Posted on 02/10/2005 10:22:42 AM PST by bikepacker67
Two scholars say Churchill's work strayed from facts on two issues
University of Colorado officials reviewing Ward Churchill's writings and qualifications will find questions about his scholarship and accuracy dating back at least eight years.
"If he is going to get fired, it is going to be for making up data, and that's one thing you can't get away with in the academic community," said Thomas F. Brown, who holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins and is an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
Brown is one of two professors at different universities who have published or have sought to publish detailed critiques of Churchill's work. Others have questioned his work in interviews.
University of New Mexico law professor John LaVelle in 1996 published a seven-page essay in the journal American Indian Quarterly questioning the basis of Churchill's theories and the underlying scholarship behind them.
"In view of America's entrenched ignorance of the legal and political concerns of Indian tribes, the publication of a grossly misleading and misinforming book like (Churchill's) 'Indians Are Us?' constitutes a regrettable setback in Indian people's struggle for social justice," LaVelle wrote.
That work apparently was never requested or considered by CU officials as they transferred Churchill's tenure from the communications school to ethnic studies in 1997, appointing him chairman of that department.
But today, Churchill's intellectual rigor is the third area to face scrutiny in the academic and political world since his views about the Sept. 11 attacks - he called some of the victims "little Eichmanns" - became widely known.
His claims of Indian heritage, which remain unconfirmed by anyone other than Churchill, as well as the shifting tales of his military service, remain the source of public debate as Churchill battles calls for his resignation or dismissal.
Churchill, who has asserted at different times that he was of one-sixteenth Creek or three-sixteenths Cherokee ancestry, now refuses to discuss anything about his past or questions about his academic qualifications.
"None of those questions are relevant to anything," Churchill said Tuesday. "This is not an issue about me. This is an issue about what I said. I'm not going to turn it into the ... National Enquirer."
But while Churchill has been unable or unwilling to produce anyone who can testify to his claims of Indian ancestry, or his accounts of facing combat in Vietnam, he has many defenders of his academic record.
"I've read a fair amount of his work, and a lot of it is excellent, penetrating and of high scholarly quality," said Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an anti-war activist.
"His work is viewed highly. I use it in my classes," said James Riding In, longtime professor in the Department of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. "...I've used some of his work in my classes before. He's a good scholar but very controversial."
Several of Churchill's theories have generated both questions and controversy in both the Indian community and the academic world at large.
But two of his opinions, often repeated in his works, have drawn much of the attention: His assertion that the U.S. government established criteria that would force Indians out of existence, and his claim that the government intentionally introduced smallpox to the Plains Indians.
Even in the occasionally bare-knuckled world of academic criticism, LaVelle's 1996 essay on Churchill stands out. LaVelle, an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Tribe, is particularly offended by Churchill's view that the various tribes have, through the establishment of membership policies, contributed to Indian problems.
In the essay, LaVelle deconstructs Churchill's collection of commentaries, "Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America."
Contained in that collection is a statement by Churchill that the U.S. government, through a piece of legislation called the General Allotment Act, sought to require proof that an Indian was of one-half or more Indian blood before providing a land grant to that person.
Such a requirement would have forced Indians to procreate only among themselves, or eventually their recognized existence would end. Trouble is, LaVelle's 1996 essay says, the U.S. government never made such a requirement in that law.
"Churchill's asserted General Allotment Act 'standard' does not exist anywhere in the text of the Act," wrote LaVelle. "Rather, that Act - like nearly all federal legislation in both history and modern times - defers to membership in an Indian tribe as the core criterion for triggering the law's applicability to individuals."
Churchill declined to respond to LaVelle's charge for this story but provided a response to the American Indian Quarterly at the time.
Then-editor Morris W. Foster of the University of Oklahoma said he declined to publish the response because he considered it potentially libelous.
Brown, of Lamar University, complains in print about Churchill's claim that smallpox-tainted blankets were intentionally distributed by U.S. officials to Indians.
In a brief filed with the Denver court in an effort to have charges of disrupting the 1992 Columbus Day parade dismissed, and in a later essay, Churchill cites UCLA anthropologist Russell Thornton as the source of his assertion that "the U.S. Army distributed smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan (Indians)."
But Thornton actually wrote that smallpox was likely accidentally spread by deckhands with the disease as they unloaded merchandise among the Mandan.
