January 31, 2005Ward of the State U - VI was preparing for an exam when this happened, so I haven't gotten round to it until now. Ward Churchill has resigned as chairman of the Ethic Studies Department at CU. This is not, of course, an end, but a beginning. Almost any professor will confirm that being a department chairman is more of an administrative nightmare than an honor. It may sound impressive to civilians, but nobody inside the academy really covets the title. Therefore, the university faculty can't be allowed to pretend that this is actually a sacrifice of any sort. In the course of resigning, he released a statement that is as dishonest as his original essay was malicious. In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths. Don't buy the book, but go ahead and read the whole thing. On an empty stomach. Posted by joshuasharf at January 31, 2005 10:52 PM | TrackBack |
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