The Try-Works

• Finally, a Rocky Mountain News headline I can get behind.  (Thanks, Vic.)
• I love that Vincent Carroll and Craig Silverman are getting all worked up about the Eichmann debate, by the way.  Especially since they seem to be unintentionally arguing that if one accepts Hannah Arendt’s take on Eichmann, then, well, Ward Churchill is right.
• Good Lord, can no one stop Mr. Martin’s whining?
• Exclusionary dogmatism.
• Unsurprisingly, over at the Academic Freedom blog, John K. Wilson ain’t confused about the lynching at all.  And he’s kind enough to send Aaron Barlow down in flames.
• “’Some people push back–On the justice of roosting chickens’ was written shortly after the events of 9/11, and from a perspective unfamiliar to most of us, that of a person of Native American heritage angry over historic events and injustices. I’ve read it and I get it, which doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with it.”
• The Ward Churchill South Park episode, here.

All right, following are highlights from Ward Churchill’s submission to the Regents on the day of the lynching.   And, yeah, it’s almost the whole damn thing, but I want a good chunk of it here on the main page.  It’s a wonderful, clear summary as to why some of us have stood right by Mr. Churchill throughout the process, even when there seemed to be nobody else around.  It’s also a great synopsis of the last two and a half years.

On the media lynching and CU administration’s hanging Ethnic Studies faculty and students out to dry.  This is where it begins.

Almost immediately, two governors, including Colorado’s Bill Owens, publicly demanded Professor Churchill’s firing, while three state legislatures, this Board of Regents and Interim Chancellor DiStefano issued formal denunciations of his views. In the following months, over 400 major stories appeared in the local print media alone, as well as more than a hundred television news spots, and virtually continuous “coverage” on local Clear Channel radio stations. The attacks extended nationally, as Professor Churchill was targeted in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, National Review, The New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, and other such periodicals. Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly dedicated segments of The O’Reilly Factor, to criticizing him on more than 40 consecutive nights.

Meanwhile, well-organized e-mail, telephone, and fax campaigns drawing upon groups identifying themselves as “Christian Conservatives” delivered over 8,000 missives to Professor Churchill and the Ethnic Studies Department demanding that he be fired on “patriotic” and/or “moral” grounds. Their objective was to remove Professor Churchill from academia and silence his political speech; it bore no relationship to such lofty goals as “maintaining scholarly standards” or “preserving the integrity of the university.” Many of these communications expressed a racial animus so ugly that it must be read to be believed, yet University administrators, while claiming to be concerned about racism on campus, refused to even acknowledge these attacks on their faculty, staff and students. (See Exhibit B, Open Letter from the Department of Ethnic Studies, receipt of which was never acknowledged by any CU official.)

Despite Professor Churchill’s more than quarter-century record of exemplary service to the University of Colorado, no University official ever offered any statement in his defense or attempted to curb the media frenzy. Rather, the “trial by media” was encouraged by CU’s continuous and highly selective (and therefore prejudicial) violations of its own rules concerning the confidentiality of personnel processes.

The overtly hostile statements and actions of CU officials actively facilitated a microscopic and highly biased media intrusion into every aspect of Professor Churchill’s life. His privacy and physical security, as well as those of his immediate and extended family and colleagues, was rendered all but nonexistent, while anyone who ever had scholarly or personal differences with him was encouraged—in several cases solicited—to advance allegations to the University regarding his work, political positions, and personal life.

On the Regent’s emergency meeting, and Mr. Tom Lucero, one of the Regents, whom was calling for Churchill’s head from the get-go, and on the first pass at an attempt to fire Ward Churchill for his political speech.  Leading, of course, to the drummed up academic fraud charges.

As this media frenzy was just beginning, and in complete disregard of their own Laws pertaining to Academic Freedom, the Board of Regents convened an “emergency” meeting on February 3, 2005. (At least one Regent, Tom Lucero, had already made televised statements suggesting that Professor Churchill should be fired because of his statement concerning the attacks of September 11, 2001.) At that meeting Interim Chancellor DiStefano publicly denounced Professor Churchill’s views as “repugnant.” He then announced a 30-day investigation (later extended to 45 days), which—despite his explicitly stated bias—he himself would conduct in concert with Law School Dean David Getches and Arts & Sciences Dean Todd Gleeson.

These administrators comprised an “ad hoc committee” whose stated agenda was to examine everything Professor Churchill had publicly stated or published in order to determine whether any of it “crossed the line” or “exceeded the boundaries” of constitutionally protected free speech. The convening of a University body for any such purpose abridged not only the rights of Academic Freedom contractually guaranteed every faculty member under the “Laws” of the Regents, but also the guarantees of free speech, due process and equal protection contained in the Constitutions of the United States and State of Colorado.

Professor Churchill was never even given the courtesy of official notification of the February 3 Regents’ meeting, nor of the “investigation” subsequently conducted by the Interim Chancellor’s ad hoc committee. During the ad hoc committee’s investigation, he was never confronted with nor provided an opportunity to respond to accusations made against him. In direct and deliberate violation of University rules requiring confidentiality in personnel matters, on March 24, 2005, Interim Chancellor DiStefano convened a press conference to announce the “findings” of his ad hoc committee and to distribute copies of its “Report” to the media. (This and numerous other University statements were and are still publicly posted on the official CU-Boulder website.)

