churchill as a political target

After having read many of these comments, I am amazed at how easy it is for readers to deceive themselves that the Churchill incident is somehow about plagiarism, first and foremost. Anyone who thinks this guy was investigated because he did not properly cite himself in a piece or made a few unsupported claims , or did ghostwriting occasionally, is living in a fantasy world. This guy was investigated and expelled for one simple reason: because of the comments he made regarding September 11th and the roosting of chickens. Without those comments, this whole inquiry does not happen, plain and simple. Conceding that the investigation arose precisely because he said something so politically controversial (and I would claim, ridiculous) is the first step in understanding this war on higher education John Wilson warns against. If people can be fired for making controversial claims, no matter how stupid or ridiculous they are, then there are truly no legitimate standards for American scholarship. This is politicized, arbitrary scholarship at its height.

Anthony DiMaggio, at 12:05 pm EST on March 1, 2008

Wow

Horowitz is right after all. No reform of the universities can come from within if even theft and lies are now considered acceptable.

Amazing.

JBM, at 6:35 am EDT on May 19, 2006

The ‘truth’ finally comes out

” .. In an era when the right-wing is already targeting college professors ..”

Darn .. had to read all the way to the last paragraph, to find the left-wing spin. How tedious.

Mr. Churchill and his supporters remind me of your average felon in prison — prisons are also filled with “innocent people ‘wrongly’ convicted.”

The Churchill mess is just the tip of the iceberg, making the case to charter public higher education. Chartering HE would let Churchill, Shortell, Furr, et al., find their authentic value in the world.

Art D., at 7:00 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Further Thoughts on Plagiarism

In my essay here, I focused on the troubling definition of research misconduct by the committee. I would be equally troubled if David Horowitz took a massive pay cut and became a tenured professor, and his errors in “The Professors” were used to justify his dismissal. Bad research isn’t misconduct.

I didn’t address the plagiarism charges, which are somewhat different. Churchill is found guilty of plagiarism for using material from an article he co-wrote without crediting the original organization that was the co-author. In another case, he is found guilty of misconduct for ghostwriting an article. In the final case, the Colorado committee finds him guilty of plagiarism for an essay which does not bear his name and which the committee acknowledges it cannot prove that he wrote. None of these is a classic definition of plagiarism. The question is, what is the common academic penalty for this?

I believe that many tenured professors should be fired for research misconduct. I was outraged in 1996 when the University of Chicago refused to fire history professor Julius Kirshner who had taken a book review written by a graduate student, and had it published solely under his own name, word for word, in a scholarly journal. The University of Chicago accepted Kirshner’s explanation that he assumed he owned the ideas of his graduate assistant. The professor’s punishment was that he would only be allowed to teach undergraduates, not graduate students, for five years.(see http://eh.net/pipermail/eh.teach/1996-August/000104.html)

Compared to Kirshner, Churchill’s crimes are minor. Churchill deserves condemnation for his shoddy scholarship and unethical practice of ghostwriting. And perhaps stronger evidence might prove a claim of plagiarism. And this report would certainly justify a refusal to hire or give tenure or promotion to a professor. But suspending or firing a tenured professor based on the shaky logic and inadequate evidence provided by the committee is difficult to justify, and it is doubtful that a less controversial professor in similar circumstances would receive the same treatment.

John K. Wilson, at 8:05 am EDT on May 19, 2006

In recent writings, it seems that many have forgotten that academic freedom doesn’t stand alone... it’s academic freedom AND responsibility. Conveniently, many seem to want nothing to do with responsibility and it is rarely mentioned in the same sentence.

The play book mantra of the “evil right wing” works well for Enquirer level press; however, I expect more than this from the academic community.

WF, at 8:15 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Ward Churchill and academic lying

John Wilson wrote this in defending Ward Churchill’s erroneous use of footnotes in academic writing: “In my forthcoming book, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, I include a quote by former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer admonishing Americans to “watch what they say.” I have a footnote listing a news report about the statement. But I also include in the footnote a reference to a letter to The New York Times by Fleischer explaining why he is being misinterpreted. I do not comment on this claim, because every word in my footnotes counts against the word limit for the book, and I don’t want to waste precious space scrutinizing some political hack’s line of bullshit. But I thought readers might want to look at a different view.”

Maybe Wilson’s example, I assume makes sense to him, but let’s remember that Churchill is supposed to be writing for academia, not the general public. In my experience, footnotes are always used to support or confirm the writers point of view, unless the writer explicitly states otherwise.

Wilson’s defense of Churchill is, in my view, just another “academic hack’s line of bullshit.” Churchill knew what he was doing and he knew it was deliberately misleading. Let’s not shed crocodile tears for this creep, this “little Lenin".

feudi pandola, at 8:40 am EDT on May 19, 2006

The defense of Ward Churchill

To understand more clearly the upside-down logic of those who coalesce around a moral imperative, one that renders them the final arbiters of moral virtue, I’d suggest reading, “Why Robespierre Chose Terror” in the Spring 2006 issue of the City Journal. The righteousness with which college professors dismiss the fraudlent behavior of Churchill makes a mockery of any search for agreed upon facts with which one might use to support an argument, one that stays on point. The above article is illustrative in its stunning duplicity.

