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Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: Labor at the Crossroads

First the Wedding; Now the Wake: Big Labor's New Unity Partnership by JoAnn Wypijewski; Report from Baghdad: How Did the Votes Add Up: by Patrick Cockburn. Tsunamis of Blood: Wolfowitz in Indonesia: by Joseph Nevins; ALSO Alexander Cockburn on Tsunami Aid: How the People Scored. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Wars of the Laptop Bombers

 

Today's Stories

February 28, 2005

Diana Johnstone
Censorship and the Empire

 

February 26 / 27, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
An American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence

Noam Chomsky
Nuclear Terror at Home

Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground

Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited

Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami Mafia

Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda

Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts

Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind

Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars

Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee

Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America

Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood

Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin

John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns

Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style

Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace

Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation

Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert

 

February 25, 2005

Roger Burbach
Murder in the Amazon

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making

Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats

Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party

John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians

Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil

Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs

David Smith-Ferri
When the Battlefield has No Borders

Website of the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D

 

February 24, 2005

Omar Waraich
The Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician

Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame & 30 Pieces of Silver

Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons

Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?

Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill

James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush

Diane Christian
Bad Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq

Website of the Day
The Gray Line

February 23, 2005

Werther
The Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq

W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground Rules

James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?

Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby

Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and Cops)

Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism

Alexander Cockburn
Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo

Website of the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?

February 22, 2005

Naseer Aruri
The Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East

Richard Manning
The Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan

William A. Cook
Righteous Racism Running Rampant

Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability

Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out

Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL

Kirkpatrick Sale
Imperial Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire

 

February 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson
"He Was A Crook"

John Ross
Mexico: the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq

Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did I Say It?

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to You by the US Navy

David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State

Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake

Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST

Michael Neumann
Strategies in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky

 

 

February 19 / 20, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"

Kathleen Christison
Struggling for Justice in Palestine

Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata

Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to Commit Suicide

Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues

Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior

Scott Richard Lyons
Ward Churchill and the Identity Police

Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage

George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in Oregon

Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels

Manuel García, Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War

Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?

John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past

Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?

Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal

Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark

Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard

CounterPunch News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland

Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller

Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin

 

February 18, 2005

Ben Moxham
In East Timor, the Nightmare Continues

Dave Lindorff
The Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte

Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery

Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy

Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads

Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward Churchill

Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?

Mickey Z.
"One Man Has Stopped Killing"

 

 

February 17, 2005

Joshua Frank
Hogtying of the Deaniacs

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media

Robert Fisk
Under the Shadow of Death in Lebanon

Christopher Brauchli
Where Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be Cannon Fodder?

Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions

Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples the Laws It Wrote"

Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill

 

 

February 16, 2005

Robert Fisk
Lebanon: a Battlefield for the Wars of Others

Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect Retirement

Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...

Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration

Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff

Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities in Texas

Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre

Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel

Website of the Day
The World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch

 

 

February 15, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
Dean a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch

Robert Fisk
The Killing of Mr. Lebanon

Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again"

Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal

Mickey Z.
Radio Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook

Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean

Nadia Martinez
Ending World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now

Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of Magical Thinking in Politics

Paul Craig Roberts
The American Job Sell Out

 

 

February 14, 2005

Robert Jensen
Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11

Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style

Patrick Cockburn
Outcome of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War

Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?

Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?

Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood

Elaine Cassel
The Lynne Stewart Verdict

 

February 12 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill's Genes

Saul Landau
Alarcon Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba

Paul Craig Roberts
Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself

Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All Major Roads into Baghdad

John Feffer
Bush v. N. Korea: Round Two

Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak

Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!

Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich

Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)

John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll

Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"

Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice

Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin

Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour

Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado

Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?

Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan

Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting

Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman

 

 

February 11, 20055

Manuel Garcia, Jr
The Eight Percent War

Kurt Nimmo
Ann Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need Him?

Dave Lindorff
Guckert or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In

Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott Abrams

Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz

Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion

Jennifer Van Bergen
Lynne Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All

 

 

February 10, 2005

Dave Lindorff
What Academic Freedom?

Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed

Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?

