Ward-o can preach on his own dime

Stanley Fish had some cogent comments about these matters in The NYTimes Sunday —

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23...%2dEd%2fContributors&oref=slogin

According to several sources, Ward-o’s government-subsidized pension is nearly $70,000/year. He scammed Colorado taxpayers, really good.

Now, if Ward-o really believes in what he has been preaching (certainly not teaching), he is more than financially capable of doing it on his own dime.

Holy good night, academia is so full of it! Do they not think the masses get their type of messages from the Internet (Daily Kos, MyDD), Air America, PBS, NYTimes, bar-rooms, and break-rooms?

So — why do they need to be subsidized by the public? Why don’t they do a Michael Moore and fund it themselves? That’s what the Communist Chinese are doing!

What are they afraid of — failure and rejection? Well — the party’s over. The bill’s arrived. Time to pay up — or get real jobs.

Art D., at 6:25 am EDT on July 24, 2006

Brava, Zia Morento

Brava to Zia Morento for being able to parse the difference between the two wrongs of Churchill’s research violations and the violations of academic freedom. I for one know it took a lot of strength for her to stand up for what is right in this case, but she did. Again, Brava!! Thank you for signing the petition!

michael vocino, professor at university of ri, at 7:50 am EDT on July 24, 2006

As Usual, Churchil Brings Out the Best in Everyone

Nice to see that IHE’s Ward Churchill obsession continues unabated. But it does seem that every time Chuchill’s name comes up, the quality of the debate deteriorates just a little more.

It usually takes a while before the argument gets reduced to ad hominems and non sequiturs. But not this time. It’s only 9:00, and already we have gratuitous personal attacks against Professors Shortell and Vocino. Nice start, folks.

And if anyone can explain this one to me, I’d be grateful:

“So — why do they need to be subsidized by the public? Why don’t they do a Michael Moore and fund it themselves? That’s what the Communist Chinese are doing!”

Uh, OK, whatever you say...

As for the substance of the article, I think the whole Ward Churchill thing is a bit played out. But I did want to say a word about the analogy involving someone being ticketed for speeding because the police office didn’t like the political content of her bumper sticker. Leaving aside the question of whether the speeding ticket should stand up in court, shouldn’t the police office in question be fired immediately?

Maybe the problem is that we’re spending too much time here worrying about the seriousness of the speeding infraction, and too little time contemplating the corruption of the police department.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:15 am EDT on July 24, 2006

Wayward Ward

Leave it to the “white academic left” to embarrass itself yet again, this time whining and bleating about the woes and unfairness heaped on Ward Churchill (faux Indian, faux academic).

The more he says and the louder he says it about any topic, the more shame and ridicule Churchill brings on the so-called “white academic life.”

Sensible, clear-thinking people have learned to stay far away from a phonie like Churchill.

But the “white academic left” sees their mirror image in that mental misfit and, like lemmings, they rush to defend the indefensible.

The comedy and farce are breathtaking.

Chuck, at 10:30 am EDT on July 24, 2006

The truth in Prof. Churchill case is coming out, strangely, in two ways. Left says he is not guilty of plagiarism, while Right says he is guilty of plagiarism. Neither judgement of course is an academic judgement, but, apparently, the result of bending the academic law. Is there a third group now, opposing political corruption of academia? If so, they should have a look at my case — the 50 documents of unprecedented corruption of academic law: http://ca.geocities.com/uoftfraud/Michael Pyshnov.

Michael Pyshnov, at 10:30 am EDT on July 24, 2006

Whistleblower analogy

Rather than the traffic stop analogy mentioned in the article, I’d propose applying a whistleblower analogy to Churchill’s case.

CU was in the position here not of a traffic cop who initiated action on his/her own observation, but of an ombudsman or review panel presented with a whistleblower’s complaint. Whistleblowers often have an axe to grind—the promotion/raise/etc. that they didn’t get—but we don’t usually let their ulterior motives overrule the substance of the complaint, or block an investigation of it.

In this case—yes, the complaints against Churchill arose from parties who had an axe to grind, and yes, I find that somewhat disturbing. But is the university obliged to investigate the complainant before investigating the complaint, and only proceed in cases where the complainant is judged to have “pure” motives? I can’t imagine such a system working at all.

Hiram Hover, at 11:00 am EDT on July 24, 2006

We need to see the evidence

I signed the statement. Here’s why.

My impression of Churchill is poor, and has been since before any question about his scholarship came to general knowledge. But that is not the same as saying he is a liar, or deserves to be fired.

It should be obvious that the UCo, went on a fishing expedition because of Churchill’s statements, which he had the right to make, and certainly not to get fired over, stupid and reactionary though they were.

And the faculty committee basically went along with that. The fact that they did so objectively compromises them anyway. They could have refused, after all, given the highly politicized nature of this “investigation” – which it would be more honest to call a “witch hunt.”

I skimmed the faculty report on Churchill. I did not study it carefully.

