Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, has faced a great deal of criticism for his recent comments about women in the scientific fields. He suggested that men may be biologically better suited for the sciences than women, and downplayed the role of sex discrimination in the hiring of females in the scientific fields. Despite the facts that Summers had in his arsenal to support his claim, he has been widely criticized as sexist, and his credibility to serve as president of Harvard has been called into question.
However, many of these critics have rallied behind embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. Churchill is now famous for making the following comments in an essay published on September 12, 2001: "As for those in the World Trade Center...well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."
Later, Churchill described the victims as "little Eichmanns," referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to slaughter millions upon millions of innocent people during World War II. Churchill believes that they have this position because they were working in America?which he blames for everything that has gone wrong in the world since the mid-1700s. Islamic suicide bombers? Churchill says they are making "gallant sacrifices" by blowing up school buses, shops, and cafés.
Where is the outrage from the Left? Nowhere to be found. They are busy fretting about Lawrence Summers. Love them or hate them, Summers' points were legitimately posed to the members of the scientific community.
Churchill's words are much more alarming. The fact that he holds a position of any prestige at all, let alone a tenured position, demonstrates a fundamental lack of standards of conduct in academia. The social sciences are especially flagrant.
Churchill's comments are outrageous, but they are not the root of the problem. He lives in a world where truth and honesty have no value. Churchill is not the only professor making similarly outrageous claims, but none of them have been held accountable like Lawrence Summers was for a harmless boy vs. girl argument.
Where is the thirst for truth in our academic institutions? In post-modern thought, the truth is passé. Churchill has built his career on flimsy research, facts twisted and warped to fit into a blind ideology, and outright lies. His essays are distortion-ridden propaganda pieces published mostly in anarchist or communist newsletters. How has he been allowed to keep his job for so long?
No professor would be allowed to teach math if he or she did not believe in the Pythagorean Theorem. Nobody would be allowed to teach at a medical school if they still practiced ritual bloodletting with leeches. However, in the social science realm where Churchill operates, truth has been objectified to the point where it is entirely relative. Churchill could say anything, no matter how dishonest, because there is no right and wrong.
Churchill is one example of how our academic community is failing. Academic institutions no longer hold their professors accountable to tell the truth. Under the guise of "free speech," people like Ward Churchill have distorted their way to tenured positions, and spit their bile into hundreds of young minds every year. Churchill should be able to say pretty much anything he wants, but not in front of a college classroom.
It is imperative that the academic community shun professors such as Churchill and encourage reasonable academic discourse. Hopefully, Ward Churchill will prompt more colleges and universities to rethink and retool. Otherwise, the substantive value of a college education will continue to plummet.