Ward Churchill Gets a Warm Welcome in Speech at U. of Hawaii

[G_j]

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050224082621966

Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - February 24, 2005

Ward Churchill Gets a Warm Welcome in Speech at U. of Hawaii
By SCOTT SMALLWOOD

Honolulu

Standing in front of a crowded auditorium here on Tuesday night, Ward Churchill didn't look like a professor who had received 100 death threats just a few weeks ago. That's what happened the last time he was scheduled to speak on a college campus. But this time, the four leis draped around his neck made him look more like a visiting dignitary than a treasonous professor, as he has been labeled.

Who says people hate this man? Maybe back on the mainland they do. There, his calling victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns" led to a rough reception.

It was just four weeks ago that the three-year-old essay in which he made that remark sparked a national controversy, and prompted Hamilton College, in upstate New York, to cancel his planned speech. It led to thousands of negative e-mail messages, hundreds of newspaper articles, hours of talk-show ranting, and calls for his firing. More recently, Denver reporters have been investigating his Indian heritage, his scholarship, and how the professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder received tenure.

..more..

[Inland]

1. How many attendees were worthy of death, in Ward's view, as Eichmanns?

But don't worry, because when Ward denounces an investment banker and a commidities broker as deserving of death at the hands of Osama, it is because THEY are part of "a willfully ignorant, self-deceiving public that celebrates the obliteration and carnage of others because they devalue them to the point of being not human."

Poor Ward. Only a bad academic could see that a white collar worker deserves death in a destruction of a few city blocks, while denouncing our society as celebrating obliteration and canarge of others because of dehumanization.

Profoundly amoral.

[K-W]

2. That is a completely bogus reading of his work.

He never said he thought anyone deserved to die.

[Inland]

9. Here it is. Haven't I given you this essay before?

Not only was death an "penalty befitting their participation", but the WTC attack was the most fitting penalty he could think of.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0204-32.htm

"Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.......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. "

[G_j]

3. link?

do you have the quotations where the word "deserve" was used?
I noticed you used it twice.

[Inland]

7. Here they are. WTC death not only a deserved penalty,

but the best, most effective penalty he can imagine.

"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."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0204-32.htm

[bloom]

4. The people of Hawaii

are probably more tuned into his arguments than a lot of people.

It wasn't so long ago that the corporations came in and took over a lot of the land there.

Our government also did some dirty deals that many of them still aren't happy about.

I'm not surprised if Ward Churchill found an audience there.

[Inland]

8. Of course Ward found an audience. So does Bush, and Osama.

There's a huge market for inflammatory talk demonizing the other as participants in huge global forces.

That's what lead to the ability to commit horrendous crimes against civilians in WTC and in Iraq. First, you have to deny that there really is any such thing as a civilian, that everyone is either a participant, supports participants, or in its most virulent stage, has the bad luck of being close to a participant.

Ward is only different and famous in carving out a specialized niche among Americans who think their fellow Americans deserve to die for trading commodities futures. But it doesn't become less of an amoral position because Ward shares national identity with the people he would have punished. I know comedians say its all right to make jokes about your own kind, but it still isn't right to call for the deaths for the participants in your economy just because they are your own nation.

[scottty]

5. WTF. I read somewhere that Ward Churchil is not

even American Indian like he claims to be.

[newyawker99]

10. Hi scottty!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[paineinthearse]

6. John Stewart called him an

"academia nut"