Posted on 02/26/2005 5:08:38 AM PST by billorites
Like a high mountain road posted with danger signs, Ward Churchill's career has been marked by repeated warnings to University of Colorado officials that there could be serious trouble ahead.
CU has been contacted a number of times over the past 20 years by prominent figures within the American Indian community who have raised questions about Churchill's truthfulness, his scholarship and his ethnicity.
Churchill responded Wednesday night that CU had conducted thorough investigations of each complaint over the years.
"I came out as clean as a hound's tooth," he said.
David Bradley, a Santa Fe-area American Indian artist whose feud with Churchill has endured more than a decade, says he told CU a long time ago that Churchill should be fired.
"If his bosses had simply done their jobs, if they had checked him out, if they had started reading his damn writing, they would have said, 'Wait a minute! This falls below our standards,' " Bradley said.
"If they had, he wouldn't have tenure. It was a failure every step of the way."
Churchill has been under fire for an essay he wrote on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Churchill called many of the victims "little Eichmanns" who were complicit in mass murder. The CU Board of Regents has ordered an investigation of Churchill's works and activities.
Bradley says he is the first to have blown the whistle on Churchill, whom he criticizes on many counts, including his belief that Churchill has no legitimate claim to American Indian status. But by the time he contacted CU in 1994, several other Churchill critics had a clear head start in bringing their complaints to CU.
Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement activist, says he first approached the university with questions about the veracity of Churchill's claim to American Indian heritage in 1986.
"We went out there with a stack of documents to tell them about him," Bellecourt said. "I made a special trip to Colorado and went to the university. I tried to meet with the president of the Board of Regents."
Bellecourt says none of the regents was willing to talk to him, and instead sent an employee to meet with him. He says he gave her all the documentation and never heard from them again.
"We were really frustrated when we left," Bellecourt said. "We said, 'At least we warned them.' "
Claim to be Indian challenged
Bellecourt continued to raise the issue of Churchill's American Indian background over the next few years, contacting the university again in 1994. That year, several others joined him and wrote letters about Churchill to then-CU President Judith Albino, saying that Churchill was fraudulently claiming to be an American Indian.
"We told the university he wasn't Indian and was disruptive in the community," said Carole Standing Elk, a California Indian activist. "We said, 'He doesn't represent us, and how did you put him in the ethnic studies department?' "
Albino referred the matter to former CU Boulder Chancellor James Corbridge. In a letter to Standing Elk, Corbridge said the university had reviewed Churchill's claims to be an American Indian but could not make that an issue in his employment.
"The university has taken your concerns very seriously," wrote Corbridge. "However, given the fact that equal opportunity is the law of the land and that positions in the public sector are to be awarded to all persons regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and based only on their ability to do the job, the university does not believe that any attempt to remove Mr. Churchill because of his ethnicity or race would be appropriate.
"Even if Mr. Churchill is not an American Indian, as he claims, Title VII protects Caucasians as well as persons of color. Further, it has always been university policy that a person's race or ethnicity is self-proving."
Corbridge went on to say that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had taken the position that "observation and self-identification are the most reliable indicators of one's racial grouping."
Meanwhile, other prominent American Indians were challenging Churchill's claim of American Indian ancestry. They insist Churchill would not have his job if he hadn't said he was an Indian.
"I sent a letter to the university in 1992 saying he's not a native person," said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute. She says she received a response from a university official saying Churchill had not been hired because he was an American Indian.
Harjo, the former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, says that is nonsense.
"He was interviewed and hired because he said he's an American Indian," she said. "The material he used to gain tenure says he's an American Indian. If he were Ward Churchill, white man, they would not have made him chair of ethnic studies."
CU 'aided and abetted his deception'
Harjo says CU is complicit in the uproar over Churchill, since the university has given him a platform that he has used to attack others.
"He's lied to the university and they've passed him off as an Indian," she said. "They've aided and abetted his deception. The university needs to accept its role in this and do something about it."
Churchill has insisted in interviews that he is at least one-sixteenth Cherokee and Creek, but family tree researchers have verified only white branches. Since 1974 he has been an associate member of the Tahlequah, Okla.-based Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. The tribe has said that his membership was honorary and required no proof of Cherokee heritage.
