COLLEGE AVENUE: The Oppression Lobby

...The fact that the University of Colorado ever gave this man a position S T E P H E N K L U G E W I C Z on the faculty is a testament to the power of the oppression lobby...

...At least one female academic in the audience walked out of Summers' speech, the Coalition for an Anti-Sexist Harvard organized rallies against Summers in the aftermath of the talk, and critics drew up a petition that deemed his remarks "scientifically sloppy, irresponsible, and absolutely unacceptable," and urged Summers to resign...

...Churchill holds only a Master's degree (from Sangamon State University, Illinois), his scholarship is shoddy at best, and yet somehow he was tenured and made chairman of his department...

...At the start of the 21st century, this is the orthodoxy that reigns among American university students and especially faculty—who are arguably the freest, least oppressed group of people in the history of the world...

...MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 51...

...But these revelations have not made a dent in Churchill's support among his colleagues at the University of Colorado, hundreds of whom took out an advertisement at the end of February in a Boulder newspaper declaring their support for Churchill...

...Now, charges of plagiarism and intimidation have arisen against Churchill...

...In January, Summers suggested at an academic conference that innate differences between the sexes (and not oppression) maybe one reason that women are not as successful as men in math and science careers...

...Though the Hamilton panel was canceled at the eleventh hour amid protests and threats of violence and Churchill was pressured to resign as chairman of the Department of Ethnic Studies, his notoriety increased when he refused to back down from his comments...

...Churchill has become the lobby's patron saint...

...Nor have they dimmed Churchill's standing among fellow academic radicals like MIT's Noam Chomksy, who cooed, "I've read a fair amount of his work, and a lot of it is excel-lent, penetrating and of high scholarly quality...

...At the same time, a speaker of unfashionable truths can find his reputation besmirched and his job in jeopardy...

...This is a form of theater that attempts to sensitize participants to "various forms of oppression and discrimination, including racism, heterosexism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and ageism...

...I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women," Summers groveled in a statement issued five days after his remarks...

...Summers, in his remarks on the state of women in math and science faculties at the most elite universities, challenged the sacred cows of the oppression lobby and suffered the consequences of his political incorrectness...

...The only qualification that he made to his "little Eichmanns" statement was to concede that "children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by" were exempted from his indictment...

...None of this was enough for the oppression thugs...

...And at the University of Pennsylvania, a student group that dubs itself "The Feminology Project" declares in its mission statement that members will "strive to understand the ways in which we [women] are oppressed, but also the ways in which we may be oppressing others...

...He argued that "the building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple...

...C O L L E G E A V E N U E S T E P H E N K L U G E W I C Z The Oppression Lobby F YOU VISIT THE CAMPUS of the University of Maryland, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, the University of Arizona, or any one of a score of major American universities on any given day, you might witness an event called "The Tunnel of Oppression...

...There is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization," Summers suggested...

...In addition, questions about his ethnic identity as an Indian continue to haunt the longtime Native American advocate...

...The celebrated cases of two American academics, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill and Harvard President Larry Summers, illustrate the power and pervasiveness of the oppression lobby on campus...

...Jumping to Churchill's defense, Oscar Chamberlain, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, called criticism of the Ethnic Studies professor "McCarthyism" and asserted that "the backlash against Ward Churchill has become far more offensive and frightening than any-thing he did or said...

...Yet to judge by the reaction of some members of the audience and the powers-that-be in the Harvard community, one would have thought that Summers had articulated some radical theory of female inferiority aimed at denying women their civil and political rights...

...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...

...The ideology of oppression is the raison d'etre of student ethnic and homosexual groups, as well as nearly all Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies departments—and it is the focus of innumerable course offerings, diversity weeks, and sensitivity sessions...

...It also mattered little to the oppression lobby that Summers shares their goals...

...Harvard University President Lawrence Summers has felt its wrath ever since he questioned one of oppression theory's basic assumptions...

...If a professor or student may not have noticed the oppression on their way to class, that's pretty good evidence that they are among the oppressors...

...He opened his speech by announcing that he would address the "crucial objective of diversity...

...On September 11, 2001, Churchill, professor of American Indian Studies with the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, penned an essay on the terrorist attacks of that day, opining that the civilians killed in the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns...

...So my sense is that the unfortunate truth—I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true...:" Summers concluded that he "would like nothing better than to be proved wrong" about his finding that men and women really are different...

...The University of Minnesota's Women's Studies Department offers a course titled "Systems of Oppression...

...iHE OPPRESSION LOBBY also punishes dissenters...

...It was not enough for the oppression lobby that Summers, who is no right-wing ideologue but a liberal and former Clinton administration official, couched his speculations amid qualifications and pre-emptive apologies: "...if my reading of the data is right—it's something people can argue about...

...On the Internet, a company selling term papers to college students lists several options under the category "oppression essays and research papers on oppression"—yours for $27.99...

...Churchill, who embodies all that the oppression lobby stands for, endeared himself to tenured radicals everywhere by providing a moral justification for 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 the terrorist attacks of September 11...

...On America's campuses today, we have a murky system of collegiality where if you have the right sort of opinions you can end up tenured and a department chair, despite your manifest lack of qualifications...

...Despite reports to the contrary, I did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science...

...policy has always been enslaved—and they did so both willingly and knowingly...

...Stephen Klugewicz, is executive director of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Collegiate Network of alternative campus newspapers...

...Churchill has repeatedly accused the United States of committing "genocide" with its Middle East policy, a claim that he has made throughout his career against the American government...

...Predictably, Summers quickly collapsed under the pressure and began issuing numerous apologies...

...The Harvard faculty subsequently voted "no confidence" in Summers' leadership, and as of this writing his future remains in doubt...

...Crowds at the University of Colorado cheered him, several faculty members publicly declared their support for him, and Churchill received further invitations to speak, notably from the University of Hawaii...

...Oppression is everywhere, and everyone on cam-pus is supposedly being oppressed or oppressing someone else, either consciously or unconsciously, at any moment...

...This filthy essay came back into the headlines early this year when Churchill received an invitation to speak at Hamilton College in New York...

...So let's see...

...The entire thrust of his talk was how to achieve sexual equality on the Harvard faculty...

...One wonders whether, like Soviet communism's grip on Eastern Europe, the oppression lobby's totalitarian hold on college campuses will one day collapse as a result of its own overreaching, internal contradictions, and moral vacuity...

...The women of Harvard—professors, students and alums—merit more than a belated and defensive `I'm sorry,"' Kim Gandy, president of NOW, huffed...

...Yet the oppression lobby actually celebrates hate—as long as it is directed against the United States, or white males, or both...

...Days later, Summers announced a new initiative to hire women to the Harvard faculty...

...By the left's own standards, at the very least, Churchill ought to have beenvilified for "hate speech...

...every objection raised against his statements and his scholarship is taken as further evidence of the oppressive power of the majority...