The recent controversy over the writings of Ward Churchill, radical activist, faux Indian, and tenured professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, raises a number of serious academic issues — which, let me underscore, does not mean that Churchill himself is in any way serious. On the contrary, Churchill is as unserious as anyone ever paid to stand in front of a classroom, an intellectual featherweight whose ideas are less politically scandalous than buffoonishly wrongheaded. Case in point is his assertion that the victims of the World Trade Center attack got what was coming to them: "If there...