In July 2007, Ward Churchill was fired from his position as a tenured professor at the University of Colorado.
The pretext given for his dismissal was academic misconduct. But the real reason was that Professor Churchill wrote some things that offended people.
His termination was a violation of the academic freedom guaranteed to faculty by CU and the U.S. Constitution.
We embrace free speech for pragmatic reasons. Without criticism, human knowledge cannot increase.
Francis Bacon explained, “Knowledge is like water, it will not rise above the level from which it fell.”
Intellectual freedom is essential to the progress of the human race. William Godwin understood this when he wrote that no government “should set up a standard upon the various topics of human speculation, to restrain the excursions of an inventive mind. It is only by giving a free scope to these excursions, that science, philosophy and morals have arrived at their present degree of perfection.”
It is seldom the case that any of us are wise enough to discern that we are absolutely correct, or that another person is completely wrong. We should keep in mind that we are all members of a species infamous for intolerance, ignorance and cruelty.
The human race has a track record of murdering its greatest benefactors simply because they said things that offended people.
The investigation into Professor Churchill’s alleged academic misconduct was a disingenuous and utterly transparent excuse for punishing him.
I doubt if many CU faculty members could withstand having their entire body of work scrutinized by a Star Chamber with a magnifying lens.
Suppose I publicly criticize the local police department, and their officers subsequently start following me all over town, ticketing me for minor violations that they normally would ignore.
Am I being punished for breaking the law — or for exercising my right of free speech?
I have never met Professor Churchill, and it is likely that we would disagree on many things.
I approach issues from the opposite end of the political spectrum. I’m an outspoken conservative, member of the National Rifle Association and advocate of pure 19th-century laissez faire capitalism.
But I’m not afraid to hear viewpoints that I disagree with, and I don’t seek to punish people who think differently. I listen to them because I might learn something.
Truth can only be found when there is a vigorous dialectic.
I am curious as to how CU will carry out its mission of research and teaching now that its faculty works in a culture of fear. Scholars cannot think and write freely if they know that they might be fired because someone is offended by their work.
In the academy, we are supposed to inculcate intellectual diversity, not expel those we disagree with.
It was Professor Churchill’s duty to be controversial and offensive. He should not have been fired for doing his job.
The administration of the University of Colorado has made an execrable error, one that stamps the institution with the indelible brands of ignorance and intolerance.
David Deming is an associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Deming has obviously never read the CU documentation about Churchill’s research misconduct. Deming is gullible to repeat Churchill’s false claim that nobody noticed Churchill was a dishonest scholar until his 9-11 essay.
Finally, Churchill’s big mouth got him noticed, but that does not absolve him of his research misconduct.
Many Indians are sick of Churchill.
A whole tribe of Canadian Ojibway are mad at Churchill.
They wrote a resolution against him in July 2004, long BEFORE the criticism of Ward Churchill became national news in early 2005.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2007/05/canadian-ojibways-support-family-of.html
The Indian law professor John LaVelle demonstrated that Ward Churchill’s historical falsifications were undermining Indian sovereignty as far back as 1996 and 1999, long BEFORE CU looked into Ward Churchill’s frauds.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2008/07/blusters-last-stand-ward-churchill.html
Churchill mischaracterized what scholars have written in order to fabricate evidence that the US Army gave the Mandan smallpox.
This is the same kind of lie that the KGB used to tell about the US Army inventing AIDS to kill black people–a lie even KGB chief Primakov owned up to in Izvestia.
Churchill wrote in the KGB-sponsored mouthpiece that the FBI-backed death squads that killed 342 Indians. Get real!
Churchill writes that certain politicians deserve to be hanged. For example:
“[R]everies of malignant toads like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Jesse Helms squatting in the shadows of the gallows are simply too pleasant to be suppressed.” [2003 Introduction to Churchill’s book Acts of Rebellion]
In THREE of his “scholarly” books Churchill “jokes” that American mothers should “snuff” their babies and themselves to do the planet a favor.