Gene Jewett, at 8:45 am EDT on May 19, 2006

ward churchill

People like churchill need to be held accountable. Academic freedom is not license and if churchill and his acolytes stick out hteir necks then the chopping bolck becomes an option.

robert gaudino, at 9:00 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Witch hunt

Timothy Burke, a historian of Africa at Swarthmore, has an excellent, thorough commentary on the ACTA report that complements this piece. He demonstrates persuasively that the report is based on a deep misunderstanding of what it means to research or teach controversial material:

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=201

DGH, at 10:00 am EDT on May 19, 2006

For Shame

After reading Mr. Wilson’s article on the Ward Churchill incident I was troubled by the tone of this article, which appears to focus upon some “vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses.” This tone was present throughout this article, and gave Mr. Horowitz position that there is a left wing conspiracy much more credence than it should have.

What is even more disturbing is that this article defends Churchill through attacking the Colorado committees conclusions. Wilson cites “Churchill is guilty of occasionally shoddy scholarship and the dubious practice of ghostwriting, and perhaps even more.” Occasional shoddy scholarship!!!! Wow, is that what we are reduced to labeling plagiarism. I feel that there has been substantial evidence that Ward Churchill is guilty of plagiarism. He has done everything from steal large swaths of other individuals research, to copying paintings, and claiming that they were original work! To defend Churchill, and to claim that the committees findings are somehow detrimental to university professors everywhere is ludicrous. In fact, what the university does in response to the committee’s findings will set the bar for university professors and students everywhere. This will be accomplished through setting a precedent that even if you are tenured, you are held accountable for claiming that work is original is in fact taken from other sources without permission.

Plagiarism is far from a rare event. According to Plagiarism.org, cites that 80% of college students cheat at least once in their life, while 36% of undergraduates plagiarize while in school at least once. Furthermore, 55% of faculty are unwilling to devote time to investigate student plagiarism. You can find this information at http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism_stats.html.

The point of my rant is this. If professors are not held to a higher academic standard how can we expect students to be held to a similar standard. Instead, if we shrug off blatant theft of others intellectual property and label any punishment as being part of a “conspiracy” such as Mr. Wilson suggests, would we expect the problem to get better or worse?

I think Mr. Wilson needs to reconsider his thesis, in that Mr. Churchill is the victim of a rightwing conspiracy. In fact, his thesis is analogous to an individual who gets a speeding ticket being justified for blaming the cop for giving him the speeding ticket, as opposed to taking ownership for the fact that he was guilty for speeding. Or maybe a better analogy is a student blaming the instructor for “giving” him/her a failing grade, when in fact the student earned that grade without any help from the instructor.

Instead Mr. Wilson’s thesis should be that Churchill got what he asked for. If he did not steal other individuals intellectual property, then any group looks for wrong doing, regardless of their ideological slant, would find nothing, so long as the individual accused did not plagiarize. Just a thought.

vinnie, VG, at 10:00 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Oh, c’mon. The guy ghostwrote papers for others then cited those papers in support of his own work. He plagiarized. How are these things not misconduct?

Paul Gowder, at 10:15 am EDT on May 19, 2006

All cats aren’t equally gray

There’s a heck of a lot of difference between Churchill’s claim that the US intentionally gave Indians infected blankets and Horowitz’s objection to women’s studies programs on the grounds that women’s inequality is a myth. The difference is lots, and lots, of substantiated data concerning, e.g. male-female wage gaps, “missing women” in asian countries, etc. Now there may be an innocent explanation for that data: women may prefer lower paying jobs and the missing women may be a consequence of some medical condition. But the data is there, and it’s the business of academics in women’s studies and related disciplines to ask the why questions.

The stories Churchill has been telling are apparently along the lines of holocaust denial and space aliens landing in New Mexico. People don’t deserve to be put in jail for telling these stories but they also don’t deserve to be tenured. Note, the appeal to a left-, right-, Jewish-, scientific- or whatever establishment inttent on shutting them up is standard procedure for these charletans. And on the left in particular they’re inclined to appeal to the Solidarity of the Oppressed to make the case that if fellow leftists challenge any scholarship that purports to be radical, feminist, or whatever they are playing into the hands of the enemy.

I can’t think of anything more likely to support the conservative agendas of Horowitz et. al. than taking the bait.

LogicGuru, at 11:05 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Focus, people...

There are multiple charges in the report. The pagiarism ones justify firing in my opinion, since I have very little tolerance for plagiarism by fellow professors.

However, I do worry about the idea that incorrect facts are considered misconduct. Factual errors are part and parcel of science, and they are quite different than fabricating data. The appropriate place for factual errors to be addressed is in publications or the peer-review process; they do not constitute ethical violations. I find this part of the report worrisome because while I never plagiarize, I’m sure that there are factual errors somewhere in my work. Moreover, it is often non-obvious how the sources I footnote combine to create support for a data point.

