James Panero of The New Criterion writes:
Churchill is an issue, Kirkland is an issue, but the real issue is the normativeness (can I use that word here?) of deadening rhetoric on college campuses. Why is it that it takes a public outcry and national media coverage to challenge tenured ideas? The process of academic review and administrative oversight should be analyzed more than anything. Not until colleges and universities begin to question their assumed role as political re-educators (rather than educators) will we begin to see the end of the Ward Churchills, the Kirkland Projects, and the spectacles that substitute for real learning. There will always be radicals and ideologues out there, but it doesn’t mean that shrill thinkers deserve tenure-track jobs. I should think that freedom of speech still translates into a freedom from employing troglodytes.
Wretchard of The Belmont Club also has some thoughts:
The fascination may not be with Ward Churchill himself but with the Leftist demimonde glimpsed briefly through him. Churchill, Peterson and Jackson are, besides being themselves, gateways into worlds in which the incomprehensible is merely ordinary. It is not that the worlds of the radical Left, the scumbag and high-class pervert are the same; they are different in every particular and yet are somehow identical in a elusive way. The common description I came near to supplying is ‘fantasy’, though it is not quite that; because deep down those worlds concern themselves with practical gratification. I think the right term is ‘sad’; reprehensible yes; disgusting yes; and sad.
Be sure to read the comments as well.
Update: The Power Line fellows have some thoughts on whether or not Churchill deserves tenure–and on tenure in academia in general.
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