As far as the various other charges against Churchill, they quickly fell apart under scrutiny from actual experts in Churchill’s particular field of inquiry. There may indeed be some legitimate areas of debate regarding various historical events that have occurred during the American Holocaust – but those are debates that would ordinarily be carried out in academic conferences, colloquia, peer-review journals, and of course books (be they marketed for professional or lay audiences). If it turns out that a particular claim made by Churchill ends up factually incorrect, it should be falsified in one of those particular forums.

I get that there are a number of folks, some of whom are legitimate readers of DV and others who troll this site whenever the topic of Churchill is brought up, who for whatever reason do not like Churchill personally and/or do not like what he has to say. To those individuals it would be high time to remind them that those are not legitimate reasons to go on a fishing expedition in order to subsequently terminate his employment.

Finally, although I’m heartened that Churchill thus far has achieved a partial victory, I will breathe a bit easier if the judge presiding over his case rules in favor of reinstating him to his faculty position at CU. From what I’ve gathered, legal precedent should be in his favor, but as we know, we’re living in an era where the temptation is to sweep aside precedents for the sake of political correctness.

So by way of rebuttal, let me repeat/clarify:

First, it is not my intention to argue that Ward Churchill is stupid, or that he doesn’t have the brains to teach at a large university. Clearly he’s a smart guy and seems to know as much as any PhD. My point in mentioning his education was to simply state that CU hired him with far fewer credentials that is standard for a tenured position in a different field than his degree is in, especially at a large school. I was blaming the school for this, not him. If it was offered, why shouldn’t he take it?

On my “lack of documentation”: I can document the investigative reports by the university as well as testimony in the trial itself. If any of you feel those sources are false and fabricated, fine. It so happens that after reading it and hearing it, I do not. I assume, HR, that you refer to the Rocky Mountain News story as to where my evidence comes from. As far as I know, anything I mentioned in my last post that might be in that story also appears in the trial testimony and the reports made by CU. I didn’t directly have that story in mind when I posted.

Some of you ask me for my evidence and call my conclusions “circumstantial,” yet I see no documentation to the contrary. In the story above, one witness (Dr. Mann) stated a “reasonable basis” for the smallpox story. Ok, fine. Yet I find that assertion to be vague, especially compared to the book WC cited as his source for that incident. I simply see an absence of specific refutation. So please, I invite you to disagree with me, but if evidence is so important to you then document your own opinion and don’t just ask me for it. The bottom line is that I can point to several sources that back me up, not all directly affiliated with CU. That in itself does not make me right but it’s a good place to start. That’s what my whole reason for being interested in this case is: Evidence. My sources (the trial, the CU docs, etc.) back me up and I did not write them. That does not seem true with some of Churchill’s scholarship.

Tony, you seem to be under the impression that I attacked Churchill’s right to free speech, when in fact I defended it. I said he has the right to free speech. I said he does not have the right to fabricate or falsify. If you do not believe he did either of those things, then okay. I did not attack his 9/11 essay or his politics, beliefs, or the general subject of his scholarship. That may be what got him investigated (which was wrong), but I care not what he says which may or may not rub people the wrong way. I’m not sure why you bring the First Amendment into what I wrote. I said I would lose my position if I cited a source that didn’t corroborate me (if it could be determined I did it intentionally), or if I ghost wrote an article and then cited it under my name, or if I allowed someone else to take credit for my work. Politics or personal feelings have nothing to do with it. We are told to report our students who turn in work under another’s name. I would not lose my position for exercising my rights to free speech, but I would for the things mentioned above. You simply assume that I, like the university, question his scholarship based on his politics. I don’t. Let him say what he feels he needs to, and it isn’t my right to get in the way. If I want to disagree with that sort of thing, I should do it in the spirit of academic discourse.

Also Tony, please do not presume to put words into my mouth or thoughts in my head. I do not have such feelings and I disagree with people who do. Perhaps some who think WC is a fraud do so as you describe, but the “broad strokes” you accused me of painting at the beginning of your response came back to discredit you at the end of it. I work in one of the most diverse departments in my university, and I appreciate and like my colleagues very much. You made a silly assumption about me based upon a relatively short post and in so doing, did the very thing you accused me of. Seriously, we can disagree on things that we are passionate about without resorting to personal attacks. Do not assume you know or understand my politics or my university experiences because I happen to take one particular side of an issue.

