Professor Ward Churchill's writings about the victims of 9/11 sparked an outcry that led to an investigation of his claims of being American Indian and of allegations of plagiarism.
Posted on 06/27/2006 9:16:18 PM PDT by SmithL
Tonight, embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill issued a statement defending his scholarship and threatening the school for attempting to fire him.
CU announced on Monday a decision to terminate Churchill, who began to be investigated for academic misconduct after an essay he wrote compared victims of the September 11th terrorist attack to an infamous Nazi.
Statement released Tuesday by University of Colorado-Boulder professor Ward Churchill:
It was quite predictable that Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano would recommend that I be fired from my tenured professorship at the University of Colorado/Boulder. After all, he was effectively ordered to find some "legally defensible" basis for doing so by Colorado Governor Bill Owens.
In pursuit of this purely political objective, the interim chancellor has at this point expended more than a year and upwards of $250,000 in taxpayer monies.
For all that, he has failed.
Certain facts about my case simply cannot be denied: 1. Interim Chancellor DiStefano joined Governor Owens and several Colorado legislators in publicly and repeatedly denouncing me on explicitly ideological grounds, thereby making his personal biases abundantly clear.
2. In direct violation of the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado concerning Academic Freedom, the interim chancellor took the unprecedented step of creating and chairing a special committee devoted to investigating the political content of my scholarship.
3. He and/or his surrogates on this special committee actively solicited allegations of "research misconduct" against me, contriving to cast the impression through the media that these allegations were independently and voluntarily submitted by the scholars involved.
4. Since this produced a "shot-gun load" of allegations but no actual complainants, Interim Chancellor DiStefano named himself complainant without, by his own admission, even bothering to read much of what he was supposedly alleging.
5. Throughout this process the interim chancellor routinely violated the confidentiality rules concerning personnel matters in the CU system, issuing numerous press releases designed to sustain the media "feeding frenzy," subjecting me to "trial by news media," and denying my rights to privacy and due process.
6. Having thus virtually guaranteed that faculty members at the University of Colorado could not be neutral, the interim chancellor/complainant then used his administrative influence to ensure that my request for an investigative panel composed exclusively of persons external to CU was denied. Consequently 3 of 5 panel members, including its chair, were drawn from the Boulder faculty. As predicted, serious questions concerning the impartiality of 2 of these internal panelists have come to light, and more can be expected.
7. Similarly, my repeated requests that the investigative panel include acknowledged experts in the relevant subject areas were ignored. Ultimately, 4 of the 5 panelists professed no specific knowledge whatsoever concerning either the procedures employed within my discipline or the topics under discussion. So much for the pretense that the merits of my work have been assessed by my peers.
The investigative report produced by the panel, while voluminous, misses the mark entirely.
The panelists were required by the rules to restrict their inquiry to whether I actually committed fraud and plagiarism.
Instead, they indulged in a repetition of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," presuming to assert the "truth" of the various historical and legal questions involved, in a manner comfortable to themselves and to those they seemingly perceive as comprising the "American mainstream." Such enforcement of orthodoxy was plainly not within the panels legitimate mandate.
Indeed, as regards the allegations of fraud raised by Interim Chancellor DiStefano, whether what I wrote is true or false is irrelevant. The ONLY relevant consideration is whether I had reason to believe it was true.
On this score, I did, and still do, and the panel proved nothing to the contrary. This is amply reflected in the evidence the panel left largely unaddressed in its report. Much the same pertains to my having supposedly "invented" historical incidents, and the alleged implications of my ghostwriting.
As to the panels findings that by a "preponderance of the evidence" I twice engaged in plagiarism, a simple question presents itself: What, exactly, is a "preponderance" of no evidence at all? Of course, the report produced by the investigative panel is designed to make the opposite of all this seem true. In fact, it seems reasonable to suggest that the very length of the document was meant to obscure its lack of substance.
Two observations support this conclusion: 1. In order to conclude that I engaged in research misconduct, the panelists, collectively, severely distort certain of their sources, omit mention of material inconvenient to their conclusions, cite themselves as the sole authority confirming many of their points, and occasionally engage in outright fabrication.