Suzan Mazur
More on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha

Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition

Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little Hope"

Greg Moses
Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

Website of the Day
The Missionary Positions

 

 

February 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Duck and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers

Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say

John Ross
Hecho en Mexico: the Iraqi Election

Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon

Conn Hallinan
The Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely Forbidden"

Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions

Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

 

 

February 8, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral Pact, Not a Party"

Brian Cloughley
Out of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"

Harry Browne
"Don't Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland

Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President and Ward Churchill

Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the Same Beast

Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper

David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq

 

 

February 7, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's War on Jobs

Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher Ed

Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill

Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill

Patrick Cockburn
The Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism

Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried

Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI

Tariq Ali
Imperial Delusions

 

 

 

February 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs

Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day

Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill

P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust

Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story

Pamela Olson
West Bank Story

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court

Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents

Robert Fisk
History by Laptop

David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome

Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada

Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love

Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life

Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside

Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy

Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the Game

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File

 

February 4, 2005

Brian Cloughley
The Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"

Bill Christison
Election Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?

Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft

Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal

Ron Jacobs
The Downward Spiral in Iraq

 

 

February 3, 2005

Ward Churchill
On the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions

Sharon Smith
Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support

Mickey Z.
Leslie Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?

Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union

Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan

Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq

Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence

Dave Lindorff
The Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies

 

 

February 2, 2005

David Domke / Kevin Coe
Bush's Brand of Christianity

Noam Chomsky
Iraq After the Elections

M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me in Its Crosshairs

Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen

Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean

Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT

Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn

Website of the Day
War is a Racket

 

 

February 1, 2005

Joshua L. Dratel
The Torture Memos

Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi

Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"

Uri Avnery
The Stalemate

Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal

Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel

Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades

Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
American Police State

Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 22, 2004

James Petras
An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia

Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel

Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge

Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column

Kathleen Christison
Imagining Palestine

Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos

 

 

December 21, 2004

Greg Moses
The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV

Dave Lindorff
Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish

Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk

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Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam

Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"

Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti

Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report

Paul Craig Roberts
America Locked Up: a System of Injustice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 28, 2005

A Neocon Test Case for Academic Purges

The Attacks on Ward Churchill

By EMMA PEREZ

We've done some preliminary research and analysis and it's become clear exactly what's at stake and what we're up against. CU-Boulder has been made the national frontline of the neocon battle for dominance in academe.

CU-Boulder has likely been made their "test case," their break-the-mould moment in a national strategy. Their local resources and troops (thinktanks, legislative, rank-and-file followers) are already fully mobilized and their national resources are mobilizing in our direction (if not already mobilized), and the infrastructure they already have here is formidable. On Ward's specific case, they are already *at least* 3 weeks ahead of us in organizing, and they are using tactics they have been testing since the 90s.

Some details from preliminary research:

* The CO governor, Governor Bill Owens, is no ordinary Republican governor. He is an activist leader in their battle for higher education through his role in ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni).

ACTA is Lynn Cheney's organization, which hit the headlines a few years ago for creating the rightwing National Assoc of Scholars (NAS) and for proposing post-911 to monitor faculty nationwide for ideological (liberal/left) bias. Gov. Owens is especially active in ACTA's "Governors Project". He has already hosted an ACTA-led conference in CO for state trustees, probably for training them (wouldn't be surprised if some of our regents aren't in this same loop). He is already implementing the Governors Project strategy at less visible institutions. For example, last month the trustee structure at Mesa State College was revised and he appointed 3 new trustees, one of whom is "the intermountain coordinator for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for teacher preparation reform."

Also leading in this "Governors Project" is Pataki in NY-no doubt connected with the Hamilton College incident that started all of this.

* The general strategy in forcing and then manipulating this "investigation" of Ward's scholarship shares key tactics with the neocon sinking of Emory historian Bellesiles in 2001 www.oah.org/pubs. There are also likely to be parallels with the campaign against Linda Brodkey at UT in 1991 as well as other campaigns through which they have been testing and developing their methods and tactics.

