Disingenuous controversy: responses to ward Churchill's 9/11 essay.

• Author: Fritch, John
• Position: Ward Churchill, Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens - Critical essay

At the end of January 2005, controversy (1) erupted concerning an online essay that University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Professor, Ward Churchill, authored on September 11, 2001, entitled "'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." In this essay, Churchill argues that U.S. foreign policy created the conditions of resentment that made the 9/11 attacks a reasonable response to U.S. imperial policy. Given a history of intervention into other countries, including the 1991 bombing of Iraq's infrastructure, and U.S.-imposed sanctions (which he labeled a genocide), Churchill (2001) muses that the attackers' response was proportional. Their four assaults with explosives represented "about 1% of the 50,000 bombs the Pentagon announced were rained on Baghdad alone during the [first] Gulf War" ("On Matters of Proportion and Intent" section, [paragraph] 1). The attacks, according to Churchill, simply gave Americans "a tiny dose of their own medicine" ("On Matters of Proportion and Intent" section, [paragraph] 3).

Although his essay contained numerous arguments, the segment that triggered intense reaction appears about one third of the way through, in which Churchill questions the claim that the attackers targeted "innocent civilians." Churchill argues that, according to U.S. targeting strategy, the World Trade Center was not a civilian target but, instead, was filled with people who "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" ("They did not license themselves to 'target innocent civilians'" section, [paragraph] 1). Churchill labels those who were killed on 9/11 "little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers" ("They did not license themselves to 'target innocent civilians'" section, [paragraph] 1).

When this essay appeared online on September 12, the response was minimal (e.g., Hemingway, 2001). Churchill was scheduled to speak in late November 2001, at rallies in Burlington and the University of Vermont, as part of protests against the bombing of Afghanistan, when a reporter discovered the essay. Many protest organizers indicated that they wanted to revoke his invitation to speak, although none did; one group withdrew its sponsorship of a rally, however, rather than be associated with Churchill. Little or no discussion followed this lone incident, and Churchill continued to lecture around the country.

Then, on January 26, 2005, more than 40 months after the essay was published, bloggers learned that Churchill would appear on a panel entitled "Limits of Dissent?" on February 3 at Hamilton College, a liberal arts college in central New York State. His "Roosting Chickens" essay was (re)discovered and became the focus of nationwide attention. On Friday, January 28, the top story on Fox's The O'Reilly Factor focused on Churchill's essay and his scheduled appearance at Hamilton (O'Reilly, 2005a). The controversy expanded with additional regional, national and international news coverage. Stories appeared in The Denver Post (Harsanyi, 2005; Merritt & Pankratz, 2005), The New York Times (York, 2005), the Rocky Mountain News (Ensslin, 2005), and continued on The O'Reilly Factor (O'Reilly, 2005b, 2005c, 2005d, 2005e, 2005f, 2005g, 2005h, 2005i, 2005j). On February 1, Hamilton College President J. H. Stewart (2005) canceled the panel, citing "[c]redible threats of violence" as the reason. Two days later, the Colorado Board of Regents convened in special session and ordered a 30-day University of Colorado-Boulder internal review to determine whether "Professor Churchill's conduct, including his speech, provide any grounds for dismissal for cause," assuming such a dismissal would not infringe on his First Amendment rights (DiStefano, 2005, [paragraph] 11). Later, this review was extended to examine charges of research misconduct. (2)

Media coverage did not end. Bill O'Reilly devoted ten segments to Churchill between January 28 and March 3, his final March 3 "Talking Points Memo" declaring: "Professor Ward Churchill is a traitor" (2005j). Between February 2 and February 20, more than 25 editorials appeared in newspapers across the country (Hamilton College, 2005). On February 4, CNN's Paula Zahn Now interviewed Churchill and Hamilton President Stewart (Nelson, 2005). On February 24, The Daily Show devoted a segment to Churchill (Karlin & Stewart, 2005). On March 4, Real Time with Bill Maher featured Churchill and Michael Faughnan, (3) whose brother had died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and who wrote an open letter (Faughnan, 2005) to Churchill responding to the "Roosting Chickens" essay (Maher, Grey, Gurvitz, Carter, & Griffiths, 2005). Even South Park joined the fray with references to the Eichmann comment (Parker & Stone, 2005), which some viewers praised, declaring "South Park Bitch Slaps Ward Churchill" (Shackelford, 2005).