Jeff, at 11:05 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Make university investigations public!

With both communists and neo-conservatives abandoning any semblance of scholarly attitude and pushing for the abolition of law established for centuries, universities have entered the era of Inquisition.

The university “investigations” are DESIGNED (with all “procedures” and “guidelines") to result in arbitrary decisions. These “investigations” must be conducted in public, period. Otherwise, they will continue to allow such fraud as this:http://ca.geocities.com/UofTfraud/

Is there anyone who can stop these monkey trials? Anyone who can prohibit using universities for political gains by the “groups"?

Michael Pyshnov.

Michael Pyshnov, at 11:05 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Invented, not incorrect

“However, I do worry about the idea that incorrect facts are considered misconduct.”

That is not what Churchill did. He invented “facts,” published them under different names, then cited among those publications to make it seem as though those “facts” found acceptance in the scholarly community.

JBM, at 11:35 am EDT on May 19, 2006

Can’t anyone spell charlatan?

Bob at State U., at 12:35 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Churchill’s Mandan Fabrications

People should read the Churchill Report carefully.

The Report was written by a panel including one prominent historian and one person in Mexican-American Studies, so it’s not like they don’t know what they’re doing. Churchill is, simply, a fraud: read the material on the epidemic. It’s clear he made things up. He said in print, and said repeatedly in print, that the small pox epidemic among the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikaree people in 1837 was the result of a conscious U.S. Army plot, spread from U.S. army posts on the Upper Missouri, spread by army surgeons at those posts (later reduced to one army surgeon) who intentionally gave infected blankets to the Indians, those blankets having come from Army smallpox wards in St. Louis. These post surgeons also withheld from the Indians a small pox vaccine that was available at the army forts, and these “post surgeons” gave advice to the Indians to “scatter", the advice being given with the intent of spreading the disease farther.

That is Churchill on the smallpox epidemic of 1837. Courses based on his books will be saying this is what occurred.> But the written sources Churchill himself cited in his writings demonstrate:

1. There were NO army posts in the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikaree country. NONE. That is a fabrication. 2. Hence there were NO evil army “post surgeon(s)” (in fact, no doctors existed on the Upper Missouri at all in 1837) to hand out infected blankets intentionally. That is another fabrication. 3. There was no U.S. Army smallpox ward, or any smallpox ward, in St. Louis in this period from which the “infected blankets” could have come. That is another fabrication. 4. There was NO vaccine available on the Upper Missouri in 1837 (as sources complain about), so none could be evilly and intentionally withheld by the “evil post surgeon(s)” at the “army forts". That is another fabrication. > 5. There were indeed forts, but these were forts of the American Fur Trade Company (which Churchill evidently mistook for U.S. Army forts on the basis of the term “fort"). One of these forts, when struck by the smallpox, closed its gates to prevent contact with the Indians. They had no desire to spread the disease. Naturally: the AFTCompany had no desire to kill their own customers! The idea that “bad advice” was spread is yet another fabrication. 6. The written documents all indicate that the smallpox was spread accidentally because of smallpox on an AFTCompany steamboat that came up the river: the captain of the boat kept on, instead of turning back when the smallpox was discovered, because he feared angering his Indian customers if the steamboat with its merchandise didn’t arrive that spring. He was an idiot, and greedy, or concerned to maintain the Company’s customers. 7. One written document DOES say the smallpox was intentional—spread by a white man who was denied passage on the steamboat, in order to kill all the whites on the boat. This was a rumor. Other than that—no, no, no evidence of Army, Army surgeons, intentional spreading, etc. These are fabrications. > 8. Churchill, citing various authorities in his written, placed the number of Indian dead at over 100,000, or at 125,000, or at 400,000. Any reader will assume that this is what the various authorities say. But none of the authorities he cites for his death-figures gives ANY figure at all. This is another fabrication. ( The authorities agreethat the deaths were huge in number).

Now, read the report: When questioned about his “lack of contemporary sources” for the things he had repeatedly asserted about the epidemic, Churchill then lied about those sources to the committee itself. Most striking is that while he only cited the traditional written sources on the epidemic in his repetitive published work on this topic, now, > when shown that these sources not only did not support what he said happened (the army conspiracy) but directly contradicted what he said happened, he only now suddenly claimed to the investigating committee that his exposition was all along based NOTon the written sources he had cited in print, but instead on a mysterious “Indian oral tradition” concerning a U.S. Army plot. Upon investigation, the committee determined through investigation with Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikaree experts that this “Indian oral tradition” itself turned out not to exist. That is, it was another fabrication. It was evidently made up on the spur of the moment in February by Churchill to cover himself when caught grossly misusing the traditional written sources.

It is important to remember that Churchill repeatedly published, in books that sell widely, that the U.S. Army engaged in a plot to destroy the tribes on the Upper > Missouri in 1837. This poisonous story has been spread and spread and spread by him. It is fiction. The real story is horrendous enough—7/8 of the Mandans died between June and October 1837!—but Churchill’s work is fiction.