The ad hoc committee concluded that Professor Churchill’s writings and statements were all constitutionally-protected political expression. Since this was self-evident from the outset—were it otherwise, the appropriate investigative body would have been the FBI, not a university committee—this simply confirmed the fundamental illegitimacy of the inquiry. At that point, an apology not only to Professor Churchill but to the entire faculty—all of whose guarantee of Academic Freedom had been compromised—would have been in order.

On CU’s soliciting charges against Ward Churchill.  At least those which they didn’t simply copy and paste out of the virulently anti-Churchill Rocky Mountain News.

No such apology was offered, however. Instead, the ad hoc committee went on to claim that it had received allegations of research misconduct by Professor Churchill and announced that it was forwarding certain of these to the University’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct (SCRM). As the evidence has since established, and contrary to President Brown’s assertion, the University did not simply “receive” allegations; rather, they were solicited by University administrators. No written complaints had been received from any aggrieved party when the research misconduct investigation was commenced. Furthermore, all of the allegations concerned material written by Professor Churchill many years, sometimes decades, earlier. Had there been substantive problems with this work, they would have been investigated much earlier.

By that point Professor Churchill had published more than 4,000 pages and 12,000 footnotes, exclusive of reprints and translations, After an unprecedented effort to scour this body of work and to solicit allegations from all possible sources, including known political adversaries and former in-laws, approximately five pages of text and a half dozen footnotes were referred to the SCRM for investigation. The questions referred were of the sort that could be raised with respect to the work of any prolific scholar, but clearly such investigations have never been the norm, either at CU or any other U.S. university.

Although several of the allegations were dismissed after being refuted by Professor Churchill, the SCRM forwarded seven charges to an Investigative Committee. (Problems with the composition of that Committee, its process, and its findings are summarized below.) The pretextual nature of the investigation, as well as its consistent violations of established personnel policies and basic notions of due process and fundamental fairness is illustrated by the fact that well after the investigation was underway, then-Interim Chancellor DiStefano forwarded another 59 pages of material downloaded from the Rocky Mountain News website to the SCRM, with instructions to Professor Churchill to answer any “new allegations” contained therein.

On SCRM’s findings, Ward Churchill’s appeal, and Hank Brown’s contempt for due process.

Predictably, the SCRM Investigative Committee—in a Report that is itself now the subject of two separate sets of research misconduct charges—concluded that Professor Churchill had committed research misconduct with respect to certain of the charges. Although only one of its five members actually advocated dismissal, a majority of the SCRM and then-Interim Chancellor DiStefano–who, having served as “complainant,” now became sentencing judge—disregarded the Committee’s recommendations and advocated the harshest possible sanctions.

A formal appeal by Professor Churchill to a panel of the Faculty Senate Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee resulted in a finding that the University had not met its burden of proof on several of the charges brought by the SCRM Investigative Committee. The P&T Appeal Panel did uphold the Investigative Committee’s findings on a handful of technical charges enumerated below. A majority of the P&T Panel recommended a one-year suspension and demotion, not dismissal. This recommendation, like that of the SCRM Investigative Committee, was disregarded, this time by CU President Hank Brown who recommended that the Regents fire Professor Churchill.

On the bizarre workings of SCRM.  (Rhymes with “scum,” just so you know.)

Given the intensely negative slant of the extensive Denver/Boulder media coverage of this case, and the hostile climate at the University of Colorado–including, but not limited to the fact that the Interim Chancellor was serving as “complainant” in the case—Professor Churchill requested that the Investigative Committee be composed of objective, outside experts in his field of American Indian Studies. In light of the bias already exhibited against him by law dean David Getches, Professor Churchill specifically asked for the exclusion of law school faculty.

Instead, the SCRM appointed a 5-person committee dominated by CU insiders and chaired by CU law professor and former prosecutor Mimi Wesson. SCRM Chair Joseph Rosse knew that, over a year earlier, Professor Wesson had denounced Professor Churchill, likening him to “charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers” like O.J. Simpson, Bill Clinton, and Michael Jackson. In the same e-mail, she advanced her flawed “traffic stop” analogy ultimately used in the Investigative Report to justify the pretextual origins of the investigation.

The Committee included no American Indians and no experts in the field of American Indian Studies. The closest was an expert in federal Indian law—a very distinct field—whose ideological views were known to be adverse to Professor Churchill’s. Two scholars who are experts in the field, one an American Indian, had initially been appointed, but both withdrew when they came under attack in the local media and University officials failed to make any defense of its selection process. (One, Professor Robert A. Williams, Jr., has testified to the P&T Appeal Panel that the Committee appeared biased and that he does not consider its Report credible.) Although eminently qualified American Indian scholars were available and willing to serve in their stead, they were ignored.

And.

Despite numerous requests, Professor Churchill was never informed of the standards being applied. In fact, even during the P&T Appeal Process, long after their Report had been issued, Committee members were unable to clarify what standards they had used.

The Report claims that American Historical Association (AHA) protocols and other unspecified standards were utilized. It falsely states that Professor Churchill agreed to AHA standards and never reveals which other standards were used. In some instances these appear to have been the standards used in legal publications; in other cases they seem more akin to “gut” reactions. The result was the retroactive application of an apparently randomly selected set of “standards” which have never been applied to any other member of the CU faculty.

