Privatization is the strategic policy; developing ideologically-based culture wars to accomplish is their tactic. So let's paint a picture of ethnic studies professors as cooks and pretty soon every yahoo is out there demanding that these programs get cut. And so the next thing you know, they get cut. Let's try not to over-inflate Churchill's individual improtance in the scheme. And you don't have to agree with Churchill or keep quiet about your diasgreement to defend his rights or to defend public institutions and liberal arts prorgams or ethnic studies departments. In fact, it will take more than just those people who agree with WC or who wil remain quiet about their disagreement with his views to win on the privatization issue. It will take people who will denounce his views to win the thing, like it or not. If the argument is that the tiny protion of the "left" that concurs with WC alone can speak out on this or defend Chruchill (a la Robert Jensen) get ready to lose...again.
Joel Wendland
To think that Bush and his shock-jock vanguard don't want to shut up academic lefties isn't only dead wrong, it's a perverse piece of social-democratic pusilanimity. Churchill is only a little fish that we can sacrifice to fry our bigger anti-privatization fish. Only by proclaiming our respectability can we win the really important battles. "First they came for the cultural studies department, but I was not in cultural studies..."