“In a separate development, a barrel with what investigators are describing as ‘deep, violently gouged scrape marks’ in the bottom has been discovered near the home of rightwing pundit Michelle Malkin.”

We are also receiving unconfirmed reports of numerous shallow graves which appear to be containing “straws grasped way past the breaking point”.

The debate rages well into the night as to weither the Malkin residence is truly situated on the top a small mountain, or simply a hill with several moles.

Maybe i’m just not hip enough to be in the loop, but who is Ward Churchill? He sounds vaguely familiar enough….

He’s a left-leaning academic whose work has been primarily focused on Native history and state repression of Native and other movements (e.g. Agents of Repression and The Cointelpro Papers). The big hue and cry came when he made an argument that the WTC was a legitimate military target by virtue of the fact that it consitituted a center of the technocratic corps which help spread the influence of American foreign and economic policy all over the globe. (It also contained an office for the CIA, which would be good enough justification if we were bombing Iraq or Afghanistan, it should be said.)

Anyway, in the current political climate, this was not up for debate but rather cause to hound Churchill out of his job. Unsurprising, when you consider that even the USS Cole bombing is considered a “terrorist attack” in wingnut circles.

Ward Churchill is a random professor who had a part of a book leaked onto the internet that said bad things about America in the wake of 9/11. So of course he became the poster boy for America-hating liberals, despite the fact that he speaks for nobody but himself.

It’s basically the equivalent of finding a guy in your local bar saying he hates blacks and using that as proof that all Republicans are racists.

And what he said that pissed off Republicans so much was that the US was attacked thanks to our long history of shitty foreign policy wrt the Middle East, something our own intelligence mostly agrees with. The way he said that was very incindiary and really shitty, but that isn’t the part that gets Rethug panties in a bunch. What makes them so angry is the notion that policies have consequences including blowback.

The big hue and cry came when he made an argument that the WTC was a legitimate military target by virtue of the fact that it consitituted a center of the technocratic corps which help spread the influence of American foreign and economic policy all over the globe.

I seem to recall his phrasing being a little less academic than “legitimate military target,” but I’m sure that had nothing to do with the hue and cry.

What he’s being fired for, according to this, is plagiarism and making shit up.

Of course, that doesn’t matter to Malkin and her followers. Churchill said some stuff that pissed them off, he got fired, so HAHAHA WE WIN! EAT IT, MOONBATZ!

Come on, guys, get up front with it. Churchill is the guy who compared corporo-capitalist-o-crats who worked in the World Trade Center towers to Nazis and implied they’d gotten what they deserved. This didn’t sit well with the right, nor in fact with many in “the center” and on “the left.” My understanding is that his firing had more to do with his activities involving plagiarism and sloppy research than with his 9/11 comments (although I’m sure those didn’t help).

No point in being disingenuous about the guy. His situation doesn’t negate the wingnuts’ idiotic barrel-scraping/molehill-mountain-making of it all.

He called victims of the 9/11 attack on the WTC, “Little Eichmans” which is really the passion inducing sound bite that was originally focused on by the Fox gang and picked up by the mainstream media. Since he was a left wing professor this was totally unacceptable and he should never be allowed to work again. It also verified their smears about all progressives. On the other hand, saying the wives of victims of the 9/11 attack on the WTC are “happy their husbands are dead.” is not at all similar and if a wingnut were to say something like that, it would be a reason to buy her book and to put her on mainstream television. O’Rielly really led the anti-Churchill charge which is interesting because I don’t believe Churchill ever invited Al Queda to attack an American city.

It’s funny how this stuff works. As I was reading the first paragraph of this comment, I thought I should edit it to assure that no one could interpret it as condoning Ward Churchill’s commentary. This is the self-censorship that authoritarianism breeds. I really don’t recognize my country anymore.

Well, if he made shit up about smallpox blankets that’s serious stuff. Nothing wrong with digging into his scholarship to make sure it’s above board.

But I think the wingnuts should try to look at his whole body of work. Maybe he wrote about al Qaeda eating children, or Khamenei being dead, or WMD in Tikrit, or how Iraq sought yellowcake in Nigeria, or how well the Iraq War was going, or how America didn’t torture, or how there was no disagreement about the U.S. Attorney’s list, or how Jamil Hussein did not exist, or how the mosque didn’t really blow up, or how no one told us the levees could break, or how Ashcroft wasn’t visited on his hospital about that particular form of spying, or that we only recently heard about Mark Foley, or that it’s standard medical practice to diagnose patients through a video feed, how we never were “stay the course,” how the mission was accomplished.

Then they’d have to admit he wrote SOMETHING true, right?

My favorite part was this comment to Michelle:
“Isn’t “invented facts” a lie? Leave it to the Rocky Mountain News to euphamize the bejeebers out of it.” — TMoney

[Under the heading of invented facts, see also: uranium from Africa; “reconstituted” nuclear weapons; mobile chemical or biological weapons labs; 45-minute delivery systems; al-Qaida terrorist training camps “in a part of Iraq not under Saddam’s control,” meetings in Prague between Iraqi agents and 9/11 hijackers; etc.]

Come on Sadly, Noes. Our Great Leader, Our Dark Master, Dr. Churchill has been fired from his position on Government Welfare so that our grip on the American Government for the past 70 years is threatened. Truly our plan for our soldiers’ defeat in Iraq is threatened by the spontaneous giving of flowers and celebrations of freedom now breaking out all over that troubled land. And I know what you are saying, I thought we followed the biddings of Kos, but I have one last surprising revelation for you: Kos is Ward Churchill.

man this sucks big time. I hear YearlyKos maybe be cancelled because of this horrible, tragic event.

I would say something but seeing as the guys who does all my thinking for me has been fired I have nothing to say.