And weirdest of all.

The Committee also artificially restricted Professor Churchill’s ability to respond to the charges. He was prevented from speaking directly to expert witnesses, even his own, and was required to e-mail his questions across the room to the committee chair. This caused considerable confusion and allowed Professor Wesson to “interpret” what he was asking, sometimes fundamentally changing his meaning; and generally impairing his ability to elicit information.

So, yeah, weird.  And, of course, obviously biased.

That the Committee was both biased and politically motivated is reflected in several statements made in its Report. For example, all of Professor Churchill’s witnesses were American Indians and each confirmed that his interpretation of the smallpox epidemics at issue conformed to their peoples’ oral traditions. Yet the Committee, composed entirely of non-Indians gratuitously accused Professor Churchill of “disrespecting” American Indian oral history.

In another example, the Committee exceeded its mandate to function as fact-finding body first by recommending sanctions, and then by attempting to justify its harsh recommendations by referencing Professor Churchill’s “attitude.” In other words, he was given the “Catch-22” option of apologizing for things he did not do or being condemned for being insufficiently contrite.

Finally, the political motivations and bias of the Investigative Committee can be seen in the fact that its first move, upon completion of its Report in this “confidential” personnel matter, was to hold a press conference and publicly disseminate the Report. It still remains prominently featured on the University’s website where, tellingly, none of Professor Churchill’s responses, even those identified as exhibits to the Report, are available.

The record contains numerous other examples of how the investigative committee abandoned its mandate to serve as a nonadversarial information-seeking body, in the process denying Professor Churchill his rights to due process and equal protection. In light of the many problems evident in the composition and procedures of the Committee, it is not surprising that it proceeded to do exactly what it accuses Professor Churchill of doing: it tailored its Report to fit its conclusions.

On the seven charges which the SCRM finally came up with after their year or so of cracker-jack investigative work.

* The first two allegations addressed in the Investigative Report concern Professor Churchill’s summaries of the impact on native peoples of two federal laws, the Allotment Act and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. In its 20-page analysis, the Committee acknowledged that his conclusions may be correct, but criticized the nature of his citations and faulted him for having failed to publish a response to a particular critic. On the Allotment Act the Committee again acknowledged that Professor Churchill was essentially correct and his accuser generally incorrect. However, the Report accuses him of getting the details wrong, despite the fact that he wrote only a few paragraphs on the subject and, thus, did not address any details. For this he is charged with falsification.

* The third charge concerned Professor Churchill’s statement that there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that John Smith introduced smallpox among the Wampanoags in the early 1600s. The committee took it upon itself to decide that this was an “implausible” conclusion and that, therefore, he had not cited to enough circumstantial evidence. This is characterized as both falsification and fabrication.

* Professor Churchill’s two paragraph statement that in 1837 the army deliberately spread smallpox among the Mandans at Fort Clark generated 44 pages of analysis on the fourth allegation. While basically affirming his conclusions, the Committee expressed displeasure with the nature, thoroughness and, in some cases, the sources of his citations. Although numerous scholars have made the same general point without any citation, Professor Churchill was charged with falsification, fabrication, and deviation from accepted reporting practices.

* The fifth charge involved the use of material from a pamphlet circulated by a long-defunct environmental group called Dam the Dams, whose representative stated he was happy to have the article used. In his initial use, Professor Churchill gave Dam the Dams co-authorship credit and presented uncontested evidence that this credit was removed by the magazine’s publisher. In all subsequent use of the material, he credited Dam the Dams in his footnotes. For this he was charged with plagiarism.

* The sixth allegation asserted that Professor Churchill plagiarized an article he had ghostwritten for Rebecca Robbins. The Committee concluded that he had not plagiarized it, but that having allowed a junior scholar to take credit for the original piece was a failure to comply with established standards of authorship attribution. It reached this conclusion despite the fact that ghostwriting is common practice and the committee could point to no rule or standard that had actually been violated.

* Finally, with respect to the seventh allegation, the Committee concluded that Professor Churchill had committed plagiarism by not preventing portions of an essay written by Fay Cohen to be published under the name of an Institute of which he was a co-founder, in a volume edited by a third person. The fact that his role consisted only of copy-editing the volume, that Professor Cohen never complained to the publisher, and that she acknowledged having been solicited by CU’s law dean David Getches to make this complaint were deemed irrelevant. Neither Professor Cohen nor the Dalhousie University report on the matter has ever accused Professor Churchill of plagiarism; the closest that report came to doing so was its statement the Professor Churchill has “some” involvement in the process. Thus, the claim that Professor Churchill plagiarized Fay Cohen’s material is simply not supported by the record.

After having gone through thousands of pages of Professor Churchill’s writings and actively solicited research misconduct complaints, these seven charges were all that remained as the basis for the Investigative Committee’s findings of research misconduct and then-Interim Chancellor DiStefano (acting as both complainant and sentencing judge) to recommendation that Professor Churchill be fired.

On the P&T Appeal Panel’s findings, which tossed out three of SCRM’s charges completely, and over-ruled their recommendation of termination, going for a one year suspension instead.

