Another Free Speech Issue on Campus

[MattK]

Erik- Unless the professor goes against a school policy or a labor contract, he shouldn't be fired. There are sometimes policies in employment against teaching certain things. Public K-12 schools have quite a few (creationism vs evolution being one, certain books, profanity, etc.). Some Universities also have such rules. I don't know the policies or curriculum of this University.

The american was in a US military uniform. He was the first official US military casualty in WWII. As a footnote, he was fighting in the RAF. I meant it only as we were not really neutral, we had taken sides well before we declared war.

 

[JoseCuervo]

Erik,

Didn't we have Americans fighting long before December '41? I seem to remember reading about the US Military putting advisers, pilots, etc.. in the Canadian forces that were already fighting. And the Burma Hump was what????

 

[Erik in AK]

Matt, of course we took sides...Britain was our closest ally and we openly shipped "relief supplies" to them. Coal, oil, food, and textiles were sent obstensibly for the British citizenry, but one would have to be blindly naive not to acknowledge that American materiel was funneling into the British war effort.

I think you are mistaken about this pilots status. Please get me a name and squadron designation--I'm pretty sure this man was wearing an RAF uniform and flying for one of Britain's "Eagle" squadrons, which were made up of American volunteers.

Gunner, Americans who enlisted in the Canadian Forces were members of the Canadian military...period. Where you were born is legally irrelevant , its whose uniform you wear that counts. American action in Burma and China was conducted by "civilian" volunteers. The famous Flying Tigers and their fearsome looking (but outdated) P-40's were mercenaries paid by the now infamous Chinese general, Chaing Kai Shek (sp).

Yes there were Americans fighting in WWII before we declared war on Japan but they did not wear the uniform of the United States and so their actions did not constitute "American" military action. i suggest you look up the "Law of Armed Conflict" and the Rules of War in the Genva Conventions on the web. International law regarding what is and what isn't military hostility is clear.

 

[MattK]

Erik- I have looked up the pilot that was shot down in Europe. He was an American volunteer in the RAF just as I stated. It didn't say what uniform he was wearing but he was a part of the Eagle Squadron. It seems the US sent over 100m dollars and a bunch of planes to support the war effort in Europe. The members of the Eagle Squadron flew an American flag where they were based as shown in a picture in the USAF archives. As soon as Pearl Harbor was attacked in December, most Eagle Squadron pilots became USAAF pilots.

Although not declared, in November 1941 there was an "Undeclared Naval War" in the Atlantic. The 1939 Neutrality Act passed by congress was officially changed. It allowed for US ships to be armed and to go into combat areas. Essentially, we went to war prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and prior to the declaration of war.

 

[danr55]

Matt, Rockwell made his ill fated speech at San Diego State College in about 1969. I've been to Auschwitz. It's impossible to see that and the pictures in the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and not be moved. There was a holocaust and millions of people died.

The Naval actions you are referring to were part of the Lend Lease agreement between the US and Britain. US Warships provided escorts for US merchant vessels carrying humanitarian goods and British merchant ships carrying war supplies. The "rules of engagement" if you want to call them that were to defend only the US ships as the Brits were officially at war.

 

[MattK]

DanR- My grandfather was in Germany but didn't talk about it much. He had a photo album that he kept that has quite a few pictures of concentration camps (bodies and survivors). I'm not positive which ones or where in Germany he was but the pictures are moving as you say (not moving in a good way I might add). He also has a picture taken of General Patton.

Thanks for the information. I find this subject to be very interesting.

 

[cjcj]

guppie9- thanks for explaining it to cjcj, I've tried but it seems almost impossible. We did declare neutrality at one point in time but it is documented that the 1st US soldier was killed in Germany (in uniform) WHAT uniform?

Matt that seems to be your problem...you try to explain things by making statements like "I ALSO HEARD OF" and other "rumors".... You try to give 1/2 the facts or none at all. [see in uniform] then when you are caught without getting the "facts" straight. you are constantly backtrack,and say i was [just kidding]..[just throwing the ball out there] and other obtuse statements. The good part is that you are getting a good schooling from the Elders on this board. [and its free].....For your info The 1st draft was held in 1941... we had openly declared neutrality in 1939 [not at "some" point] We declared "WAR" after pearl harbor was attacked... use facts or something close to one ....not you heard a rumor etc,etc.



Guppie I will agree with you that i overreacted....and maybe i shouldn`t have reacted at all. hey Matt i heard that Buzzh is your brother, or brother inlaw...Any truth to the "rumor"? [ i like to have my facts straight] whenever possible.

 

[BuzzH]

cjcj,

Maybe you need to take some of your own advice?

You way over-reacted to someone asking QUESTIONS...

As to the topic, I think anyone with more than 2 firing brain cells would agree that the U.S. was involved and committed to WWII well before the official declaration. Our involvement was unavoidable...end of story.

 

[whitedeer]

Gummer.....Flights over the Burma Hump began in April 1942 when the Army flew gasoline and oil to China for planned use by Doolittle's Raiders following their attack on Tokyo. Under the control of the Army Air Force Air Transport Command after December, 1942, the India-China Wing of the ATC slowly increased its lift over the "Hump" to more than 12,000 tons a month in early 1944 and over 70,000 tons a month by July, 1945. This kept China in the was and cost over 800 fliers their lives.

 

[whitedeer]

And Buzz......as distasteful as it is to agree with you, the USA had B-17s on ships to China, before Pearl Harbor, for our own premptive strike on Japan.......so yes, war was unavodable at the time.

