Ward Churchill has made this a banner year for making as much money as he can off of fooling people into thinking he's a First Amendment Hero, all because he got free publicity for himself by calling muslim terrorists who murder Americans as "Humanitarian" and comparing American civilians murdered from Muslim terrorism as high-ranking Nazis who got what they deserved for being part of American capitalist culture. But his own actions in recent months show Ward to be quite the savvy capitalist himself: promoting nothing of free speech but "paid speech" -- even going as far as threatening to sue others who he determines to stand in his way of making a fast buck.

I witnessed this pattern of Ward Churchill’s recently right here in Chicago (my home away from Hawaii). At DePaul University in downtown Chicago, Dr. Harvette Grey of Depaul’s Cultural Center had personally invited Churchill to come to DePaul and give a speaking appearance on October 20th, and siphoning student fees to pay for his appearance. (Little fact: Illinois is Ward’s native state.) The topic of Ward’s presentation was advertised as, "Human Rights and Dignity for Men of Color," and promoted on DePaul’s Web site and to the media as a press release, claming it to be in the interests of free speech. Coincidentally, and to DePaul’s embarrassment, the University was being sued by a professor who had lost his job for questioning a militant Muslim group at a student event, where brochures they were distributing were calling Jews the equivalent Nazis, and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. (The student group and other Muslim activists went to the DePaul administration and claimed to be offended that a professor be allowed to express a pro-Israel viewpoint, an so DePaul had the professor suspended without pay, and then threatened him with the loss of his job if he did not make a public apology to the Muslim group, as the DePaul administration already had.)

Several weeks before the event, I called DePaul’s Cultural Center and spoke with Dr. Grey. I identified myself, my company, and explained the documentary production we were doing on Churchill and free speech issues. She talked with me rather pleasantly, so I asked her if it would be all right for us to record the event and also see if she could arrange for me to have an interview with Churchill. Apparently she had assumed that I was a supporter of Churchill’s, and she started confiding in me how horrible the media was for being critical of her for inviting Churchill. She promised me enthusiastically that she would check with him on my request, and that she would personally get back to me soon.

A week passed, with no phone call or email from Dr. Grey as she promised. I contacted her office again, and asked to speak with Dr. Grey regarding the status of my request. After a delay, her receptionist refused to let me speak with her, stating their official line that Churchill’s event was being closed off to the media, and only available to "The DePaul Community." I mentioned that Dr. Grey promised me that I was to receive a response directly from her, or at least some kind of explanation. To my surprise, the receptionist then blurted coldly, "Dr. Grey never spoke with you" before hanging up.

One could argue that DePaul is a private university and it has the right to do what it wants on its own private property. But truthfully, is a university like DePaul really a private enterprise? Not at all, when you consider that DePaul takes taxpayer money to fund its events. Below is the text that as it reads verbatim on DePaul’s Web site: http://ospr.depaul.edu/html/about/mission.html)

"[Depaul] funding derives from government agencies at all levels (federal, state, and municipal) and from other entities that fund fellowships, research, and other faculty development activities. It is awarded through a variety of funding mechanisms, including grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements."

Not to mention, which is the largest funding source for DePaul? Student tuition. You would think that a university that values where the majority of its funds come from would give the most consideration to those investors -- its students. Yet the students were not only refused any financial disclosure on Ward’s invitation made by just a single person; they were also refused to even protest Ward’s appearance on campus bulletin boards, talk to him personally, or even make a silent protest at his speaking event under penalty of removal. Call it a classic attitude of "shut up and hand over your money so we can tell you what to think."

I later learned that it was Churchill himself who had demanded of Dr. Grey not to allow my documentary crew to film the event, for no interviews to be given by him or the Cultural Center, and certainly no recordings be made of his event by anyone outside of his own group. On the night of Churchill’s speaking event -- the university orchestrated with Churchill its "High Security" mode, something it had very rarely done for any speaker, if at all. Anyone without a DePaul ID was to be barred from even entering the building, as extra police was hired along with campus security to prevent Churchill from being exposed to any potential protestors.

On the night of Churchill’s speaking event, at least one attendee had decided to take initiative and do a recording of his speech. An audio copy was delivered to me, for which I decided that since it was both public funds and student fees that paid for this speech, that it would be fair for both the students and the public to hear what they paid for. I had the audio cleaned up, and made it available online for all to hear.