First, the Panel concluded that but for Professor Churchill’s constitutionally protected speech, the research misconduct investigation and recommendation to dismiss would not have occurred. Despite recognizing the illegitimate origins of the investigation, however, the Panel proceeded to make its own assessment of its results.

The Appeal Panel acknowledged that the standards by which Professor Churchill’s work were to be judged were not made explicit while he was engaging in the scholarship, nor even during the investigation. It found no evidence that ghostwriting is explicitly prohibited by any standards in any discipline. It concluded that “mistakes” were or may have been made in the SCRM’s failure to abide by its rules on confidentiality, in its failure to inform Professor Churchill about bias exhibited by Investigative Committee chair Mimi Wesson, and its refusal to grant Professor Churchill an extension of time to respond to new allegations.

The Panel rejected the Investigative Committee’s conclusions that Professor Churchill “fabricated or falsified evidence” concerning (i) the General Allotment Act, (ii) the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, (iii) John Smith’s role in spreading smallpox among the Wampanoags, (iv) the Army’s intentional spreading of smallpox at Fort Clark, and (v) the Army’s storing, rather than distributing, of smallpox vaccine. It also determined that the Investigative Committee “exceeded its charge” in two instances.

Hank Brown and the Regents simply ignored the appeals process, of course.  Leading to the final piece of the puzzle: CU’s servile slavishness to political and financial interests.

The efforts of University officials to obscure the political nature of this campaign to discredit and terminate Professor Churchill by engaging in a protracted “research misconduct investigation” have resulted, predictably, in a complex paper trail of accusations and rebuttals. They hope, no doubt, to have generated enough smoke to convince this Board of Regents, as well as the general public, that there must be an underlying fire. Nonetheless, despite the best efforts of CU administrators and the local media, academics, scholarly and activist organizations, and concerned individuals nationally and internationally have seen through this charade.

The question remains, however: why would the administrators of the University of Colorado go to such extraordinary lengths not only to sanction Professor Churchill for his views, but to ensure maximum publicity – e.g., by announcing press conferences and releasing their “reports” at each step of the process? By taking this route, University officials have not only risked liability for violating their legal obligations but have squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds and brought CU into academic disrepute among hundreds of the country’s most renown scholars (see Exhibits I, J, and K), and generated protest from hundreds of CU students (see Exhibit L).

Across the country, there have been many cases in which a professor’s work or statement has become the subject of political controversy. Almost without exception, when university administrators have taken a clear but firm position supporting Academic Freedom, the furor has died down within a few days, or perhaps weeks. Yet CU officials did exactly the opposite , fueling the publicity by continuously catering to the media. What prompted this course of action?

Clearly, it was not concern for “academic integrity.” The fine-tooth combing of Professor Churchill’s work yielded only a few flimsy charges of research misconduct which have been misleadingly labeled as “plagiarism” or “falsification/ fabrication of evidence.” Similar, if not more egregious, charges could be brought against virtually any CU faculty members who has published regularly if their work were subjected to similar scrutiny. Yet the University has not embarked on such a quest in the name of maintaining scholarly standards.

It has now been established that CU administrators did not independently receive allegations against Professor Churchill but, instead, actively solicited them. What prompted them to go to such extreme efforts to find a justification for his dismissal? The only reasonable explanation appears to be external political and financial pressure on the University, pressures which appear to have led CU officials to directly violate this Board of Regents’ stated Laws on Academic Freedom.

. . .

University officials have been understandably reluctant to divulge their real motivations for this seemingly irrational course of conduct. However, it is apparent that the University has come under considerable political and financial pressure to fire Professor Churchill, regardless of the costs entailed. It is also clear that the University has done everything except fulfill its mandate under the Regents’ Laws to “resist to the utmost such pressures or interference.”

As noted above, beginning in early February 2005, the University came under intense political pressure from then-Governor Bill Owens, as well as from members of the state legislature, to fire Professor Churchill. Colorado legislators considered making CU funding contingent on the University’s response to this case. Then-Congressman Bob Beauprez (whom many assumed would be the next governor), boasted about having discussed the Churchill matter with President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One. Rightwing politicians across the nation, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, joined in the condemnation of Professor Churchill and his views.

The initial burst of public attention was intensified and dramatically prolonged by the manner in which CU officials continuously fed the media. This, in turn, fueled various organizations to pressure the University into dismissing Professor Churchill. In response to requests filed under Colorado’s Open Records Act, the University has produced tens of thousands of pages of e-mail and other correspondence. Many of these were clearly part of campaigns orchestrated through churches and workplaces.

A large percentage of the communications urging the University to fire Professor Churchill include threats to withhold donations “until” he has been removed. While many others urge the University to drop its investigation of Professor Churchill and uphold the principles of Academic Freedom and the First Amendment, these almost never include threats of financial retaliation should he be fired. During this time, the Denver Post reported that the Daniels Fund was “withholding” a $400,000 grant to CU pending resolution of various issues. At that time, Hank Brown (now President of CU) was on the board of the Fund. Various other threats from large donors, or potential donors, have been documented. It is clear that CU’s strategy of continually publicizing the status of the various “investigations” into Professor Churchill’s work was designed, at least in part, to assuage select sectors of its perceived “constituency.”

