Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Found: "the Ward Churchill of the right"

Rocky Mountain News columnist (and CU law professor--who coulda' guessed?) Paul Campos says today that Glenn Reynolds is the right's Ward Churchill for suggesting that selectively targeting Iranian officials and scientists might be preferable to bombing the bejeezus out of the place to stop their nuclear program:

[W]hile it would perhaps be an exaggeration to call people like Reynolds and his fellow law professor Hugh Hewitt (who defended Reynolds' comments) fascists, it isn't an exaggeration to point out that these gentlemen sound very much like fascists when they encourage the American government to murder people.

All this raises several interesting questions. For instance, does academic freedom insulate a law professor from any institutional consequences when he advocates murder? Reynolds and Hewitt, after all, certainly didn't object when University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's celebration of the murder of American civilians raised serious questions about why the university had chosen to employ and tenure such a person, and led to an investigation of Churchill's academic record.

Indeed, Hewitt and Reynolds both went out of their way to publicize the Churchill affair, as an example of left-wing extremism in our universities.

Why does right-wing extremism in our universities, as represented by such things as law professors calling on the Bush administration to commit murder, get so much less attention?

Maybe (just throwing out ideas here, Paul) because Reynolds' extremism exists only in your own mind? Reynolds, of course, gleefully (well, soberly--I'm just projecting) dismantolates Campos, who sounds like he consulted CU colleague Glenn Morris on the column.

Update: In his reply to Campos, Reynolds quotes an e-mailer who uses the verb "beclowned"--an absolutely wonderful word I'd never heard before. Just now though I noticed that Tim Blair used it yesterday. That's a little scary.

Update II: Michelle Malkin noticed all the beclowning going on, too.

Update III (2/21/07): Reynolds hits back in the Rocky. Campos is so thoroughly beclowned he'll have to change his giant pants.

Update IV: Best comment at the Rocky so far, from "Chuck" at 11:11 a.m.: "non-cAmpos mentis."

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