Hue, I disagree with your “circumstantial ad hominem” assertion. Not circumstantial. Documented. Again, if you think my sources are faulty, so be it. Driven by a lack of reason? That confuses me. I believed at the outset of the trial that there was not a “pure” witch hunt, but that the allegations of wrongdoing became glaring as a result of the publicity WC got, not because they simply wanted Churchill gone. However, the university’s witnesses did not generally acquit themselves well, and so now I believe that it was a witch hunt. Likewise however, Churchill’s witnesses didn’t always convince me, including one who maintains that making up a story constitutes fact. Based on Churchill’s failure to explain some of these issues, I maintain that he did engage in academic fraud. Not ad homenem. I interpreted what I read. Some of the facts changed my mind. Some did not. I am indeed passionate about academics but that does not make me incapable of reason.

Peter, I appreciate that you responded to something I did mean to say, Sangamon State being defunct. I am aware that it became the University of Illinois-Springfield, but it is essentially not the “same” university (others have also called it defunct). Either way, though, this was tangential to my argument.

I do apologize for the long post. I wanted to point out that I have yet to see anyone who responded to me respond with hard evidence contradicting my opinions. All I get are “you’re wrong” and even a personal attack in one instance. Perhaps I asked for it by posting in the first place. I am an opinionated person, as are most of the people here, and I know I am not dealing with a bunch of idiots. So I wanted to engage in a discussion. If this was the wrong place for that then my apologies for doing so. I didn’t post here to flame or make enemies. Just wanted to state an opinion for discussion. Something I care about.

Hoping that this will generate healthy discussion of differing opinions out in the world,

-CC

circumstantial ad hominem is still circumstantial ad hominem even if you point it out before engaging in it

Also, I find your lack of appreciation of the First Amendment shocking — especially for someone who claims to be an academic. The First Amendment protects unpopular speech, and it even protects speech that is questionable. Even speech that is generally unprotected (like “hate speech” or “fighting words”) cannot be selectively proscribed. In other words, even if Churchill engaged in academic “fraud,” which is not protected speech, the Univerity cannot enforce a prohibition of academic ethics on an ideological basis.

If your school would fire you for the content of your speech, then perhaps you should find another job. But let me guess: the Native American/Black/Latino/Asian-American/Feminist/Gay professors are shutting good people like you out of the academy, so you cannot find a decent job where the administration believes in free speech. Poor you….

He does not have the right to fabricate and falsify, or to ghostwrite. Regardless of the fact that uuniversities generally don’t have explicit rules against ghostwriting, it is a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader and to strengthen one’s scholarly argument in the absence of better evidence. It’s a convenient way to make yourself look like you know more than you do; it’s lying by deceit. If there are no hard rules i tis likely because such activity is so obviously deceitful that no one thinks to include it in their policies. Students in college are not allowed to put another’s name on their work, or to cite themselves without proper documentation.

He does not have the right to say a source says one thing when it does not, or it says the opposite, and then cover that fact up by citing the whole document rather than a page number so it makes his falsification difficult to track. Etc. etc.

He doies not have the right to cite a source as backing you up when it doesn’t, or to quote a specific fact from that work which does not appear.

Yes, CU is at fault. This was absolutely a witch hunt. They wanted to get rid of him for what he wrote, in my opinion. But that’s not all. CU was dead wrong to hire him with his lack of rigorous degree experience (which is expected of major university professors). He has no doctorate and not even a masters in his field. His masters is from a now-defunct university where grades were optional. They had no right to fast track such a person to tenure (one year versus six, if I remember correctly). All this because of an initiative to dicersify the faculty. A fine goal, yes, but at what cost? CU caused this problem and they deserve whatever happened and will happen. But this doesn’t mean WC is fit to teach. Just because they chose this moment to look into his work doesn’t mean he’s innocent. They may be guilty, but they also uncovered genuine academic misconduct. It is a slam dunk. I am an academic, and I’d lose my job without blinking if I did this. Whoever says that he is an exempliary researcher/scholar either knows nothing about scholarship or about this case. His research is sloppy, shoddy, and it appears obvious that it is intentionally so in many instances.

He has every right to challenge the master narrative. Good for him. If the master narrative is built on lies, it needs to be debunked. But if his own narrative is full of lies, it is likewise of no use except to those who profit from the lies.

Let him write offensive material. Who cares? But not lies. There are no winners here.

So, there is just a little justice in America. Not enough for me, but this was sweet!

And I hope this great teacher and scholar gets his job back.

On the campus that I work at, the admin bosses already fired a couple of profs who exposed the corrupt administrative practices to the local media. I am a doctoral candidate at a western land grant university, and man, I cannot believe the level of intimidation, corporatism, authoritarian practices, and just plain old institutional fascism that I have seen on this campus. And I know for a fact that this university, where I happen to work at, is not the only one with this problem. The whole Amerikan university system is infected with these epidemics.

Most radical profs learn to become ‘collegial’ very quickly, not to publish controversial articles that reflect on the local university, local government authorities, or local religious sensibilities in any way – if they want tenure. But even getting tenure is getting tougher. Admin hacks desperately want the few benefits that they give out to disappear altogether. They are tired for paying for a pathetic and weird humanities prof who teaches only two courses per semester, publishes books that few people read, and expects a six figure salary with full medical and dental benefits – and lots of other perks – after a full professorship position – and this includes ‘Ethnic Studies’ long haired profs who rant on genocide, i.e. Churchill.

The bad economy is a godsend for these admin capos, which include presidents, vice presidents, provosts, vice provosts – and deans (the lowest on the totem pole – but the most ambitious too) and there are lots of other new positions being invented as I write. These guys get the good money from the regents-trustees who really control these universities – to do the cutting – meaning firing the useless prof radicals-weirdos who should be begging on the street corner or doing hard time for possible terrrorism charges.

This is fascist Amerika not France or the Netherlands. Most majors at most state universities are not geared for open debate and free thinking. The most popular majors with students are business, marketing, the hard and applied sciences, such as engineering, criminal justice-social sciences, and social work-psychology. The Amerikan university is just another corporate hack fund. Universities do make money on lots of matriculated students, large lecture classes, part time ‘adjunk ‘slave-teachers to do the intro basic courses, such as Eng. 101, intercollegiate sports, low grade crap food student dining, student parking fees, other erroneous student fees with matriculation, minimum security jail-student resident halls, and campus police forces. A class on American Genocide with ten students and that meets fro only one semester every three years just doesn’t cut it with the admin numbers game. Where do the humanities radicals actually fit within the whole scheme?

The humanities radical profs that I know have to walk on eggshells at their jobs. They should not demand too much from the deans, never offend students and try to get 100% student popularity-evaluations, not complain about unpaid meetings, force themselves to publish – for the sake of publications, and accept ‘service positions’ in order to show their duty to the univ.-corporation. Meanwhile, the deans desperately try to delegate more workloads, classloads and planning loads on to them. Cowardice has become the unspoken word on campus. Everyone knows that all campus workers have to take a pay cut – except administrators. Profs like Churchill are few and far between on Amerikan campuses. They speak the truth to power and they ‘don’t take shit’ – the admin thugs want them out – and they will eventually have all of them out (unless they shape up) whether right-wing kook jobs like ACTA survive or don’t survive.

The standard response: denial… so much denial that it was impossible to accept he was writing about that very same attitude.

At the ‘highly regarded’ university I went to, teachers basically masturbated to images of Obama… I hear that’s the case in many places.

Complicit?

Chickens come home to roost?

Nah … our president was a decider … and we are deniers … of the holocaust we perpetrated against the original occupants … of the pain and suffering we knowingly inflict on the rest of the world … of the blatant racism for which we are known (and secretly proud!). But we are the ‘perfect’ people … the best … incapable of wrong.

9/11 was predicted … it was blowback … there are no innocents. Never have been, never will be.

Ward Churchill was a victim of his own honesty … of the reality that USans are incapable of admitting they can ever do anything wrong … and even worse, we elected a man (O’Bama) to make us feel good about ourselves even though we elected his predecessor TWICE to make us feel good about ourselves.

Ya think we might just be fickle? Maybe two-faced? Maybe … just maybe the reason we point fingers is that we really don’t want to admit that we WANT AND DESIRE THE EMPIRE … a country that WANTS AND DESIRES TOTAL DOMINANCE of the rest of the world?

Our courts say that Churchill was wronged by the University of Colorado … but USans need a scapegoat … certainly WE could never do anything wrong!

Bullshit … the question is: are we capable of any correct behavior when our empire is at stake? I don’t think so …

RG the LG

Apparently, hatred of native Americans still exists. Ward Churchill was fired for voicing his opinion, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is vilified in our press regularly and Hugo Morales of Bolivia is also treated as an enemy. All three of these men are native American or partially native American. All three consider themselves fighting for the underpriveledged.