In the state of our evidence, no one knows HOW the smallpox was transmitted to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikaree. Trade blankets are possible, but human contact is equally likely (the Indian oral tradition—the real ones the investigating committee found—has both versions). That is: blankets may not have been involved at all.

Worst of all, and noted with horror by the committee, is that when confronted with his shoddy scholarship and outright fabrication, Churchill didn’t give an inch. He said he intends to republish his account of 1837 this year. He doesn’t understand what he did wrong.

This is just ONE part of the Churchill verdict.

For a professional historian such as myself, this kind of conduct by Churchill is really stunning. That he doesn’t think he did anything wrong is worst of all. This is not a matter of the picky “footnote police.” Churchill is an untrained fraud.

Arthur Eckstein, Professor of History, University of Maryland

arthur eckstein, at 12:40 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

The heavy lifting in Wilson’s article is done by a phrase like “shoddy, perhaps more ....” That’s terrific rhetoric. It’s utterly inaccurate, but terrific rhetoric.

Note how the “perhaps more” protects Wilson from the accusation that he’s failed to consider the string of frauds by Churchill. But if we’re to take Wilson seriously, he needs to come out from behind his “perhaps” and come down firmly: was there “more” or not? If so, what kind of “more"? Did Churchill engage in a long, repetitive pattern of scholarly frauds or didn’t he?

The positive developments from the Horowitz onslaught and Churchill onslaught, etc., is that the left on campus — which has for decades been operating in the “if we don’t like it, we censor it” mode — is now rediscovering the once-quaint virtues of academic freedom, open dialogue, and tolerance of different views.

This is Phase 1 of the process — where academia “talks the talk” of viewpoint tolerance. Walking the walk will take a few more year, but it will come. Academia is always a lagging indicator of social mores. It will take another decade for academia to catch up to the conservative turn our society took in the 1980s.

Bernardo O’Boyle, at 1:40 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Well done, Prof. Brown

Dr. Brown has shown the difference between a scholar’s respect for truth and research rigor — and myopic, rank politization of issues.

It is like the true scientist Dr. Koop and the AIDS crisis. Dr. Koop’s heart felt one thing — but his medical mind acknowledged the impending crisis.

Mr. Churchill is an unhappy man who used a family fable ("we’re Indian") to enlarge his ego.

He harms the cause of American Indian rights with his shoddy research methods — if there can be no generalized consensus, how can there be some resolution?

He places himself above the CU community because to acknowledge the facts would be to crush his self-ego.

This is beyond appalling. The word I want to use now is unprintable in a family publication.

R.A.S., at 1:45 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Shoddy versus “making shit up”

For me, “shoddy” scholarship includes lots and lots and LOTS of pieces of academic writing, essays that make arguments that are full of holes, bad evidence, leaps in logic, etc. There are many examples, of course, but the ones that attract attention are the ones that push particular political/cultural buttons. Churchill’s infamous 911 essay is an example. I did read that piece about a year and a half ago, when this whole business began, and the reason why I think it is shoddy is because his argument is full of lots of holes and his writing is pretty poor. I haven’t read it, but everything I hear about Horowitz’s book on the 101 most dangerous academics suggests to me that it too is probably an example of shoddy scholarship.

“Making shit up” is fabrication. To borrow from Chicken Little’s post about “Standards” (which was useful, btw), saying that Pearl Harbor didn’t happen would be a fabrication. Signing your name to something you didn’t write would be a fabrication.

Now, there is a fuzzy line possible between these two things. It is possible to be a thinker so far ahead of her time to be perceived as fabricating something (I don’t think Churchill is such a thinker, btw). It’s also possible that the writer didn’t realize that they were fabricating something (this happens with student writing all the time, but that’s a plagiarism topic where I’m not going to go). But generally, I think the line is pretty clear.

Shoddy work happens all the time. But I don’t think that’s a “crime.” Fortunately, most shoddy scholarship doesn’t push the political/socal buttons being pressed by Churchill or Horowitz, so they remain forgotten among the thousands of academic articles that go virtually unread.

Blatently “making shit up” is (I think/hope) more rare, and I think that is a crime.

How does this figure in with Churchill? Well, as I said with my first comment here, I’m not going to defend Churchill and I don’t really care what happens to him. But I will say this: the fact that Churchill’s 911 piece was shoddy (or poorly written or badly reasoned or whatever) is not the reason why this brew-ha-ha (sp???) started in the first place. The reason why this all started, obviously, is because Churchill’s argument about 911 pissed people off— which I suspect was his purpose.

Pissing people off with shoddy scholarship is not a reason to fire a tenured professor (and btw, I strongly agree with the comment that CU got what it deserved when it hired, tenured, and promoted Churchill in the first place).

However, making shit up is a crime and deserves to be punished. If Churchill is guilty of that, if it’s not the whole 911 issue, then I would agree, he should get some kind of punishment.

