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The Right Result for the Wrong Reason
Feb. 1st, 2005 04:22 pmI have mixed feelings about the news that Hamilton College has cancelled the panel discussion on 9/11 at which Ward Churchill was to speak.
Churchill, if you haven't been following this story, is a professor at the University of Colorado who compared the victims in the WTC towers to Adolf Eichmann, and said they "deserved to die." He also praised the "combat teams" who "struck America" that day, killing the "technocrats."
The families of victims of 9/11 -- some of whom attend Hamilton -- protested loudly against this invitation. As a consequence, several things happened: Churchill resigned his department chair, though not his job; at first, the school moved the panel to a larger auditorium (heard on newsradio, no link found); and, finally, after receiving multiple death threats aimed at Churchill and the college administration, have cancelled the panel.
It strikes me that while the professor is free to speak as he likes (however detestably he did so), this panel was in exceptionally poor taste (and questionable academic value). The 9/11 survivors' claim that spending their fees on this speaker was at best a slap at them is well grounded, and aside from the professor and the administration, there was universal lack of support for this speaker at this session.
Death threats, though, strike me as unnecessary. Sure, they accomplished the goal of getting the panel cancelled. But is this a precedent we want to see? Forget for the moment the slippery slope argument that suggests that death threats will become a common response to an unwelcome academic function. It's in poor taste -- it's criminal -- to exercise this sort of response to the panel.
Better would have been to stage a massive sit-in and boycott of the panel. To have made it impossible for people to go in, blocking the entrance peacefully with bodies 50 deep, all chanting derisive AND TRUE comments on the professor, would have been a significant media event, and would have shown that peaceful protests STILL WORK.
*sigh*
I am very glad that this worked out as a cancellation. But I am concerned about the method and its cost.
Churchill, if you haven't been following this story, is a professor at the University of Colorado who compared the victims in the WTC towers to Adolf Eichmann, and said they "deserved to die." He also praised the "combat teams" who "struck America" that day, killing the "technocrats."
The families of victims of 9/11 -- some of whom attend Hamilton -- protested loudly against this invitation. As a consequence, several things happened: Churchill resigned his department chair, though not his job; at first, the school moved the panel to a larger auditorium (heard on newsradio, no link found); and, finally, after receiving multiple death threats aimed at Churchill and the college administration, have cancelled the panel.
It strikes me that while the professor is free to speak as he likes (however detestably he did so), this panel was in exceptionally poor taste (and questionable academic value). The 9/11 survivors' claim that spending their fees on this speaker was at best a slap at them is well grounded, and aside from the professor and the administration, there was universal lack of support for this speaker at this session.
Death threats, though, strike me as unnecessary. Sure, they accomplished the goal of getting the panel cancelled. But is this a precedent we want to see? Forget for the moment the slippery slope argument that suggests that death threats will become a common response to an unwelcome academic function. It's in poor taste -- it's criminal -- to exercise this sort of response to the panel.
Better would have been to stage a massive sit-in and boycott of the panel. To have made it impossible for people to go in, blocking the entrance peacefully with bodies 50 deep, all chanting derisive AND TRUE comments on the professor, would have been a significant media event, and would have shown that peaceful protests STILL WORK.
*sigh*
I am very glad that this worked out as a cancellation. But I am concerned about the method and its cost.
