Ward Churchill September 11 Attacks Essay Controversy

Ward Churchill September 11 Attacks Essay Controversy

Ward Churchill, former ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote an essay in September 2001 titled Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens about the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which he argued that American foreign policies provoked the attacks. He described what he called the "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns," i.e. as those who banally conduct their duties in the service of evil.

In response to 2005 publicity from the mass media and in weblogs, Churchill was both widely condemned and widely defended. Some defenders who did not agree with Churchill's analysis and/or with his inflammatory phrasing nonetheless felt that the attacks on Churchill represented efforts at intimidation against academic discourse and suppression of political dissent.

At the height of the controversy, the University ordered an inquiry into Churchill's research, and then fired him on July 24, 2007, leading to a claim from some scholars that he was fired over the ideas he expressed. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. On July 7, 2009, Judge Larry Naves vacated the ruling and determined that the university does not have to rehire or pay Churchill. On September 11, 2012, Churchill lost his appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court against previous rulings that the university does not have to rehire him. His lawyer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to Supreme Court of the United States on December 10, 2012 with a response due on January 11, 2013.