Steven D. Krause, at 3:20 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Hmmm, using data you know to be false as evidence to justify a conclusion that you have already reached. Doesn’t sound like academic work; sounds more like politics. The only difference between this firing offense and a possibly impeachable one is there is a reasonable chance the president believed his sources were credible.

Andrew, at 5:40 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

I was vehemently opposed to the investigation when it started because the political motivation of the CU admin. was apparent to everyone who watched. And I was one of many CU faculty who signed a statement protesting the initial investigation. But I am perplexed by the left’s continued defense of Churchill and by Wilson’s characterization of the committee’s report as mere footnote policing. I encourage anyone who is inclined to accept this view to read the report and make your own decision. Wilson suggests that Churchill’s only misdeed was citing a source that reaches a conclusion different from his own. But when we write a sentence stated as a fact, then provide a footnote, we are clearly implying that the souce will document that fact. If not, it’s still fine to cite it, but then we write something like, “For another viewpoint, see..” The main issue in Chuchill’s work, though, is that THERE SIMPLY WAS NO DOCUMENTATION FOR THE CLAIMS HE WAS MAKING and he cited a source AS IF THERE WAS DOCUMENTATION. And this didn’t just happen once; it was a repeated pattern. The committee distinguished between simple factual errors and deliberate misrepresentation, and argued (persuasively IMO) that the many instances of this in WC’s writing added up to something other than shoddy work or lousy footnoting practice.

The report notes that the circumstances of the investigation are highly suspect because W.C. had previous complaints against him that the university decided not to investigate. If CU had only investigated earlier, it could have been done without explicit political motivation. Yes, I’m ashamed that the admin. stooped to political pandering and took weeks to decide that his 9-11 comments were protected by the 1st amendement. And I share Wilson’s concerns about witch hunting and slippery slopes.

But... why are some on the academic left (which I consider myself a part of) still rushing to Churchill’s defense? None of the dubious political motivations of Cu’s admin. make it OK for a prof. to misrepresent sources and and historical events to buttress a false case. This kind of thing makes humanistic scholarship difficult to defend and justify. We all know that there was genocide against Indians by whites. We didn’t need WC to tell us that. It is a scholar’s job to document the details of that genocide, accurately. WC’s antics, and especially the left’s defense of them, ultimately make the alternative and sorely needed perspectives of ethnic studies scholars much more difficult to be heard, especially by those who don’t want to hear them anyway: by students, university administrations, and the public.

humanities anon., University of Colorado, at 9:45 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

back to 9/11

Churchill’s scholarly shortcomings and professional integrity are all beside the point in one important sense: the political processes leading to his exposure were triggered by an emotional and ideological response to a from-the-hip essay in which he attacked American notions of national and cultural exceptionalism while trying to place the crimes of 9/11 into political-historical context. Given its own moral economy, he argued, the US state “deserved” to be attacked. It’s this unremarkable analysis that, ultimately, is the target of the campaigns against Churchill. He “blasphemed” the people and idea of the United States and had to be made to pay. His ethnicity (defined in biological or legalistic rather than discursive terms by his detractors), his personality and style, certain points in his scholarship became avenues of a totalistic attack in retribution for, and to undermine the power of, his 9/11 ruminations. One hopes that the idea of “roosting chickens” won’t be dismissed because of Churchill’s academic misconduct with respect to particular historical issues. Vainly, no doubt.

Tim Behrend, School of Asian Studies at University of Auckland, at 11:10 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Professor Wilson’s claim that “ACTA threatens that academic freedom will be revoked from colleges unless they start censoring their professors and ban such courses” puzzles me. I have the ACTA report in front of me, which was forwarded to me by Charles Mitchell of ACTA, and I do not see any statement indicating an intention to advocate revocation of academic freedom.

Indeed, Wilson’s statement is nonsensical because ACTA has no authority over academic freedom. Rather, academic hiring committees have such authority, as do university administrations. Since both academic hiring committees and university administrations are more likely to be dominated by left wing extremists than by conservatives, it would hardly seem likely that a conservative group like ACTA would have much influennce over academic freedom.

Rather, Wilson once again illustrates the Orwellian use of the term academic freedom characteristic of the suppressive left wing McCarthyites who dominate universities and suppress and fire anyone who disagrees with their dumb hypotheses, such as caucasians are responsible for high crime rates in Cote d’Ivoire, Aristotle lynched Hispanics, and there are no differences between males and females. Rather, such crackpot views have come to dominate universities, and most who disagree, like Lawrence Summers at Harvard, are driven out by the left wing bigots who dominate these institutions.

How could ACTA threaten academic freedom when left wing campus bigots have already destroyed it?

Mitchell Langbert, Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, at 11:10 pm EDT on May 19, 2006

Moreover

In the introduction to the ACTA report Anne Neale makes the statement: “the solution is not to fire professors who express extreme views but to expose them, to compel them to defend their positions, invite them to debate ideas and above all, to insist that they do their job of teaching students well...the faculty’s academic freedom should end at the point where profesors abuse the special trust they are given to respect students’ academic freedom to learn.” These remarks are entirely consistent with the statements of the American Association of Univeristy Professors.