In a prior interview with the News, Churchill bristled when asked about those who question his lineage.
"Suzan Harjo is no more entitled to interrogate me on that score than your average fellow bureaucrat," Churchill said. "And my non-responsiveness to her specific questions, when she tries to conduct her inquisitions, has been basically 'Kiss my ---.' It's a typical ad hominem attack. And the question is, what has it got to do with anything?"
Bellecourt and Harjo say Churchill's belligerent speeches and writings are evidence that he is not of American Indian descent. They say Indians usually avoid the confrontational behavior Churchill is known for.
"You've seen his demeanor, his arrogance; that's not the Indian way," said Bellecourt. "We're a compassionate people, that's always been a trait of Indians."
Harjo met Churchill at a conference in 1990 and says she was immediately suspicious of his background.
"There was nothing in his manner or appearance or his way of relating that made me think I was dealing with an American Indian," she said. "He's not a native person. He's a white man."
The issue of whether Churchill is really an American Indian is important, Harjo says, because the point of programs like American Indian studies is to give voice to a community that has long been neglected.
"We're trying to get authentic voices heard and read," said Harjo. "Churchill tries to co-opt our history. He lifts stuff from native cultures and passes it off as his own."
She says Churchill is known in the Indian world for his bitter attacks on prominent people in their community.
"He's attacked me in his books," said Harjo. "He's been burning and slashing through Indian country. Talk about chickens coming home to roost."
Deceased wife's sister among critics
Bradley, a Chippewa, said there are several reasons he and Churchill clashed. One is that Bradley landed a post at the Institute of American Indian Arts as an instructor and guest artist in residence from 1990 to 1992. It was a post for which Churchill had interviewed, said Bradley.
Also pivotal to the Bradley-Churchill feud is Bradley's support for the 1990 American Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which prohibits an artist who is not American Indian from representing his or her work as American Indian art when trying to sell it.
In 1994, Bradley contacted CU, lodging his complaint with Evelyn Hu-De-Hart, then director for CU's Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America.
"I made the same argument it's always been," Bradley said. "One, that he's a fake Indian. Number two, he's a bully and a terrorist, and number three, he's writing ugly lies and slander about me, and the school is giving him a power base to publish these lies about me.
"He probably wouldn't even get that stuff published if he didn't have that cloak of credibility as a professor. They're enabling him, in other words."
Hu-De-Hart's assistant, Bradley said, "told me that complaints were being taken, and that's about it. Nothing of substance was told to me."
Rhonda Kelly, 41, of Winnipeg, the older sister of Churchill's deceased third wife, Leah Renae Kelly, also contacted CU.
Leah Kelly was hit by a car while walking on Arapahoe Road near the couple's home east of Boulder the night of May 31, 2000. She was found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.35, more than three times the level of legal intoxication in Colorado.
Churchill later published a book of Kelly's writings, In My Own Voice. In a lengthy preface, he contended that the American Indian woman's alcoholism and other personal troubles could be traced back to her parents' having been forced, like many indigenous people, into "residential schools" or "Indian schools" intended to speed their assimilation into white culture.
Rhonda Kelly, a second-year law student, has produced a 15-point brief of inaccuracies she said she has found in Churchill's preface. She has asked the book's publisher to remove it from circulation, and to ask a man writing a screenplay based on the book to desist.
Kelly's complaints include her contention that only her father was educated at a residential school and Churchill's misstating the name of the Denver hospital to which Leah Kelly's body was taken.
Churchill, she said, never contacted family members to verify biographical family details included in his preface.
But Churchill said Wednesday evening that it was Rhonda Kelly who wasn't clear on the facts. He said Rhonda Kelly "never had time to come out and visit" her sister. He said he "finished the book living with her parents" and "talked at great lengths" with both of them. If anything was incorrect, they were "small errors," he said.
Churchill disputes allegations
Rhonda Kelly said she "would like to see this book removed from circulation just because it is an inaccurate portrayal of my family. It makes spurious, false allegations about my father and my people. It is inexplainable why this happened."
Kelly, who is Ojibway, said her sister, a May 2000 graduate of CU, told her that she suffered "psychological abuse" during her marriage to Churchill. She described him as exhibiting "very controlling behaviors."
