Ward Churchill As Gollum

So far as I am aware, there is no truth to the rumor that Washington State University will inaugurate an “Albino-American” studies program in response to complaints by the country’s latest aggrieved minority. As it turns out, not everybody who is unhappy with this summer blockbuster movie, “The Da Vinci Code,” is troubled by its heretical religious themes. A small minority is disturbed that the movie’s psychopathic villain is a murderous albino. I never would have guessed this, but the Da Vinci code represents the 68th movie made since 1960 that features an albino villain, including, and I am not making this up, Mel Smith as the sadistic albino executioner in the Princess Bride.
Michael McGowan is an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation and he has been quoted lately complaining that Hollywood almost always portrays people of real pallor in a bad light. Although I don’t think that their image has suffered so much that Jesse Jackson fears hearing their footfalls on the street at night. But, if McGowan manages to make enough noise, who knows? There just might be an albino studies program someday.
If it happens, I’d like to submit my resumé. I have most of the qualifications. I don’t have a PhD. I have no academic record in albino studies. And, I’m not an albino, although I do sunburn easily. The only deficiency in my record is that I am not a foam-at-the-mouth, anti-American leftist.
Of course, that last qualification might be the most important.
You might remember Colorado University’s ethnic studies professor, Ward Churchill. He brought national attention to himself by saying, in essence, that the victims of September 11, 2001 who perished in the World Trade Center had it coming. Once the bright lights were turned upon him, the world learned that he achieved academic prominence without a PhD, little academic record, and that he wasn’t an Indian, although he claimed that he was to get his job. And we learned that he was hired, immediately given tenure, and was quickly promoted to department chair primarily because of his radical political views and falsified ancestry.
Recently, Ward Churchill has reaped a bit of the wind that that he sewed when an investigative committee appointed by Colorado University found that Churchill had committed plagiarism, had intentionally misrepresented the work of others, and had created imaginary researchers, whose work he cited to support his own conclusions. That’s a rather long record of dishonesty. Remarkably, only one of the committee members recommended that Churchill lose his job.
When one considers that the central function of a university is the discovery and dissemination of truth, the committee’s recommendation makes it clear that 4 or the committee’s 5 members have little respect for the sanctity of truth or the mission of higher education.
Of course, just about anywhere else in the world, Churchill would have been held to account for his deceits. But, moonbats prosper in higher education because there they are fertilized and nurtured with tenure. Tenure makes it nearly impossible to fire faculty regardless of how egregious their behavior or how poor the quality of their work.
Ironically, the original purpose of tenure was to protect the academic freedom of faculty by shielding them from capricious firings provoked by politic or philosophical disagreements. Now, professors are awarded tenure as a reward for holding the proper political views. Most faculty have to endure a 5-6 year probationary period to prove themselves worthy of tenure. Ward Churchill was hired with tenure on the basis of his politically correct, but factually flawed rhetoric.
If tenure is something that faculty and administrators cannot wield wisely and responsibly, then it should be taken away.
And so, I was quite happy to learn that Ward Churchill is not going to skulk quietly away in a dignified manner. He is threatening lawsuits, and I’m half tempted to contribute to his legal fund. I think that the longer he drags this out and the uglier he makes the fight, the more the taxpayers and the parents paying tuition will come to appreciate the extent to which the worms have corrupted the academy. The Ward Churchill affair promises to turn a lot of rocks over. Like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, Ward Churchill might yet have a positive role to play – just not the one he had in mind.