But I know from my research on other contentious topics — the Spanish Civil War, the Stalin period in the USSR — that researchers do lie, and shade the truth. And, of course, honest researchers come to differing conclusions when faced with the same evidence.

* * * * *

So I am not going to simply “believe” the report. To do so is no different from “believing” Churchill.

Nor am I going to state that the report is factually wrong. I want to see the evidence myself.

Anything we do has got to go beyond “who do you have confidence in? Whom do you believe?”

If it were any other subject that I were researching, I’d want to see the original sources — the parallel passages, and the works themselves. I am sure we all would. So, why should this case be any different?

The UCo report does not do that. It provides some quotations, but not nearly enough of them. It gives its conclusions, but not the original evidence on which those conclusions were based.

It’s a very big job to get all the publications of WC’s that are discussed in the UCo faculty committee report, so as to check what they assert.

But that is exactly what has to be done. IMO it is very telling that this UCo committee did not do this.

I am hoping Churchill himself takes care of this point. If I were being charged with something like this, that’s what I’d do – provide all the texts, and a narrative, so that nobody would have to “take the Committee’s word” for anything.

If I had made any errors, I’d point them out and discuss them. EVERYBODY makes mistakes. EVERYBODY has biases.

It is not “fair” that Churchill has been put in the spotlight, and now has to do this. But that is the way it is. Churchill could provide all the texts – put them on the Internet, for example.

Personally, I am not going to undertake to do all this myself. But I’d study them, if they were made available. And no doubt the only person who might do this would be Churchill — since the UCo committee is no longer in session, and did not do this — much to its discredit.

That is my two cents on the report of the UCo committee.

We can, and IMO should, protest strongly the way in which all this has been done. Had WC not made the statements he did, it is clear that he would not have been put under this kind of scrutiny. So, the scrutiny is suspect from the get-go.

Grover Furr, Associate Professor, English & Comp. Lit. at Montclair SU, at 11:30 am EDT on July 24, 2006

Hiram Hover makes the key point about so-called “mixed motive” cases. Take two professors, each of whom has committed identical acts of plagiarism, lying about sources, and creation of false resumes. Now take two different people who each initiate a formal complaint against one or the other of the professors. One of the complainants has horrible motives. The other cares only about academic integrity.

Can we seriously commit ourseleves to the position that we will only investigate and discipline a plagiarizing academic in the second case? Will we really say that the complainant’s subjective motive is a defense to proven plagiarism? Will we permit the accused academic to argue, “I need not answer to the plagiarism issues, because I hereby accuse the complainant of bad motive"?

Bernardo O’Boyle, at 4:00 pm EDT on July 24, 2006

In response to Bernardo O’Boyle

Jaywalking is illegal in New York City. Nobody is prosecuted or even issued summons. Imagine that only blacks who jaywalk (and all such blacks) are issued summons. Is this OK?

No, it is selective prosecution. It is not legal/appropriate to target only a subset of such individuals from all those that commit some misdeed because of reasons unrelated to such act.

regina, at 6:30 pm EDT on July 24, 2006

I think Mark Lause is right on-target in saying that Colorado, in effect, got what it deserved—the university “passed over candidates with different qualifications when they selected, reviewed, tenured and made their commitments to Ward Churchill.” This is one reason I’ve opposed calls for Churchill’s dismissal—the Univeristy would be far better off examining its personnel procedures to determine how someone with Churchill’s shoddy credentials could have been hired, tenured, and made a department chair, and then making the necessary reforms to prevent other Churchill-like hires in the future.

That said, the consistent defenses of Churchill from figures such as Grover Furr and the “Teachers for Democracy” crowd or bizarre analogies from UnApologetically Tenured (massive academic fraud as the equivalent of a speeding ticket?!) serve as powerful arguments for those outside of the academy who argue that the contemporary professoriate is incapable of policing itself.

KC Johnson, Professor at Brooklyn College, at 6:30 pm EDT on July 24, 2006

Regina,

Your analogy fails for two reasons. First, under your analogy, plagiarism (like jay-walking) would have to be a trivial act that is in fact never prosecuted. You might think that academic plagiarism is trivial, but the broad consensus says otherwise.

Second, under your analogy the prosecutor has vicious motives. But what the Churchill defenders are arguing is not that the panel imposing discipline had vicious motives but rather that the original *complainants* did.

So let’s return to your analogy but make it realistic. Take a serious offense, like automobile theft. Suppose that complaining witnesses take airtight proof of theft (say, a videotape) to the police but the complaining witnesses have admittedly invidious motivations. Suppose their motivation is racist.

Under your approach, the police should say “we have unambiguous videotape of the car theft, and car theft is a serious matter, and we routinely punish people for theft, but because the complainant’s motives are dubious we will ignore this matter.”

Bernardo O’Boyle, at 8:00 pm EDT on July 24, 2006

UnApologetically Tenured was so quick to strike back that he/she didn’t even acknowledge that I endorsed the second half of the bizarre analogy that he/she repeated: that we spend “too little time contemplating the corruption of the police department.”

