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Outragious
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Should this profesor be fired?
Yes
56%
 56%  [ 14 ]
No
28%
 28%  [ 7 ]
Can't make up mind
16%
 16%  [ 4 ]
Total Votes : 25

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ironbadger
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Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 45
Location: anaheim, CA

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What this guy is doing is hiding behind free speach to push a specific political agenda.

What a lot of folks don't seem to realise is that freedom of speach is NOT a license to incite riot and foment insurrection in the guise of "speaking your mind".

Any right can be abused, and continued abuse of this nature is actually harmful in that it erodes respect for the law and the right of free speach.

The attackers of 9/11 were pursuing an extremist religious cause- they'd have murdered this idiot as quickly as they did anyone else regardless of his political stance, and probably without even caring.


He is doing this not because he cares about his "cause"- but because it gives him a sense of power and an inflated personal ego over his own supposed importance.
He hides behind the imagery of tolerance and equal rights- while encouraging people to consider murder as a justifiable course of action to influence political change.

Thats the form of idealism that led very directly to the terror after the french revolution- where in pursuit of the "society of perfect virtue", it became acceptable to guillotine anyone for any reason at all if they were suspected of not supporting the idealist movement 100%.
While at the same time congradulating themselves on achieving perfect liberty and equality....

Think on that a while folks.
I'm a moderate in my own leanings with a very good sense of history and human nature- and I am frankly scared to death by what I see more and more of in the older, former political radical 60s type of people, and what they now publically say is acceptable in pursuit of politcal change....


-Badger-

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Henry_Hound
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Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 792
Location: Somewhereville, MO

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

True he has his right to freedom of speech but what he is doing isn't protected by the first amendment. He is only using it to hide behind. What he does in the classroom is where a lot of the problems come from. He's teaching his students to hate America. He's giving them only his, and anyone who agrees with him opinions. Not showing them the other side or what the truth of the matter is. The board of regents that hired him had no idea that he thought this way, and would go so far as to use his teaching status to support terrorism. He has been reported of encouraging his students to come up with better attacks on the US. If that is true, as I said before I'm not sure it is, but if it's true then that is supporting terrorism.

Quote:
Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.


He is saying that people critisizing his esay is an atempt at stifling freedom of speech. He seems to forget that if you make your opinions known to the public others have the right to disagree, voice there own, and critisize you for yours. And the only people he'll have a debate with are people that think like him. He has a big list of trying to clarify what he was saying in response to critisizers on the site. All that does is clarify that the people critisizing him are correct.

He points out the the Hitler war machine worked because all German citizens supported it. No they didn't. When he first came into power he got the support for some initial changes and further empowering himself by getting the country out of the depresion they were in. He used that to get more power. He then started inacting his "final aolution" as it's been called. By that time he had complete military control and there was nothing the citizens could really do about it. Did some citizens support him no matter what? Probably. But I'm going to guess that most did not. But they couldn't do anything about it. Churchill is saying that every German citizen, That would include jewish citizens, supported what Hitler did. But we know that is not true. I read a book called "The Trail of Stars" or "Follow the Stars" which centers on a nonjewish German family helping to get jewish people out of the country either before the war broke out or just after. This would show that Hitler did not have full support of the citizens.

As I stated earlier I had attempted to read the essay, but it made me sick. I saw nothing that would convince me that the critics have distorted anything. They don't have to. He said it himself.

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Joshua Fox
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Joined: 02 Apr 2001
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Location: The Canadian Rainforest

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sirya Black wrote:
It doesn't go both ways.... Either you have freedom of Speech or you don't.

Just because he disagrees with the 'powers that be" doesn't mean he should lose his job. It's an opinion and it is up to people to read it and agree or disagree or even choose to not read it at all. Thats what freedom of speech means. It's the Americain first amenment (sp?) and that means it is a right that is given to all and most likely will never be overthrown. In order to strike it down someone would have to breal the ammendment anyway.

Like it or not people would love to shutdown PF based on the same types of 'disagreement' with our lifestyle.

How would you like to have your job threatened for being a Furry? *been there and done that personally*


With all due respect, my love, I'm afraid I must clarify a few things.

Indeed the first amendment does guarantee one's right to speak one's mind freely, but other articles in later government documents have clearly stated that the amendment is not 1) Unconditional and 2) Universal.

The first amendment never has and, to the best of my predictions, never will cover sedition, slander or what has become known as 'irresponsible speech', which is usually defined as speech with the intention to do harm. There's no looney defense lawyer (left or right-wing respectively) who would claim that screaming 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater was one's constitutional right. And indeed nor should they, for no one could deny the irresponsibility of the act. Ward Churchill, I'm afraid, has a huge problem with responsibility.

Despite his claims, there is not a single Indian Nation that claims him or anyone in his lineage as a member of their tribe (The Cherokee nation, which he onced claimed to be a part of, has flatly denied they have anything to do with him). He's been asked numerous times for clarification, but refuses comment on the subject. Academically he's little better; in books he's written, Churchill made two glaringly erroneous claims.