In turn, the heightened publicity—none of which was initiated by Professor Churchill—propelled this case into the national spotlight, where it became symbolic of the struggle over who controls higher education. Various neoconservative organizations—many of them linked through funding from a network of rightwing foundations such as Bradley, Olin, Scaife, and Castle Rock (Coors) —used this case to further their campaigns against the “liberal bias” of universities and, particularly, to eliminate ethnic, gender, and peace studies programs, as well as affirmative action and diversity more generally.

A conspicuous player in this network is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), founded by Lynne Cheney, and allied with groups such as the Federalist Society, the Cato Institute, and David Horowitz’ Center for the Study of Popular Culture. As stated on its website and in its publications, ACTA’s strategy is to enlist trustees (regents) and alumni to bring political and financial pressure to bear on universities and the “best way to reach trustees is through the governors and state leaders.”

In May 2006, with the SCRM Investigative Report on the Churchill case forthcoming, ACTA published a study entitled “How Many Ward Churchills?” Pointing to courses and departments which focus on “race, class, gender, sexuality, . . . globalization, capitalism, . . . and the destruction of the environment,” the report concludes that “Ward Churchill is everywhere.”

ACTA has a strong base in Colorado and, particularly, at CU. Former Governor Bill Owens was a leader of ACTA’s Governors Project and hosted an ACTA conference for all trustees in Colorado. Regent Tom Lucero is known as a strong ACTA supporter, and current ACTA chair Jerry Martin was formerly chair of the CU-Boulder Philosophy Department. Although current CU President Hank Brown was a founding member and continuing associate of ACTA, he refused to recuse himself from making a decision in this case. Recently, President Brown appointed Michael Poliakoff as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Research. Mr. Poliakoff, who comes to CU from Hillsdale College, authored an influential ACTA report and is described as one of ACTA’s “friends in high places.”

While the extent of political and financial pressure brought to bear on the University to fire Professor Churchill may never be fully exposed, it is clear that CU administrators have been subjected to a great deal and, in response, have chosen to sacrifice both Academic Freedom and Professor Churchill’s rights.

Keep reading.

Mr. Paine and Mr. Martin are all a’twitter — I love that — because Vernon Bellecourt crony, Carole Standing Elk, has checked in over Pirateballerina.

Lovely.

As always, what’s most interesting is what she and the dimwitted duo ain’t telling you about Ms. Standing Elk’s relationship with Ward Churchill.

Like, say, that she somehow neglected to mention that whole Ward Churchill assault thing to anyone in any official capacity whatsoever, making it entirely unverifiable.

And, that she’s been busted using her husband’s clientèle of alcoholics and drug addicts to picket Ward Churchill speeches.

And, most damning of all, that she has a real good reason to hate Ward Churchill, and it has nothing to do with him being a fraud. It has to do with the leaders of her organization being widely suspected of being in cahoots in the rape and murder of an American Indian activist and mother of two. Something which Ward Churchill’s been vocal about for 15 years.

And which seems born out by the fact that the one of the folks Mr. Churchill’s been naming as the shooter/rapist is already in prison, and another is being extradited from Canada any minute now.

Not that Mr. Paine and Mr. Martin aren’t aware of all of that, of course. But hell, they ain’t never met a rapist or a murderer they didn’t like. As long as they happen to be anti-Churchill, that is.

Funny, the way their priorities stack up, ain’t it?

The second interview from the Denver local Fox affiliate, here. Like the first interview with Mr. Zappolo, it’s the best bit of coverage to come out of the lynching. And that includes the so-called alternative press, and, yes, leftist sacred cow, Democracy Now.

The line about Hank Brown getting all a’twitter with some celebrity thing and sniffing around Russell Means is classic Ward Churchill.

Lakota activist, CU student, and all-around badass, Ann-erika White Bird, on Ward Churchill’s lynching.

And the decision to fire Ward Churchill is really sad for me. He’s the only professor that I’ve taken a class, where I really felt empowered as an Indigenous person. And our history, the history of genocide against our people, the history, the policy, the US policy of extermination against our people, the forced sterilization of our women — that was found out as early as the ’70s — it was all something that Ward talks about in his books. So I’m not just talking about the class that he’s offered, the FBI at Pine Ridge, but, you know, other classes that he teaches and then the books that he’s written is really affirming as a Native person.

The history that we hear growing up about the smallpox blankets, it’s not something that you question. It’s something that is part of our oral history. And it’s part of the history of other indigenous peoples. So when I’m here at CU Boulder and I talk to other students who are Dene [sic — error from the culturally illiterate gentleman at Slapstickpolitics] or from other nations, it’s a common understanding.

Keep reading.

Update: One wonders if the anti-Churchill bloc ever gets a little embarrassed at the regularity with which they expose their nigh monolithic ignorance of the issues they pretend to address.

Update II: Mr. El Presidente points out that the above mentioned cultural illiteracy is Democracy Now’s.  Which is hardly surprising.  I apologize to Mr. Presidente whole-heartedly, while reminding readers that Mr. Martin is still dumber than a sack of hammers.

Another from Shubel Morgan.

The first answer from his Newsweek interview.

NEWSWEEK: Any regrets over calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”?

Ward Churchill: No. I never have any particular regrets about calling things by their right name. And it’s about time we stop pretending that Americans are in a completely different analytical category from everyone else in the world, and are somehow exempt from the consequences of their actions.

