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Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American writer, activist, and academic. He is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and author of over twenty books and hundreds of essays. Churchill was widely discussed and criticized in the mass media during 2005, stimulated by publicity given to a 2001 essay in which Churchill questioned the innocence of many of the people killed in the World Trade Center attacks, labeling them as "technocrats" and "little Eichmanns."

Background

Early life and education

Churchill was born in Elmwood, Illinois and attended Elmwood High School. He was drafted by the U.S. Army and saw active service in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1968. Military records through the Freedom of Information Act show he was trained as a projectionist and light truck driver. Radio host Bob Newman published these military records to dispute alleged 1987 claims by Churchill that he had served as a paratrooper trained in reconnaissance. Churchill later received his B.A. and M.A. in Communication from Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield.

In 1990, he joined the University of Colorado at Boulder as an assistant professor and was granted tenure the following year .

Writing

As a scholar, Churchill has written on Native American history and culture, and is particularly outspoken about the genocide inflicted on the indigenous peoples of North America by European settlers and the repression of indigenous peoples that he claims continues to this day.

In Fantasies of the Master Race (1992), Churchill examines the portrayal of Native Americans and the use of Native American symbols in popular American culture. He focuses on such phenomena as Tony Hillerman's mystery novels, the film Dances with Wolves, and the New Age movement, finding examples of cultural imperialism and exploitation. Churchill calls author Carlos Castaneda, who claims to reveal the teachings of a Yaqui Indian shaman, the "greatest hoax since Piltdown Man."

Churchill's Indians 'R' Us (1993), a sequel to Fantasies of the Master Race, further explores Native American issues in popular culture and politics. He examines the movie Black Robe, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation killings, Leonard Peltier, sports mascots, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, and blood quantum laws, calling them tools of genocide. Churchill is particularly outspoken about New Age exploitations of shamanism and Native American sacred traditions, and the "do-it-yourself Indianism" of certain contemporary authors.

Struggle For The Land (reissued 2002) is a collection of essays in which Churchill chronicles the U.S. government's systematic exploitation of native land and the killing or displacement of the Native Americans who once inhabited it. He details Indian efforts in the 19th and 20th centuries to prevent defoliation and industrial practices such as surface mining.

Churchill's A Little Matter of Genocide (1998) is a survey of ethnic cleansing from 1492 to the present. He compares the treatment of North American Indians to a number of genocides in history, such as those in Cambodia and Armenia, and those of the Gypsies, Poles, and Jews by the Nazis.

In Perversions of Justice (2002), Churchill argues that the U.S. legal system was adapted to gain control over Native American people. Tracing the evolution of federal Indian law, Churchill argues that the principles set forth were not only applied to non-Indians in the U.S., but later adapted for application abroad. He concludes that this demonstrates the development of America's "imperial logic," which depends on a "corrupt form of legalism" to establish colonial control and empire.

In Agents of Repression (1988), co-authored by Jim Vander Wall, the authors describe "the secret war" against the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement carried out during the late 1960s and '70s by the FBI under the COINTELPRO program. The COINTELPRO Papers (reissued 2002), co-authored with Jim Vander Wall, examines a series of original FBI memos that detail the Bureau's activities against various leftist groups, from the U.S. Communist Party in the 1950s to activists concerned with Central American issues in the 1980s.

Activism

Churchill has been active since at least 1984 as the co-director of the Denver-based American Indian Movement of Colorado, an autonomous chapter of the American Indian Movement. In 1993, he and other local AIM leaders—including Russell Means, Glen Morris, Bob Robideau, and David Hill—broke with the national AIM leadership, including Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and Vernon Bellecourt, claiming that all AIM chapters are autonomous. The schism continues, with the AIM claiming that the local AIM leaders are tools of the government being used against Indians.

Churchill has been a leader of Colorado AIM's annual protests in Denver against the Columbus Day holiday and its associated parade. These protests have brought Colorado AIM's leadership into conflict with some leaders in the Denver Italian-American community, the main supporters of the parade. Churchill and others have been arrested while protesting for acts such as blocking the parade.

Initially, some local American Indian support and advocacy organizations in the Denver metro area believed that the activities of the Colorado AIM chapter damage the work of the Colorado Indian Commission and Denver Indian Center. This was back in the early 90's. Since then, thousands of local indians annually participate in the protest.

