On Ward Churchill & legislative activities

Earlier this month I said this:

I personally do not want to see state politicians getting involved in this issue. There are plenty of reasons for the University of Wisconsin Whitewater to decide against having Churchill on campus outside of the stupidity of his "little Eichmans" essay.

Today, the State Assembly passed a resolution that condemned Churchill and which called on UW Whitewater to call off the March 1st speech. This non-binding resolution is a responsible action on the part of the State Assembly. Those in the State Legislature have every right to express their displeasure at UWW holding this speech, and using their leadership to try to convince the university to cancel the speech. Ultimately this is the University's mess to deal with, though, and I applaud them for not putting the clamps to UWW. When I said the quote above, I was not referring to that type of action, but rather this type, found in Colorado:

Furious lawmakers threatened to take state funding away from the university over an essay by Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, who wrote that some "technocrats" killed in the World Trade Center were like Adolf Eichmann, who orchestrated the Nazi holocaust.

These Universities have been creating their own messes. They have to deal with them now. It's the only way they can be made to face reality. If lawmakers in Colorado were to cut funding, not only would they possibly create a huge legal mess, they'd also give the University of Colorado a scapegoat for firing Churchill, allowing them to get away with not fully addressing their own culpability in this. The best way to clean up a University is to let it dig itself a huge hole, and then let it get itself out of it. Stay out of their way. Steve Nass and the Wisconsin State Assembly displayed leadership today while still leaving UW Whitewater to find its own way out of an uncomfortable position.