Of course, leftists like Wilson find the idea that he should be required to respect students’ academic freedom troubling, even baffling.

Since Wilson’s remarks about ACTA are characteristic of the misrepresentation in which academics engage in suppressing conservatives’ academic freedom, I have written the following letter of support to ACTA:

“In cataloguing ideologically- and politically-driven courses in nearly four dozen well-known institutions of higher learning, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni has performed an important public service. You have broadened and further documented Roger Kimball’s insights in Tenured Radicals. The courses that you describe in “How Many Ward Churchills: A Study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni” do not deserve the appellation “academic.” Rather, the courses that you describe amount to trash; that is, shrill advocacy of left wing ideology and biases, reverse racism, and anti-American demogoguery. The courses that you describe are the handiwork of cranks. Sadly, the broad prevalence of such courses across a wide swath of the country’s best colleges suggests a decline in standards in higher education to which the public needs to be alerted. Alumni are not getting what they think when they contribute; the public does not get what it thinks when it provides tax exemptions; employers do not get what they think when they insist on credentials from institutions; and parents do not get what they think when they pay tens of thousands of dollars to be told that the most free, wealthiest and creative society in history, the United States of America, is inferior to the left wing prison camps of the Soviet Union or Cuba, or the backward, suppressive and closed-minded cultures of the third world.”

Of course, our left-wing campus cranks do not volunteer to emigrate to North Korea beause, er, well, you figure it out.

Mitchell Langbert, Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, at 5:10 am EDT on May 20, 2006

In my view, Mr. Wilson is simply wrong to believe that in the Ward Churchill case the academic community is suddenly raising its standards of scholarship. On the contrary: in the Ward Churchill case the academic community is simply applying to Ward Churchill the prevailing standards of scholarship that are absolutely required of all professionals.

Mr. Wilson also cynically implies that conduct such as Churchill’s is widespread among scholars—and I believe that is wrong as well. In 25 years in the profession I have never come across a previous case of a scholar simply MAKING UP historical events, as Churchill does. I deny that such fabrication is widespread.

Wilson now finally agrees that Churchill’s scholarly failures are far worse than just a few confused footnotes. But he still does not want to see an intentional pattern of misconduct here. I urge him to read the report, and especially to consider Churchill’s deceptive conduct towards the investigatory committee itself when they caught him out on the question of his outrageous misuse of the sources of the 1837 smallpox epidemic on the Upper Missouri. At that point he had sudden recourse to a mysterious “Indian oral tradition” which he had never ever referred to in print, and which turned out only he knew. No scholar from the Three Affiliated Tribes vouched for his “oral tradition” on the epidemic; they denied it. It was just another lie. (Of course, Churchill’s last desperate defense here rested on the idea that he himself is an Indian,which he isn’t, and thus had access to “special knowledge", which he doesn’t.) We can all agree that Churchill’s performance was pathetic. But Mr. Wilson, it was worse: it was completely and cynically unethical.

It is fair to say that Colorado is now reaping the results of having intentionally hired and then promoted to the heights an unqualified political hack, and paying the price for having protected and promoted him for a decade after the complaints about his grotesque misuse of sources and evidence started to flow in (which was long before 9/11). That should be a lesson for other university administrations.

If the Ethnic Studies Association decides to support Churchill along the lines suggested by Mr. Wilson, the entire field will be going over a cliff.

Arthur Eckstein

arthur eckstein, at 2:10 pm EDT on May 20, 2006

My point was that the claims Wilson made, in the language he made them, were borne out by the documents he cited, so that Brown’s extreme language about Wilson’s capacities and veracity was uncalled for. As I noted in my previous post Wilson does not use the term “controlling authority.” Nor do I. Nor do I “infer” anything about controlling authority. If Brown wants to argue that we *should* be discussing this in terms of something called a “controlling authority,” that’s fine. But to say I “wrongly infer” something when I don’t make the inference in the first place, or even use the concept, is just silly.

On © I’m not excusing Churchill, simply noting that the issue Brown raises is one that Wilson had quite a lot to say about, and that one would think that a reply to Wilson would engage his substantive argument on that point. Much turns on what implicit claim a reference is thought to make.

Brown’s real argument seems to be that Wilson understated the original charge to the committee. That is, while the documents Wilson cites are relevant and appropriately characterized, there are other more-relevant or more-powerful documents, and once you take them into account the severity of the committee’s judgments is more comprehensible. I don’t know enough to assess its merits, but this strikes me as a reasonable, smart argument.

Let’s pursue it with an example. The report has the following passage on page 24.

“In short, when one carefully dissects the Churchill claim quoted in the original allegation, the three apparently independent third-party sources dissolve into one source (the Act) that clearly does not expressly support his claim, and two other sources (the Robbins and Jaimes chapters) that he wrote himself. Although Professor Churchill purported to offer his claims as supported by research, based on independent sources, it turns out that the claims not only cannot be supported but that he has misrepresented the independent nature of his sources employed to buttress the unsupportable details of his conclusions. Were Professor Churchill a scientist, rather than a researcher engaged in social science research in ethnic studies, the equivalent would be (1) the misstatement of some underlying data (i.e., his mischaracterization of the General Allotment Act) and (2) the total fabrication of other data to support his hypothesis (i.e., the ghostwriting and self-citation of the Robbins and Jaimes essays).”