In fact, each kind of academic misconduct the interim chancellors carefully-selected panel claims I committed is engaged in by the panel itself in the writing of its report. (One of the panelists even takes credit for authoring a work unquestionably written by another scholar.) In the face of all this, it becomes apparent that the panelists arrived at their conclusions before the fact, the orchestrated their data accordingly. In other words, to borrow the panels own term, their report was clearly "thesis-driven." Paraphrasing them again, it means they "dont understand the difference between scholarship and polemic," and have produced a report consisting of "propaganda rather than scholarship." 2. Even if the allegations at issue were true and they certainly are not they do not constitute offenses for which faculty members can, under any ordinary circumstances, be terminated. The panel, the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct (SCRM) which endorsed its report, and the interim chancellor all thus resorted to the argument that I could/should be fired, not for what I did, but because I have refused to recant. In other words, it is my "attitude" which justifies the severity of the recommended sanctions.
This, then, is the backdrop against which Interim Chancellor DiStefanos "news flash" that I should be fired must be understood.
From start to finish, the interim chancellors blatant conflicts of interest not to mention the political nature of his biases have been obvious to anyone who cared to view the matter honestly. So, too, the ways in which he has manipulated the process at every step in order to guarantee the outcome he announced on Monday, June 26.
The interim vice chancellors strikingly duplicitous comportment over the past 16 months will not go unchallenged. I will file an appeal of the whole charade with the Faculty Senates Committee on Privilege and Tenure (P&T) within the next 10 days.
Far from putting the "final touches to the Churchill story," as fantasized on Denver editorial pages, the interim chancellors elaborate subterfuge has merely set the stage for the taxpayers to waste another quarter-million dollars while I go through the P&T process.
Hopefully, the members of P&T who review my case will display the sort of integrity conspicuously lacking in their predecessors on the investigative panel and the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.
That would do much to constrain the magnitude of damage sustained by the University - and consequently the taxpayers - when my case goes to court, as it ultimately will.
- Ward Churchill Boulder, Colorado June 27, 2006
deny, deny, deny
go to hell Churchill
I was going to say "Get lost, nutso," but yours works better.
Paper Tiger.
Face it, you are gone, sucker!
"Waaaa! I lost my government job! But I saved 15% on my car insurance through GEICO."
Was it written in the native language of his ancestors, i.e. English?
CORRECTION:
Statement released Tuesday by FORMER University of Colorado-Boulder professor Ward Churchill:
Chronic liars always blame everyone else.
The Dan Rather defense.
Little Eichmans strike back. The AP couldn't even mention Eichman, instead referring to an infamous Nazi.
Churchill can fire back, but belief here is that he's shootin' nothin' but blanks!
Quit your crying boy, there's always CNN.
Now THAT'S an Indian name he deserves!
"Ok you little Eichmans, how does it feel to pay $30k a year to listen to complete psychopaths like me? "
Fire this worthless scumbag, and then sue him for all the monies he has fraudulently collected from the people of Colorado.
Buh-Bye. Dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Nice to see ya, hate to be ya. So long. Farewell. Auf wiedersein (sp). Adieu (sp again). No whammies, no whammies, no whammies [BUZZ]. Hit the road jack. Dont ya come back. No more. No more. No more. [Oh good lord - kelsey grammer sound clip]. [Price is right loser sounder]. Good riddance, a$$hole.
It's sort of like someone on trial for a crime, and when faced with the prosecution's evidence, prattling on and on about the short-comings of the prosecutors and witnesses, without actually bothering to explain an alternate reason for his fingerprints on the smoking gun found at the crime scene.
And beyond that, I was really struck by the very "un-academic" writing style of his "rebuttal." It sounds very far removed from the gravitas that I am accustomed to reading in missives penned by men of learning. It sounds, for lack of a better description, almost comic book-ish.
"...whether what I wrote is true or false is irrelevant. The ONLY relevant consideration is whether I had reason to believe it was true."
Is this something liberals tattoo on the inside of their eyelids? Jeez, of COURSE it is relevant. You 'cited' people's works as confirming your own, when they were citing YOUR work!
I look forward to watching him bounce on pavement, but I know darn well that pragmatically, the governor should have offered him half a million to leave the state and never come back.
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