Editor's Note: Free the professors

Many Americans today take the First Amendment for granted. The most ubiquitous evidence is the line, "I believe in free speech, but this just goes too far." This oxymoronic statement demonstrates the lack of intellectual rigor with which many people confront philosophical and political subjects.

As a result, attempts at censorship and other, more common forms of speech suppression are constantly popping up across the country. Fortunately, most of them are more like skirmishes than major battles, but that doesn't make them any less offensive or alarming.

The last place you would expect to see the First Amendment under assault is on a college campus, where you might presume that learned minds, understanding the nation's history and founding democratic principles, would embrace free speech. Yet two recent high-profile attacks on free expression have occurred within the halls of academia.

Colorado conniption

Ward Churchill is an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado. The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Churchill wrote an essay that sought to explain why Middle Eastern terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. Churchill argued that the 9/11 attacks were a case of "chickens coming home to roost"--payback for the U.S. bombing of Iraqi civilians in 1991 and subsequent economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent children. Churchill compared U.S. actions in Iraq to those of the Nazis "during the early months of their drive into Russia," noting that internationally the American policy was described as "deliberate genocide."

As for the 9/11 terrorists, Churchill discounted the prevailing argument at the time that the attackers had "initiated" a war with the United States. "A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more or less continuously by the `Christian West'--now proudly emblematized by the United States--against the `Islamic East' since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago," he wrote.

So far, nothing too provocative, right? Despite the widespread patriotic fervor after 9/11, this general point of view did emerge here and there amid the national mourning and outrage.

But Churchill argued further that the World Trade Center was, in fact, a "military target," and the people inside were not necessarily "innocent civilians." "True enough, they were civilians of a sort," he wrote. "But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire--the `mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved--and they did so both willingly and knowingly." Churchill called the twin towers' occupants "little Eichmanns," a reference to the man who organized Adolph Hitler's genocide of the Jews.

At the time, the University of Colorado distanced itself from Churchill's views but supported his free speech rights. But that was then. Last month, Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. An uproar ensued after campus officials discovered Churchill's essay (and follow-up book). They abruptly canceled his appearance.

The incident prompted some Colorado politicians, including the governor, to call for Churchill's firing. This, in turn, spurred faculty and students to rally to his defense. Churchill recently resigned as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department, but has vowed to remain a tenured professor. In an attempt to defuse the situation, some have urged Churchill to apologize. He has declined.

On the homefront

Veteran UNLV economics professor Hans Herman Hoppe is under fire for a classroom comment about homosexuals. In a money and banking course last year, Hoppe noted that certain demographic groups are more likely to plan for the future than others. For example, the very old and the very young don't tend to plan for the future, while couples with children are more likely to plan than those who do not.

In this context, he said homosexuals tend to plan less than heterosexuals, a product, perhaps, of tending not to have children and to live riskier lifestyles. No students objected to the comment in class, but a student later filed a complaint.

Rather than defend the professor's freedom of speech, the university at first decided to hand Hoppe a letter of reprimand and dock his pay. When Hoppe's dean objected, the university changed its punishment to a letter of reprimand and no pay raise. Nonplussed, Hoppe turned to the ACLU, which has taken up his free speech fight. "I have done absolutely nothing wrong," Hoppe told the Review-Journal.

Say it loud

Free speech is the most important constitutional right we have. Its enduring simplicity and strength engender envy the world over. I shudder to imagine what American life would be like without the degree of free speech we generally enjoy.

Obviously, most of us at one time or another are compelled to hold our tongues. In the private sector, frequently, businesses expect employees to keep their political views to themselves. And as my wife wisely points out, we wouldn't be too happy if elementary schoolteachers were force-feeding extreme viewpoints to impressionable youngsters. But higher education is different. Ward Churchill and Hans Hoppe are classic examples of individuals who should be able to express their views--no matter how controversial--without fear of reprisal. After all, free speech is the essence of what "tenure" means.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER