Ward
Churchill's Comeuppance
Washington (The Weekly Standard)
5/29/2006 -
In April 2005, when Matt Labash profiled University of Colorado at
Boulder professor Ward Churchill in these pages (Churchill's the guy
who achieved notoriety by calling 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns"),
Labash ran into a Bay Area American Indian Movement activist named Earl
Neconie protesting outside of a Churchill speech at Berkeley. Neconie
said that among his set, Churchill, a faux-Indian, faux-scholar, and
faux-just-about-everything-else, had picked up the Indian name "Walking
Eagle," since "a walking eagle is so full of s--that it can no longer
fly."
Last week, a university investigative committee basically reached the
same conclusion as Neconie. After a national outcry for Churchill's
head, including multiple accusations of plagiarism and academic fraud,
a 12-member Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the university
decided allegations regarding Churchill's "scholarship" warranted
further investigation (they took a pass on looking into his purported
Indian ancestry, which has been called into doubt by actual Indians and
which he's never bothered to prove).
The standing committee then appointed an investigative committee, which
took several months and nearly 400 man-hours per committee member to
write a report, which was kicked back to the standing committee, who
have finally released it. They will now consider the findings and make
recommendations to an interim provost and Arts and Sciences dean, and
if any actual discipline is ever meted out, Churchill may then elect to
pursue a hearing before the Committee on Privilege and Tenure, who will
then make their recommendations to the Interim Committee for Jumping
Down, Turning Around, and Picking a Bale of Cotton. Such are the
rhythms of university life, where a professor would practically have to
strangle a provost while uttering sexist imprecations to have his
tenure revoked. And even then, it would require further review.
The investigative committee's 124-page report comes complete with
turgid asides on the "standards" of ethnic studies scholarship, and
lots of tut-tutting about the evil, headline-hungry media running
roughshod over people's scholarly reputations (never mind that outlets
like the Rocky Mountain News took only a few weeks to do what took the
university over a year). That said, after reading their findings,
Churchill might want to change his name to Heap Big Pile of Bull. Of
the seven allegations of research misconduct under investigation, the
committee found him guilty of falsification, fabrication, plagiarism,
failure to comply with established standards regarding author names on
publications, and "serious deviation from accepted practices in
reporting results from research."
In summation, Churchill, in the eyes of the committee, is guilty of
just about everything besides clubbing baby seals with furry puppies.
But while the above-mentioned string still needs to run out, only three
of the five committee members think that revocation of tenure and
dismissal is appropriate. The other two recommend a two-year suspension
without pay. Meanwhile, Churchill, who's taken two semesters off from
teaching, is writing another book while drawing full salary, and also
appears to be mopping up on the lecture circuit.
The Scrapbook realizes that Churchill is accustomed to stealing from
others. But while out on the hustings, he might want to boost this
passage from himself, referred to in the committee report and found in
his own feel-good book, Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle
for American Indian Liberation: "Tailoring the facts to fit one's
theory constitutes neither good science nor good journalism. Rather, it
is intellectually dishonest and, when published for consumption by a
mass audience, adds up to propaganda."