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February 4, 2005

Notes from Ferdy - Betsy Hoffman Makes It Clear

by Ferdinand T Cat

Let's Try Freedom has an EMAIL from University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman. The topic of the letter is apparently the controversy surrounding former Ethnic Studies Department Chairman Ward Churchill. Churchill wrote an essay a few years ago in which he very indiscreetly stated that America deserved the 9/11 attacks.

Professor Churchill could learn a lot from Ms. Hoffman, whose message begins with the following statement

In the wake of what has been a difficult time in the life of this university, I wanted to clearly state my position and the position of my administration on issues surrounding academic freedom.

and then natters on for seven more paragraphs without clearly saying a single thing. As far as Bruce and I can tell, the University of Colorado is officially on both sides of the whole issue.

But that's not all! In the entire text of the letter, there is not a single reference to Ward Churchill, his possible future, or anything which might identify what the letter's about. One has the feeling that somewhere there's a web site entitled Boilerplate Letters for College Presidents and she selected the one labelled Whack-Job Department Heads - Extra Mild.

I don't want to be too hard on Betsy Hoffman. She needs to balance the faculty's desire for freedom of opinion with the average parent's desire to not have their children taught by unrepentant idiots. Nonetheless, I don't see a problem here. Dr. Churchill is in the Ethnic Studies department. Ethnic Studies is a purely elective discipline, and unless you want to identify yourself to prospective employer as a dangerous troublemaker, there's no need to have anything to do with it.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


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Comments

Yeah, pass along that Boilerplate website if you find it. If not, I think you have your first entry if you wanted to start one. After all, this is one of the best "say nice things to every side of the issue while maintaining strategic ambiguity" letters I've seen in a long time.
I wonder if any students will take Dr. Churchhill's class or if he will ever have another class.


Posted by: Lars at February 7, 2005 5:55 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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