Keep reading.

Worth pondering, from you know who.

For those of you who do, as a matter of principle, oppose war in any form, the idea of supporting a conscientious objector who’s already been inducted [and] in his combat service in Iraq might have a certain appeal.  But let me ask you this: would you render the same support to someone who hadn’t conscientiously objected, but rather instead rolled a grenade under their line officer in order to neutralize the combat capacity of their unit?

From Shubel Morgan.

Now and then it’s nice to check in with those arbiters of all things righteous, the Denver local media, and see what they’re up to when not defending our childrens’ minds from the likes of Ward Churchill.

Take, for instance, Craig Silverman, who along with his partner Flagpole Dan Caplis, has brayed (er, honked) longer and louder about Ward Churchill’s ethical turpitude than anyone. What’s he been up to when not on the radio, you wonder?

How’s about ensuring the release of a pedophile convicted of trying to seduce a twelve-year-old girl on the internet?

As part of his sentence for a sexually graphic Internet chat with someone he thought was a 12-year-old girl, former Colorado radio personality Scott Cortelyou must register as a sex offender.

But questions lingered Tuesday about how long the 53-year-old Conifer resident must remain on the register.

Initially, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office said Cortelyou could petition to be taken off the registry 10 years after his probation ends, but a legal change this year may put Cortelyou on the list indefinitely.

His attorney, Craig Silverman, said he didn’t have a definitive answer as to how long Cortelyou remains on the register.

“Lord knows there are some dangerous sex offenders in the world; Scott Cortelyou is not one of them,” Silverman said. “This is a good man who made a mistake.”

Silverman noted two court assessments found Cortelyou is not a sexual predator and termed him a low to moderate risk of re-offending.

Cortelyou, who pleaded guilty in April to Internet luring and attempted Internet sexual exploitation of a child, was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of intensive supervised probation.

Keep reading.

I love the line from Mr. Silverman. Mr. Cortelyou, he tells us, just made a mistake; he, like, tripped over his shoelaces and tried to rape a twelve-year-old.

Sigh. Who hasn’t done the same?

Even Bill O’Reilly knows the lynching had jack shit to do with academic integrity.

Well, it took two-and-a-half years, but the University of Colorado finally axed the nutty professor. Ward Churchill has been fired for academic misconduct, including plagiarism.

Despite those assertions, this was really about an out-of-control teacher earning nearly $100,000 a year saying things so foolish that no institute of learning could support them.

Imagine losing a loved one in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and then hearing a tenured professor of “Ethnic Studies” accuse your dead relative or friend of being “a little Eichmann,” a Nazi. All because the murdered person worked in a capitalistic enterprise.

That statement from Churchill is the equivalent of a teacher denying the Holocaust happened or saying that slavery wasn’t evil. How could any school allow a teacher that misguided to instruct students? Talk about academic malpractice!

Keep reading.

I offer the following by way of explanation. (Thanks for the pointer, TG.)

As one of our finest commenters, Nixon, reminds us, following the fairly obvious money trail which led to Ward Churchill’s lynching brings you smack up against CU President Hank Brown’s door.  

You see, back in March of 2005, Hank Brown, then President of Daniels Fund, a “major Colorado philanthropic organization” (link to Pirateballera, as the original article seems to be gone) decided to withhold nigh half a million dollars in donations to CU until Ward Churchill was fired.

Money which, now that the very same Hank Brown, who was made President of CU a month after withholding the funds, has fired Ward Churchill (with his lapdogs, the Regents, of course), the university can expect to receive.

Everybody follow that?

• For you, Mr. Martin, Mr. Paine.
• For you, Laurie.
• This is probably the funniest thing I’ve read in years.  There are times it almost feels unkind to poke at the anti-Churchill bloc.  Sort of like kicking a three-legged dog.
• On Ward Churchill and Fat Friends.  (It’s actually a damn fine post.)
• And the award for best Ward Churchill lynching headline goes to . . .
• Possibly racist; definitely fucking stupid.  That’s the beauty of Mr. Crowell and Mr. Martin: no matter what they put their hands to, the result’s invariably the kind of mediocrity which would make a Full House scriptwriter suck a bullet.
• Why Bill O’Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Microphone.

Now that the University of Colorado Board of Regents has voted to fire Professor Churchill–a sanction recommended by only one of the five members of the Committee that prepared the report on Professor Churchill’s research misconduct–some readers may be interested in my earlier remarks on the subject.  A number of law professors have played important roles in this process, including Colorado’s Marianne Wesson, who chaired the investigative Committee; her colleague Paul Campos, who, disgracefully, called early on for Professor Churchill to be fired for his offensive speech; and Robert Clinton, a distinguished Federal Indian Law Scholar at Arizona State, who also served on the Committee.  Those who have actually read the report (they are clearly few and far between, judging from the commentary) will realize that the punishment is so clearly disproportionate to the actual scholarly offenses that Professor Churchill’s prospects in court–where he will argue that his offensive speech is the real reason the university is punishing him, in violation of the First Amendment–are likely to be good.

Keep reading.

My employer, the University of Colorado, has finally fired my colleague, tenured professor Ward Churchill. Why? There are lots of explanations. Take your pick.