Self-citation is a perfectly honorable thing. It’s a way of saying that you dealt with this question already, and anyone who wants more can go to your earlier publication for the details. Ghost-self-citing is, however, pretty weird. It’s certainly misleading. You owe it to your reader to be clear when you’re self-citing and when you are not. So I agree this falls within the realm of misconduct. (And ghosting scholarly work sounds like misconduct itself.)

But the last sentence of the passage quoted above seems to me to be using the wrong categories. The analogy between natural and physical science does not hold here. Articles aren’t data. (No scholar will be so naive to think that your ability to cite three names in support of a point proves it — you may have three lunatics.) We can say that Churchill was wrong about the archival data three times under three different names (and as the committee notes, scholars have already gone after him in the literature on these claims.) We can say that he is highly misleading by self-citing in a way that does not make it clear that nobody else supports him on this point. But experimental data this is not.

If Brown’s right, it’s now clear why the committee made this tortured analogy to natural science, rather than just relying on the perfectly good criteria historians use: this analogy puts them in contact with a federal legal standard that was written to go after natural-science data-fabricators. (Again, this isn’t to excuse the conduct, but we can perhaps see the structure of the legal case for firing Churchill being bolted together here.)

Wilson could launch a plausible critique here: exactly what is the relation between the AHA standards and the Federal ones used above? If AHA standards were ultimately not what this rested on, why does the committee make such a big deal about them, and about having agreed with Churchill on their use?

Just to be clear, I’ve not written a word attacking the good faith of the UC committee and I’ve seen nothing so far to suggest that theirs was not an honest effort to complete a very difficult task. This cannot have been a committee assignment that any of them welcomed.

Colin Danby, at 7:00 pm EDT on May 20, 2006

Watching this Debate

One of the fascinating things here is watching this debate.

There is, of course, the left-right split. Probably legitimate because there is an ongoing organized attempt to intimidate faculty not adhering to America’s current political “party line.” That makes it logical for faculty from outside “the American Right” to be highly suspicious of the findings of an investigation that was begun for political reasons. To deny that this happens within a context is nonsense, and had the UC committee investigated “all” faculty in the same way, people would be less nervous about accepting the findings.

Then there is fear. A many have said, shoddy, sloppy research happens all the time. Universities almost insist on this by creating exaggerated faculty publishing requirements. And logically, faculty members are nervous about anyone combing through their work looking for errors.

A nice touch is the worried father, a common element in the United States today, who having given his child no discernible judgement capabilities, and sent him or her to a secondary school devoted to AP courses and achievement test scores, hopes Universities will protect that child from dangerous ideas.

And of course there is the very understandable — if very disappointing — outrage against someone who has (legitimately or not, convincingly or not) attempted to trash a cherished American myth-set. Good teachers, good schools, and good entertainers are all dependent on risk-taking and myth-breaking — but all can go badly — be it horribly inaccurate historical film-making (Pearl Harbor, U-571) or Churchill’s writing. What Colorado seems not to have done, is develop a way of saying that extreme controversey is essential on their campus, but (perhaps) not this way.

Finally there is the issue of plagiarism, false sources, and ghost writing. Every day hundreds of university faculty put their names on student-developed papers they had — essentially — no part in writing. Colleges and journals encourage this. Every day authorship “order” gets arranged by who needs that “first credit” right now. Every day people are out there Googling themselves and their colleagues counting citations. And obviously, every day crap is written and published because — hey, all that counts is publication.

Do I have an opinion on Ward Churchill? I’m not sure. He seems like so many, someone who warps their research to fit their publication and political agendas. If this is wrong, and I believe it is, then a lot more needs to change than the status of one tenured professor.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 7:00 pm EDT on May 20, 2006

More Errors of Fact

Once again Danby misrepresents the facts, falsely stating that “the claims Wilson made, in the language he made them, were borne out by the documents he cited,” and thus I should not take Wilson to task for his errors of fact.

But that is not the case. Quoting Wilson:

“Because Colorado’s policy explicitly exempts “honest error,” the Colorado committee turned into a kind of character police. Noting their dislike for Churchill’s “attitude,” the committee members seem to have concluded without the slightest evidence that Churchill intentionally deceived readers with his footnotes.”

I’ve already demonstrated that CU’s policy does not “explicitly exempt” honest error—but in fact specifically takes it into account—and that Wilson is simply wrong on this. And Danby is wrong to say otherwise. Such stubborn refusal to face facts is what incites me to strong language. Wilson cited to the definition while misrepresenting it as policy, thus wrongly implying that the CU committee was not permitted to reach a verdict of honest error.

