Friday, February 11, 2005
Ward
Churchill Interview: The Man in the Maelstrom
Interview by Pamela White (Boulder Weekly,
10 Feb 2005)
Excerpts from the interview...
Ward
Churchill: I was on the word processor working on an extended
essay on American Indians in films, which I had been working on
for some time... The phone rang. It was Kathleen Cleaver. She said,
"Is your TV on?" I said, "No." She said, "Well,
turn it on, because a plane just hit the
I suppose like everybody else, I was stunned... I knew it was real, but still there was this disbelief thing. And to be fair about it, that was probably affecting everyone, including the people who had set up the cameras and were filming the thing as it occurred—probably more so for them because they were watching it for real.
But
it struck me even before the first building came down that this
was already being framed. It was proclaimed to be "senseless"
before the first building came down, and senseless means "without
purpose," and that seemed absolutely
absurd to me on its face. How could they possibly know? There are
planes being hijacked all over the country. Two of them have hit
the
And then there's the outrage: How can this happen? Well, there's various ways you could take it, like, "How did they penetrate the air defense?" But I don't think that's the nature of the question. That was not my sense. It was more like, "What could possibly provoke somebody to do this?" OK, that question and, "Why do they hate us?"
All of that [struck me]—both the framing of it as being senseless and the amazingly stupid questions as to what would provoke somebody to do this.
BW: My first thought when I saw what had happened was, "Somebody is going to get their ass kicked."
WC:
Well, it occurred to me at the time that somebody was finally
kicking
Well, it was about that time—it was the early afternoon—I got a call from the woman who was the editor of Dark Night Field Notes... She said, "We need a from-the-gut response on this, and we need it in time to post it tomorrow."
BW: So the essay started as a "from-the-gut" response. What were your thoughts going into it?
WC: This was absurd what was being said. No one's calling [the reporters] on it for describing it as senseless. You've got a little contradiction in packaging here going on between the official news sources who are proclaiming it senseless and then the more official officials—the official officials—who are proclaiming it things like, "They did it because they hate our freedom," and other really profound and insightful things of that sort. It can't both be senseless and for a reason at the same time.
I don't think I was the only one with a different response from the mainstream. It just happens to be the way I framed it. Where that begins is borrowing from Malcolm X's thing about the chickens coming home to roost.
[...]
Churchill then discussed the concept of collective responsibility and the notion that some of those who worked in the World Trade Center were not only aware of, but participants in actions that caused harm and suffering abroad. Such events could not occur without broad support from the American public, he said.
WC: I don't say they had detailed information. They were not concerned enough to gather it. They simply embraced it. They applauded it. They voted for it. But they're not innocent of it at the same time.
How do you end up participating in this process and being proud and triumphalist about this process and making your vocation the participation in and proper functioning of that system and be innocent at the same time? And that takes me to the Eichmann comment.
BW: Your Eichmann comparison seems to be the thing that has upset people the most.
WC: Oh, yes... I said specifically the comparison to Eichmann devolved upon the technicians of empire. Is there some definition you can give me where a food-service worker or a child or a janitor pushing a broom is a technician of empire? I wasn't talking about that, clearly. That's the only point that's been raised. "How can you say that an 18-month-old baby girl on a plane was comparable to Eichmann?"
Well,
the fact of the matter is, I never said that. To use Pentagon-speak,
that would be the collateral damage... I don't know that they had
any specific intent to kill everyone that was there. In order to
get at the target, the dead bystanders were "worth the price,"
to quote directly from Madeline Albright. [The terrorists] used
the exact same logic used by Pentagon planners and
[...]
BW: So you're not saying the people who died on 9/11 deserved to die?
WC: I'm not a judge. I want the whole goddamned process to stop, you know? That extends to these collateral damages... I certainly don't embrace that. I didn't judge Eichmann. I didn't impose the death penalty. You can adduce that if Eichmann is worthy of death, because of what he had done in arranging train schedules and such, then these other Eichmanns are worthy of death. But I didn't pronounce the sentence. I merely made the comparison.
[...]
And the American public has long since convinced itself that it can act however it wants in the world for personal benefit, for profit, for whatever, or have it done in their name, and claim innocence and impunity from any consequences at the same time. Excuse me. I challenge that. You're not innocent if you're a participant, if you support it, if you embrace it, if you vote for it, if you revel in it, if you celebrate it. You're complicit, just like the Germans.
[...]
BW: Does this raise concerns that we might be looking at open season on dissident academics?
WC: That's exactly what it is. It's been as much as stated by Newt Gingrinch and David Horowitz and others, that this is the "kick-off." I'm the kick-off. I didn't select this position. I got selected for whatever set of reasons they had. If you want to know why they selected me as opposed to 30 other targets they might have selected, you'd have to ask them. I think they thought I'd be a vulnerable target. Sorry, guys. Miscalculation there. It's the opening round of a general purge of the academy of people who say things they find to be politically unacceptable.
[...]
BW: You've gotten a fair amount of support from CU students and faculty.
WC: I've gotten support from the AAUP, which has entered an unequivocal and elegant statement of support. That does not mean they agree with my position. That's not the issue here. Not everyone who supports me agrees with me... The society of American law teachers, all 900 law professors have signed on to it. The ACLU here [supports me], the ACLU in the New York Times today and so on. So, no, I'm not without support on that issue. And I'm actually not without support in terms of the analysis [in the essays].
BW: Isn't the real story in all of this the response to your essays?
WC: The larger framing was articulated by one of the regents, Tom Lucero, at the regents meeting the other night: I want a justification for the existence of whole departments. I want to review the tenure system altogether. I want every course justified to my satisfaction.
BW: That's not academic freedom. That's a dictatorial response—
WC: —from someone who could not possibly have the competence to assess the validity of these things. How could Tom Lucero possibly have assimilated the knowledge to pass scholarly judgment on the individual courses and their content and the scholarship that attends them in all these different areas?
This is transparently clear: Anything that he doesn't like, whether he knows anything about it or not, is to be gone. He has announced—telegraphed—the fact that he doesn't like anything having to do with cultural studies, ethnic studies, dissident political studies, gay rights. None of that has anything to do with proper scholarship in his mind, not that he knows a goddamned thing about any of it. And it's not that he's a particularly malevolent individual. He's representative of the whole. That's the mentality that goes into this. This is a book-burning exercise. It's a stifling of political discourse.
Links:
- Governor Bill Owens' letter on Ward Churchill (1 Feb 2005) - PDF
- Political Intrusions into the Academy (American Association of University Professors, Feb 2005)