In April 1983, Churchill traveled to Tripoli and Benghazi as a representative of the AIM and the International Indian Treaty Council to meet Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya while a U.S. travel ban to that country was in place. The visit was intended to seek support from al-Qaddafi regarding the U.S. government's violation of Indian treaties.

Artwork

Apart from his academic position and writing, since the 1970s, Churchill has attained a certain notoriety as a visual artist. Works by Churchill, such as lithographs, woodcuts, and drawings are fairly widely exhibited in galleries of the American Southwest, and to some degree elsewhere. As with the work "Winter Attack", discussed below, Churchill frequently takes as subject matter of visual compositions historical photographs or other past works, particularly ones associated with Native American figures. Screen prints and other signed works by Churchill are often available on eBay. The online journal Artnet mentions Churchill's artwork.

9/11 essay controversy

The essay

Churchill wrote an essay in September 2001 entitled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" about the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which he argued that American foreign policies provoked the attacks, describing the "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns."

Churchill argued that the impact on the population of Iraq of decade-long economic sanctions, together with the Middle East policies of President Lyndon Johnson, and the history of Crusades against the Islamic world, had contributed to a climate in which 9/11 was what he called a "natural and inevitable response."

The "roosting chickens" phrase comes from Malcolm X's comment about the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy that Kennedy "never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon."

Churchill explained what he meant in a February 2005 interview with Democracy Now!:

If you want to avoid September 11s, if you want security in some actual form, then it's almost a biblical framing, you have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As long as you're doing what the U.S. is doing in the world, you can anticipate a natural and inevitable response of the sort that occurred on 9/11. If you don't get the message out of 9/11, you're going to have to change, first of all, your perception of the value of those others who are consigned to domains, semantic domains like collateral damage, then you've really got no complaint when the rules you've imposed come back on you.

In an allusion to Hannah Arendt's depiction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as an ordinary person promoting the activity of an evil system, Churchill referred to the "technocrats" working at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns." He wrote:

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire, the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved and they did so both willingly and knowingly.

He wrote that the victims were:

... too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

Churchill compared the American people to the "good Germans" of Nazi Germany, claiming that the vast majority of Americans had ignored the civilian suffering caused by the sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s, which he characterized as a policy of genocide.

The essay was later expanded into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which won Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award in 2004.

Imbroglio

National attention was drawn to the essay in January 2005, when Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College as a member of a panel during a debate entitled "Limits of Dissent".

The text of the essay was quoted on the January 28, 2005 edition of the Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor. An outraged Bill O'Reilly initiated a campaign against Churchill. The January 31st edition of The O'Reilly Factor featured Paul Campos, a University of Colorado professor appalled at Churchill's comments. At the end of the segment O'Reilly suggested that viewers wishing to voice their opinions could contact Hamilton College or Hamilton's president, Joan Stewart.; Hamilton College subsequently received 6,000 e-mails concerning Churchill. The lecture was changed to a larger venue, but was later cancelled by the college's president, Joan Stewart, following what she described as "credible threats of violence". Churchill has written that he received threats against his life as a consequence of the news coverage.

In response to what he called "grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks," Churchill clarified his views:

I am not a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."

He continued:

It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage". If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.

On January 31, 2005, Churchill resigned as chairman of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado, but remains a tenured professor .

Colorado Republican governor Bill Owens publicly called for Churchill's dismissal . The Colorado House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Churchill's statements .

The Board of Regents of the University of Colorado, meeting in executive session on February 3 2005, adopted a resolution apologizing to the American people for Churchill's statements, and ratifying interim chancellor Phil DiStefano's review of Churchill's actions. DiStefano was directed to investigate whether Churchill had overstepped his bounds as a faculty member and whether his actions were cause for dismissal. The university's Standing Committee on Research Misconduct agreed that his words were protected by the university's academic free speech code, but agreed to investigate subsequent charges made against Churchill of plagiarism, falsification, fabrication and ethnic fraud (see below).

Charges of a "new McCarthyism"

When Churchill's comparison of "technocrats" who died on 9/11 to a notorious Nazi was first widely publicized in early 2005, media commentators such as FOX News's Bill O'Reilly and The Nation's Marc Cooper denounced Churchill's essay. However, a number of academics and activists defended Churchill's essay, or argued that it was not grounds for firing him from his teaching job. One of Churchill's fellow professors in the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado, Emma Perez, alleged that the attacks on Churchill were an organized "test case" by neo-conservatives to stifle liberal criticism of the War on Terror, and to undermine the funding of ethnic studies departments nationwide. Betsy Hoffman, then the president of the University of Colorado, said of the attacks on Churchill, "We are in dangerous times. I'm very concerned. ... It's looking a lot like George Norlin being asked to fire all the Catholics and Jews or the McCarthy era."