That got Churchill’s turkey feathers up in a bunch.

I received an email from Churchill, the first email I had ever received from him. It was not for a lack of communication on my part -- I had attempted to contact him numerous times beforehand, requesting an interview or even a public televised debate on free speech, considering his own troubled history with me in Hawaii. (Ward would never speak to me, but instead made statements to the media saying I was a "Nazi cartoonist on par with Joseph Gobbels," that I was "sick and a sick joke," and saying that my being murdered "would be a good thing.")

Below is Churchill’s email to me:

Okay, Mr. Walking Eagle, try this:

What I say is copyrighted, just like the work of any other "performer," to be recorded only with my express permission, and subsequently used in any fashion whatsoever only with my explicit consent.'''

You, for whatever reason(s), seem to have an extraordinarily difficult time wrapping your mind around the simple fact that I am under NO obligation to allow you to record me (or otherwise participate in your various "projects").

Translated, that means the following: although you're obviously entitled to purchase any/all of my CDs, you have NO "entitlement" to record me yourself.

The fact that you had a pocket-sized recording device smuggled into the room where I spoke at DePaul, despite the express prohibition on doing so repeatedly announced by the sponsors, has resulted in you/anyone associated with "Walking Eagle Productions" being permanently barred from recording my talks.

Should "bootleg" recordings of my material turn up in anything you happen to produce -- a "documentary film," for instance -- you may rest assurred that you will be sued on exactly the same grounds as you would were you to use material recorded without authorization at a Dylan or Steve Earle concert.

My attorney, to whom this correspondence in cc'd, has suggested I make the above absolutely clear to you. Therefore, I have. Any further communications in this or related matters will be from him/his associations.

Consider yourself warned, Ward Churchill

Several things in Churchill’s letter strike me as most peculiar:

• I hadn’t smuggled anything in. I was never allowed into the building per orders of Churchill, much less the speaking room. (Churchill assumed that I must be some kind of super-spy, or some "Nazi" spy.)

• This was the first time I ever heard someone who demanded to be taken seriously as a scholar in the same breadth referring to himself as a "performer." (Well, he certainly dresses up as one, including the toy squirt gun and camos with shades to make him almost look more foreboding than silly.)

• Threatening to sue me and telling me to buy his CDs in the same breadth -- now that’s quite the sales pitch. (Or I should say, he considers himself generous enough to "entitle" me to purchase them. I guess even though he wants people he calls "Nazis" murdered, he’s still willing to take Nazis money.)

• Now he’s comparing himself to Bob Dylan.

• Churchill believes that anything that comes out of his mouth is, by his decree, automatically copyrighted material. (According to this, he can never be quoted or filmed by anyone at any public or private event for any use without his express consent, and his due monies.)

But this email also made me realize the motives -- call them very entrepreneurial motives -- of a most cutthroat sort. It allows us to really understand how Churchill "sells" himself -- his image, his body of work, his pseudo status as a super-Indian (scholar, activist, Renaissance man, proletariat, and even now "rebel republican" -- all to make the largest profit for himself possible.

Here is how Churchill plans his speaking presentations:

• Control all dialogue. At any speaking engagement, Churchill wants to make himself look as impressive as possible. He can’t do that if he’s being posed questions directly from the audience, where a protestor may slip in. (Which is why now he only accepts questions on note cards that are pre-approved by his appointed moderator.) He certainly can’t do that with the media, where he freezes up when pressed with a question about his activities. And he certainly can’t do that in an actual debate, which he has always refused even after promising it to a citizen who publicly issued him a challenge.

• Make challenges you don’t have to uphold. At the same time, facetiously challenge political figures larger than him in the media (Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Fox News’ Bill O’Reily) to a public debate, but refuse to debate any actual academic or free speech advocate who he’s challenged in the media or at a public engagement (including yours truly). The reason is obvious: he can only increase his stature when he avoids actually engaging in any real debate on the issues with a real person, where he would expose his scholarly weaknesses. (Can you remember the last time when Churchill had an actual debate -- and not a bunch of panelists who supported him?) Not only does this emperor of me speech have no clothes, he has no balls, either.

