March 01, 2005, 7:47 a.m.
“Teachable Moments”
But who will teach the teachers?

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the March 14, 2005, issue of National Review.

It recently came to light that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill had slandered some of the 9/11 victims as "Little Eichmanns," who may well have deserved punishment for their participation in what went on "in the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers."

That led to cursory public examination of earlier, similarly insane tirades, and prompted calls for Churchill's resignation. The usual fiery counter-support — protests and news conferences — ensued, to the effect that the professor's right of expression and academic freedom were being imperiled. But like so many academic scandals these days, the original "little Eichmanns" comment — that innocent victims murdered at work by fascistic killers were comparable to a Nazi mastermind of the Holocaust — was just the torn scab revealing a festering sore beneath.

Churchill, it turns out, has no Ph.D., although it is the terminal degree required under normal circumstances at all such major research universities. Few, other than poets, novelists, and artists, are ever hired for tenure-track positions without it. Churchill probably also lied in claiming American Indian ancestry, thereby gaining entrée to favorable hiring and tenure considerations.

The disturbing story went on for days, as accounts of former Weather Underground ties, a past trip to Libya to cultivate dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and several prior arrests surfaced about Churchill. The public further learned that the $114,032-a-year Churchill may have distorted his Vietnam-era military service, and routinely misrepresented scholarly texts to fit his own particular revisionism.

What he was, is, and writes are little more than ostentatious castles of sand. Indeed, to read Churchill's essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" (e.g., Mohamed Atta & Co. were not terrorists, but "combat teams" avenging America's killing of "500,000 kids") is to experience a colloquial, Chomsky-like rant — the fabricated statistics and inflammatory rhetoric made worse because his drivel is actually inside rather than outside his supposed field of ethnic-studies expertise...

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE DIGITAL VERSION OF NATIONAL REVIEW. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO NR DIGITAL OR NATIONAL REVIEW, YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR A SUBSCRIPTION TO NATIONAL REVIEW here OR NATIONAL REVIEW DIGITAL here (a subscription to NR includes Digital access).

*   *   *

YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital!