"I'm not backing up an inch!"
Ward Churchill, USA Today, February 28, 2005
Never speak of others in a bad way. The negative
energy that you put out into the universe will multiply when it returns to you.
Native American Code of Ethics ---
http://eveningrain.com/Ethics.html
A key faculty panel has recommended
that Ward Churchill, the controversial University of Colorado professor found
guilty of misconduct (plagiarism), be
suspended but not fired,The Denver Postreported, citing Churchill’s
lawyer. The university’s president and board could still move to fire Churchill
without the committee’s blessing, but administrators at the university have
placed a high priority on having faculty members take the lead in investigating
Churchill. Churchill’s lawyer did not reveal the rationale behind the faculty
panel’s recommendation. Inside Higher Ed, May 17, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/17/qt
Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
One of the least diverse academic associations is the highly liberal Modern
Language Association. However, even the MLA could not muster up a vote critical
of the firing of Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado. While material distributed by those seeking to condemn
Churchill’s firing portrayed him favorably, and as a victim of the right wing,
some of those who criticized the pro-Churchill effort at the meeting are
long-time experts in Native American studies and decidedly not conservative. Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
December 31, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/mla
They (9/11
Al Qaeda terrorists) were targeting
those people I referred to as 'little Eichmanns.' These were legitimate targets. Ward Churchill at New College
on December 6, 2006 ---
http://www.newcollege.edu/
Jensen Comment
Yeah right! Over 3,000 deaths don't matter much according to Ward Churchill since,
in his mind, the 9/11 kills were
"legitimate targets" suffering from capitalistic excesses
built upon from the Native American exploitations of their ancestors ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
An ethnic studies professor from the University of
Colorado, Ward Churchill, received a standing ovation last night from a crowd of
more than 200 New School students after blaming the 2001 World Trade Center
attacks on America's support of Israel and its sanctions against Iraq in 1996.
In a two-hour speech at the New School titled "Sterilizing History: The
Fabrication of Innocent Americans," delivered without notes, Mr. Churchill
traced what he called a pattern of mass murder as American foreign policy from
the time of the country's inception to the events of September 11, 2001, which
he said the country... Annie Karni, "New School Students
Cheer Ward Churchill Speech," New York Sun, December 12, 2006 ---
http://www.nysun.com/article/44971
Jensen Comment
Remember that over 3,000 9/11 deaths don't matter much since they were all
"little Eichmanns" suffering from capitalistic excesses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
A new book by former president Jimmy Carter is
generating wide controversy. Pro-Israel groups are offended by Carter's
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and say the book is unworthy of a former
U.S. president. Jackie Northam, "Jimmy
Carter's Book Stirs Criticism, Complaint," NPR, December 11, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6605934
Jensen Comment
Both President Carter and Ward Churchill find it convenient to blame nearly all
radical Islamic terrorism on Israel and the U.S. Republican Party. But whoa
there --- Jewish voters in the U.S. believe that Democrats are better friends of
Israel than Republicans. Still Carter and Churchill coming from different
directions contend that Israel is wiped off the map and all capitalist economies
are plowed under, there will be peace on earth and even the Taliban and Al Queda
will avow peace and freedom for all. In fairness neither Carter or Churchill
want Jews blown to bits. They just hope that Jews will unilaterally disarm and all capitalists surrender
to Islam in the belief that there will be no more terror on earth.
"U. of Colorado Makes It
Official: Ward Churchill Is Not Welcome Back,"
by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 21,
2009 ---
Click Here
The
University of Colorado has filed a court brief formally
responding to Ward Churchill’s
bid
for court-ordered reinstatement to
the faculty. As university officials had suggested would be
the case, their stand on his reinstatement is a very
emphatic no.
In the
brief, filed yesterday in state court, the university’s
lawyers note that the jury that found last month that Mr.
Churchill had been
fired unjustly, in violation of
his free-speech rights, also determined that he was due only
$1 in damages. The jury’s decision to award Mr. Churchill
such a nominal sum “can be seen only as a complete
repudiation of Professor Churchill’s scholarship and the
jury’s ultimate conclusion that he destroyed his own
reputation.”
The
brief also seizes upon remarks by Mr. Churchill’s lawyer,
David A. Lane, as reason to deny the professor’s
reinstatement. In an interview with
The Denver Post following
the jury’s verdict, Mr. Lane said university officials would
face another lawsuit by Mr. Churchill if they so much as
“look at him cross-eyed” after his reinstatement. Likewise,
Mr. Lane told the
Colorado Daily that Mr.
Churchill would sue if the university put him in a basement
office or stripped him of class time.
The brief
argues that such threats place the university in an
untenable position, where it faces the threat of litigation
over routine academic decisions and must effectively
immunize Mr. Churchill from complying with professional
scholarly standards if it does not want to be sued for
investigating any new complaints of misconduct brought
against him.
If the court
decides to award Mr. Churchill anything, the brief says, it
should only be compensation for the pay he would be earning
if he had kept his job. The brief argues, however, that he
should not even be given that.
A state court judge on Tuesday not
only denied Ward Churchill everything he sought in his
long-running battle with the University of Colorado system, but
also negated the one victory the controversial scholar had won
so far: a jury verdict holding that system officials had
violated his First Amendment rights by firing him from a job as
a tenured ethnic-studies professor in response to statements he
had made.
Having presided over the four-week
trial that led to the jury's April 2 decision that the
university had illegally fired Mr. Churchill for academic
misconduct, Judge Larry J. Naves decided to vacate the jury
verdict on the grounds that the university officials named in
his lawsuit were immune from such litigation.
Moreover, Judge Naves held, he could
not appropriately order Mr. Churchill's reinstatement on the
flagship campus, in Boulder, because the jury had found the
professor undeserving of any significant compensation for
damages—as reflected by its awarding him just $1 for economic
losses—and because the university system's lawyers had
successfully made the case that returning Mr. Churchill to his
old job would damage the university, its faculty members, and
its students.
"I conclude that reinstating
Professor Churchill would entangle the judiciary excessively in
matters that are more appropriate for academic professionals,"
Judge Naves wrote.
In briefs and hearings leading up to
his decision, Judge Naves said, he received credible evidence
that Mr. Churchill's reinstatement would "create the perception
in the broader academic community that the Department of Ethnic
Studies tolerates research misconduct." Such a perception, the
judge said, will very likely make it harder for the department
to attract and retain new faculty members. "In addition," he
wrote, "this negative perception has great potential to hinder
students graduating from the Department of Ethnic Studies in
their efforts to obtain placement in graduate programs."
On the question of whether the
university would have owed Mr. Churchill pay in lieu of
reinstatement if the jury's verdict had been upheld, Judge Naves
refused to grant the professor even that much, saying that Mr.
Churchill had not made a serious effort to find another job
since his dismissal, in 2007.
The judge's ruling was a major
setback for Mr. Churchill, who had been investigated for
academic misconduct, found guilty of it by a series of faculty
panels, and fired by the Colorado Board of Regents at a time
when the university system was under tremendous pressure to fire
him as a result of the uproar over an essay in which he had
argued that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were
provoked by the United States' actions abroad.
Mr. Churchill's lawyer, David A.
Lane, responded to Judge Naves's ruling by announcing plans to
appeal. In a statement e-mailed to The Chronicle, the lawyer
said, "The message in this ruling is that if your First
Amendment rights are violated by the University of Colorado,
don’t look to Denver District Court for justice, because justice
did not prevail in this instance."
Several university officials issued
statements heralding the judge's decision. Bruce D. Benson,
president of the University of Colorado system, said, "This
ruling recognizes that the regents have to make important and
difficult decisions" that should not be influenced by "the
threat of litigation." The regents' chairman, Steve Bosley, said
the ruling "affirms that in dismissing Professor Churchill, the
Board of Regents did the right thing, in the right way, for the
right reasons."
Philip P. DiStefano, chancellor of
the Boulder campus, called the decision "a victory for faculty
governance" in that it "reinforces the idea that faculty set the
standard for academic integrity on our campus and all campuses
across the country."
'Fruit of the Poisoned Tree'
Some prominent advocates of academic
freedom said they were troubled by the judge's decision. Cary
Nelson, president of the American Association of University
Professors, issued a statement saying the "chilling effect of
the judge's views could be substantial."
Continued in article
One of the least diverse (politically) academic associations is the highly liberal Modern
Language Association. However, even the MLA could not muster up a vote critical
of the firing of Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado. While material distributed by those seeking to condemn
Churchill’s firing portrayed him favorably, and as a victim of the right wing,
some of those who criticized the pro-Churchill effort at the meeting are
long-time experts in Native American studies and decidedly not conservative. Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
December 31, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/mla
Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
Jensen Comment
Aside from probably faking his claim to faking Native American
heritage in order to avoid having to earn a PhD in academe, his
big black eye as far as I'm concerned are the allegations by
Native American scholars that he faked major findings in his
research. The proven plagiarism is less important in the grand
scheme of his scholarship but became crucial in overturning his
tenure status.
Sadly this fiery
speaker will now become even more of a hero among liberal
professors and students who place politics ahead of honest
scholarship.
