PBU44 - Happy Halloween
The witch-hunt spearheaded by the ultra-right, with the assistance of the media, against University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has dangerous implications for academic freedom and free speech in the US. It represents the latest manifestation of the new McCarthyism, the drive to suppress and silence critics of Bush administration policy and its "global war on terror" in particular.Churchill, a Native American activist, is professor of American Indian Studies and former Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder (he resigned from the latter post as a result of the current controversy). A member of the leadership council of the Colorado American Indian Movement and a past national spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Churchill is an outspoken opponent of American imperialism. He is also co-author of The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States and Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.
Churchill has been singled out for attack by Colorado Republicans and the right-wing governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, for an article he wrote following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington. The piece, " 'Some People Push Back' - On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," essentially argued that America got what it deserved in the attacks. Churchill wrote that the "most that can honestly be said about those [suicide bombers] involved in September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."
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ALSO READ EXCELLENT PIECE BY David Cole, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center
AND JUAN COLE'S ARTICLE
