CU Professor Ward Churchill Speaks At University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, March 2005

I was a BA student at UWW when Churchill spoke, and although I couldn't obtain a ticket (sold out), I instead sought out a video of the speech from AV. I kept putting off digitizing the video, finally getting around to it a few years ago. Though I don't fully agree with Churchill, I'm glad to now share his 2005 presentation.

WHITEWATER (AP) - Tuesday night, CU Professor Ward Churchill defended his essay to a crowd at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

source: 9news

In the essay, Churchill compared people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center to Nazis. In his Tuesday speech he said he wrote it from his gut that same afternoon in an attempt to examine what motivated the attackers. Ward Churchill said he was spurred to write the essay after television networks "spun" the attacks as senseless and government officials labeled the attackers as evil freedom-haters. Nowhere in his essay did he advocate the attacks or say they were justified, he said. "You point to the phenomenon and you try to understand it," he told a crowd of about 300 people at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. "It wasn't senseless." He then launched into a litany of policies that may have figured in Al-Qaeda's motives, including sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s that Churchill said left more than 500,000 Iraqi children dead, and the killings of Palestinian children for throwing stones at Israelis. "Somebody might be upset at that," Churchill said. An imposing figure with a deep, booming voice and shoulder-length hair tinged with a streak of silver, Churchill thanked UWW Chancellor Jack Miller for letting him speak. Hundreds of people took advantage of the chance to judge Churchill for themselves at his speech and question-and-answer session, sponsored and partially funded by a campus organization. University personnel tightened security in advance of the speech. Churchill supporters gathered outside the campus' main gate holding signs reading "First Amendment Fan" and "Free Speech." Campus Republicans down the sidewalk held signs with messages such as, "Wanted, Osama bin Laden, Dead Not Alive." The UW-Whitewater Native American Support Services and the Native American Cultural Awareness Association invited Churchill, a longtime American Indian activist, to speak six months ago about racism toward American Indians. His appearance marked only the second time he has spoken on a college campus outside Colorado since January, when his comments in the essay prompted a college in New York to cancel his speech there out of security concerns. Written in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, Churchill's essay likened the "technocrats" killed in the WTC to Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi who orchestrated the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. The essay and a follow-up book attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak in January at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Churchill has come under intense scrutiny in CO, where some have questioned his claims that he's part American Indian. The governor has called for Churchill's dismissal. A number of schools have turned away Churchill. He made his first speech outside Colorado since the controversy began in late February at the University of Hawaii to an overflow crowd. He generated the same debate there as in Wisconsin, with about two dozen campus groups supporting him and college Republicans protesting. During a press conference he said the U.S. government's violations of international law and human rights made Sept. 11 inevitable and free speech is in jeopardy. Miller, the UW-Whitewater chancellor, said he let Churchill speak because the First Amendment allows for freedom of speech and the school must promote different kinds of thought. Still, he called Churchill's Sept. 11 remarks "grossly inappropriate." Republicans in the WI Assembly passed a resolution last week condemning Churchill's "anti-American hate speech" and urging the UW-Whitewater to cancel the speech. John Stellmacher, 22, a finance major at UW-Whitewater, held a sign Tuesday night reading, "Proud my university supports free speech." He said the Assembly went over the line with its resolution. Students should have access to a broad spectrum of ideas, he said. Jim Winship, 56, a social work prof, said he has lived in Spain and El Sal. when those countries were governed by dictators, and he thinks Americans should cherish the right to free speech. "Ward Churchill is not yelling fire in a theater. He's expressing something that's unpopular in an offensive way," he said. But UWW history major Andy Harris, 24, said anyone who compares victims of the World Trade Center attacks to Nazis is a Nazi himself. Among the Republicans protesting the speech was Vicky Hachtel, 56, of Fort Atkinson, who held a sign reading, "True Indians do not disrespect the dead." "It's a shame the university wants to put itself on the map by letting this guy come and talk trash," she said

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