 

[MattK]

cjcj- Since you brought up the subject of "problems". Your problem is... Oh, wait the super bowl is on in two hours and I wouldn't have nearly enough time on the list. Never mind.

 

[MattK]

whitetail- I was unaware we were planning a pre-emptive strike. Do you recall where to get information on this? I believe you, I just hadn't heard it.

 

[whitedeer]

MattK.....These facts were presented in review of past Indo-China intelligence briefings following the USA's build up in Indo China during the USA's involvement in Viet Nam. A good reading is the book authored by Robert Smith Thompson "A Time for War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor" Thompson shows that in the year following his election to a third term, Roosevelt followed a course of action that inevitably led to that "date which will live in infamy."

 

[cjcj]

cjcj- Since you brought up the subject of "problems". Your problem is... Oh, wait the super bowl is on in two hours and I wouldn't have nearly enough time on the list. Never mind.

Matthew. if you are going to list my problems..please do so in "ENGLISH ONLY" hump ...i have a hard time understanding "school boy jibberish"....OhOh i think i hear big brother/brother inlaw coming to rescue you again. hump

 

[MattK]

Whitetail- Thank you for the information, I'll try finding that book. It sounds interesting.

cjcj- You don't like "school boy jibberish" because it has words with more than two syllables (it has big words).

 

[ELKCHSR]

One of my history teachers a long time ago, when we were going thru U.S. history, said that we (The U.S. politicians and military at that time, were just itching to get into the war effort. The attack on Pearl Harbor was known in advance, but was allowed to happen so that we would and could get into it officially. After watching a lot of the documentaries about this very subject, it seems as though that was really the case.

 

[Ten Bears]

Back to the topic at hand please.

 

[Nemont]

More on Ward Churchill:

He was invited to speak at Hamilton college as a guest lecturer. He asked for an honorium of $3,500 that was to be paid out of the Student Body funds. One of the students was a young man who lost his father, who worked as a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, when the North Tower Collapsed. He objected to having any of his tuition dollars being spent on a guy like Ward Churchill. This young man led a successful campaign to stop Mr. Churchill from presenting on campus.

In addition it has come to light that he even though he claims to be Native American he isn't listed on the Tribal Rolls of the tribe he claims his heritage from:

The United Keetoowah Band Cherokee says University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is not a member of their tribe.

"He's not in the database at all and is not a member of the Keetoowah," said Georgia Mauldin, the tribal clerk in Tahlequah, Okla.Full Story

Nemont

 

[BigHornRam]

If C. U. cans this bag of pus they may have to can half their faculty. I hear when the Indian lady student challanged his claim of being Native American, he lowered her grade from an A to a C. To top it off he SMOKES cigs (at least thats what he smokes in public)! I'm torn between leaving him as an example of why not to be a lefty, or giving him a big boot in the ass. I guess this ones up to Colorado to decide.

 

[Nemont]

Campos: Truth tricky for Churchill
February 8, 2005

The deeper one digs into the Ward Churchill scandal, the more amazing the story becomes.

Academic freedom must be protected, which is why I'm continuing to write about this matter. A version of academic freedom that protects Churchill from appropriate sanctions isn't sustainable either as a political or an ethical matter.

Consider: Churchill has constructed his entire academic career around the claim that he is a Native American, yet it turns out there is no evidence, other than his own statements, that this is the case.

Churchill has said at various times that he is either one-sixteenth or three-sixteenths Cherokee, yet genealogical reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and others has failed to turn up any Cherokee ancestors - or any other Native Americans - in Churchill's family tree.

Why should we care one way or another? We should care because Churchill has used his supposed Indian heritage to bully his way into academia. Indeed Churchill lacks what are normally considered the minimum requirements for a tenure-track job at a research university: he never earned a doctorate, and his only degrees are a bachelor's and a master's from a then-obscure Illinois college.

Churchill's lack of conventional academic credentials was apparently compensated for, at least in part in the eyes of those who hired him at the University of Colorado, by the "fact" that he contributed to the ethnic diversity of the school's tenure-track faculty.

To the extent that Churchill was hired because he claimed to be a Native American, he would seem to be guilty of academic fraud. But the situation is worse than this.

Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar University, has written a paper that outlines what looks like a more conventional form of academic fraud on Churchill's part. According to Brown, Churchill fabricated a story about the U.S. Army intentionally creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837, by simply inventing almost all of the story's most crucial facts, and then attributing these "facts" to sources that say nothing of the kind.

"One has only to read the sources that Churchill cites to realize the magnitude of his fraudulent claims for them," Brown writes. "We are not dealing with a few minor errors here. We are dealing with a story that Churchill has fabricated almost entirely from scratch. The lack of rationality on Churchill's part is mind-boggling." (Brown's essay can be read here: http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/Churchill1.htm.)

Similar charges have been leveled against Churchill by University of New Mexico law professor John Lavelle, a Native American scholar who has documented what appear to be equally fraudulent claims on Churchill's part regarding the General Allotment Act, one of the most important federal laws dealing with Indian lands. (Lavelle also accuses Churchill of plagiarism).

The saddest aspect of Churchill's case is that, in regard to his identity, he might not be guilty of fraud in the narrowest legal sense. According to the News, Churchill has been claiming to be a Native American since his high school days in Illinois. It may well be that by this point he has genuinely convinced himself that he actually is an Indian.

Of course some people believe they're Napoleon. But that's not a good reason for giving them professorships in French history.