A number of other political commentators have similarly analyzed the "Churchill Affair" in terms of a "witch hunt"; for example, Gilles d'Aymery, Fred Feldman, the Michigan Independent Media Center, Scott Richard Lyons (writing for Indian Country), and others.

According to over 600 academics signing an "An Open Letter from Concerned Academics":

To be clear: the issues here have nothing to do with the quality of Ward Churchill’s scholarship or his professional credentials. However one views his choice of words or specific arguments, he is being put in the dock solely for his radical critique of U.S. history and present-day policy in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Apparently, 9/11 is now the third rail of American intellectual life: to critically probe into its causes and to interrogate the international role of the United States is treated as heresy; those inquiring can be denied forums, careers, and even personal safety.

They continue:

The Churchill case is not an isolated incident but a concentrated example of a well-orchestrated campaign launched in the name of “academic freedom” and “balance” which in fact aims to purge the universities of more radical thinkers and oppositional thought generally, and to create a climate of intimidation.

The conservative Denver newspaper, Rocky Mountain News has run numerous and ongoing articles alleging misconduct. Supporters of Churchill's academic free speech take the frequency, content and tone of these articles as evidence of Churchill's having become a political bête noire among Colorado conservatives. (see below Rocky Mountain News links).

In the spring of 2005, Ward Churchill won a teaching award (in the 25-75 class size category), receiving 54 votes among the 2,085 students at the University of Colorado at Boulder who voted for its annual Teaching Recognition Award. The University of Colorado Alumni Association, which sponsors the award, announced that they would withhold the award from Churchill until the investigation on the charges that he committed research misconduct had been concluded. Given annually for 44 years, this is the first time the award was withheld from its winner.,

The University of Colorado has declined to pursue any actions against Churchill based on his controversial statements about the 9/11 victims.

Allegations against Churchill

As a result of the controversy over the essay, additional allegations became the subject of debate in the media and on Internet weblogs. These included disputes over his claim of partial Native American heritage, and allegations of academic fraud and plagiarism. University of Colorado administrators ordered an investigation, which is currently underway, into the allegations of research misconduct, which include plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. He has also been accused of intimidating his colleagues, and has made remarks allegedly advocating that soldiers kill their commanding officers.

Works

Books

• Marxism and Native Americans, edited by Churchill (South End Press, 1984, paperback: ISBN 089608177X, hardcover: ISBN 0896081788)
• Culture versus Economism: Essays on Marxism in the Multicultural Arena (Indigena Press, 1984)
• Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, co-authored with Jim Vander Wall (South End Press, 1988, paperback: ISBN 0896082938, hardcover: ISBN 0896082946)
• The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent, co-authored with Jim Vander Wall (South End Press, 1991, ISBN 0896083594)
• Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Common Courage Press, 1992, ISBN 1567510000, hardcover: 1993, ISBN 1567510019). Released in a revised and expanded edition as Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Colonization (City Lights Publishers, 2002, hardcover: ISBN 0872864154, paperback: ISBN 0872864146)
• Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema, and the Colonization of American Indians (Common Courage Press, 1992, ISBN 0872863484)
• Cages of Steel: The Politics of Imprisonment in America, co-edited by Jim Vander Wall (Activism, Politics, Culture, Theory, Vol. 4, Maisonneuve Press, 1992, ISBN 0944624170). Re-released as Cages of Steel: The Politics of Imprisonment in the United States (AK Press, 2004, ISBN 1904859127).
• Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Common Courage Press, 1993, paperback: ISBN 1567510205, hardcover: ISBN 1567510213)
• Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation (Aigis Press, 1995, ISBN 1883930030)
• From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism 1985-1995 (South End Press, 1996, ISBN 0896085538)
• Islands in Captivity: The International Tribunal on the Rights of Indigenous Hawaiians (South End Press, 1997, paperback: ISBN 0896085678, hardcover: ISBN 0896085686, out of print). Re-released, co-edited by Sharon Venne (South End Press, 2005, hardcover: ISBN 0896087387).
• Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America, with Mike Ryan, an introduction by Ed Mead (Arbeiter Ring, 1998, ISBN 1894037073)
• A Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust And Denial In The Americas 1492 To The Present (City Lights Books, 1998, hardcover: ISBN 0872863433, paperback: ISBN 0872863239).
• Draconian Measures: The History of FBI Political Repression (Common Courage Press, 2000, out of print, hardcover: ISBN 1567510590, paperback: ISBN 1567510582)
• Acts Of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader, (Routledge, 2002, paperback: ISBN 0415931568, library binding: ISBN 041593155X)
• Perversions of Justice: Indigenous Peoples and Angloamerican Law (City Lights Publishers, 2002, paperback: ISBN 0872864111, hardcover: ISBN 0872864162)
• On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality (AK Press, 2003, ISBN 1902593790)
• Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools (City Lights Publishers, 2004, ISBN 0872864340).
• Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power: Lectures on Globalization, Colonialism, and Native North America (AK Press, 2004, ISBN 1904859046)
• To Disrupt, Discredit And Destroy: The FBI's Secret War Against The Black Panther Party (Routledge, 2005, paperback: ISBN 041592958X, hardcover: ISBN 0415929571).
• Confronting The Crime Of Silence: Evidence Of U.S. War Crimes In Indochina, co-edited by Natsu Saito (forthcoming from AK Press, 2006, ISBN 1904859216)

