4. februar 2005

Firing Churchill As most of you have probably read elsewhere, one Colorado professor named Ward Churchill has shamed his surname by making some utterly disgusting statements comparing the civilian victims on 9/11 to nazi genocide administrator Eichmann. The university administrators are now taking steps that may lead to his dismissal. I am glad to see that the more principled commentators on the right (though I would believe most on the left also see these comments as disgusting) are strongly opposed to firing Churchill over his inflamatory speech. Eugene Volokh puts it well: I think Justice Hugo Black was right to say that First Amendment rights "must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish"; and the same is true of academic freedom principles, flowing both from the First Amendment rights of public university employees and from their tenure contracts and professional norms. If the Ward Churchills of the world are fired for their speech, disgusting as it is, that would be a perfect precedent for left-wing faculties and administrations to fire right-wing professors for much less offensive statements. In addition to these more practical considerations: This is the kind of people who test whether we're really serious about protecting freedom of speech. That does not prevent, of course, others from exercising their right to let prof. Churchill know exactly what kind of sick, depraved person he is. Yet, I can't help thinking that when a professor is so ethically and logically absurd in his thinking, what else is he teaching students? 4:45:02 PM    comment []  trackback []

Rumsfeld offered to resign over Abu Ghraib Surprise announcement of the day: “I submitted my resignation to President Bush twice during that period and told him that ... I felt that he ought to make the decision as to whether or not I stayed on,” Rumsfeld told Larry King in an interview airing later Thursday on CNN. “And he made that decision and said he did want me to stay on.” Rumsfeld added, though, he had "no regrets" as there was nothing the Secretary of Defense could do to control the conduct "in the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib prison halfway across the world." 7:22:09 AM    comment []  trackback []

- Ban swastika, ban hammer and sickle Germany and France are among the EU countries banning swastikas and other nazi symbols. They want to extend the ban to the entire European Union. Now some EU lawmakers want to ban communist symbols, too. The group from Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic said the communist symbols should be included in any ban because of the suffering caused by Soviet-backed regimes in eastern Europe. "We would like to have an equal treatment of the other evil totalitarian regime of the communist system," said Jozsef Szajer, an Hungarian member of the European Parliament. EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has proposed a Europe-wide ban on display of the swastikas and other Nazi symbols as part of a campaign to combat anti-Semitism and intolerance. "If we decide to ban one, we should decide to ban all of them," said Jan Zahradil, a Czech member of the EU assembly. I can't argue with that logic, but what it really shows is that setting aside freedom of speech to ban symbols is a stupic course. It's not as if the countries with swastika bans have a better record in fighting racism than those who believe in freedom of speech. 2:46:03 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.03.2005; 01:29:44.