Ward Churchill was wrong about many things, but not everything
Ward Churchill passed away on Aug. 11. May he rest in peace. Churchill raised a lot of hell as a self-confessed aide to the Weather Underground and a fierce advocate for Native American rights. I gave him hell on the radio, national TV and in print.
On Jan. 28, 2005, our 630KHOW Caplis and Silverman Show broadcast live from Boulder and cross-examined Churchill about his essay calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” That phrase bothered me as an American Jew and legal advocate in court for victims of violent crime.
Online, I found a devastating clip of Churchill advocating political violence, which we played repeatedly for our eager audience. My ultra-conservative co-host and I co-authored a March 2005 op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News advocating Churchill’s dismissal from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Bill O’Reilly had me on his Fox News show several times to discuss Churchill. Fox News knew me from my prosecutorial career and my commentary about O.J. Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey, and Kobe Bryant. They also wanted a non-conservative Denver lawyer willing to call out a menacing leftist megalomaniac.
Most deplorable to me, as I wrote here in 2023, was not the “little Eichmanns” line. Grotesque as it was, I would not have sought Churchill’s firing over that alone. It was Churchill’s repeated recorded advocacy of political violence: telling a Seattle audience how one might go about hitting Wall Street. Churchill urged his followers to return a “dose of medicine,” including chemical, biological and nuclear attack on America.
Then there was the fraud. Churchill was a Caucasian from Elmwood, Illinois; no more Indian than Elizabeth Warren. Churchill plagiarized, fabricated sources and falsified evidence about atrocities against Native Americans.
Colonial mistreatment of Indians required no invention or exaggeration. White Christians marched west under Manifest Destiny and did monstrous things to Native Americans. There were more than enough real American atrocities without inventing them.
Churchill monetized his deception. CU ethnic studies students bought Churchill’s many books, and he traveled globally posing as Native American — adorned in braids and shades — to profit from an Indian identity he did not actually possess.
In 2005, I perceived a disgruntled Vietnam vet manipulating impressionable students, who used bullying and 9/11 victim-baiting to make a living, build an identity and gather a following. Identity politics and that bully-boy style brought Churchill a modicum of fame and fortune in academic circles.
Here’s what partially drove my animus. On his 2005 CU Boulder office door, I studied Churchill’s poster of the iconic Warsaw Ghetto Jewish boy, hands raised as Nazis aimed rifles, with the caption: “Support Palestinian Rights.” A Holocaust image conscripted into what I perceived as libel against the Jewish state. I regarded Churchill as a surefire antisemite. Perhaps I was wrong.
On June 23, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded that Israeli forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, amounting to genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank. The essence of childhood, the report said, has been destroyed. I am skeptical of what the U.N. writes about Israel. But tens of thousands of children have recently suffered violent deaths in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon.
Israel was savagely attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, and righteous retaliation against Hamas and its allies was warranted. But a just cause does not license everything that follows. Israel overreacted and committed war crimes in Gaza, then partnered with Trump in an ill-advised campaign in Iran, begun Feb. 28 with the assassination of Ali Khamenei, much of his family and scores of Iranian schoolchildren. We now have endless war and an energy crisis.
Times change. So have some of my opinions. In March 2015, I covered the AIPAC conference and Benjamin Netanyahu speech for 710KNUS.
Then-Colorado U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, one of Netanyahu’s congressional escorts, had an extra ticket and invited me. I enthusiastically cheered Netanyahu’s historic speech against Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, then exited the House chambers with then-friend, Sen. Cory Gardner.
I was way wrong about the silver-tongued Netanyahu. I was ignorant of the depths of his corruption. Now, he’s a war criminal. I find no common ground with Netanyahu’s allies, extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. I dislike Israel’s entanglement with America’s abhorrent administration. Israel, exactly like America, has lost its equilibrium. Both need new leadership ASAP.
Criticizing modern Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is not antisemitic. A harsh critic of Israel’s current government, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el-Sayad, claims he loves Judaism and Jews. That’s possible. Criticizing Trump’s America is a form of patriotism, not anti-Americanism.
Churchill’s callous rhetoric about 9/11 murder victims outraged our nation and me. His academic dishonesty and plagiarism justified the professor’s removal. Churchill’s lawsuit brought a paltry one-dollar award and no return to his professorship, a defeat finalized by a 2012 ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court.
Churchill was occasionally correct. Native Americans, Palestinians and Jews know too much about children being slaughtered by bigots with big weapons. Might should never make right. Neither should skin color, ethnicity or superior numbers.
There’s room enough for everybody if we can just get along. Perhaps that happens in the world to come.
Craig Silverman is a former Denver chief deputy DA. Craig is columnist at large for The Colorado Sun and an active Colorado trial lawyer with Craig Silverman Law, LLC.
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