The first and most famous at this point is that the Nazis had no official policy or program for conducting the holocaust and the extermination of European Jews (which he's regularly compared to the 'genocide' of the Israelis against the Palestinians). No credible History teacher - and let's face it, for all his pomp and premise, that's what he is - can argue this point, and it's hard to imagine anyone arguing it without wearing a hood or an armband, given the irrefutible evidence offered by those involved in the tradgedy, as well as documents from the desk of, ironically enough, Rudolph Eichmann.

The second claim that's has historians scratching their heads is that the U.S. Military deliberately caused an outbreak of smallpox among Indian tribes in the west during the late 1830s, leading to the death of most of those who caught it. The trouble with that claim is that, this leading up to the Civil War, the U.S. Military at the time did not have any kind of presence in the area in which the outbreak took place; that, combined with accounts from the afflicted indian tribes themselves have led to the accademically accepted conclusion that the disease was brought up the Mississippi river on a trading boat and spread through the local population.

These claims, which by the testimony of some of his former students he brought into the classroom, are uncorroborated, unsupported and thus entirely irresponsible. Thus this leads to the one ground that the University has to fire him, despite his tenure: Incompetency. The argument will be made that no History professor of reasonable competency would make these claims, and it is in that way that he will likely be fired... immediately after which the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) will file a lawsuit against the college on Churchill's behalf. He even said publically that: "They better not fire me... unless they want me running the place."

Most alarming to me is the fact that the FBI is currently investigating him on a charge that he trained members of the Weathermen terrorist group (this was back in the late 60s) to make bombs and use weapons. To the best of my knowledge the investigation is still in its opening stages and thus no damning evidence has yet been found, but Churchill has for many years been a cheerleader for terrorist groups such as them and if it is found that he did provide them with this kind of support, he may well be looking at the first charge of Treason the U.S. Government has made since the few years following World War II.

'Should' the man be fired? As an American citizen and a student, I stay back from that question. He does not answer to me, I don't know him and have no say in what will become of his academic career, so I'll leave that to the board of directors.

But as a lover of history and a constant stickler for historical fact and accuracy? I'd fire him in a second. The man should never have been hired in the first place with such repulsive innaccuracies filling his mind and, in turn, the minds of his all-too-impressionable students.

For those who worry that this man is being persecuted simply and only for his point of view, please remember this:

"Ignorance is NEVER accepted as a point of view."

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Concolor
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Joined: 19 Nov 2001
Posts: 832
Location: South Carolina

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well! Many excellent posts, and some really good background info. I didn't know that he was not actually a member of a tribe. All you hear on the mainstream media is that he is a Native American.

One small point to make, and then I'll go: Freedom of Speech, insofar as it applies to any viewpoint -- whether or not that viewpoint has any merit -- covers an awful lot of ground. For him to express such ideas, be they ever so repugnant and misinformed, is his Constitutional right. The courts have consistently upheld the point that Free Speech applies to everyone, hate groups and lunatics and anyone else with unpopular or patently insane ideas. No one has the legal standing to prevent him from saying what he said.

HOWEVER ...

ITEM 1 -- He has no right to expect anyone else to listen. In his capacity as a university lecturer, and given that he teaches some courses that no one else teaches, and therefore any student who wishes to pursue studies in that field MUST sit under him on occasion, he has what amounts to a captive audience. He is the practical equivalent of the spittle-flecked, Bible-thumping street preacher who gets on a bus and starts loudly proselytizing the passengers. They don't want to hear him, but they can't "turn him off". And that is one situation where Freedom of Speech is limited.

ITEM 2 -- He has no right to expect anyone else to pay for his idiocy. Just because he holds these views and wishes to express them does not mean that he can force the University to pay him while he passes them off as anything remotely akin to fact. It is a public school, and therefore uses public money (your tax dollars) to operate. Would you like to have someone ramming a weird cult religion down your impressionable child's throat in the guise of "Culture Studies"? No? Well, friends, it's the same thing. If we are going to have "separation of church and state" it should be applied evenly across the board. His rantings certainly amount to a religion in his own mind, that much is evident in his essays. I've met very few practioners of mainstream religions who had anything like that level of fervor.

So, yes, fire the jerk. Immediately.

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Thane
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Joined: 31 Mar 2004
Posts: 275

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re: Ward Churchill's "Tribal Affiliations."

http://anncoulter.com/

She's compiled a history of Churchill's "Indian" shenanigans.
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aryeon
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Joined: 11 Mar 2004
Posts: 478
Location: nederland

PostPosted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hum!? i dont no what to think of this man.
he is not speaking in true balck and whit terms. he sounds more like a bitter man who tryed to change the system whith in the rules, and got nothing
in return. and now he is kicking against the system , shacking the tree so to speeck.

must he be firerd ?..................
I still can not wrap my mind around it .... so i don`t no.

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Cateagle
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Joined: 20 Nov 2000
Posts: 1004
Location: Ft. Worth, TX

PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This has been discussed and disected quite thoroughly in the blogosphere and the general consensus is that Churchill is a liar and fraud with regard to any indian heritage and there's evidence, see here for a brief press summary or here for a history of his intellectual dishonesty, of other problems with him and his claims. This article by a University of Tennesse Law Professor does a good job of covering the whole situation. Ward Churchill appears about as honest as a Soviet Commisar; I have no sympathy for him.
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