The University claims that Churchill is guilty of “research misconduct.” That’s debatable. As I’ve pointed out on this site, none of the people doing the investigation had expertise in Churchill’s field of Native American Studies. Several people who are experts in that field have challenged the University’s claim. So who knows for sure?

Churchill and his lawyer say it had nothing to do with his research and everything to do with his infamous words “little Eichmanns,” describing the victims of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The nation’s headline-writers agree. None of the headlines I’ve seen mentioned “research misconduct.” They all mentioned 9/11. Churchill’s sacrilege drove conservatives nuts. Last year, even Colorado’s Republican governor called for Churchill to be fired.

It’s not just conservatives. This year Colorado’s new Democratic governor cheered the decision, too, as did many political centrists and even liberals. But it was the conservatives who launched and persisted in the anti-Churchill attack, outraged by his “anti-American” views.

Then there’s another way to see it, through the lens of the old adage, “Follow the money.” Here’s what CU president (and former right-wing Republican senator) Hank Brown wrote in a letter to the whole university community, just hours after Churchill got the axe: “We are accountable to those who have a stake in the university: the people of Colorado who contribute $200 million annually in tax dollars … the donors who gave us more than $130 million this year.” Like any university president, Brown’s job is to watch the bottom line. Like any public university president, he has to satisfy the state legislature (with a majority of centrist Democrats and a sizeable minority of reactionary Republicans).

But in a state that ranks near the bottom in public funding for higher ed, Brown has to keep a special eye on private donors. So at the same time he released a letter to CU donors, on the letterhead of the CU’s fund-raising arm, the University of Colorado Foundation. “Donors to CU gave a record $130 million this past fiscal year,” he wrote, “and it is incumbent upon us to work to continue to be a place worthy of your investment.”

Once the attack on Churchill began, Brown — and all CU administrators and Regents — had to decide whether to curry favor with the left or the right. If you were in their shoes, which flank would you protect? Where would you see the money coming from? Duh!

However, it’s not fair to blame it simply on pursuit of the almighty dollar. There is some evidence that the administrators who nailed Churchill may genuinely share the outraged conservatives’ views.

Just like Hank Brown (who is president of the whole CU system), the head of the Boulder campus, Chancellor Bud Peterson, sent out a letter justifying the firing. The most important issue is about values, Peterson wrote. “We must now reaffirm our core values. … In a time such as ours, in which the very concept of “truth” is often bracketed by relativism … and reduced by manipulation and “spin,” our students must know that when they enter our classrooms, they occupy sacred territory where truth is always pursued on a foundation of ethics, honor, and integrity.”

In fact, if our students have been paying attention they know that CU administrators have been manipulating and spinning this story hard ever since it broke, trying to placate the right-wingers calling for Churchill’s blood.

. . .

My university can be a great one. But its administration and Regents have made the task a lot harder. They’ve let the university be turned into a media circus tent blown by the political winds, chasing a chimera of certainty more elusive than any wind. It may look like free speech, academic creativity, and the University of Colorado have been dealt a mortal blow. But remember, you’ve only read the first book.

Keep reading.

(This is actually a letter to Cindy Carlisle, sent the night before the firing.)

Dear Cindy,

You no doubt have heard more about the Ward Churchill case than one Regent’s term, to say nothing of a lifetime, should have to bear.  But, yes, I do want to bend your ear; I shall be brief.

The fustian surrounding the case, both pro and con, derives from the fact that the Investigative Report on Academic Misconduct was politically charged and motivated from the start.  I need not rehearse what is now common knowledge, except to reiterate that the politics in itself invalidates the Report and, especially, its subsequent influence on decisions by university officers.  The long and short of it is that the Report was conceived and executed in bad faith, and neither it nor later reports and judgments based upon it [e.g. those of Chancellor Distefano and President Brown] are credible bases upon which to terminate Churchill.

The Report Committee knew right off that it was recruited to prejudicially investigate so as to indict Churchill’s work.  It notes in its very first paragraph that the university inaugurated  the investigation under political pressure.  Its conclusion chastises CU administrators, who hired, promoted and exploited Churchill’s notoriety up to the point of political interference, for so glibly becoming his prosecutors.  The Committee’s own cynicism is transparent, however, when its Introduction cites the First Amendment, academic freedom and the CU Regents’ recognition of “robust and free debate” but simultaneously “notes its concern regarding the timing and, perhaps, the motives for the University’s decision to initiate these charges at this time.”  From beginning to end, then, the Committee knew the dubious master it was serving.  Nonetheless, in a coy addendum, the Committee says that Churchill’s “controversial essays…played absolutely no role in its deliberations.”  Uh huh, and Sadam’s WMD jumped over the moon.

The Committee’s ethical queasiness is apparent in the prose of its report.  An early instance serves as a paradigm.  On page 15, in discussion of the General Allotment Act of 1887, it says that the Committee “did not view its role as arbitrating the truth or falsity of Professor Churchill’s claims….  Rather, the Committee’s role was to determine whether Professor Churchill had employed generally accepted scholarly research techniques in arriving at his conclusions.”  It then takes the next eight pages assessing the “Accuracy of Professor Churchill’s description of the General Allotment Act of 1887.”  The muddle is that the Report, while pretending to address only matters of scholarly method, in fact embeds that in an unresolvable dispute of historical interpretation so that what goes in the guise of “discussion” is actually indictment on undeclared grounds. 

