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February 5, 2005
Academic Freedom =/= Paid Speaking Engagements
I've read some suggestions that the University of Colorado may be preparing the ground for firing Ward Churchill. I'm opposed. Academic freedom means the freedom for the tenured to make fools of themselves.
I got into a rather -- umm -- warm discussion of the Churchill situation last night at a dinner party in Aurora, NY, home of Wells College. Thankfully the professor defending Churchill's opinion -- indeed, he agreed that those killed in the WTC were morally complicit in all of America's evils (his throwaway line - there was a CIA office in the building; of course, there was also a museum dedicated to the first African graveyard in New York, but I guess they were little Eichmans, too) -- is not a professor at these Colleges. I wouldn't have wanted to insult a tenured professor at my own institution by implying that his employment by an institution founded by one of the name partners in the Wells Fargo company might make him complicit in 19th century American genocide. I use the verb "imply" because I didn't use the G word but I did mention Wells Fargo.
However, back to the topic of this post, academic freedom is not a promise of paid speaking engagements. It is no abridgement of Churchill's freedom of speech OR academic freedom to cancel the show in Clinton (by the way, Hamilton is in Clinton and Colgate is in Hamilton. And William Smith is our women's college and Hobart is our men's college. Upstate New York is confusing.)
By the way, in much of the bloggage people seem not to mention that Churchill was not going to be talking about 9/11, but about prisons and Native American rights, something about which he might have something useful to say based on his academic specialty (unless, of course, you believe that his ethnic identification problems invalidates his work). The Kirkland Center failed to exercise care in finding out about their invited guest. They should've known and dealt with the issues on campus in advance.
Here's an example of care exercised with invited speakers -- we are hosting Prof. Wendy Doniger this spring. She comes with built-in hecklers. We know this. What's more, there will be a concerted effort to explain to Hindu students what the controversy is about and why they might be interested in hearing about Doniger's approach. That said, we still hope that no one runs protest busses.
There's lots of commentary at Cliopatria, mainly academic, and now featuring the word "McCarthyism."
There's lots of commentary at The Volokh Conspiracy, some of which is legal and much of which is academic.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at February 5, 2005 10:12 AM