Question
What does a leading Native American scholar think of Ward Churchill's
scholarship and integrity?
And
this was the judgment of Churchill's academic peers. UCLA
professor Russell Thornton, a Cherokee tribe member whose work
was misrepresented by Churchill, said "I don't see how the
University of Colorado can keep him with a straight face,"
calling his material on smallpox a "fabrication" of history, and
accusing him of "gross, gross scholarly misconduct." Real
American Indian history, he told the Rocky Mountain News, is
vitally important, not "a bunch of B.S. that someone made up."
R.G. Robertson, author of Rotting Face: Smallpox and the
American Indian and another scholar who has accused Churchill of
misrepresenting his work, says that he's "happy that [he was
fired], that he's been found out, and by his peers—meaning other
university people—and been called what he is, a plagiarizer and
a liar." Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar
University who has also investigated Churchill's smallpox
research, said his work on the subject is "fabricated almost
entirely from scratch." Michael C. Moynihan, "Ward of the State: Why
the state of Colorado was right to sack Ward Churchill,"
Reason Magazine, August 1, 2007 ---
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121682.html
More than two and a
half years after Ward Churchill’s
writings on 9/11
set off a furor, and more than a year after
a faculty panel at the University of
Colorado at Boulder found him guilty of
repeated, intentional academic misconduct,
the University of
Colorado Board of Regents voted 8-1 Tuesday
evening to fire him.
The vote followed a
special, all-day meeting of the board, in
which it heard in private from Churchill, a
faculty panel and from Hank Brown, president
of the University of Colorado System, who in
May
recommended dismissing Churchill
from his tenured post.
The regents emerged from their private
deliberations at around 5:30 p.m. Colorado
time and voted to fire Churchill, but they
did not discuss their views and they quickly
adjourned. A small group of Churchill
supporters in the audience shouted
“bullshit” as the board vote was announced.
While the firing is effective immediately,
Churchill is entitled under Colorado
regulations to receive one year’s salary,
which for him is just under $100,000.
Churchill predicted prior to the meeting
that he would be fired and vowed to file a
suit against the university, as early as
today. In a press conference after the vote,
Churchill repeated his argument that the
board fired him primarily because of his
political views, which he said are
“inconvenient and uncomfortable” to the
powerful. He vowed to keep “fighting the
fight” and said that the impact of the case
goes “way beyond Ward Churchill” and will
hinder freedom of expression generally.
Churchill was upbeat during the news
conference, which also featured Native
American drumming and chanting by
supporters.
In an interview Tuesday night after the
vote, Brown, the system president, said that
the evidence against Churchill for scholarly
misconduct was overwhelming. “I think it was
the depth of the falsification that
ultimately led to the outcome,” Brown said.
“It wasn’t just one or two or three or four,
but numerous incidents of intentional
falsification,” such that Brown believed
that in the end board members “felt like
they didn’t have a choice.”
Brown, who was present for the board’s
discussions with Churchill and the faculty
panel that reviewed the case, but not for
the deliberations, said that board members
seemed focused not on the question of
Churchill’s guilt, but of the punishment.
Brown said that the lone regent who voted
against firing did so based only on the
issue of firing him, not out of any
disagreement with the finding that he had
committed misconduct.
The meaning of the Churchill case has been
heatedly debated over the past two-plus
years. To Churchill and his defenders, he is
a victim of politics and of a right wing
attack on freedom of thought. To Brown and
others at the university, Churchill’s case
is not about politics at all about enforcing
academic integrity and punishing those who
don’t live up to basic rules of research
honesty. To many others in academe, the
Churchill case has been less clearcut. Many
academics have said that they are troubled
by both the findings of research misconduct
against Churchill and by the reality
that his work received intense scrutiny only
after his political views drew attention to
him.
Churchill has been working at Boulder since
1978 and has been a tenured professor of
ethnic studies since 1991. In the years
before 2005, he gained a reputation at
Colorado and on the college lecture circuit
nationally as an impassioned speaker and
writer on behalf of Native Americans. Most
of his speeches were attended by supporters
of his views, so he did not attract
widespread criticism.
All of that changed early in 2005, however,
when Churchill was scheduled to speak at
Hamilton College. Some professors there, who
did not feel Churchill was an ideal speaker,
circulated some of his writings, including
an essay with the the now notorious remark
comparing World Trade Center victims on 9/11
to “little Eichmanns.” Within days, the
controversy spread — with Hamilton under
pressure to uninvite Churchill and Colorado
under pressure to fire him. Hamilton stood
by its invitation, on academic freedom
grounds, but in the end called off the
appearance, based on threats of violence.
As the University of
Colorado considered what to do, a series of
accusations against Churchill started to
come in that involved his scholarly
practices. While Churchill repeatedly has
portrayed his critics as conservatives, a
number of those who brought complaints
against him share his fury at the U.S.
government’s treatment of Native Americans.
The complaints included charges of
plagiarism, of false descriptions of other
scholars’ work or historical evidence, and
of fabrications. The university first
determined that it
could not fire Churchill based on his
statements about 9/11, but that it could
investigate the other allegations
of misconduct, which
it then proceeded to do. Three separate
faculty panels then found Churchill guilty
of multiple instances of research
misconduct. The various panels had splits on
whether Churchill deserved to be fired and
those splits were complicated.
For example, the Boulder faculty panel that
first found Churchill guilty of misconduct
had five members. One member suggested that
Churchill be fired. Two recommended that he
be suspended for five years without pay. And
two recommended that he be suspended for two
years without pay. But the two panel members
who preferred a five-year suspension said
that they — like the panel member who
favored dismissal — would find revocation of
tenure and firing to be “not an improper
sanction” for Churchill, given the
seriousness of the findings. Thus
Churchill’s defenders were able to say that
the panel didn’t want him fired and his
critics were able to say that the panel’s
majority saw firing as appropriate.
Ultimately, the university’s Board of
Regents alone had the authority to fire.
Board members have widely been expected to
dismiss Churchill, but they have been
circumspect about the case for months. With
Churchill threatening to sue, regents were
sensitive to any suggestion that they were
doing anything except follow standard
procedures for allegations of misconduct
serious enough to merit firing a tenured
professor.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Aside from probably faking his claim to faking Native American
heritage in order to avoid having to earn a PhD in academe, his
big black eye as far as I'm concerned are the allegations by
Native American scholars that he faked major findings in his
research for political reasons. The proven plagiarism is less
important in the grand scheme of his scholarship but became
crucial in overturning his tenure status.
Sadly this fiery
speaker will now become even more of a hero among liberal
professors and students who place politics ahead of honest
scholarship
Hank Brown, president of the University
of Colorado System, gave his answer on Friday and it’s clear
that to Brown, speeding is speeding. He formally recommended
that Churchill, who has tenure as an ethnic studies professor at
Boulder, be fired. In a detailed letter to the Board of Regents,
Brown said that Churchill’s violations of academic research
norms were too serious and too numerous to ignore — regardless
of the circumstances that led to all the scrutiny. Scott Jaschik, "The
Ward Churchill Endgame," Inside Higher Ed, May 29, 2007
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/29/churchill
As he pledged to
do, Ward Churchill sued the University of Colorado Thursday — the day after he
was fired for research misconduct by the Board of Regents. The Rocky Mountain Newsreported that his
suit was filed in state court, in Denver, even though the litigation alleges a
First Amendment violation of Churchill’s rights to political expression.
Churchill’s lawyer has said that the process would be speedier in state court
and the News noted that federal judges tend to defer to the personnel decisions
of colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed, July 26, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/26/qt
"Why I Fired Professor Churchill," by Hank
Brown, The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2007; Page A13 ---
University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Professor Ward
Churchill was fired this week after the university's
Board of Regents approved my recommendation to
dismiss him for academic fraud.
The
ongoing drama now moves to state court, where Mr.
Churchill has filed a lawsuit against the university
alleging that it violated his First Amendment
rights. Mr. Churchill drew considerable attention to
himself in an essay that compared 9/11 victims to
notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
While
no action was taken by the university with regard to
his views on 9/11, many complaints surfaced at the
time about his scholarship from faculty around the
country. The university had an obligation to
investigate. The complaints led to the formation of
three separate investigative panels -- which
included more than 20 of his faculty peers and which
worked for over two years -- to unanimously find a
pattern of serious, deliberate and repeated research
misconduct that fell below minimum standards of
professional integrity.
The
panels found that Mr. Churchill rewrote history to
fit his own theories. When confronted, he asserted
he was not responsible. According to one report,
"Professor Churchill has, on more than one occasion,
claimed that certain acts that appear to have been
his were instead the responsibility of some other
actor: his editor or publisher, his assistant, or
his former wife and collaborator." The report goes
on to note that "we have come to see these claims as
emblems of a recurrent refusal to take
responsibility for errors . . . and a willingness to
blame others for his troubles."
But his
case is about far more than academic misconduct. It
is about the accountability that public universities
must demonstrate. Mr. Churchill's difficulties in
facing up to his academic responsibilities are in
many ways emblematic of higher education's trouble
with accountability. Too often, colleges and
universities tend to insulate themselves in
ivy-covered buildings and have not been as diligent
as necessary to ensure that the academic enterprise
is conducted rigorously and honestly. This elitist
attitude is simply outdated, and our university has
made tenure reforms -- precipitated by the Churchill
case -- that will ensure academic integrity.
Universities, particularly public research
universities, are accountable to those who have a
stake in their success and efficient operation. At
the University of Colorado, this includes the people
of Colorado who contribute $200 million in taxes
annually, the federal agencies that provide some
$640 million annually in research funding, the
alumni who want to maintain the value of their
degrees, the faculty who expect their colleagues to
act with integrity and the students who trust that
faculty who teach them meet high professional
standards.
And
just as the public has high expectations for us, we
expect our faculty members to be accountable for
maintaining high standards of scholarship. A public
research university such as ours requires public
faith that each faculty member's professional
activities and search for truth are conducted
according to the academic standards on which an
institution's reputation rests.
The
University of Colorado's reputation was called into
question in the matter of Ward Churchill. His claim
that he was singled out for his free speech is a
smokescreen.
Controversy -- especially self-sought controversy --
doesn't immunize a faculty member from adhering to
professional standards. If you are a responsible
faculty member, you don't falsify research, you
don't plagiarize the work of others, you don't
fabricate historical events and you don't thumb your
nose at the standards of the profession. More than
20 of Mr. Churchill's faculty peers from Colorado
and other universities found that he committed those
acts. That's what got him fired.
Even
great universities have problems. Places with
thousands of faculty and tens of thousands of mostly
young students are not immune to trouble. But a
university's reputation will only be strengthened
when it works to ensure that it remains accountable
to those it serves.
Mr. Brown, a former U.S. senator, is president of
the University of Colorado.
Jensen Comment
It seems like an excellent opportunity for Ward Churchill to go
back to college and earn a doctorate. This would
legitimize his admission to the academy.
Should Academic Left Defend Churchill? The debate might be summed up in an analogy offered by
one of the faculty panels that reviewed Churchill and found that he committed,
intentionally,
all kinds of research misconduct.Committee members
said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that Colorado ignored serious
allegations against Churchill for years, and took them seriously only when his
politics attracted attention. The panel compared the situation to one in which a
motorist is stopped for speeding because a police officer doesn’t like the
bumper sticker on her car. If she was speeding, she was speeding — regardless of
the officer’s motives, the panel said.
Scott Jaschik, "Should Academic Left Defend Churchill?" Inside Higher Ed,
July 25, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/24/churchill
Ward Churchill Divides the Academy on Issues of Academic
Freedom "Academic Freedom Needs Defending — From Ward Churchill," by
Anne D. Neal, Inside Higher Ed, June 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/06/19/neal
When
the Boulder campus’s
Standing Committee on
Research Misconduct
issued its report
on
Churchill last summer, it
unanimously found Churchill
guilty of severe, sustained,
and deliberate breaches of
professional integrity. It
further noted that the
evaluative system that
nurtured and rewarded
Churchill needed an
overhaul. Now, as Brown
advises what sanction should
apply, the investigation
has also galvanized
an important discussion
about what academic freedom
is —
and
what it is not.
To Brown, accountability is
a crucial component of
academic freedom. In
recommending that Churchill
be dismissed, Brown noted
that the university’s
policies define academic
freedom as a set of
privileges and correlative
responsibilities — the
latter often ignored in
academic discourse on the
topic. Academic freedom, he
wrote, is “the freedom to
inquire, discover, publish
and teach truth as the
faculty member sees it. …
Within the bounds of the
definition, however,
‘faculty members have the
responsibility to maintain
competence, exert themselves
to the limit of their
intellectual capacities in
scholarship, research,
writing, and speaking; and
to act on and off the campus
with integrity and in
accordance with the highest
standards of their
profession.’”
Noting that academic freedom
entails both individual and
institutional
accountability, Brown
observed that
taxpayer-supported
institutions have
particularly binding
obligations to the people.
“The public must be able to
trust that the university’s
resources will be dedicated
to academic endeavors
carried out according to the
highest possible standards,”
he wrote. “Professor
Churchill’s conduct, if
allowed to stand, would
erode the university’s
integrity and public trust.”
Churchill’s conduct, said
Brown, “clearly violated the
University’s policies on
academic freedom.”
. . .
Crucially, disagreement on this very point
is dividing the American Association of
University Professors. As Inside Higher
Ed has reported, Margaret LeCompte, an
education professor who is also president of
the Colorado AAUP chapter, calls the
Churchill investigation “an opening wedge in
the concerted effort to curb academic
freedom and tenure.” But Jonathan Knight of
the national AAUP’s academic freedom program
has defended universities’ right to
investigate allegations of faculty
misconduct.
Historically the
custodian of academic freedom, the AAUP is
struggling to clarify, for itself and
others, what academic freedom is. And that
struggle centers on accountability — which,
unfortunately, explains much of why the AAUP
is encountering such difficulty. Roger
Bowen, the outgoing general secretary, has
vocally defended the
notion that
academics should not have to answer to
anyone but themselves. “It should be
evident,” he has written, “that the
sufficient condition for securing the
academic freedom of our profession is the
profession itself.”
Arguments for and against the firing of Ward Churchill
Research
misconduct is in the eye of the beholder, writes Gary
Witherspoon.
more
Liberal Professors Advertise Support for Ward Churchill's
Tenure Eleven scholars have published a
full-page ad in The New York Review of Books to try to rally
support for Ward Churchill, who is
facing possible dismissalfrom his tenured job at the
University of Colorado at Boulder. The text of the ad is
available at a Web site called
“Defend Critical Thinking,”and
focuses on the way charges of misconduct were brought against
Churchill, not the charges themselves. The ad warns scholars to
“be wary of opportunistic attacks on scholarship that are
disguised means of sanctioning critics and stifling the free
expression of ideas,” adding: “It may be that aspects of
Churchill’s large body of published writings were vulnerable to
responsible academic criticism, but the proceedings against him
were not undertaken because of efforts to uphold high scholarly
standards, but to provide a more acceptable basis for giving in
to the right-wing pressures resulting from his 9/11 remarks.”
Among those signing: Derrick Bell of New York University, Noam
Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Juan Cole
of the University of Michigan, and Howard Zinn of Boston
University. Inside Higher Ed, April 3, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/03/qt
The NPR account is at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10506061
Discussions must move beyond tenure
processes. We must now examine the tenure system itself, future
career pathways for our increasingly diverse and mobile faculty,
and standards of performance in a global academic marketplace.
There may be alternative models to explore. Those discussions
must involve a variety of stakeholders who focus on one key
question: How do we create and maintain a rigorous and
competitive tenure system that best meets the needs of our
students and our publics, and best positions America for
long-term success? Tomorrow’s students and the next generation
of Americans deserve nothing less. Hank Brown (President of the University of Colorado),
"Tenure Reform: The Time Has Come," Inside Higher Ed,
March 27, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/03/26/brown
Limits of Freedom: The Ward Churchill Case In "Limits of Freedom: The Ward Churchill Case," Robert
M. O'Neil, who directs the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression, uses this University of Colorado professor's court case to unpack
the controversies surrounding the balance institutions are seeking between
academic freedom and the special needs of scholarship and teaching. O'Neil
points out that several important questions have been curiously neglected in the
current debate.
Robert M. O'Neil, Change Magazine, September/October 2006 Volume 38,
Number 5 ---
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/change/
In fact there is no ready substantive standard to
determine when a professor forfeits the protections of academic freedom by
his extreme statements on matters in or close to his or her discipline.
Relevant considerations may actually cut both ways. On one hand, society's
expectations in regard to accuracy, respect for the views of others, and
sensitivity both to colleagues and community are greater the closer a
faculty member gets to speech relating to the core of his or her field of
expertise, for it is within that field that "fitness" can best be appraised.
On the other hand, a case could be made for offering greater tolerance to a
professor who speaks controversially in his or her field of expertise. The
advancement of knowledge depends upon the free airing of unpopular views by
scholarly experts, and thus societal interests are more clearly served by
expression close to the core of one's field. Moreover, such expression
reflects the basis on which the speaker has been recruited and supported.
Thus one might expect broader latitude to be given to a Churchill speaking
of ethnic matters or a Mirecki speaking about religious beliefs. One might
insist on tolerating extreme statements within the speaker's discipline that
might seem intolerable if made by a stranger to the subject.
Both the Churchill and Mirecki cases raised but
failed to resolve yet another issue: how far the protections of academic
freedom extend to administrative positions. The issue became moot in Boulder
because Churchill resigned his department chairmanship as soon as the
controversy broke--although the first Colorado faculty committee's initial
report noted with relief that Churchill had voluntarily done so since, had
he not, the "outrage" generated by his essay "most likely would have
warranted his removal" from the administrative position. The issue of the
potentially corrosive effects of highly provocative statements on continuing
administrative service was also mooted in the Mirecki case, since he quickly
announced that he would step down as department chair--
______________________________
Robert M. O'Neil is a professor of law at the University of Virginia
and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression. He previously served as president of the University of Wisconsin
System and of the University of Virginia. He is currently the coordinator
and program director of the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues project
and chairs the Committee on National Security and Academic Freedom in Time
of Crisis of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Professor Churchill found guilty of "misconduct and plagiarism"
Last week the University of Colorado panel
investigating Ward Churchill found that the controversial professor of Native
American studies
committed serious acts of researchmisconduct and
plagiarism. It’s now up to the university to decide on an appropriate punishment
for the tenured professor, who could be fired or suspended without pay. I don’t
know enough about the situation to support or challenge the panel’s unanimous
findings, or to suggest what the university should do about them, but one aspect
of the committee’s 125-page report signals a chilling warning to academics: If
you want to stay below the radar, keep your politics and your scholarship to
yourself.
Dennis Barron, "Churchill Fallout: It’s About Academic Freedom," Inside
Higher Ed, May 26, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/26/baron
Colorado Moves to Fire Churchill It’s possible that Ward Churchill may never again teach
a class at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The interim chancellor at
Boulder on Monday issued a
“notice of intent to dismiss”the controversial
professor, citing findings of serious and repeated research misconduct.
Churchill still has appeal rights — and has 10 days to take his case to a
faculty review committee. After any appeal, a final decision rests with the
president of the University of Colorado System and the Board of Regents. And
Churchill has vowed to sue the university to block any firing.
Scott Jaschik, "Colorado Moves to Fire Churchill," Inside Higher Ed, June
27, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/27/churchill
Should Academic Left Defend Churchill? The debate might be summed up in an analogy offered by
one of the faculty panels that reviewed Churchill and found that he committed,
intentionally,
all kinds of research misconduct.Committee members
said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that Colorado ignored serious
allegations against Churchill for years, and took them seriously only when his
politics attracted attention. The panel compared the situation to one in which a
motorist is stopped for speeding because a police officer doesn’t like the
bumper sticker on her car. If she was speeding, she was speeding — regardless of
the officer’s motives, the panel said.
Scott Jaschik, "Should Academic Left Defend Churchill?" Inside Higher Ed,
July 25, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/24/churchill
Student votes are largely symbolic on campus
I'm a bit surprised this vote to fire Ward Churchill was even taken. The University of Colorado student union voted Thursday
in support of firing tenured ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill.
Anna Uhls, "CU student union votes to fire Churchill," County News,
August 25, 2006 ---
Click Here
Question
Should the academic freedom principles guarantee the right to teach astrology?
KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of
the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led
politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired.
Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to
teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio
talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the
destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the
American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally
predictable battle lines were drawn between those who disagree about what
the doctrine of academic freedom does and does not allow.
Mr. Barrett’s critics argue that academic freedom
has limits and should not be invoked to justify the dissemination of lies
and fantasies. Mr. Barrett’s supporters (most of whom are not partisans of
his conspiracy theory) insist that it is the very point of an academic
institution to entertain all points of view, however unpopular. (This was
the position taken by the university’s provost, Patrick Farrell, when he
ruled on July 10 that Mr. Barrett would be retained: “We cannot allow
political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free
exchange of ideas.”)
Both sides get it wrong. The problem is that each
assumes that academic freedom is about protecting the content of a
professor’s speech; one side thinks that no content should be ruled out in
advance; while the other would draw the line at propositions (like the
denial of the Holocaust or the flatness of the world) considered by almost
everyone to be crazy or dangerous.
But in fact, academic freedom has nothing to do
with content. It is not a subset of the general freedom of Americans to say
anything they like (so long as it is not an incitement to violence or is
treasonous or libelous). Rather, academic freedom is the freedom of
academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any
body of material, however unpromising it might seem, to academic
interrogation and analysis.
Academic freedom means that if I think that there
may be an intellectual payoff to be had by turning an academic lens on
material others consider trivial — golf tees, gourmet coffee, lingerie ads,
convenience stores, street names, whatever — I should get a chance to try.
If I manage to demonstrate to my peers and students that studying this
material yields insights into matters of general intellectual interest,
there is a new topic under the academic sun and a new subject for classroom
discussion.
In short, whether something is an appropriate
object of academic study is a matter not of its content — a crackpot theory
may have had a history of influence that well rewards scholarly scrutiny —
but of its availability to serious analysis. This point was missed by the
author of a comment posted to the blog of a University of Wisconsin law
professor, Ann Althouse: “When is the University of Wisconsin hiring a
professor of astrology?” The question is obviously sarcastic; its intention
is to equate the 9/11-inside-job theory with believing in the predictive
power of astrology, and to imply that since the university wouldn’t think of
hiring someone to teach the one, it should have known better than to hire
someone to teach the other.
But the truth is that it would not be at all
outlandish for a university to hire someone to teach astrology — not to
profess astrology and recommend it as the basis of decision-making (shades
of Nancy Reagan), but to teach the history of its very long career. There
is, after all, a good argument for saying that Shakespeare, Chaucer and
Dante, among others, cannot be fully understood unless one understands
astrology.
The distinction I am making — between studying
astrology and proselytizing for it — is crucial and can be generalized; it
shows us where the line between the responsible and irresponsible practice
of academic freedom should always be drawn. Any idea can be brought into the
classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence
and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of
introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may
be thought to imply.
And this is where we come back to Mr. Barrett, who,
in addition to being a college lecturer, is a member of a group calling
itself Scholars for 9/11 Truth, an organization with the decidedly political
agenda of persuading Americans that the Bush administration “not only
permitted 9/11 to happen but may even have orchestrated these events.”
Is the fact of this group’s growing presence on the
Internet a reason for studying it in a course on 9/11? Sure. Is the
instructor who discusses the group’s arguments thereby endorsing them? Not
at all. It is perfectly possible to teach a viewpoint without embracing it
and urging it. But the moment a professor does embrace and urge it, academic
study has ceased and been replaced by partisan advocacy. And that is a
moment no college administration should allow to occur.
Provost Farrell doesn’t quite see it that way,
because he is too hung up on questions of content and balance. He thinks
that the important thing is to assure a diversity of views in the classroom,
and so he is reassured when Mr. Barrett promises to surround his
“unconventional” ideas and “personal opinions” with readings “representing a
variety of viewpoints.”
But the number of viewpoints Mr. Barrett presents
to his students is not the measure of his responsibility. There is, in fact,
no academic requirement to include more than one view of an academic issue,
although it is usually pedagogically useful to do so. The true requirement
is that no matter how many (or few) views are presented to the students,
they should be offered as objects of analysis rather than as candidates for
allegiance.
There is a world of difference, for example,
between surveying the pro and con arguments about the Iraq war, a perfectly
appropriate academic assignment, and pressing students to come down on your
side. Of course the instructor who presides over such a survey is likely to
be a partisan of one position or the other — after all, who doesn’t have an
opinion on the Iraq war? — but it is part of a teacher’s job to set personal
conviction aside for the hour or two when a class is in session and allow
the techniques and protocols of academic research full sway.
This restraint should not be too difficult to
exercise. After all, we require and expect it of judges, referees and
reporters. And while its exercise may not always be total, it is both
important and possible to make the effort.
Thus the question Provost Farrell should put to Mr.
Barrett is not “Do you hold these views?” (he can hold any views he likes)
or “Do you proclaim them in public?” (he has that right no less that the
rest of us) or even “Do you surround them with the views of others?”
Rather, the question should be: “Do you separate
yourself from your partisan identity when you are in the employ of the
citizens of Wisconsin and teach subject matter — whatever it is — rather
than urge political action?” If the answer is yes, allowing Mr. Barrett to
remain in the classroom is warranted. If the answer is no, (or if a yes
answer is followed by classroom behavior that contradicts it) he should be
shown the door. Not because he would be teaching the “wrong” things, but
because he would have abandoned teaching for indoctrination.
The advantage of this way of thinking about the
issue is that it outflanks the sloganeering and posturing both sides indulge
in: on the one hand, faculty members who shout “academic freedom” and mean
by it an instructor’s right to say or advocate anything at all with
impunity; on the other hand, state legislators who shout “not on our dime”
and mean by it that they can tell academics what ideas they can and cannot
bring into the classroom.
All you have to do is remember that academic
freedom is just that: the freedom to do an academic job without external
interference. It is not the freedom to do other jobs, jobs you are neither
trained for nor paid to perform. While there should be no restrictions on
what can be taught — no list of interdicted ideas or topics — there should
be an absolute restriction on appropriating the scene of teaching for
partisan political ideals. Teachers who use the classroom to indoctrinate
make the enterprise of higher education vulnerable to its critics and
shortchange students in the guise of showing them the true way.
Stanley Fish is a law professor at Florida International University.
Jensen Comment
It has always seemed to me that professors should have extreme freedom to teach
what fits within the constraints of the curriculum plan adopted by the college
as a whole. Every college has what is tantamount to a Curriculum Council that
approves contents of the curriculum. The fact that Barrett is allowed to teach
that the President of the United States deliberately targeted the deaths of over
3,000 Americans on 9/11 implies that the University of Wisconsin has approved
this nonsense in the curriculum plan.
Everyone is entitled to their own
opinion, but not their own facts. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Question
Was the recommendation to fire Ward Churchill based mainly on plagiarism, biased
research, or politics?
Ward Churchill should be fired for academic
misconduct — that’s
the decisionmade by the interim chancellor at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, after receiving
a reportfrom a faculty committee concluding that
Churchill is guilty of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. That report
shows that, even under difficult political conditions, it’s possible to do a
good job dealing with charges of research misconduct. The Colorado report on
Churchill provides a striking contrast to the flawed 2002
Emory University reporton Michael Bellesiles, the
historian of gun culture in America, who was found guilty of “falsification” in
one table. The contrast says a lot about the ways universities deal with outside
pressure demanding that particular professors be fired.
Jon Wiener, "A Lesson From the Churchill Inquiry," Inside Higher Ed, June
30, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/06/30/wiener
Jensen Comment
Jon Wiener clearly takes the side that plagiarism discoveries in Churchill's
writings are relatively minor and that politics played the major role in this
decision by the interim chancellor at the University of Colorado. What's more
clear is that what Churchill and Bellesiles call academic "research" is
unethically called "research" writing rather than "persuasive" writing with
cherry picking of facts used in support of opinion. If cherry picking is grounds
for firing in academe, an enormous number of professors would be fired around
the world, although this bias in academic "research" is one of my pet peeves
with the academy. Clearly this bias has not been grounds for firing in most
instances in our academy.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s
report
“How Many Ward Churchills?” has caused an uproar
in some corners of the Internet. Criticism has centered on two issues:
method and message. The report’s principal critics, Swarthmore history
professor Timothy Burke and The Myth of Political Correctness author
John K. Wilson, have attacked it, respectively, as a “casual, lazy,
cherrypicking survey of whatever materials the author(s) were able to access
on the Web,” and as part of “a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college
campuses.” Both critiques share confused and erroneous assumptions about the
report’s message and about ACTA’s right to criticize academic culture.
rke complains that the report’s criticisms
are ill-founded: They “see what they want to see,” they “ignore
context or specificity,” and they “avoid REAL argument of the kind
that scholars routinely engage in,” he grumbles. “The report talks
about the need to guarantee that students have unrestrained rights
to the free exchange of ideas in the classroom. Seriously, unless
you bother to get off your ass and stop reading catalogues online,
you have no idea what happens in classrooms.”
Setting aside Burke’s contemptuous tone, let’s
examine the gaps in his reasoning. Burke’s initial objections are
throw-away examples of faulty logic. The first, in which he accuses
ACTA of post ergo propter hoc thinking, is itself an example
of that logical fallacy: Burke sees ACTA seeing what ACTA wants to
see because Burke wants to see ACTA that way. But the course
descriptions ACTA cites are hardly unique or isolated. There are
hundreds of similarly tendentious descriptions published by
institutions across the country. They were chosen for their utter
typicality, not their uniqueness.
Burke’s second objection is remarkably
solipsistic — context and specificity are whatever he defines them
to be. ACTA quotes course descriptions verbatim, working from
exactly what students (and interested parents) read to select a
class. The reason? Course descriptions are designed to stand alone —
if they are all a prospective student needs to know about a class,
then they are also all tuition-paying parents, taxpayers, and
concerned citizens need in order to form a preliminary judgment.
This objection is part of Burke’s larger
criticism of the report’s reliance on course descriptions. But his
claim that these documents — the main resource students use to
decide whether or not to register for a class — do not tell us
anything about what happens in the classes in question is illogical
at best, disingenuous at worst. If true, this charge would mean
either that professors routinely engage in false advertising or that
the process by which students choose courses is a charade that fools
no one but students themselves.
In so arguing, Burke has chosen to stretch
a point ACTA freely concedes — that course descriptions are neither
courses nor perfect windows into the curriculum — in order to avoid
ACTA’s more fundamental argument about why course descriptions
matter. They matter because they are professors’ own public
representations of what happens in their classrooms. That so many
professors describe their pedagogical aims in ideologically loaded
ways raises entirely legitimate questions about accountability and
balance.
Of course, ACTA has never claimed to know
exactly what is happening in classrooms, and does not assume
authority to determine whether a class is pedagogically sound. All
ACTA’s report does is to urge college and university presidents,
deans, and faculty to examine the issue themselves. ACTA has already
outlined ways campus leaders can review departments and programs
while still being fair, respectful, and sensitive to academic
freedom and academic autonomy. Our 2005 report,
“Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action,”
was praised for its sensitivity to academic freedom and
self-governance. Burke’s hasty and intemperate critique studiously
evades these points.
Burke’s other criticism, that ACTA avoids
“REAL” argument because it does not argue in the same manner as
scholars do, is self-servingly dismissive: ACTA’s argument need not
be considered, Burke implies, because ACTA has not made its argument
as Burke thinks arguments should be made. But the truth is that
ACTA’s report is expressly not an academic paper. It is a report
designed to initiate dialogue about the college curriculum by
outlining some of the dominant terms and patterns displayed in
course offerings across the country. To condemn it, as Burke has,
for failing to maintain scholarly standards of data analysis is like
damning an apple for not being an orange.
Burke thus badly misunderstands ACTA’s
report. He both thinks ACTA isn’t qualified to judge the academic
curriculum and complains that ACTA has not framed a satisfactory
program of reform. But ACTA stresses that academics should address
the problem of self-regulation, and that they should do so now — in
the face of mounting legislative interest in controlling the
curriculum. ACTA’s report is as friendly to institutional
self-governance and academic freedom as it is possible for a
watchdog organization to be.
Now for Mr. Wilson.
Writing at
Inside Higher Ed, John K. Wilson treats
ACTA’s report as Exhibit A in “a vast new right-wing witch hunt on
college campuses”: “The far right is already pursuing leftist
academics for expressing their views in the classroom,” Wilson
writes. “ACTA threatens that academic freedom will be revoked from
colleges unless they start censoring their professors and ban
[courses that mention social justice, sex, or race].” But Wilson’s
scaremongering misrepresents the report to an audience who, he seems
to expect, will not check his sources.
Nowhere does ACTA advocate censoring
professors or banning courses. The report urges academic officials
to address — voluntarily, and in institutionally appropriate ways —
professors’ obligation to respect students’ academic freedom to
learn about controversial issues. The report recommends
institutional self-study, hiring administrators committed to
intellectual diversity, careful vetting of job candidates’ work,
review of personnel practices, post-tenure review, and — most
importantly — fostering robust debate on campus.
Here are the study’s concluding paragraphs,
which follow directly from the sentence Wilson quoted to argue that
ACTA is endorsing censorship:
Ultimately, greater accountability means
more responsible decision-making on the part of academic
administrators, more judicious hiring on the part of departments,
and more balanced, genuinely tolerant teaching on the part of
faculties. It also means acknowledging—openly and
unapologetically—that education and advocacy are not one and the
same, that the invaluable work of opening minds and honing critical
thinking skills cannot be done when professors are more interested
in seeing their own beliefs put into political practice.Finally, it
means defending the academic freedom of even the most militantly
radical academics. Our aim should not be to fire the Ward Churchills
for their views, but to insist that they do their job—regardless of
their ideological commitments. We must insist that, in their
classrooms, they teach fairly, fostering an open and robust exchange
of ideas and refusing to succumb to a proselytizing or otherwise
biased pedagogy. Only then will their ideas be subject to debate;
only then will they and their students learn to defend their
positions in the marketplace of ideas. Only then will other views
challenge, complicate, and even displace theirs. Only then can we
hope to create a truly diverse academy.
Far from calling for censorship or the
banning of classes, ACTA urges transparency about what professors
teach; far from trying to silence politically engaged professors,
ACTA defends academic freedom while at the same time noting that 1)
academic freedom does not mean freedom from criticism or freedom
from accountability; and 2) students have academic freedom too. Also
worth noting: When the Ward Churchill scandal broke in 2005,
ACTA defended Churchill
from those who sought to fire him for his speech.
Wilson mistrusts definitions of research
misconduct that include egregiously misleading citations — and no
wonder. His own argument about ACTA depends on the willful
manipulation of sources.
Neither Burke nor Wilson reads ACTA’s
report objectively, choosing instead to see it as proof of that worn
professorial complaint, that no one outside the ivory tower
understands academics. But what neither grasps is that it is not the
public’s job to intuit the special worth of professors. Insofar as
Burke and Wilson represent an academic consensus that outsiders are
not qualified to judge — or scrutinize, or question — higher
education, they signal the depth of the complacent insularity ACTA’s
report takes to task.
If ACTA’s report has a take-home message
for academics, it is that they urgently need to justify to a
skeptical public why their work deserves special protections. Only
then, ironically, will they have a chance of preserving the
independence they cherish. With transparency comes respect; with
accountability comes autonomy. That’s the paradoxical point of “How
Many Ward Churchills?” — that the more open one is about one’s
practices, the more willing one is to allow one’s work to be
scrutinized, the more responsive one is to legitimate criticisms,
the more likely one is to be allowed to carry on without undue
interference. What a pity that Burke and Wilson could not take off
their ideological blinders long enough to see that.
Anne D. Neal is president of the American Council of
Trustees and Alumni.
Some words from an anti-establishment professor that did not receive the
sound of silence, but the reactions are extremely divided between academics who
abhor Churchill's choice of words versus academics who defend his wording.
After the essay was brought to light, Hamilton
College said it had to honor its invitation in the interests of free speech,
though the college president, Joan Hinde Stewart, said she found the remarks
personally repugnant.
"Professor Is Assailed by Legislature and Vandals," by Michelle York, The
New York Times, February 3, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/nyregion/03hamilton.html?oref=login
Colorado lawmakers yesterday denounced an embattled
professor whose scheduled appearance at an upstate New York college was
canceled amid protests over his writings on the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he
compared the victims to Nazis.
The professor, Ward Churchill, meanwhile, rebuffed
calls to resign and said yesterday that his truck had been painted with
swastikas overnight as it sat in his driveway. The Boulder County Sheriff's
Department said it was investigating.
Calling his written remarks an "evil and
inflammatory blow to the healing process," the Colorado House of
Representatives unanimously approved a resolution condemning Professor
Churchill. "The victims of the World Trade Center were innocent in every
sense of the word and should always be remembered as innocent," the
resolution states.
The uproar concerns a three-year-old essay by
Professor Churchill, who teaches ethnic studies at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. In it, he called the workers killed in the World Trade Center on
Sept. 11 "little Eichmanns," technocrats who had a role in their
country's economic power and its foreign policy, which included the 1991 gulf
war.
Continued in the article
Some Students are Challenging Ward Churchill: A small group of students at the University of
Colorado confronted Ward Churchill outside his classroom Wednesday about his
essay on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. "Who do you
think deserved to die?" asked Ian VanBuskirk, 23, chairman of the College
Republicans. "Why don't you circle the names?" he said as he tried to hand
Churchill a marker while pointing to a large banner carried by other
students that listed the names of all the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Churchill, who was surrounded by students, as he made his way to his
basement...
Tillie Fong, "Challenging Churchill: College Republicans stage
confrontation outside class," Rocky Mountain News, December 1, 2005
---
http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4279691,00.html
Another Win for Ward Churchill A University of Colorado misconduct committee has
rejected a set of allegations that were made against Ward Churchill by the
family of his late ex-wife. Churchill is once again claiming that he has won
a victory, but the most serious charges against him remain alive. Churchill,
an ethnic studies professor at the university’s Boulder campus, has been
under investigation since a furor arose over controversial statements he
made . . .
"Another (Short-Term?) Win for Ward Churchill," Inside Higher Ed,
September 8, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/08/churchill
A University of Colorado professor at the center of a
national controversy over free speech and a person's right to criticize the
United States stepped forward to defend himself Tuesday night as college
administrators consider firing him.
The source of all the fury: an essay that ethnic
studies professor Ward Churchill wrote in the hours after the Sept. 11
attacks. In it, Churchill rationalized the attacks and likened some World
Trade Center victims to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
Churchill's essay was little noticed until about a
week before he was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in Upstate New York
about the “limits of dissent.” And then all hell broke loose.
The essay has stirred debate about whether it's taboo
in American discourse to take an alternative view about what happened on 9/11.
New York Gov. George Pataki called Churchill a “bigoted
terrorist supporter.” James Giaccone, whose brother Joseph died at the Trade
Center, labeled Churchill “a nut case.” Hamilton canceled last week's talk
because of death threats and other security concerns.
Here in Colorado, the Legislature branded Churchill's
words “evil and inflammatory.” Gov. Bill Owens asked the university to
fire him. The university's Board of Regents apologized, disavowed Churchill's
words and ordered a month-long investigation to see whether there are grounds
to dismiss him. Churchill, 57, holds a tenured position at the university.
More than three years after 9/11, the controversy
shows the attacks are as sensitive a subject as ever.
The Churchill debate pits advocates for free speech
and academic freedom against those who argue that there are limits if the
words in question suggest a bent toward violence — or even treason.
In his essay, Churchill used the incendiary words “little
Eichmanns” to suggest that some of the Trade Center victims were like the
notorious Nazi bureaucrat. He called them “a technocratic corps at the very
heart of America's global financial empire” who, like Eichmann, didn't kill
anyone directly but were part of the infrastructure of an imperialist
government.
Churchill said Tuesday that the “one phrase out of
one sentence in a 20-page essay” applied to the “technical cadre that make
this system hum,” not the janitors, service workers and other innocent
victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Churchill, who teaches American Indian studies and is
an activist on Native American issues, posited in his essay that America's
crimes abroad ultimately led terrorists to hijack and crash jetliners into
symbols of America's military and economic might.
Tuesday's speech in which Churchill defended himself
almost didn't happen. Campus officials postponed it Monday for security
reasons. Student organizers of the lecture said they had received threats.
But Churchill and his supporters sought a federal
court injunction in Denver on Tuesday to override that decision. After
university officials met again with the organizers, students “retracted”
their reports of death threats and urged that the speech go forward, said
Ronald Stump, vice chancellor for student affairs.
Last week, the Board of Regents ordered a 30-day
probe into the published writings and spoken remarks of Churchill. He recently
told his students he has written 24 books and 70 chapters in other
publications.
Campus police used handheld metal detectors to screen
those entering the hall for Tuesday's speech. Two campus activists were
arrested in a raucous display at last week's meeting of the regents. Churchill
has said that he has received more than 100 death threats and that last week,
someone spray-painted swastikas on his pickup.
In a written statement 10 days ago, Churchill said
his essay was not meant to defend the 9/11 attacks but to point out “that if
U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot
feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.” On Tuesday, he
explained further: “I don't want to get biblical here, but do unto others as
you would have them do unto yourself.”
Churchill's defenders say the uproar over his remarks
reflects the same kind of paranoia that drove Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his
search for communist infiltrators in American society in the 1950s.
“It's a witch hunt based on the perceptions of his
comments as being politically incorrect,” said Churchill's attorney, David
Lane of Denver.
Churchill has vowed to sue if the university tries to
dismiss him. And he says he will not apologize. “I'm not backing up an inch,”
he said Tuesday.
The dispute has ripped through a campus reeling from
months of unwelcome attention. Last year, Colorado's athletic department was
the subject of national scrutiny and continuing lawsuits over
sexual-harassment and sex-for-recruits scandals in the football program. Last
fall, a fraternity pledge died of alcohol poisoning just as the university
sought to overcome its image as a party school in the Rockies.
Churchill's critics on talk radio and the Internet
have been combing through his writings, recorded speeches and other
statements. Among the loudest are Denver radio commentators Dan Caplis and
Craig Silverman, two lawyers who play excerpts daily from a recorded
appearance Churchill made in California after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“This man is actively promoting violence against the United States,” said
Silverman, a former Denver prosecutor.
Free-speech advocates stress that Churchill has a
right to his views, no matter how unpopular.
“Much of the history of free speech in this country
is defending people who are outrageous or say reprehensible things,”
Columbia University historian Eric Foner said.
Ward Churchill argues his side of the case in The Denver Post,
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Jensen Comment: My reaction is that I've no objection to his right to
argue his case in every legitimate manner even though I might argue the opposite
on some issues. What I object to is the use of inappropriate words and
ethnic slurs that are not necessary to the argument and are offensive to many
persons on both sides of the issues. In the past two decades, ethnic groups and
feminists have hammered into us that some "languages" are
inappropriate in virtually every context. I would be condemned if I
used these languages. Why should Churchill get away with
it just because he argues on the side against the establishment?
He claims some things were taken out of context, but I don't think the
context justifies his language. A Jew does not become a Nazi just because
she or he works for a bond trading firm in the World Trade Center before 9/11.
(Note that not getting away with it does not necessarily mean that
Churchill should be fired from his job. I am not siding with the type of
punishment being contemplated.)
******************
I don't think Ward Churchill should lose his job over this incident even
though I do think he violated the trust we place in academic freedom of
speech and debate. My recommendation would be that he make a public apology
to the people he accuses of being Nazis, including victims of the 9/11
attacks and American business.
*****************
If the academy's reaction is rougher than a request for an apology, then
the academy may be over reacting. An example of what I consider an over
reaction is the action of the President of Eastern Washington University that
is entitled "Statement from EWU President Stephen Jordan on campus
speakers Ward Churchill and Ron Jeremy," --- http://www.ewu.edu/x20655.xml
The safely and security argument to me seems contrived. We've had speakers
at Trinity that probably were as much or more of a security risk. As I recall,
one speaker at Trinity had a stalker group that followed that speaker about
the country.
I don't know much of anything about Ron Jeremy other than the titles of two
of his movies. I won't comment about Jeremy other than to note that he
suspiciously sounds like a porn star in such films as "Buttman at Nudes a
Poppin' 7" and "What's the Lesbian Doing in My Pirate Movie?"
I'm not at all certain, however, that these are truly pornographic since I've
never seen the movies nor have I read any of the reviews. But I suspect
there's a porn popper aspect to his films.
As far as I know, academic freedom allows non-pornographic performances
from porn stars (whether or not Jeremy might be a porn star). Campus reaction
may be negative, but I don't know that a porn star would either be in physical
danger or cause physical danger. There are heckling dangers, but many speakers
are in danger of heckling.
Bob Jensen
The Denver Post Text of Churchill statement Tuesday, February 01, 2005 -
Here is the text of a statement distributed to the media Monday on behalf of
University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. Spelling and punctuation have
been left unaltered.
Press Release - Ward Churchill January 31, 2005
In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media
coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my
character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost,
indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will
be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.
* The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the
Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of
U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international
law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government,
acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and
fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences.
* I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply
pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and
destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is
returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed
attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and
unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King,
quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change
impossible make violent change inevitable."
* This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam
I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I
am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated
against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter
perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected
in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of
urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my
voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken
clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own
government."
* In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S.
Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a
result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that
"we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the
victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi
children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those
who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central
America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous
peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous
disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to
American deaths.
* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as
"Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire"
working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little
Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with
ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi
genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the
Allies.
* It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA
office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which
U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify
target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the
American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly
civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a
"legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as
announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but
were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than
"collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these
"standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they
should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.
* It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns"
characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it
was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers,
firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to
Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful?
Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a
description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we
ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow
others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.
* The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to
prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel
their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is
that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk
this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and
'40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint
when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as
well as my family, no less than anyone else.
* These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice
of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus
Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will,
of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be
addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to
the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I
actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the
real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic
debate in this country.
A serious punishment for Ward Churchill would be to make him continue to
teach and conduct research year in and year out for the miserable faculty raises
in academe, although his present nine-month salary of $94,000 is relatively high
for for a professor of ethnic studies. If CU prefers a more harsh punishment, he should be made Chair
of the Faculty Senate. If Mr. Churchill gets a buyout offer of $10
million, then I'm going to write a hurried essay plastered with swastikas.
"Dear Dr. Brazil: I'll quickly settle for a mere 5% of the targeted
capital campaign funds in our current fund drive at Trinity University." Internal discussions at Colorado University are
centering on a buyout offer to controversial professor Ward Churchill in order
to quell the tempest caused by his characterizations of victims of Sept. 11,
2001, as "little Eichmans" and to avoid a costly, drawn-out lawsuit,
the Denver Post reports. David Lane, Churchill's attorney said he had not yet
received word of such an offer, but he would consider it. "If they offer
$10 million, I would think about it. If they offer him $10, I wouldn't,"
Lane said. As WorldNetDaily reported, Churchill has most recently come under
fire for making an Indian-themed serigraph... "University considering Ward Churchill buyout: Daily
publicity over controversial professor, faculty protests damaging school's
reputation," World Net Daily, February 25, 2005 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43065
200 Professors at CU can find better uses for $10 million A full-page ad taken out by 200 University of Colorado
faculty members calls for the school to drop an inquiry into the writings of
professor Ward Churchill. The 200 faculty members' statement defends
Churchill's "right to speak what he believes to be the truth" based on
academic freedom rules designed to prevent faculty members from being fired for
unpopular views.
"CU faculty protest Churchill inquiry," Rocky Mountain News,
February 26, 2005 --- http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3579112,00.html
The Price of Fame
KCNC-TV Channel 4 in Colorado recently approached Churchill and tried to query
the wannabe Indian on whether he had broken a copyright law by making a mirror
image of an artist's work and selling it as his own. When the
"work" of Churchill is placed beside that of renowned artist Thomas E.
Mails and the two look like mirror images. (you can compare yourself
using the link below). . . . Churchill later
emerged with a convoluted explanation on how it was not his fault that no one
knew the image was "an orignial artwork by me after Tomas Mails."
Huh? Is he saying he just copied (and sold) it and
believed that was okay?
"Ward Churchill, a Mirror Image," The National Ledger, February
26, 2005 --- http://www.nationalledger.com/scribe/archives/2005/02/ward_churchill_6.shtml
If CU suspected he was not truthfully a Native American, would they have
hired Mr. Churchill for a tenure track position without holding a doctoral
degree? Churchill claims to be Indian to emphasize his own
anti-American agenda. He has used a life-long fabricated association with
Indians to create a political career, which he otherwise could never have
achieved. In view of such fraud, it is high time to examine just how one is
identified as an Indian these days,...
David Yeagley, "Ward Churchill Exploits Indians," FrontPageMagazine,
February 28, 2005 --- http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17172
Jensen Comment: Why can't we all be Native American? Mr. Churchill
doesn’t believe in blood quantum requirements anyway. “You don't measure
identity by either pounds or percentage points unless you're some kind of
Nazi,” he said in 1994.
Newt Gingrich -- a professor turned politician -- thinks it's time to get
rid of tenure
Aren't you a little glad he didn't have it? According to a report on The National Review's Web
site, Gingrich on Friday said that the Ward Churchill controversy shows that
"you don't need tenure in this country anyway." Gingrich said that
there are "75 whacked-out foundations that would hire him for life."
More broadly, Gingrich reportedly told an audience at the American Enterprise
Institute: "We ought to say to campuses, it's over. We should say to state
legislatures, why are you making us pay for this? Boards of regents are
artificial constructs of state law. Tenure is an artificial social construct.
Tenure did not exist before the 20th century, and we had free speech before
then. You could introduce a bill that says, proof that you're anti-American is
grounds for dismissal." There are lots of arguments about tenure, of
course, and plenty of critics of the tenure system are not seeking to squelch
controversial ideas. Some younger scholars see tenure protecting professorial
deadwood in jobs they covet. Princeton's president, Shirley Tilghman, once
published an article (which she disavowed after getting her current job)
suggesting that the tenure system hurt female academics because of the overlap
in scholars' lives between the period for winning tenure and having children.
But Gingrich's statement that free speech existed prior to tenure is worth
examining.
Scott Jaschik, "Ward & Newt & Tenure," Inside Higer
Ed, February 28, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/ward_newt_tenure
After the adverse publicity, I wonder if his speaking fees have increased
or decreased? Administrators (University of Wisconsin --- Whitewater)
wrestled with the decision to host Churchill, as Hamilton and several other
schools canceled appearances. It was decided to go forward as planned only when
it was determined that the event could be held safely, and after an exchange of
letters with Churchill in which he said he expected to be paid his $4,000
honorarium even if the event was shelved, and that he would use some of the
money to come and speak on another occasion to those who wanted to hear him. "Wisconsin university prepares for Churchill," Rocky
Mountain News, March 1, 2005 --- http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3584230,00.html
Churchill's words were certainly incendiary and
exaggerated. Not everyone in the WTC was a powerbroker making decisions
negatively affecting people around the globe. But toning it down and looking
at the essence, there are some disturbing issues lurking in his remarks.
First, I must stress that I am totally and utterly
against random killings as a means of striking back, making a point or for
whatever purpose. The suffering thereby caused has to bring pain to anyone of
compassion and who thinks about the families affected, whose lives will never
fully recover from the tragedy of loss.
And the same holds for others around the world. One
must weep for the innocents and their bereaved families in Iraq and
Afghanistan who were killed accidentally by our bombs.
Now, the troubling issues. Churchill raises the point
of whether they were "innocent." I have to raise the same question
about myself. If one is aware of injustice and suffering of others, yet does
little or nothing about it, is one totally innocent? Innocence, like freedom,
are not on-off dichotomies where one is one or the other. It is much more
complicated than that. So translating his point to this: that too many of us
go about our lives and do our jobs not fully conscious about the consequences
of what we do and what we don't do. What was so shocking that came out at
Nuremburg is that the people administering the Nazi death machine were not
people who we would ordinarily think of as evil; rather they were just doing
what they were told were their jobs and not thinking too much about the
consequences.
One of the main reasons I resigned from teaching
accounting is that I finally decided it was too amoral. Some of my students
would work on and assist organizations such as the Red Cross that does fine
work (usually). Some (perhaps the same ones) would work on and assist General
Dynamics to produce better weapons systems. Some, like my infamous fellow
alumn at Northwestern would help engineer the next major accounting fraud. In
other words, my teaching accounting would not further my goal of helping solve
some of the world's problems and reducing suffering and strife.
I find that Americans are relatively disinterested in
international affairs and what our government and what the corporations are
doing out there. Until it comes back to bite us. Then since we have no solid
sense of history behind these events, we are confused and dismayed. We then
follow leaders who have a definite and simple story about what happened and
why.
I'm sitting comfortably in my living room looking out
over our beautiful meadow and trees as I write this. I can't imagine what it's
like to live hungry, with intermittent electricity, bad water and the risk of
being blow up any minute by some indoctrinated suicide bomber. I think we
better start paying attention to what we do. The world is getting increasingly
interconnected and our ability to isolate is declining. I'm truly fearful that
if we (meaning everyone) keep doing what we're doing, it is only a matter of
time until some drives into one of our cities with a nuclear device in the
trunk of their car.
