The Ward Churchill Show
For the last few years Coloradoans have had a ringside seat for one of the most entertaining sitcoms around: “The Ward Churchill Show.”
The notorious University of Colorado at Boulder professor has been making a mockery of the educational system for years. Churchill who lacks the proper qualifications to hold his position at the university’s department of multicultural studies teaches classes on such weighty subjects as racism in old western movies. Although he’s over sixty Churchill still enjoys playing cowboys and Indians he dresses up as Tonto. He claims to be an Native American when he most certainly is not but has cashed in on that fake heritage by claiming to be a Native American artist.
To add insult to injury Churchill claims to be some sort of radical or revolutionary. That is he wrote a despicable little essay comparing the innocents killed on Sept. 11 to Nazis and praising the terrorists responsible. He has protested a Columbus Day parade held by elderly Italian Americans but no evidence that Churchill has ever engaged in any sort of meaningful political activity. Evidence that Churchill has committed plagiarism has also come to light.
Like any lousy sitcom character Churchill is a bad joke, a sort of Sgt. Bilko of the college set. Churchill claims to be a Native American, a Marxist, a scholar, an artist, an activist and a few other things, when in reality he is a second rate con man who has figured out how to work the academic system and little else. If he weren’t playing professor Churchill would probably be selling used cars somewhere.
So who or what is to blame for Ward Churchill and his antics? The truth is that our whole society is and we deserve Ward Churchill.
We Americans created Ward Churchill and his ilk sometime back in the 1950s when we decided that our universities should be daycare facilities for people in their late teens and early twenties rather than centers of higher education. When we decided that beer drinking, meaningless political protests and football games were more important than education and a college degree merely a badge of social rank we dispensed with the need for learning on college campuses. The way was cleared for classes with no academic merit and professors who teach nothing and do less.
The next step was clear college faculties particularly in the liberal arts that serve as adult daycare facilities for socially-dysfunctional middle aged intellectuals (Ward Churchill being a perfect example). Since the classes they teach are meaningless and the real work is done by teaching assistants there is no reason to hold the professors to any standard of academic truth or socially responsible behavior.
Indeed such buffoonery is now a selling point among such academics, middle class twits can now brag that they are socially and politically enlightened to their friends at the country club because they took some Marxist nerd’s class back in college. College presidents can claim they believe in academic freedom because they sit next to a guy who was blacklisted by David Horowitz at the football games.
Is there any relief in sight from The Ward Churchill Show? I’m afraid not, only when our country no longer has the money and resources to support the bloated luxury known as the university system will we plug on it. Until then we’ll have to put up with the sorry antics of Ward and his friends.
The notorious University of Colorado at Boulder professor has been making a mockery of the educational system for years. Churchill who lacks the proper qualifications to hold his position at the university’s department of multicultural studies teaches classes on such weighty subjects as racism in old western movies. Although he’s over sixty Churchill still enjoys playing cowboys and Indians he dresses up as Tonto. He claims to be an Native American when he most certainly is not but has cashed in on that fake heritage by claiming to be a Native American artist.
To add insult to injury Churchill claims to be some sort of radical or revolutionary. That is he wrote a despicable little essay comparing the innocents killed on Sept. 11 to Nazis and praising the terrorists responsible. He has protested a Columbus Day parade held by elderly Italian Americans but no evidence that Churchill has ever engaged in any sort of meaningful political activity. Evidence that Churchill has committed plagiarism has also come to light.
Like any lousy sitcom character Churchill is a bad joke, a sort of Sgt. Bilko of the college set. Churchill claims to be a Native American, a Marxist, a scholar, an artist, an activist and a few other things, when in reality he is a second rate con man who has figured out how to work the academic system and little else. If he weren’t playing professor Churchill would probably be selling used cars somewhere.
So who or what is to blame for Ward Churchill and his antics? The truth is that our whole society is and we deserve Ward Churchill.
We Americans created Ward Churchill and his ilk sometime back in the 1950s when we decided that our universities should be daycare facilities for people in their late teens and early twenties rather than centers of higher education. When we decided that beer drinking, meaningless political protests and football games were more important than education and a college degree merely a badge of social rank we dispensed with the need for learning on college campuses. The way was cleared for classes with no academic merit and professors who teach nothing and do less.
The next step was clear college faculties particularly in the liberal arts that serve as adult daycare facilities for socially-dysfunctional middle aged intellectuals (Ward Churchill being a perfect example). Since the classes they teach are meaningless and the real work is done by teaching assistants there is no reason to hold the professors to any standard of academic truth or socially responsible behavior.
Indeed such buffoonery is now a selling point among such academics, middle class twits can now brag that they are socially and politically enlightened to their friends at the country club because they took some Marxist nerd’s class back in college. College presidents can claim they believe in academic freedom because they sit next to a guy who was blacklisted by David Horowitz at the football games.
Is there any relief in sight from The Ward Churchill Show? I’m afraid not, only when our country no longer has the money and resources to support the bloated luxury known as the university system will we plug on it. Until then we’ll have to put up with the sorry antics of Ward and his friends.
posted by great one at 7:10 PM
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