Just go to google books and search “snuff the kid.”
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22snuff+the+kid%22&btnG=Search+Books
Churchill was noticed by lots of people. CU just didn’t listen.
They didn’t listen to Indian people, just to a white man who won’t take a DNA test to prove his Indian heritage. He doesn’t belong to any tribe, either.
Why should this white man talk for Indians? Churchill goes around gloating about how the 9-11 victims deserved to die and “joking” in three “scholarly” books that moms should “snuff” their kids and kill themselves to do the plant a favor.
Churchill is a dishonest scholar. He is very mean. When people think Chuchill is an Indian, he misrepresents Indians as vicious people.
crascal@erols.com
2/17/2009 7:25:44 PM
Mr Deming didn’t make much actual reference to Wardo himself except as some sort of foil for non-constitutional issues dear to his own heart.
Does this indicate Mr Deming wants or plans to plagiarise the works of others as his own? Or that he hopes or intends to site sources and use them for support of suppositions in actual opposition to what they said? (This indicates not only a lack of ethics but a larger lack in reading comprehension. i.e., Ward is also too STUPID to understand words written by others.)
Or maybe Ward’s greatest ALMOST ‘contribution’ to Academic standards and practises. The complete fabrication (Re: LIES) of history that can later be morphed into ‘facts’ and become part of a false history.
Specifically, when he ghost wrote for other ‘scholars’ even dumber and lazier then himself and THEN quotes ‘them’ in his own writings.
He therefore quotes himself, offers his own LIES as a ‘source’ and with a few more references something that never happened, or anywhere near how he says, becomes a quoted source.
jeffm@peoplepc.com
2/18/2009 10:52:02 AM
Since when does ignorance and subterfuge count as “vigorous dialectic?” Deming seems to be as unfamiliar with the Professor’s work as he is with the professor. Churchill’s fabrications hardly require a Star Chamber to unearth them. The book, American Indian Mafia, for instance, features a whole slew of Churchill’s falsehoods. The average reader, using any of the examples described, will have more than enough wisdom to conclude that Churchill was completely wrong and that the author of this long-overdue expose, Joseph H. Trimbach, is absolutely correct. While it is true Churchill highlighted himself with incendiary commentary, it is also true he was justifiably fired for trying to pass on lies and distortions under the guise of free speech and “academic freedom.” The real culture of fear comes from parents who fear that their money finances sanctuaries of academic fraud and who worry that political ideology indoctrinates their sons and daughters.
jamessimon500
2/19/2009 11:10:38 AM
CU’s process to hire an unqualified Churchill, apparently based on his phony claims of Indian heritage, were at least as poor as their process to fire him.
Many more reasons Churchill should not be teaching are at http://evanravitz.com/churchill
EvanFromHeaven
2/20/2009 7:40:45 AM
“…I’m an outspoken conservative…and advocate of pure 19th-century laissez faire capitalism…”
trans: I defend Churchill, being myself an ideological maniac, a social-darwinist who necessarily celebrates the cleansing & exemplary quality of poverty and its resulting milieus of social pathology. Omelettes and broken eggs, you know. I am myself lately sifting, eichmann-like, through the global and still-unfolding rubble of my disastrous ideology (creative destruction is it?), assessing the evil fruits of the economic model I advocate.
(but never fail…consider free of charge a 3-word Rx for a tried-and-true, regulation- and safety net-free, purely market-centered economic turnaround: ‘child sex tourism’).
That Churchill has exercised the bad personal and academic judgement to rankle rather than suck-up to power, especially in the historical moment of chicken-roosting, is his privilege. Or not. A fellow of my robber-baron belief system can’t get too worked up about injustice after all.
doorworker
2/27/2009 6:17:55 AM
It takes a rare intellect to mesh conservative thought with anarchy, the sexual abuse of children, and social pathology theory run amok. Did we forget our meds today?
jamessimon500
2/28/2009 7:51:16 AM