Audio and video

• Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment, audio CD of a lecture, recorded at the Doing Time Conference at the University of Winnipeg, September 2000 (AK Press, 2002, ISBN 1902593472)
• Life In Occupied America (AK Press, 2003, ISBN 1902593723)
• In A Pig's Eye: Reflections on the Police State, Repression, and Native America (AK Press, 2002, ISBN 1902593502)
• US Off The Planet!: An Evening In Eugene With Ward Churchill And Chellis Glendinning, VHS video recorded July 17, 2001 (Cascadia Media Collective, 2002)
• Pacifism and Pathology in the American Left, 2003 audio CD recorded at a AK Press warehouse in Oakland (AK Press Audio)
• Z Mag Ward Churchill Audio
• Ward Churchill talking at the University of Colorado, 2/9/2005, search the C-Span website
• Churchill Speaks About Academic Freedom - Free Speech Radio News February 09, 2005
• Ward Churchill Under Fire - Free Speech Radio News, February 03, 2005
• The Justice of Roosting Chickens: Ward Churchill Speaks The Pacifica Network Show, Democracy Now! from February 18, 2005 features extended Audio/Video exclusive interview with Churchill

References

1. Cesarani, David. Adolf Eichmann: The Mind of a War Criminal, (BBC.co.uk, February 1 2002) Retrieved May 31 2005
2. Newman, Bob. 'Ward Churchill's Military Claims Proven False', Mens News Daily (Guerneville, CA: Java King, February 11 2005). Retrieved August 11 2005.

External links

General

• Ward Churchill's Faculty page at University of Colorado
• Ward Churchill ZNet Homepage
• The Seven Faces of Ward Churchill by Victor Davis Hanson writing for National Review.
• "The General Allotment Act "Eligibility" Hoax: Distortions of Law, Policy, and History in Derogation of Indian Tribes" (by John P. LaVelle) (PDF file)

Articles related to 9/11 essay

• "More Controversy Over Univ. of Colorado Professor Churchill" (Transcript of The O'Reilly Factor, January 31, 2005)
• Churchill's answer to criticism of his 9/11 remarks
• "CU prof's essay sparks dispute: Ward Churchill says 9/11 victims were not innocent people" (Rocky Mountain News)
• "Take a Good Look at Kirkland Project"
• "College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Disparaged 9/11 Attack Victims" (New York Times, February 2 2005)
• "Professor resigns chair after 9/11 essay prompts protests" (CNN, January 31, 2005)
• Ward Churchill Press Statement (Denver Post, February 01, 2005)
• ABC News/Associated Press Colo. Regents Weigh Prof's 9/11 Comments January 30, 2005
• Corrected remarks from University of Hawaii speech
• Hamilton College Statement
• "CU leader chills speech" (by Jon Caldara, OpEd, February 27, 2005
• "Professor Ward Churchill, The First Amendment and Free Speech on Campus" (Capitalism Magazine)
• Complete Text "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" plus other links
• Professor Stoolpigeon
• "No License to Lie" (a legal case for firing Churchill)
• Text of Colorado State House resolution Ward Churchill (Associated Press/Denver Post, February 02, 2005)
• "Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11" (a perspective by Prof. Robert Jensen)

• 1947 births
• Activists
• American political writers
• Marxists
• Native American activists
• American essayists
• Living people