But Churchill said people who know both he and his late wife "know exactly the opposite is true."
"I don't see how it would have been humanly possible for that relationship to have been any more the exact opposite of that description," he said.
He said his wife was a victim of acute alcoholism and that he "fought a long and lonely battle to save her."
Churchill, in the wake of Leah Kelly's death, established a fund at CU for Rhonda Kelly's two children and contributed $200. Rhonda Kelly last summer wrote a letter to CU's financial aid office asking that the money be earmarked for a "promising native woman who was or is involved in an abusive relationship. I wish that such an award can assist a woman to leave an abusive relationship before her spirit is broken, as was the case of my sister Leah.
"My sister Leah Renae Kelly had so much promise, but she was involved in an emotionally and mentally abusive marriage, and as a result of feeling that she could not seek real help for fear of having others know of her predicament, she instead turned to alcohol to escape the torment and humiliation in her marital home."
Rhonda Kelly never received an acknowledgment from CU of that letter or her request.
CU financial aid officials Wednesday said they could not comment on Rhonda Kelly's letter.
The way I look at it, this joker has been storing up negative karma for years - from the AIM crowd, from his relatives, from former students like your daughter, from Indian artists whose work he stole, etc. And because he was under the radar -- just an obscure, mildly exotic (though self-created exoticism), goofy prof in a department that everybody knows is not a serious academic discipline -- nobody cared enough to do anything about it.
Where he stepped in it was believing that his own press releases and his own apparent invulnerability would protect him if he attacked the victims of 9-11.
That took him out of his little protective academic cocoon and into the REAL world, where people care about fraud, injustice, plagiarism, and cruelty. And now they are after him, and there is momentum, and it probably won't stop (may God in his infinite mercy grant) until justice is done and the whole edifice of lies comes tumbling down.
And that's a GOOD thing - especially for all the people like your daughter that he's hurt over the years. The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.
The era of non-judgementalism and political correctness was well in place when Bill Clinton escaped the gallows for just those reasons - morals were non-judgmental...I hope we're coming to the end of "scholarly bullies" and other such freebooters in our educational institutions who preach and publish anti-American rubbish and other “the sky is falling” diatribes.
We are again in agreement. My niece was treated to a D in a sociology course by a PC black Jamaican "Prof???" at Richard Bland College VA ( William and Mary satellite) because she wrote and delivered a very articulate critique of the course, as assigned specifically. The assignment was to do just that. I read the piece before she delivered it and it was fair, articulate, rational and detailed with all statements referenced with actual events. The guy used no books just ranted about his personal experience and how bad white people are. I will pay the President a visit shortly.
This goes on all the time at all the universities. At UVa you had BETTER be leftist or suffer the consequences.
It is time for the citizenry to cease being cowed by academe and realize the Emperor Has No Clothes. It just takes someone with the courage and good sense to point that out.
Aw...poor kitties!
I had a Siamese, too.
They are just the best cats.
he was refused access to the printmaking area.
he was angry.
he argued that he was a faculty member and should have privileges.
but, as i outlined above, the area and equipment are used by faculty for classes in the day time, and by students doing their classwork at night. printmaking requires a lot of room for the storage of papers, equipment, etc. while prints are being made, they must be temporarily stored in a rack which allows for drying. this stuff takes up space. obviously for even those enrolled in courses, politeness is required.
there's no room for an outsider who doesn't participate in the classes or culture. life's like that everywhere. you pay your dues, make friends, and help others.
if one person gained access, then another would demand access.
Wish it were true. It's kind of difficult to tell, when you are drowning in human waste, are you going down for the 3rd or 4th time?
Our local community college, in a conservative, agricultural area, is full of these types. Take a literature course and you get indoctrinated with radical feminism along with warmed over socialist hate-America garbage.
So, what do the locals write letters to the editor about? Faculty squabbles and tax issues. I have NEVER seen a letter or a newspaper article on the radical content of the curriculum.
You have hit the nail on the head! Churchhill could have lived out his life at CU, bedding coeds, teaching lies, getting free cigarets, having a devout following of naive kids, enjoying his status but he went too public, too outrageous. I think he believed his own lies. He reminds me of OJ.
