Ward Churchill resigns as head of department at U.Colorado

January 31, 2005

Embattled University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill today released a lengthy statement defending his controversial essay concerning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Also, today, he resigned his post of chairman of the ethnic studies program but not his professorship — because he did not want the attention focused on him to reflect on fellow department members.

Churchill has been in the eye of a media hurricane since last week when students and 9/11 victims' family members began to protest his scheduled Thursday appearance on a panel at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y. Churchill had triggered angry reactions in many quarters with his argument that American foreign policy, including support for U.N. sanctions of Iraq following the first Gulf War, had done much to provoke the terrorists' actions.

In his statement released Monday, Churchill protested what he called "grossly inaccurate media coverage," which had "resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself," Churchill stated.

The essay, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, wasintended to make the point "that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences."

Denying that he is a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, Churchill said, he had simply been "pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.

"I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, 'Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable'.

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