"Churchill's tale of genocide by means of biological warfare is shocking," Brown writes in a paper he is preparing for publication. "It is also entirely fraudulent."
Churchill's defenders point to his meticulous use of footnotes that can stretch for pages after an essay.
"He's impeccable on his sources and known for his empirical and archival-based methodologies," said Arturo Aldama, a professor with Churchill in the CU ethnic-studies department. "Whether you agree with it or not, it's always been praised for academic rigor. He has 400 footnotes per chapter."
But the footnotes themselves are not always praised.
"By researching those copious endnotes, however, the discerning reader will discover that, notwithstanding all the provocative sound and fury rumbling through his essays, Churchill's analysis overall is sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity," LaVelle wrote.
bttt
This is great.
I hope he gets his ass nailed to the wall for academic dishonesty.
What goes around, comes around.
Noam Chomsky endorses him-that's all anyone needs to know.
So besides being an idiot, he is a liar too.
When Noam Chomsky gives your work a thumbs-up, you can rest assured its fraudulent, anti-American bile.
"The chickens come home to roost."
That's funny, they said the same things about Michael Bellesiles, another academic fraud who was found out, but was staunchly defended because of his politically-correct theses.
How many other so-called "professors" are there out there who are equally inept or fraudulent, but who are merely lower in profile?
So churchill is a "little dan rather"???
It's called "footnote bluffing" to intimidate the reader into accepting what he says, when in fact the footnotes don't say anything in support of what he says. Common technique of some environmentalists, as well.
It's called "footnote bluffing" to intimidate the reader into accepting what he says, when in fact the footnotes don't say anything in support of what he says. Common technique of some environmentalists, as well.
oops...
I wonder how many times the 'Good Prof' chewed on some peyote buttons - ya know, as a Native American ceremony, of course...
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
lol...lol...lol...lol...lol...yeah, sure...lol...lol
Interesting interview with old Dog DooDoo Churchill:
Q-And how do you define yourself?
A-I define myself as an indigenous person or a person of indigenous descent. I'm of mixed heritage both racially and culturally, as are most people at this point. There's been quite a degree of hybridization. Indigenous peoples are nations defining their membership as any other nation. The practice was always that between nations, between, say the Mohawks and the Abenakis, in cases of marriage or adoption or whatever, that there could be a naturalization of citizenry. Indians naturalized citizens between groups, and once there were non-Indians, racially speaking, coming into the hemisphere, they began to naturalize representatives of these non-Indian races as being members of their polity. Those people who were naturalized became citizen members of those nations. Were they Indians or were they not? Are we using a racial definition here to describe a national polity, or do we use a political definition? I would argue that unless we are going to in turn mimic the Nazis or the South Africans and try to define a constituency in purely racial terms, we would have to acknowledge that there is not a strict biological or racial definition of Indianness. It's generally assumed that there will be some lineal descent. We count in terms of lineage. We count in terms of kinship. Kinship is not biology. If an American Indian women marries you and she is of a matrilineal society, your children will be American Indians, although racially they will only be half so. They will be full members of that society. That's the traditional way.
Q-When did this "blood quantum" business begin? Is that an invention of the Bureau of Indian Affairs?
A-There are a number of references to it. I think the points of origin or inception vary throughout the hemisphere. The Spanish were involved in categorization of various genetic combinations almost from the onset. You could say that five hundred years ago was the basis of blood quantum in Ibero-America. But in Anglo-America, while there was some preoccupation with it, it was not formalized until the passage of the General Allotment Act, mid-1880s. At that point they began to define Indian as being someone who was demonstrably and documentably of at least one-quarter by quantum blood indigenous in a given group. You couldn't be an eighth Cheyenne and an eighth Arapaho and be an Indian. You had to be a quarter Cheyenne or a quarter Arapaho or hopefully a quarter and a quarter. The reason for this was quite clear. They were identifying Indians for purposes of allotting them individual parcels of land in the existing reservation base at that point. If they ran out of Indians identifiable as such, then the rest of the land would be declared surplus. So it was clearly in the interests of the government to create a definition of Indianness that would minimize the number of Indians that were available. It was an economic motivation for the application of this genetic criteria to Indianness in the first place. It's become increasingly so ever since.
Q-It's definitely a growth industry. Prison building, prison guards. Something you might consider when you finish your academic career, a possible area of employment.
A-I'm sort of expecting to be an inmate myself.
