Churchillpalooza!

Have a week and some brain cells to waste? (via Drunkablog):

Wednesday April 11, 12:00 p.m.

Join Students and Faculty for Academic Freedom at the UMC Fountain, University of Colorado at Boulder, to march on the regents, demanding the CU administration stop its political witchhunt.

Thursday April 12, 7:00 p.m.

Ward Churchill Must Not Be Silenced: Critique of CU’s “Investigative Report”

Featuring:

* Eric Cheyfitz, professor of American Indian Studies, Cornell Univ.
* Michael Yellow Bird (Hidatsa/Arikara), professor of Indigenous Nations Studies, Univ. of Kansas
* Emma Perez, professor of Ethnic Studies, Univ. of Colorado-Boulder

Saturday April 28, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
(lunch will be served)

National Emergency Forum to Protect Dissent and Critical Thinking: Why Ward Churchill Must Not Be Fired

Featuring:

* Derrick Bell, law professor, New York Univ.; prolific author and founder of critical race theory
* Jennifer Harbury (invited), attorney, author of Truth, Torture and the American Way
* Alan Jones, professor & associate dean, Pitzer College
* Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota), professor of Indigenous Studies, SW Minnesota State Univ.
* Dean Saitta, “dangerous” professor of Anthropology, Univ. of Denver

. . . and other scholars and activists . . .

More on Thursday's colloquium defending Churchill here.

Churchill devotees published the following "open letter" in the April 12 edition of The New York Review of Books:

The militarist reflex to rely on the war option for post-9/11 security is daily proving itself disastrously dysfunctional, and as its failures become more manifest, those American leaders responsible reaffirm their extremism, relying on a brew of fear, demonization, and global ambition to pacify a nervous, poorly informed, and confused citizenry at home. And where there are expressions of significant, principled opposition, the impulse of the rulers is often repressive. In such a setting it is hardly surprising that academic freedom is menaced, but not less troubling.

The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom. The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismissal of Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member. Faculty across the country are encouraged to circulate this letter among colleagues; send letters of protest and concern to the new Chancellor (Bud Peterson, Bud.Peterson@colorado.edu) and President (Hank Brown, Officeofthepresident@cu.edu), as well as to the Privilege & Tenure (P&T) Committee (Weldon Lodwick, Chair of the P&T Committee, Weldon.lodwick@cudenver.edu; and in general publicize and mobilize within and beyond the academy in opposition to the attempted dismissal of Churchill.

You can bore yourself to death enjoy the full text of the letter here.

The usual gang of leftist idiots and terrorist sympathizers signed the petition:

DERRICK BELL, Visiting Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
NOAM CHOMSKY, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JUAN COLE, University of Michigan
DRUCILLA CORNELL, Rutgers University
RICHARD DELGADO, University Distinguished Professor of Law, and Derrick Bell Fellow,University of Pittsburgh
RICHARD FALK, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University Visiting Distinguished Professor (since 2002), Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
IRENE GENDZIER, Boston University
RASHID KHALIDI, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies;
Director – Middle East Institute; Columbia University
MAHMOOD MAMDANI, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Anthropology, Columbia University
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, Senior Research Scholar, Department of Sociology,Yale University
HOWARD ZINN, professor emeritus, Boston University
(Affiliations for identification only)

With backing like that, how can Churchill be wrong?