Tuesday, February 08, 2005
The Cost of Free Speech
The People of Colorado vs. Ward Churchill. Does a professor have the right to say whatever he wants?
As anyone who has been watching the news lately probably knows, we have a professor here in state, Ward Churchill, whose Chickens Come Home To Roost paper, written on 9/12/01 made the unfortunate reference to those who died in the 9-11 attacks as “little Eichman’s” (since a fair number were Jewish, one does get a bad feeling about the choice of phrase).
The question now before us in the state of Colorado is whether or not academic freedom means that he should be allowed to keep his job as professor of Ethnic Studies at CU (my alma mater). No one, I hope, doubts his right to say such things. That is what is great about America – people can say the stupidest things and not worry about living the rest of their years in a gulag. The question is whether Mr. Churchill deserves to keep his job.
First off, lets be clear that these statements were made three years ago, with pen put to paper in the first moments after the attacks. While many were heartbroken by the attacks, others, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, were already wondering if the attacks were not in some way the “reaping” of the seeds of cultural rot. While Mr. Churchill probably hates being lumped in with the bogeymen of the religious right, he was making the same argument that they made (though the cultural rot is clearly different on the two sides). Robertson, Fallwell and Churchill are probably all correct that America created the spark that gave rise to the attacks (I know this isn’t popular, but we know the world hates us not because we have democracy, but because of what America symbolizes to so many). To anthropology other wise would be like the Simpsons episode where the telemarkers are shocked that people hang up on them when all they are trying to do is sell them cheaper long-distance service.
Whether the world hates us because of the freedom our women enjoy, the mass media we send around the globe, our propping up of dictators, or any number of other reasons, we know (when we are honest with ourselves) that we were not innocent on 9-11. But knowing that we have created an environment as a nation that makes others, especially when their minds are poised by those who seek power by spreading hate, is not the same thing as saying “those people in the towers got what they deserve.” Just because the Jews were the most success people in German life during their great depression, just because Gypsies did have higher rates of socially unacceptable behavior, and just because the Tutsi were used by the Belgians to run Rwanda during colonial times does not mean they deserve death, imprisonment, or any other action that creates a cycle of growing hatred and violence. Churchill is dead wrong in his understanding of the world.
The bigger question is whether or not a professor at a state university has the right to say anything he wants. Beyond the fact that someone with such an overly simplistic understanding of the world is probably not qualified to teach at a university (its like an astronomy teacher teaching that the stars all hang in our sky), there is a question of whether he is an appropriate role-model of academic excellence, judicial temperament, and responsible character to be serving in the role of teaching students.
In the days since the issue erupted he has continued to defend his argument, to challenge the opposition to his comments in ways that do not show any temperance, and, it appears, to have made some false statements. Quite simply, he is not a very nice person.
But should being a “not nice person” who holds dangerous simplistic understandings of the world and who is willing to cast invectives at people who died just for going to work on that Tuesday cost him his job? Part of me says yes. He is a state employee and there are boundaries of what the state will allow (and yes, if someone was saying as a state university professor that gays should lose their citizenship I would say he should be fired).
And yet, I am troubled by my quick willingness to assent to his firing. Do I wish to silence him? (Though The Nation would probably give him a column as soon as he is fired). In a world where I grew up hearing, “Sticks and Stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me” do I need to see someone fired just for their opinion, no matter how gross? This is the challenge of living in a free and tolerant society. If this were inside the church, we would practice discipline, give him a chance to repent, and then if he chose to stand firm, ask him to leave and pray for his return to sanity. But this is a pluralistic nation where even the worst of us can prove our quality by speaking and writing.
Still, I think there is something to having boundaries. In the recent Christianity Today article, “Dorm Brothel” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/002/13.44.html) the author says, “The gentlemen of the University of Virginia lived by a double standard, but there were standards. There was little doubt about that.” Without having some standards of acceptable dialogue in society, can we ever know when things have become unacceptable. Does society not need to pick some place to take a stand and say, “you have a right to say that but you also must bear the consequences.” Knowing that such comments do not add to our cultural discussion but in fact impair them, we must say that, sorry Mr. Churchill, you comments do go too far.
But does not this lead us yet one day closer to the situation in Sweden where a Pentecostal pastor is facing jail for comments about gays that I find disturbing? Perhaps, but maybe even this points to the nature of the cost of free speech. I do not think the pastor should go to jail. But if the government was to say that tax benefits for his church would not be continued if he persists in such views, then I would say alright. If things are true, then we should be willing to pay the price for truth, as Christian martyrs have done throughout the ages. If one day my donations to the church I belong to are no long tax-deductible because of their opposition to homosexuality then so be it. We must be willing to take a stand for truth, even if it costs us. Is Mr. Churchill?