* Besides suggesting "treason" on the part of Ward and calling for his firing, Governor Owens has already requested Ethnic Studies' budget, one of the most important neocon institutional targets. In a parallel de-funding move, see their successful campaign to pass H.R. 3077

Further, by going after Ward's tenure, they are essentially targeting the scholarly legitimacy of the entire field that, through external and internal review, granted Ward tenure. If Ward's tenure (and his promotion to Full, and his successful post-tenure review) was a "mistake," the next question is "who gave it to him?" Ultimately, by undermining the integrity of tenure in one national field, the neocon Right will pave the way to an attack on the very legitimacy of tenure as an institution. CU Regent Lucero did not mince words in his public statement at the emergency meeting where the 30-day investigation of Ward was announced:

"My displeasure with Mr. Churchill's essay should be abundantly clear, however, the issues regarding faculty responsibilities are still my focus. While the language in the Laws and Policies is in place, setting the standards for faculty expectations and the grounds for discipline, I would argue that they are subjective and dependent on the faculty for interpretation as to whether a professor has crossed a line. I would suggest that the time has come for a revision to the Policies that allows for other forms of adjudication that are not reliant on the faculty for determining subjectively the fate of one of their own. (Feb 3, 2005)"

* Neocon students at CU-B (College Republicans) are likely connected with CampusWatch and/or AVOT (Americans for Victory against Terrorism); they are already connected with a very hostile right-wing talk radio talk show host in Denver (that is then feeding to the national level) and they have been using tried-and-true CampusWatch/AVOT-type tactics to create the steady stream of racist, violent hatemail that not only Ward, but ES faculty and students are receiving.

* While we are confused and disoriented by the barrage of attacks, the state legislature is already moving to get tenure changes written into the books. The tactic is for Owens to make radical demands and push the envelope to the right, opening up space for a conservative Democrat to propose a more "moderate"-looking bill (Senate Bill 85, which includes tenure law changes) that should, if they're smart, pass quickly and easily, possibly even before the next Regents meeting. Reported in the Colorado Daily on Friday Feb 11, the tenure changes appear minor but will be used as footholds for the next deeper round(s) of legislative actions.

* The CU-Boulder administration seems well-intentioned but to have misjudged the stakes and their opposition. They may have believed they could keep control of the investigation by doing it in-house but the Right is already outflanking them by using this investigation to launch an ideological show-trial; it's a war of public opinion in which the administration has already been outmaneuvered. By the end of 30 days, they could easily be backed into a corner, unable to resist the Right's larger agenda. The Admin's investigation can find whatever it wants (it could even decide to make no move against Ward), but by that point, it won't matter because all the legislative momentum/power will be out of their hands. Ultimately, the neocon agenda doesn't even have to succeed in getting Ward's tenure revoked; the attack on Ward is only one key piece of a larger campaign with several objectives beyond the firing of Ward.

* Ward is a prime target. He is vulnerable and, at the same time, has extremely high strategic value. In terms of his vulnerability: he can be isolated from support forces who would traditionally make it hard to attack a tenured faculty. There are faculty who have problems with his being American Indian or who have something against Ethnic Studies, etc etc-these faculty will be reluctant or refuse to defend him (until it's too late). As a revolutionary, he can be counted on to have a significant number of colleagues who strongly dislike him and will be reluctant or refuse to defend him (until it's too late). On top of all this, in the post-911 climate, moderates who would normally disagree with his views but then go on to defend his free speech rights and academic freedom, will hesitate because they are afraid of being cast in with his "anti-americanism" (much like the McCarthy period). In terms of his high value as a target (David Horowitz has already written on this): he's not only tenured, but he's a full prof; he's not only inside ethnic studies but he was chair; he's not in just any university in CO, he's at the institutional flagship of "liberalism" in the middle of a red state.

We have to be as clear as possible about the big picture. This is much, much bigger than an individual attack on Ward. What we're looking at is a carefully developed, pre-existing national strategy that has been searching for exactly the right breakthrough "test case." It has found extremely favorable conditions in Ward's situation and in the post-911 climate. As they've been doing already in other areas they want to dismantle the structural footholds (academic freedom/tenure, ethnic studies) that social movements gained for people of color and liberal and progressive intellectuals inside academe during the 60s & 70s. If they are successful in Colorado, it could set a precedent like Bakke. Raising the stakes even higher, Governor Owens has ambitions that reach as far as the White House. The next phases of his career hang on this crucial campaign that will give definitive proof of his leadership ability. If he pulls it off, it's a glorious triple coup-de-grace: undermine the legal foundation of tenure/free speech, hurt/ruin Ethnic Studies...and at no less than the strongest "liberal" campus in the state. His personal investment in this campaign is very high and he is likely to throw his whole weight behind it.

This is a fight to make history.

Emma Perez is the new chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado.

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