John Mertz, associate professor of Japanese at NCSU, writes in a letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education (here’s a link, but note it’s a subscriber site) March 18 that a previous columnist

seems to defend Ward Churchill’s right to speak, but he undermines Churchill’s right to be heard.

Say, in which Amendment in the Bill of Rights can that be found? Is it perhaps in the Double Secret First Amendment that contains the Separation of Church and State clause?

Mertz continues with a ridiculous statement that the columnist “offers a statist muzzle cloaked in liberal fleece: Let them speak (but never be heard)!” Statist? How? Is the state coming in and stopping folks’ ears? And how would forcing folks to hear Ward Churchill ? or anyone, even non-charlatans ? not be a statist act? Allowing the right to speak is the true liberal right; determining that certain people have a “right to be heard” is the act of the true statist. Some pigs are more equal than others.

Speaking of true statism, read Mertz’s questions in mid-letter:

How about the kids who die from malaria every year because capitalism is too competitive to spare them the couple of dollars it takes to provide a mosquito net? Or the others who died for lack of clean water?

Wow, what a novelty ? a Marxist in academe.