• Resell the same stuff. You would think that for $4,000 - $5,000 a pop, event organizers and attendees could at least be treated to fresh material. But audio and transcripts of Churchill’s speeches reveal that he has basically been giving the same speech all year. (Even at the DePaul event, which was supposed to be about human rights for people of color -- the vast majority of the speech was about himself.) The money-making plan: Charge it once to attendees and taxpayers, then charge it again as resold "performances" on CD. (Just like a comedian honing his stand-up act before releasing it out as a CD.) If you’re a performer, that’s called being a hack, or artistic fraud. If you’re being paid $4K-$5K, an audience should expect a new speech with fresh material, or at least one that stands out on its own. But he gives the same canned speech. Why pay that much money when it’s the same thing he gave elsewhere? Because by not allowing other people to already hear it, it exposes the lack of scholarship and new thought. He fools the local attendees that he’s giving them a uniquely relevant specch -- when in reality it’s his own canned speech.

• Threaten and intimidate others. For a guy who demands free speech protection for himself, Churchill has a history of not only threatening to sue other scholars, activists and the media, but even his own (ex) family members. (As in the case of the family of Churchill’s 3rd wife, who was killed during the end of their marriage and Churchill threatened her family with suing them if they dared to speak out against the falsehoods he made about her and them in one of his books.) This is why he hired the law firm of Kilmer, Lane and Newman, LLP, and also demands government restrictions on those who’s speech he personally doesn’t like.

So now we have the answer: Why aren’t recording devices allowed at Churchill’s speaking events? Because Churchill himself demands they not be allowed. This is for his own attention, for his own control, for his own personal profit, for his need to bully, and for feeding his ever-increasing yet fragile ego.

By the time this article is published, Churchill will have already spoken to attendees at Shoreline Community College in Seattle ($20 a pop), most likely giving them the same speech he already gave here in Chicago. He will then continue his notoriety tour at other campuses across the U.S., making far more money for himself off taxpayers nationwide and even more off the taxpayers in his home state. It’s the great American swindle as a theatrical performance, a one-man off-Broadway production coming to a college near you. I almost think now that each of Churchill’s "performances" should come with its own brochure program. It could read as such:

"Ward Churchill, now available for corporate events and private parties. No refunds."

The only thing to complete this transition to a "performer" is for Ward to have his own stage name. "Ward Churchill" just doesn’t seem to strike any awe in an audience, like I’m sure he wants to (which is why he needs the costume to make up for it). I leave him with a moniker that actually matches his personality, and keeps his initials -- change his first name to "Wimpy" and his last name to "Chicken."

Call me an anti-capitalist: I won’t charge him a penny for it.

Grant Crowell, a University of Hawaii graduate, worked as a cartoonist at Ka Leo O Hawaii, the University of Hawaii student newspaper. Today he is the CEO from Grantastic Designs, Inc., an online solutions marketing firm specializing in search-and user-friendly Web sites that provide measurable success. See http://www.grantasticdesigns.com or read the marketing book, "Search Engine Visibility" at http://www.searchenginesbook.com for more details. To contact Grant Crowell, write to him via email at mailto:grantc@ix.netcom.com

Links

Taped conversation with Dr. Harvette Grey of DePaul’s Cultural Center

http://www.ward-churchill.com/wc/depaul/10_13_05-10_41 AM-Grey.wav http://www.ward-churchill.com/wc/depaul/10_18_05-11_24

AM-Grey_Secretary.wav

Overview of DePaul free speech controversy and Churchill’s speaking event.

http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2005/10/ward_churchill.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4938

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/5790.html

Video of ex-DePaul Professor Thomas Klocek at Horwich Jewish Community Center in Chicago, speaking out on his losing his job and his free speech lawsuit – 10/16/05

rtsp://dss5.streamhoster.com/grantastic/Klocek-speech.mov

rtsp://dss5.streamhoster.com/grantastic/Klocek-interview.mov

Interview with Foundation in Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) President David French (with his comments on DePaul free speech lawsuit)

http://web5.streamhoster.com/grantastic/FIRE-French16K.mp3

Audio of Ward Churchill’s speech at DePaul

http://www.andrewmarcus.com/blog/mentalward

Interview with Andrew Marcus of The Mental Ward (Blog) – discussing DePaul controversy and his posting the audio of Churchill’s speech http://web5.streamhoster.com/grantastic/Andrew_Marcus_Mental_Ward_20051027.mov

Guest Commentary...