In short, the Report rhetoricizes its discourse to (con)fuse methodological misdemeanors with intellectual felonies.  It indicts Churchill’s hyperbolical number of fatalities in the 1837-1840 smallpox epidemic, for example, as if it significantly skewed the fact that, though nobody knows the exact figure [as the Report itself acknowledges], substantial numbers of people did die in it, and it is thus an event pertinent  to Churchill’s historical hypothesis of  a deliberate U.S. holocaust of Native Americans.  Should Churchill have proposed a figure for which he had neither proof nor sources?  Obviously not.  But Churchill is hardly alone in contending that the U.S. deliberately decimated the native population of America.  That “fact” does not depend on his numerical speculation.  Neither is hyperbole in the service of historical hypothesis new to the discipline, nor is it an act so heinous as to recommend his firing. 

Similarly with the charges of “plagiarism,” which have made an open and shut case for colleagues and politicians alike.  But a close reading of the Report reveals that these charges are essentially  meretricious.  In the first case, out of four works Churchill cited the source in question appropriately in three of them, and the fourth was due to an editor’s omission.  The third case is an oblique instance and largely a “victimless” matter, where Churchill had originally published a colleague’s essay in a book he edited with appropriate citation, so that his intellectual debt was on public record.  The second case is more telling about the Report’s predisposition.  The Committee dismissed this charge because it turned out that Churchill had “plagiarized” his own pseudonymous work; but it then cited his pseudonymous authorship as “academic misconduct” and went to some lengths to depict the practice as a menace to scholarship and the civilized world.  Well, it’s hardly a touchstone of scholarly method, but that the Report takes this as representative of Churchill’s work is a distinct measure of its determination to nail him with something, however trivial.

In sum, Ward Churchill’s academic misbehaviors are minor, particularly in the context of a very large body of work that goes categorically unquestioned.  Moreover, most, if not all, of these charges had been on record for years before his 2001 “Little Eichmanns” rant.  It was only then that the right, in particular, got cranked up.  Quite why the Report Committee, especially Miriam Wesson, would lend itself to do such blatantly political hatchet work I cannot say, though for the locals pleasing the administration likely has its rewards.  Be that as it may, the Report is an unpersuasive document, if not flat out dishonest.  And, as noted above, subsequent judgments based on it have had their own fish to fry.  Whatever short term harm the university hopes to evade by firing Churchill, the long term damage of censorship and subjection to political hacking will be far worse. 

Cheers, Peter

Maybe I’m going a bit dotty here, but doesn’t the following make the second Rocky Mountain News columnist to argue that Ward Churchill was fired for, well, his free speech?  What the hell is happening over there?  Jesus Christ, if they can’t even keep the anti-Churchill sentiment unanimous at anti-Churchill central, I’m more excited about the court case than ever.  And, as y’all know, I’ve been more than a little excited thus far.

The oddest thing, though, is that this might be the strongest article to come out of the mainstream media yet.

Any tenured University of Colorado professor who says the firing of Ward Churchill will not limit or otherwise affect academic free speech and other freedoms, I wouldn’t want teaching my children.

It is so patent a lie that they should have the dignity not to even address it. No, what happened to Ward Churchill should keep them up at night.

Maybe, too, I have a certain soft spot for anyone, no matter how knuckleheaded, who gets savaged simply for speaking his gut. And that is exactly what the CU professor got.

In the long-ago paper he wrote, he did succumb to hyperbole, went for shock value. He dared call dead Americans “little Eichmanns.”

So stupid. So heartless.

Yet what happened next? The then-governor and talk radio and TV loudmouths all jumped him, scoured his DNA - no Native American he! - and even took on his wife before jamming a scope into every nook and crevice of his professional and private life.

So challenged, CU first, and quite laughingly, swore up and down it had no problem with what the man had written as his opinion. No, no, the true crime, they later had learned, was plagiarism and bad scholarship. They were merely forced to act.

I won’t even give Hank Brown and the Board of Regents a “perhaps” on this one. They flat fired the guy for what he had written as opinion. It is that simple.

If Ward Churchill had known what ultimately was going to happen to him, I’d bet even he would have simply played 21 questions in his paper, forcing students and others to figure out for themselves his beliefs about why the terrorists of Sept. 11 hit the World Trade Center, a paper that likely never would have been read, much less remembered.

Even the rocket scientists at the university must now know to keep it plain vanilla bland, or shut their mouths altogether. Heaven knows what might next tick off Bill O’Reilly, a man who is lucky he does not hold CU tenure. If outrageousness and lack of scholarship can trigger firing, he would have been looking for work long ago.

The real losers in the entire affair are CU students, the very people President Brown and the regents supposedly were protecting. Kids, I firmly believe, want to be challenged, can handle outrageousness, flip the hood on it, look it over and see it for what it is.

At least I hope this is true, given that TV and the talk shows don’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

Keep reading.

Right here for Ward Churchill’s submission to the Regents on the day of his lynching.  (Along with several binders full of evidence, of course.)  My favorite bits to come.

I haven’t seen this anywhere, but here’s audio of Tom Mayer and Ward Churchill on KPFK directly after the lynching.  The whole show’s about the case; the interviews start at 33:20.