Professor Calls 9/11 Victims Nazis
According to the Denver Post, University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill has resigned as Chairman of the Department of Ethnic Studies, but he will remain on the university's payroll as a professor in the department at $94,242 per annum. His sin is having written an essay after 9/11 comparing the victims to Nazis. Although the essay was written some time ago, apparently the controversy over his being invited to speak at Hamilton College in New York generated enough heat to result in his resigning the department chairmanship. The Denver Post:
In the essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Churchill said the Pentagon was a military target, "pure and simple."
"As to those in the World Trade Center ... 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."
The New York Times quoted more from Professor Churchill's essay:
They were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants.
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.
The Denver Post quotes him further, explaining what he really meant:
I have never characterized all the Sept. 11 victims as Nazis. What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food-service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.
I'd never heard of this guy before. Perhaps it's because I don't pay as much attention as I should to his area of academic specialization, which the NYT characterized as "social activism on American Indian rights." Or perhaps it's because in that large universe of dangleberries ensconced in American universities, his star just doesn't twinkle that brightly.
I wish I could say it's amazing that the University of Colorado would continue to employ him and that Hamilton College would want him to speak to its students. But it isn't.
In the essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Churchill said the Pentagon was a military target, "pure and simple."
"As to those in the World Trade Center ... 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."
The New York Times quoted more from Professor Churchill's essay:
They were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants.
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.
The Denver Post quotes him further, explaining what he really meant:
I have never characterized all the Sept. 11 victims as Nazis. What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food-service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.
I'd never heard of this guy before. Perhaps it's because I don't pay as much attention as I should to his area of academic specialization, which the NYT characterized as "social activism on American Indian rights." Or perhaps it's because in that large universe of dangleberries ensconced in American universities, his star just doesn't twinkle that brightly.
I wish I could say it's amazing that the University of Colorado would continue to employ him and that Hamilton College would want him to speak to its students. But it isn't.
6 Comments:
This guy talks about the fat cats in the building while he's pulling down almost 6 figures per year!!! I bet he's a little man (in mind as well as body)who's mad at the world. He and Hitler would have gotten along very well. I say put all the relatives of the people who died on 9/11 in a football statium with him and lock the doors for 24 hours.
AOL, thanks for the contact information. I'll be sure to drop him a line, and I hope a lot of other people do, too.
This guy is the flip side of the coin to the Reverend Fred Phelps...who rejoices in the deaths on 9/11 in part due to the fact that some of those who died in the WTC were gay.
These people are on the fringe of society. However I think it's important that they're spotlighted. It's better to have light shone on people like this than to allow them to go underground and fester.
Carla, the thing is the Phelps, Falwells, and Robertsons can be dismissed as the ignoramuses they are. But I still cling to a need to respect professors as an intellectual elite, and I suffer much more psychic pain when I see them spouting this kind of offensive drivel. It's also depressing to think that this whackadoo is the one making impressions on the tabula rasa of the young minds in his classes.
Tom, I linked to your post, but you don't seem to have trackback.
Thanks! Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't support trackback.
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