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec95barsamian.htm
Churchill claimed membership in an Oklahoma Cherokee Indian tribe. This tribe has a casino these days, no are they going to cut him a check for a share of the profits. He's a damn phony white boy
Rocky Mountain News: Local
... 2005. The United Keetoowah Band Cherokee says University of Colorado professor
Ward Churchill is not a member of their tribe. "He's ...
www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/ local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3519179,00.html - 51k - Feb 8, 2005 -
Leftist bet the farm on another fraud.. maybe someday they'll get their head out of their butts and awaken to the real world.
You got that right.
I'm getting my Phd now. This is a second career for me. I come from a profession (law) where, contrary to many FReepers' opinions, there are actual sanctions against those who, shall I say, stray from the reservation. You are not a lawyer for life, and missteps can cause you to be reprimanded, suspended, or disbarred (ask Clinton about that).
From what I have read about Churchill's publications, they seem full of creative 'research' and, to be less generous, outright lies. This is the kind of thing that can and should get you kicked out of a PhD program, denied tenure, or have your tenure removed.
Of course, if Mr. Churchill had actually obtained a doctorate, he might have a bit more knowledge of what constitutes research. How the other members of the Ethnic Studies Center, all PhDs from what I can tell from the website, can have a non PhD as the head, knowing that this guy is not published in peer-reviewed journals (400 footnotes does not necessarily indicate rigorous scholarship), is beyond me. Unless, of course, they too are 'Hate America Firsters' and so, scholarship and integrity be damned.
"He's impeccable on his sources and known for his empirical and archival-based methodologies," said Arturo Aldama, a professor with Churchill in the CU ethnic-studies department. "Whether you agree with it or not, it's always been praised for academic rigor. He has 400 footnotes per chapter."
But the footnotes themselves are not always praised.
Translation:
"He's a fantastic teacher and professor. Too bad that everything he says and quotes is a damn lie."
ROTFLMAO. Obviously this clown, and many others, have been getting away with it for years. If people hadn't made a fuss about his "little Eichman" hatred, none of these "academics" would have bothered to actually check his footnotes to see if they support his race bating Marxist rhetoric.
I've wondered if he was another Vietnam vet impersonator.
To me, lying is the most insidious form of evil a person can do. I'm not including the violent crimes here. They stand alone in another category. I mean lying. Lying by people in influential positions. Like congress-critters, senators, presidents, TEACHERS, people in responsible positions...satan was the father of lies, and he is today.
FMCDH(BITS)
The only documented case of "germ warfare" against the indians was by a Brit named Amherst
He's a dilettante-American.
Oh, Chomsky standing up for one of his own NIHILIST's...
Winston Churchill is more of an Indian than this guy (seriously he was 1/64th Indian)!
NO LIE! It is a widely-distributed meme, now with a life of it's own. We need to kill it.
""I've read a fair amount of his work, and a lot of it is excellent, penetrating and of high scholarly quality," said Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an anti-war activist."
Chomsky likes him? He's toast.
Thanks for posting this.
This guy is a Fraud, too many of these in the Academia halls.
Pretend Indian, why not pretend "disillusioned war hero too?
It fits right in with a lot of the slock Hollywood garbage from the 70s and this clown sounds like he's been playing the role. Remember this bit of Hollywood melodrama?
Ward Churchill as Billy Jack fighting the Capatilist Meanies.
Bellesiles was eventually fired for academic dishonesty thanks to the fact that people outside the academy wouldn't let the issue go away. Hopefully, Churchill is next.
Bellesiles book, sad to say, is still on library shelves.
Are Frumious bandersnatchi related to Jinxian bandersnatchi?
What's the prevailing wisdom in your department on the truth of this smallpox claim? Or for that matter, on anything this guy says?
Pretend Indian, why not pretend "disillusioned war hero too?"
Hey, this dude Churchill fought side by side with a little known Navy LT by the name of John Kerry. I hear they ventured into Cambodia sometime around Christmas in the late 60's.
We be brillig, we be. I think that we are more like Jabberwocky than not.
I think ol' Ward is toast. He underestimates the power of the internet to research anything and everything. He has put himself under the most powerful microscope and anal probe ever, and he is going to live to regret it. Adios, kemosabe!
"And they that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon them."
Selling whiskey to the peaceful Kuhmer Rouge Tribe. Ya... that's the ticket.
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