It’s clear in the Churchill case that there was an extraordinary “corruption” of the “police department” that was the Univ. of Colorado personnel system, and I agree fully with him/her that the focus of both Colorado and the academy as a whole should have fallen on what went wrong with an Ethnic Studies department that hired, tenured, and made chair an obvious charlatan like Churchill. Although we disagree on the reasoning, I agree with him/her that Colorado should not have moved to dismiss Churchill.

Perhaps UnApologetically Tenured can speak more on how to address the “corruption” in the academic “police department,” since this theme hasn’t seem to have been a concern of figures like Shortell, U.T., Grover Furr, et al, on this site.

KC Johnson, Professor at Brooklyn College, at 10:40 pm EDT on July 24, 2006

For the record (not that it matters), Churchill’s salary last year was $96, 392. It’s available on the CU website

http://www.colorado.edu/pba/facstaff/facsal/2005-2006/index.htm

He was certainly one of the better paid humanities profs. at CU.

As someone who is appalled by the circumstances of the investigation and would eagerly sign a statement saying so I find myself unable to sign this statement because of the way it characterizes the charges against Churchill, as mere obsessions over small details. The bottom line is, he made claims, repeatedly, that can’t be substantiated. It’s one thing to make a mistake. But the way he cited false sources (ie., ones he’d authored under another name) to buttress these claims makes it look like research misconduct to me (though, I concede, that is debatable). The statement also misrepresents the report by taking out of context its remarks on the “impressive volume” of his work. I simply don’t have the same reading of the report.

anon., University of Colorado, at 4:40 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Inconvenient facts from CU provost’s report

” .. We can, and IMO should, protest strongly the way in which all this has been done ..”

Excuse me — the CU provost’s report clearly states that WLC was *verbally* accused of being a deceiver, phony, and faker for years.

However, after WLC made his despicable, vile, and atrocious comments about British, Japanese, and U.S. workers murdered on 9/11, that is when WRITTEN complaints were filed.

It was at that point, the report states, the provost was OFFICIALLY required to investigate.

Is Mr. Furr suggesting that the CU provost should have just ignored the written complaint? Why, that would be as absurd and inane as claiming Stalin wasn’t such a bad guy, after all.

As for this .. “And if anyone can explain this one to me ..”

Here’s a reply at the ninth-grade level: why do soft-side academics think their politics should be subsidized by taxpayers, at a time when even Chinese Communist Party magazines have advertising in them?

Art D., at 5:55 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Refusing Evidence

Grover Furr complains that he has not seen the evidence against Churchill, yet he admittedly signed the petition without studying the report that contains the evidence he complains about not having seen. Grover, study the report instead of complaining that you haven’t seen the evidence it contains. Responsible people read facts before deciding important policy issues based on them.

JBM, at 6:55 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Ethnic Studies

So we are appalled that the ethnic studies department is not what it is cracked up to be? You seem perfectly satisfied with academics based on advocacy, then cry in despair when an academic acts like an advocate. Would the outcry be this great if the CU professors of Knitting 101 were suspected of crocheting?

If you expect to be taken seriously as truth-seekers by the greater world, then you must seek to prove first, then convince. Advocates and victimologists already assume that they have this proof and they skip on to the convincing. As their judges, your failure to challenge the legitimacy of advocacy as an academic discipline makes you equally guilty for their substandard research, since the course of study itself is substandard.

GoFigure, at 11:45 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Politics

One of the arguments brought by Churchill’s defenders is that he was hired and tenured because of his political views.

Why is it okay to hire and tenure a professor because you agree with his politics, but not okay to fire him because you disagree with his politics?

Most of Churchill’s defenders seem unfamiliar with the facts of the case. I think it’s pretty clear that CU is firing Churchill for what he did, not for his distasteful political speech. While his faults were known in ethnic studies for years, nobody ever brought a written complaint about his research misconduct to the CU administration. How was CU to have known about it until someone complained?

Thomas Brown, at 12:15 pm EDT on July 25, 2006

Ward Churchill

Having read some of Ward Churchill’s writings, I am amazed that his work is considered scholarly. (Churchill doesn’t even have an earned Ph.D. degree!) Pieces I have read are screeds that string together slanted observations of events supplemented with implied underhanded motives on the part of those Churchill hates, to arrive at foregone conclusions. I agree with the comment above that Churchill’s machinations pose a threat to the academic stature of Native American Studies. If Churchill’s scholarship is representative of scholarship at the University of Colorado, that institution is in poor shape indeed.

Jsens, at 4:35 am EDT on July 26, 2006

And I will hereby end my participation in this interesting and useful discussion by indicating my complete agreement with Ophelia. I like to think that I’ve ALWAYS been in that group (which includes people on the Right, Left, and all places In-Between) that believes that truth matters and that fraud and plagiarism are not OK. Truth, scholarly integrity, due process, and academic freedom all matter. Which is why this Churchill case is not, in my opinion, so open and shut. Thanks and cheers, Dean.

Dean Saitta, Professor of Anthropology at University of Denver, at 7:15 pm EDT on July 26, 2006