Ward Churchill September 11 Attacks Essay Controversy - Public Controversy

Public Controversy

National attention was drawn to the essay in January 2005, when Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College as a panelist in a debate, "Limits of Dissent."

The text of the essay was quoted on the January 28, 2005, edition of the Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor and commentator Bill O'Reilly subsequently discussed Churchill on a number of other segments as well. The January 31 edition of The O'Reilly Factor featured Paul Campos, a University of Colorado professor, who said he was appalled at Churchill's comments. At the end of the segment, O'Reilly suggested that viewers wishing to voice their opinions could contact Hamilton College or Hamilton's president, Joan Stewart; Hamilton College subsequently received 6,000 e-mails concerning Churchill. The lecture was changed to a larger venue, but was later canceled by Stewart, following what she described as "credible threats of violence." Churchill said that he received threats against his life as a consequence of his statements and the corresponding news coverage. Fox News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor in particular, led the coverage of Churchill's scheduled appearance at Hamilton College. In the three weeks following the January 28, 2005 debut, FOX ran 16 stories on the Churchill story (9 on The O'Reilly Factor). By contrast, ABC aired no stories on Churchill, CBS aired one (on its morning newscast), NBC aired two (one on its morning broadcast, one on the nightly news,) and CNN aired four stories. Thus, FOX News aired more than twice as many stories on Ward Churchill than the other four news networks combined.

In response to what he called "grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning analysis of the September 11, 2001, attacks," Churchill clarified his views in a January 31, 2005 press release:

I am not a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."

— Ward Churchill, Statement to Rocky Mountain News

He continued:

It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage". If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.

— Ward Churchill, Statement to Rocky Mountain News

Churchill clarified further in a February 2005 interview with Democracy Now!

If you want to avoid September 11s, if you want security in some actual form, then it's almost a biblical framing, you have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As long as you're doing what the U.S. is doing in the world, you can anticipate a natural and inevitable response of the sort that occurred on 9/11. If you do not get the message out of 9/11, you're going to have to change, first of all, your perception of the value of those others who are consigned to domains, semantic domains like collateral damage, then you've really got no complaint when the rules you've imposed come back on you.

— Ward Churchill, Statement to Democracy Now

On January 31, 2005, Churchill resigned as chairman of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado.

Former Colorado Republican governor Bill Owens and former Democratic governor Bill Ritter have publicly called for Churchill's dismissal.

The Board of Regents of the University of Colorado, meeting in executive session on February 3, 2005, adopted a resolution apologizing to the American people for Churchill's statements, and ratifying interim chancellor Phil DiStefano's review of Churchill's actions. DiStefano was directed to investigate whether Churchill had overstepped his bounds as a faculty member and whether his actions were cause for dismissal. The university's Standing Committee on Research Misconduct agreed that his words were protected by the university's academic free-speech code, but agreed to investigate subsequent charges made against Churchill of plagiarism, falsification, fabrication and ethnic fraud (see below). In May 2006, the University announced that its Research Misconduct Committee found that Churchill's publications demonstrate a pattern of research misconduct. On June 26, 2006, Chancellor Phil DiStefano recommended Churchill's dismissal to the Board of Regents, and relieved Churchill of his campus duties including teaching, service, and research. In August 2006, the CU student government passed a resolution to support the committee's recommendations to fire Churchill.