Given that Churchill's essay appeared the day after 9/11, why did the controversy emerge more than three years later? What suddenly made Churchill's essay a focal point at that particular time? Several commentators had made similar arguments (e.g., Chomsky, 2001; Johnson, 2004; Roy, 2004; Zizek, 2002), yet Churchill received the most vociferous reaction. Our interest here is not primarily in what Churchill wrote but, instead, in the response to Churchill's essay. Specifically, we are interested in why the controversy erupted at the time that it did.

Even as this article goes to press, fallout from the controversy continues. However, we focus on the two months from January 26 to March 26, 2005, because the controversy during this time focused on Churchill's 9/11 essay. Although ongoing battles over Churchill's scholarship were triggered by the controversy over his 9/11 essay, the internal mechanics of university review processes is beyond the scope of this essay. Regardless, it is important to understand the origin of the battles.

Exploring the origin of the controversy over Churchill's essay enables an inquiry into the conditions and timing of an emergent controversy. Analysis of Churchill's argument, how the controversy emerged, and how it proceeded, allows us to explore both the conditions that contribute to the ripeness of a controversy and the possibility of disingenuous controversy that closes off, rather than expands, argumentative space. We posit that an interesting mix of public argument about U.S. foreign policy, the national grieving process, and negotiation over collective memory defined Churchill's essay as a location through which to assert disciplinary power over what is (not) considered an acceptable statement about 9/11. After reviewing controversy theory, we explore the timing and intensity of the reaction to Churchill and his essay. Analogizing from legal and agricultural conceptions of ripeness, we argue that the time was ripe for disingenuous controversy, an appearance of controversy that stifled genuine controversy.

THE DARK SIDE OF CONTROVERSY

Within argumentation studies, it now is widely accepted that consensus is not necessarily the only desirable outcome of disagreement (Olson & Goodnight, 1994; West, 1996; Willard, 1996). Dissensus, as much as consensus, has value. In fact, when belief systems are so calcified that critical engagement seems unlikely, controversy becomes a necessary means of creating the conditions for argument to proceed.

In his Alta Argumentation Conference keynote, G. Thomas Goodnight (1991) celebrated controversy because it "pushes the limits of the available means of communication.... [and] becomes generative of new, unorthodox communication strategies and subversive of established ones" as it "expands cultural, social, historical, and intellectual arguments" (p. 2). In Goodnight's conception, "controversy is a site where the taken-for-granted relationships between communication and reasoning are open to change, reevaluation, and development by argumentative engagement" (p. 5). Controversy, then, is not a sign of a sick society or a demos incapable of action but, instead, often is a sign of a public capable of evolution, changing in response to shifting beliefs, norms, and conditions.

Working with Goodnight, Kathryn Olson later would expand this theory through an analysis of the fur controversy in the United States, a controversy that pushes and pulls at the boundaries of the public and private, as well as the meaning of consumption in a late capitalist society. Olson and Goodnight (1994) contend: "Social controversy challenges the parameters of public discussion by extending argumentative engagements to the less consensually-based cultural and social regions of oppositional argument. Oppositional arguments work outside and against traditional practices of influence" (p. 250). The purpose of oppositional argument is not necessarily to persuade (or find bases of identification) but to render evident and sustain challenges to "communication practices that delimit the proper expression of opinion and constrain the legitimate formation of judgment within personal and public spheres" (p. 250). (4) Central to their analysis is a consideration of the way oppositional argument functions in both its discursive and nondiscursive forms.

Claims are refuted and norms of participation disputed through discursive argument. The move to close off these discursive challenges often channels communication into nondiscursive argument that can "usher into the public realm aspects of life that are hidden away, habitually ignored, or routinely disconnected from public appearance" (Olson & Goodnight, 1994, p. 252). When deployed by those who seek to engender controversy, nondiscursive arguments can "redefine and realign the boundaries of private and public space" (p. 252).

We would caution against Olson and Goodnight's formulation of the discursive and nondiscursive as possessing...