Who's Teaching Our Kids?

Ward Churchill is a wuss. So says this Village Voice letter-writer, who thinks Churchill doesn't go far enough. Too bad the paper doesn't tell us where she teaches; we could scratch that school of the college list for Incredible Daughters 1 through 3.

Churchill's finest hour?

Thanks for Curtis White's critique of left academia in his "Chickening Out" [The Essay, February 23--March 1] concerning Ward Churchill and the dilemma of the Holy Whore.

But I do take exception to his statement that "we [left academics] have little choice but to continue to do these things," in reference to collecting our salaries and then paying taxes that we know are going to pay for the very things we decry. Real choices for radical action by leftists in academia do exist. They include donating a significant percentage of those salaries to radical social-change organizations like RESIST, teaching students about counter-recruitment, racism, and sexism on campus and off, encouraging them to think despite significant cultural forces that continue to bludgeon them with the received opinion of corporate culture, and, last but not least, making a personal decision to engage in whichever of the many forms of tax resistance available to us. The slogan "Not with our bodies! Not with our money! Not with our minds!" has real meaning in the real world--and yes, even in left academia!

Carol Wald