Robin Alexander
Updates after March 6, 2005
Not a happy time for the academy. University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman
announced Monday that she is resigning amid a football recruiting scandal and a
national controversy over an activist professor who had compared victims of the
Sept. 11 attacks to a Nazi.Hoffman,
who has been president for five years, told the Board of Regents in a letter
that her resignation is effective June 30 or whenever the board names a
successor. SI.com, March 7, 2005 --- http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/football/ncaa/03/07/cu.hoffman.ap/index.html?cnn=yes
Hoffman said last week that Churchill would not be
fired if the review turns up only inflammatory comments, not misconduct.
The furor over Churchill erupted in January after he
was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Campus officials
discovered an essay and follow-up book by Churchill in which he said the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks were a response to a history of American abuses abroad,
particularly against indigenous peoples.
Among other things, he said those killed in the trade
center were "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who
organized Nazi plans to exterminate Jews. The college canceled Churchill's
appearance, citing death threats and concerns about security.
Jensen Comment: A review of Ward Churchill's speeches and writings is
being conducted to determine if the professor overstepped his boundaries of
academic freedom and whether that should be grounds for dismissal.
Purge of conservatives at Colorado University? Mitchell taught at the Hallett Diversity Program for 24
straight semesters. That is, until he made the colossal error of actually
presenting a (gasp!) diverse opinion, quoting respected conservative black
intellectual Thomas Sowell in a discussion about affirmative action.
Sitting 5 feet from a pink triangle that read "Hate-Free Zone," the
progressive head of the department berated Mitchell, calling him a racist.
"That would have come as a surprise to my black children," explains
Mitchell, who has nine kids, as of last count, two of them adopted
African-Americans. People say liberals run the university. I wish they
did," Mitchell says. "Most liberals understand the need for
intellectual diversity. It's the radical left that kills you." So
Churchill may play the part, but Mitchell is the true dissenter at CU. Why
did he stay this long? "I stay to create enthusiasm and love for
history," Mitchell says. " And I am successful at that. I love the
classroom, and I love my students." Once,
president Hoffman promised increased intellectual diversity at CU - not a purge
of conservatives. Another promise broken. David Harsanyi, "A CU prof deserving of sympathy," Denver
Post, March 7, 2005 --- http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~31908~2748616,00.html
Also see "Heretics in the Academy?: On campuses across the
country, conservative professors face a sea of hostility and ideological
bias," by Jennifer Jacobson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp.
A8-A11.
These are sources you might look at when tracking the resignation of the
president of Colorado University and the saga of Ward Churchill and his little
eichmans:
She says it's the budget rather than her bad boys
The president of the University of Colorado, Elizabeth Hoffman, resigned Monday
after struggling with a football recruiting scandal and a firestorm over a
professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to Nazis . . . She said in a
telephone interview that the Churchill case was not the impetus for her
resignation, but that it had become a distraction that was hindering her ability
to address what she called a more serious problem, a budget crisis at the
university over a shortage of state financing. "It was becoming
increasingly difficult to be strong on the issues that were important in the
long run because it kept coming back to questions about me," Dr. Hoffman
said, "so I decided I had to take my future, my job, off the table."
Dr. Hoffman, 58, was named the university's president on Sept. 1, 2000, after
serving as provost at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Kirk Johnson, "University President Resigns at Colorado Amid Turmoil,"
The New York Times, March 8, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/national/08colorado.html
Ideologies make them both predictable and dreary
I am growing tired of academics whose
ideologies make them both predictable and dreary, and I care not a fig if they
are professional America knockers or professional America boosters. As with any
country possessing the power to "murder and create" (T.S. Eliot's
phrase), America has not always used its might wisely, but there are hundreds of
crosses dotting the Normandy beachheads that remind us of the times when we were
prepared to sacrifice to set others free. Among the many things Mr. Churchill
needs to learn is this lesson and others like it.
Sanford Pinsker, The Irascible Professor, March 10, 2005 --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-10-05.htm
Bob Jensen's “Evil
Empire” essay --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyEvilEmpire.htm
A Done Deal with Ward Churchill Blows Up Settlement negotiations between the University of
Colorado and professor Ward Churchill stalled Friday because of renewed
opposition by groups that want to see him fired even if it takes a court fight
to make him go away. "The ball is in CU's court," said Churchill
attorney David Lane, who confirmed negotiations have hit a wall. Late Thursday,
a settlement was all but done after lawyers for Churchill and the university
agreed on financial terms. But when revelations arose Friday about a plagiarism
complaint against Churchill, regents balked. Churchill critics, including former
state Senate President John Andrews, and private citizens across...
Arthur Kane and Dave Curtin "Regents balk at Churchill deal:
Plagiarism allegation stalls buyout proposal," Denver Post, March
12, 2005 --- http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2758694,00.html
Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/a_deal_collapses
If CU suspected he was not truthfully a Native American, would they have
hired Mr. Churchill for a tenure track position without holding a doctoral
degree? Churchill claims to be Indian to emphasize his own
anti-American agenda. He has used a life-long fabricated association with
Indians to create a political career, which he otherwise could never have
achieved. In view of such fraud, it is high time to examine just how one is
identified as an Indian these days,...
David Yeagley, "Ward Churchill Exploits Indians," FrontPageMagazine,
February 28, 2005 --- http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17172
Jensen Comment: Why can't we all be Native American? Mr. Churchill
doesn’t believe in blood quantum requirements anyway. “You don't measure
identity by either pounds or percentage points unless you're some kind of
Nazi,” he said in 1994.
Churchill said his mother and grandmother told him
he was part Indian, and he thought of himself that way while growing up in
Illinois.
Dan Elliott, "Prof Weary in Fight on 9/11 Comments," ABC News,
March 18, 2005 --- http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=592952&page=1
Churchill has many critics, some on his own campus.
Law professor Paul Campos said Churchill's writings are unfair and unbalanced,
and there is evidence he has plagiarized and fabricated material.
"That goes beyond being an ideological hack and having no balance or nuance
or intelligence in your work," Campos said. "It goes into the realm of
academic fraud, which is a firing offense." Churchill said his
critics have mangled the facts in their rush to condemn him. He said the
inquiry is not merely an investigation of his work but a pretext for a broader
campaign to discourage critical thinking and reduce higher education to "an
advanced vo-tech" where students are taught skills useful to
corporations. "It's not about me, and it's not about 'little
Eichmanns,' either," he said.
Dan Elliott, "Prof Weary in Fight on 9/11 Comments," ABC News,
March 18, 2005 --- http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=592952&page=1
Updates on March 25, 2005
The report notes six allegations of either plagiarism or distortion of
scholarly materials Where Churchill may face difficulty is in allegations
of research misconduct. The report notes six allegations of either plagiarism or
distortion of scholarly materials. In one of the cases, the report notes, a
lawyer at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, concluded that one of its
professors had been plagiarized by Churchill. The Dalhousie professor also
charges that Churchill made a threatening phone call to her — a charge he has
denied.
"Churchill Survives — For Now,," Inside Higher Ed, March 25, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/25/churchill
The university received complaints from Indian leaders 10 years ago that
Churchill was being untruthful The report also examined an unusual allegation that has
been raised: That Churchill is not an American Indian, as he has claimed.
According to the report, Churchill has always identified himself to the
university as an American Indian, and the university received complaints from
Indian leaders 10 years ago that Churchill was being untruthful. At the time,
the university concluded that self-identification was an appropriate way for
Churchill to declare himself an Indian, so the matter was dropped. Since the
university ruled on the matter a decade ago, the review concluded that it could
not investigate questions with regard to Churchill’s hiring. But, it did say
that if Churchill is misrepresenting himself as an Indian, that could constitute
research misconduct.
"Churchill Survives — For Now,," Inside Higher Ed, March 25, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/25/churchill
“A remaining question is whether Professor Churchill
has attempted to gain a scholarly voice, credibility, and an audience for his
scholarship by wrongfully asserting that he is an Indian. There is evidence that
Professor Churchill’s assertion of his Indian status is material to his
scholarship, yet there is serious doubt about his Indian identity,” the review
said. “The evidence is sufficient to warrant referral of this question to the
Committee on Research Misconduct for inquiry and, if appropriate, investigation
to determine whether Professor Churchill relies on his Indian identity in his
scholarship and, if so, whether he has fabricated that identity.”
"Churchill Survives — For Now,," Inside Higher Ed, March 25, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/25/churchill
Colorado University is an "lunatic asylum" says one of its inmates Both Ward Churchill and one of his legislative critics
compared the University of Colorado to an asylum this weekend — showing that the
debate over the controversial professor has not been put to rest by a university
review released Thursday. Churchill says that the new investigation
requested by the review — this time an inquiry into whether he engaged in
plagiarism and other forms of research misconduct — is unfair. In a speech in
San Francisco Friday night, he said that the new investigation at Colorado,
which will examine among other things his claims of being an American Indian,
was befitting to a “lunatic asylum,” and he vowed not to cooperate with
the investigation, according to a report in The Rocky Mountain News.
Scott Jaschik, "Churchill Wars Continue," Inside Higher Ed, March 28,
2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/28/churchill