A different kind of Churchill

Autin Bay, the Belmont Club and others have picked up on the strange tale of Ward Churchill, an America-hating professor who also claims to be an American Indian, but may not.

The Posse has mentioned him before, but this tale keeps getting more interesting.

The question has been raised as to whether Churchill's views should disqualify him from holding his job at the University of Colorado.

Predictably, the hated Instapundit says "no."

He does add some caveats to this, and suggests Churchill should never have been hired in the first place, but to the Posse, that is a distinction without a difference.

If one regrets hiring an employee, firing is the obvious remedy.

What seems to be lost (or only lightly touched upon) is what Churchill's actual job is: to teach and instruct.

Academic freedom is not a blank check to hire articulate and well-regarded monsters.

There are certain standards that decent places of learning must respect.  Academic accomplishment is one, but another is whether the professor is willing to support (or at least merely refrain from urging violence upon) the body politic.

Just as universities rightly refrain from tenuring eugenicists or Klansmen, so too should hateful anti-Americans' views be given some scrunity.

Free speech is well and good, no one has a right to a fat faculty salary to exercise it.

If Churchill wishes to form his own college or radio network, more power to him.

Academic freedom requires, as its basis, that the utterings and teachings of those protected by it have some constructive purpose.  Blaming the United States for every evil is intellectually bankrupt and a scholarly dead-end.

Students that end up in his class are therefore recieving instruction that is worthless.

To put it another way, imagine a professor who, deciding that college is too difficult, lowered the standards of his class to that of an elementary school.

Instead of calculus, he taught only the simplest forms of arithmatic.

Would firing him violate free speech, or would it be demanding a more rigorous standard and level of instruction?

For too many faculty, politics trumps competance and ideology is a cover for intellectually demanding work.

Churchill should be fired precisely because his views are antithetical to academics.

Unless the University of Colorado has decided to grant degrees in fascism.

Comments

[upke]

Churchill's crime is more serious than what's being mentioned by the media.

Please read chapter 9 of "TERRORIST 101" on my blog (underneath image) for more relevant info.

Posse: I love your writings!!!

[upke]

Churchill's crime is more serious than what's being mentioned by the media.

Please read chapter 9 of "TERRORIST 101" on my blog (underneath image) for more relevant info.

Posse: I love your writings!!!