The Real Ward Churchill

Churchill isn’t merely a fellow with highly controversial opinions, and an inflammatory way of expressing them.

He’s a world-class academic fraud, as outlined in this excellent page on the Pirate Ballerina blog.

But the personality of one mentally disturbed “diversity” academic is in fact much less interesting than what the Churchill case says about academia, and about the academic grievance industry. The fact that someone with vastly inferior academic credentials could be hired by the University of Colorado -- a quite reputable institution, at least until now -- is hugely revealing. So is the fact that Churchill was invited to Whitewater by a group of American Indian students. And the fact that his fee was paid by the group of Indian students, and also a group of black students.

If you are a member of a politically correct Victim Group in academia, your job it to be aggrieved. It is to prate constantly about how you are a victim, and how American society is racist, and sexist and homophobic. It is to provide the kind of rhetoric that the white liberals and leftists on campus love.

Your job is not to achieve academically. It’s not to prepare for a good job and a successful life. Success is subversive. One former “victim” group, Asian Americans, has made the mistake of being markedly successful, and they are therefore derided as a “model minority.” In other words, traitors to the politically correct cause.

Make no mistake: Churchill is a creature of liberal and leftist white academics. For all his posturing, he is in the business of giving them the rhetoric they want and like.