen, you have to move beyond the stance of,  
‘Whatever my country does is fine,’ and you have to move into a  
direction of saying, ‘I want my country to live up to the best ideals  
of its history and its values.’

“And that requires us to dissent again and again and again.”
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