Raise hell with the President and start a letter to the editor campaign advocating cutting off funds....include your representatives , state and Fed so they know you are looking to them IN WRITING to address this issue...hold the legislator's and governor's feet to the fire...advocate business drop support....on and on and on....if you just have the will and the courage to move your body....Good Luck... FREEP,,,,Picket....Raise HELL cut a wide and rational swath!!!
Sue in the courts for discrimination if they give bad grades out of hand as they invariable do....read the fairy tale The Emperor Has No Clothes....everyone was afraid of the Emperor and all ooohhhed and ahhhhhed at his costly taxpayer funded extravagant and priceless new clothes whice were a blatant and taxpayer expensive LIE...A little girl stopped all the deceit with a simple cry " The Emperor Has No Clothes"
try it.
I remember my first tangle with being judgemental.
One of my kids had played hooky for several days in high school at a girls school, expensive, college prep. I was raisiing the roof, called the school asking why I hadn't been told {she was 15}. I then suggested that we devise her punishment, I was ready to ground her for a year and the school told me they had discussed her "bad choice" and that I should sort of butt out, that I was harsh. Now I had worked very hard to pay the very high tuition and I considered her actions something a teen does {did it myself} but I also thought she ought to be aware of how hard we worked to give her that opportunity and how much she had disappointeed us. That is how I think a person acquires a conscience. But the school wanted none of it. They thought this had nothing to do with a conscience or guilt or honesty or human values,,,it was all just a "bad choice".
His words of wisdom apply here: "NEVER believe your own press releases." -- "Nobody is invulnerable, but powerful politicians sometimes think they are."
They key to this is money. That is it in a nutshell as far as the U thinks.
Now the decent faculty, they have a different key and that is to give them courage to speak out. A guy from the law school already has. And our support gives them cover to speak out.
But for the University, money is it. I am thinking, as is my daughter, of asking for our money back for that course. And they call me twice a year for money and I give like clockwork. I am waiting for the next call when I will refuse until Ward is fired and the entire ethnic studies department is gvien a look see by an impartial group. Maybe Accuracy in Academia.
"So, what do the locals write letters to the editor about? Faculty squabbles and tax issues. I have NEVER seen a letter or a newspaper article on the radical content of the curriculum."
Start writing DIFFERENT kinds of letters. FREEPERS will help you if you need...ask anyone posting to this thread...read and see who is articulate....give specific examples.....or just copy the Rabbi's editorial and PAY to run it in your local rag ( which is probably owned by a leftist conglomerate)
FEEOC has just turned racial grouping on it's head.
Why wait? Send a request now in writing 1) for a refund for the fradulent and abusive class and 2) instruct them not to ask you for money because it has dried up!. 3) post the letters here on FR to help others who do not have your level of skill and adroitness and to show others the specific courage involved instead of us all preaching to the choir. The time for ACTION is now. One must strike while the iron is hot...not wait with excuses until it has cooled down.
This admonishment is not directed toward you but to those of us who are not quite so accustomed to dealing with academic intimidation. You could start a REAL FREEP !!! Gee sounds like fun!
These are all good ideas, and they might work, somewhere in America . . .
My state is dominated by liberals, however, and too many voters suffer from attention deficit.
I am not totally without hope, though. While in the past, our state legislature was totally owned by the NEA and the education lobby, I think things are loosening up. More Republicans are involved, the Internet has helped, and home schoolers are such WONDERFUL advocates for common sense. Yeah, there's hope.
Now is the time to strike, while the iron is hot.
Some might call it "piling on" - I would call it taking advantage of the strategic moment, and, besides, this low-life excuse for a professor DESERVES to be piled on, preferably by elephants and ten ton weights.
Write a letter and share it here on FR
....a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.... courage and action
What if ALL interested parents wrote letters demanding refunds.....CC to the Rocky Mountain Post....PILE ON !!!
And that may be the last straw for the regents at CU-Boulder. Given the fact that The O'Reilly Factor is Fox News Channel's #1 rated show, that type of bad publicity will cause a massive "blogstorm" against Professor Churchill and CU-Boulder--fearing the possibility of losing a lot of donation money--will offer Professor Churchill a golden parachute payment in return for his resignation.
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