Furthermore, anyone who takes the trouble to read the committee’s report will immediately see that Wilson is also willfully misrepresenting the report when he claims that they failed to find “the slightest evidence that Churchill intentionally deceived readers.” In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that Churchill did precisely that, and the committee gives numerous examples. Churchill’s sock puppetry alone is convincing evidence of an attempt to deceive, and there is much more.

I agree that the report’s section on the General Allotment Act is poorly worded in places. But the fact remains that Churchill stated that the Act contains a blood quantum requirement, when it does not. Thus Churchill has falsified the central primary source—repeatedly. The committee’s reference to science is unneccessary. Churchill has both falsified data and fabricated data, violating the ethical standards of any scholarly discipline. A few paragraphs of clumsy writing in the report do not alter that underlying fact.

On the question of why the committee invoked AHA standards, I think I have an answer. Churchill complains that none of the committee members is an American Indian, and that none of them are experts in American Indian Studies, and thus they are not familiar with the standards in his field. Of course, this complaint is so specious that it doesn’t require a response. But due to the political context of the investigation, the committee bent over backwards to give every consideration to Churchill’s complaint. Because there is no published ethical standard for American Indian Studies, they invoked the AHA statement on ethics, which is the closest and most appropriate ethical standard for assessing research on an historical event.

Wilson complains that the AHA does not explicitly disallow citing someone who disagrees with you, as if that would somehow excuse Churchill’s transgression, or as if it demonstrates some sort of politicized malfeasance on the part of the committee. That is a willful misreading of the situation on Wilson’s part. Wilson is attempting to trivialize the degree of Churchill’s fraud by recasting it as being limited to citing someone who disagrees with him. But anyone who takes the time to read the report will immediately see that Churchill’s transgressions are far more serious than that. On this point, I found Wilson’s essay to be transparently dishonest, and that is what provoked me to criticize him in the language I used.

Thomas Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lamar University, at 9:40 pm EDT on May 20, 2006

Apologist Wilson and the comments

It is amazing that academics can comment on an article or opinion with the introduction, “I haven’t read it, but” and make statements such as “may be shoddy, or more” and be published, much less read. The editors at Inside Higher Ed should reject opinion such as Wilson’s and comments that obviously have no grip of the facts.

An opinion or comment must be based upon at least a reading of the material critiqued and specific cites to the opinion or fact that is believed to be wrong or misstated.

Some comments were outstanding, such as the parent who asks the Higher Ed profession to clean up its act or suffer oblivion.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 9:15 am EDT on May 21, 2006

Churchill considers himself a scientist

As the report noted, Churchill agreed to be considered an historian for the purposes of the investigation and be held to the standards in history. But, more importantly, Churchill himself was cited by the committee regarding his claims about good science and journalism, to wit:

“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.”

I believe we can infer from that statement that Ward Churchill considers himself a practitioner of science and journalism and that both require one to adhere to the same standards.

The claim that Churchill should be held to standards of footnoting in the humanities is astonishing. Whether in the sciences or the humanities, scholars do their readers a service by noting the difference between a footnote that supports a claim and a footnote which supports competing claims. I dont’ know about anyone else here, but that’s how I track down the interesting material to read.

Such footnotes are usually prefaced with “But see....” The author typically provides a brief summary of how the author in question disagrees with the matter at hand. It’s really quite simple and obviously important for anyone who wishes to use those footnotes the way Churchill claims he wishes his readers to use them when speaking to a general audience. (See the “rich footnote” quote in the report.)

Churchill knew he lied about the authorship of a few papers. He used that lie to pretend that he had support for his claims from independent researchers.

Lying about who actually authors a paper by completely writing it yourself — and having others in on the secret is not something to be treated lightly. That is, this is not a situation where a senior scholar takes credit for research conducted and written by a junior apprentice. This was a case of the senior scholar writing a paper and then assigning authorship to two other people — two people who also committed acts of misconduct on my view.

If you think someone like that has not besmirched the academy enough to warrant his removal from said academy or some equally serious punishment, all I can say is: I’m thoroughly disgusted.

Feminists and left activists worked hard to bring universities to the point where they were willing to hire someone like Churchill on the basis of the critiques we’d lodged against the system of assessing someone’s professional worth and publication record.

Churchill has done a disservice to the social movements that helped put him in his position at the university. He has betrayed people who sacrificed their own careers to make that happen.

He has also betrayed the men and women who defended him and who denied that he could possibly be guilty of anything more than a forgetful lack of quotation marks in a footnote.

Bitch | Lab, at 4:15 pm EDT on May 21, 2006

Question for Thomas Brown et al.

I’m curious how you imagine Churchill at work on the small pox epidemic among the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikaree people in 1837. Do you think he was searching for obscure evidence that there was some degree of intentionality in US Army actions that contributed, or even caused, the outbreak? But then, having failed in his search, he decided to make up evidence to perpetrate a propaganda hoax on the scholarly community and concerned political activists? In other words, do you believe that he calculatedly set out to perpetrate a deception? You and other harsh critics here seem, in fact, to use terms like lie and deceive and “falsely claim” quite readily (against Wilson, too). Do you think that Wilson, likewise, has inten