Maybe I should go see what Kos or Atrios says I should say.

We salute you, our half-inflated but no longer tenured Dark Lord!

(yehhh)

The Dark Lord is dead. Long live the Dark Lord.

All hail, Dark Lord Kos.

I was personally shocked to find out that Churchill wasn’t Digby…

Anyway, I’m glad My Hero Ward has been freed from this time-consuming professor gig, because I believe he is famous enough and yet not too famous to be on The Surreal Life. Or he could branch out into his own show–Ward Churchill is 60 and Single (is he?), or maybe if it’s on late it could have some filthy title like Ward Searches for Beaver.

I DID feel a disturbance in The Force there, for just a sec.

Regardless of whether you agree with Curchill or not, (I tend to take his arguments seriously even if his wording is a bit incendiary), we should all be very disturbed at the fact that a tenured professor was fired for saying something controversial. There would have been no inquiry into his scholarship if there handn’t been a conservative shitstorm spearheaded by such though police luminaries as falafel boy. At least one of Churchill’s colleagues says the charges were bogus, and the court, decidedly kangaroo. If they can bring down one professor, more will follow, not all of which will be as extreme. The effects on free discourse are chilling.

Three cheers for academic freedom.

Mr. Churchill meet mr. finklestein

Dammit. Well, I suppose that since my King who apparantly teaches something or other at a Univeristy … somewhere out west I believe, has been defrocked, I guess I have to jump out the window. 🙁

I was personally shocked to find out that Churchill wasn’t Digby…

I am still convinced Ward Churchill is really Michelle Malkin in male drag. It’s like Fight Club and Ward is her Tyler Durden.

Maybe Lawyers, Guns, and Money can feature Ward in a deposed monarch Sunday post.

Darth Kos: Something something Dark Side. Something something something complete.

Don’t let down you guard! Now that Churchill has been relieved of his teaching and service obligations, he’ll have ample time to appear on cable news programs and spread his venom far beyond Boulder. And the liberal MSM will invite him on. Yes, it will!

[Churchill: If you strip me of tenure now, I will come back more powerful than you could possibly imagine.]

If it wasn’t for Lord Churchill, whoes values and teachings I have applied without question to both my personal and professional life, I wouldn’t hate America and love Islamocommunism as much as I do today.

Personally, I’m saddened by this monumental victory by the Right Wing. Saddened isn’t even the proper word. Devestated? No… Discombobulated? That’s not it… Dead inside? Now we’re getting warm…

On the plus side, the value of my Ward Churchill action figure collection just increased by 500%. Drinks on me, boys!

Also – Michelle Malkin is blowing my mind!!

Mr. Churchill meet mr. finklestein

These are actually rather different cases.

Finkelstein was accused of no serious academic misconduct. But he was merely denied tenure.

Churchill had his tenure revoked (a far more serious and unusual measure), but on the grounds of serious academic fraud.

Neither case, however, would have played out as it did were it not for the politics of the faculty members in question.

My feeling is that both institutions were within their rights to do as they did, but that the Finkelstein case was a more pure political hit job. Given the seriousness of the allegations against Churchill (which seem, as far as can tell, to be valid), CU behaved entirely correctly, even if they were initially goaded into acting for extraneous political reasons. Though Loyola, which denied tenure to Finkelstein, is probably within its rights to do so (institutions, especially private ones, have great latitude in the granting and denial of tenure), the decision was far more outrageous and reflects much more poorly on the institution.

IB, I think Finkelstein was at DePaul, not Loyola. But your assessment of the two situations is dead-on, as far as I can tell — it’s tough to know the extent of academic fraud in Churchill’s work, but it seems clear that there’s at least some. Finkelstein, on the other hand, seems to have committed the unforgivable sin of pissing off the Dersh.

Somehow I find it telling that Churchill outlasted Maher by over five years. You have the freedom of speech in this country, but that doesn’t mean you won’t pay a helluva price for actually expressing that freedom…

mikey

Ooops…right you are SM. I had the wrong Chicagoland Catholic U.

MWAH-HA-HA! My coffers will fill with Sean Hannity’s gold when I fill his studio with my dumbassery. Ratings, bitchez!

Marching orders for my DFH Dark Minions to follow soon!

Meanwhile Noam Chomsky and Lewis Lapham remain in their jobs. Damn these dark moonbat lords!

Yes, the sacking of Churchill must really scare the other big moonbats….Clooney and Penn.

Come on, guys, get up front with it. Churchill is the guy who compared corporo-capitalist-o-crats who worked in the World Trade Center towers to Nazis and implied they’d gotten what they deserved. This didn’t sit well with the right, nor in fact with many in “the center” and on “the left.” My understanding is that his firing had more to do with his activities involving plagiarism and sloppy research than with his 9/11 comments (although I’m sure those didn’t help).

No point in being disingenuous about the guy. His situation doesn’t negate the wingnuts’ idiotic barrel-scraping/molehill-mountain-making of it all.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence, then, that the CU investigation came after the moment that the right-wing discovered the essay “Some People Push Back”.

The charges of ‘plagiarism’, as I understand it, stem from his non-academic writing, which does put a different cast on it, even if it were outright a case of lifting material (which it isn’t). Naturally one would prefer it if all academics were intellectually honest in all their works, but I’d also hate to think that a well-organized smear campaign could induce a university to chuck me just because I may have written a zine or blog post which resembles some other material I may or may not have read via a kangaroo court which includes nobody from my discipline.

When assessing whether one’s research is within the bounds of accepted scholarly work in one’s discipline, it would be helpful to have at least a few people from one’s discipline around to establish that from their own firsthand experience. The whole reason ethnic studies departments were created in the first place is because the existing standards for scholarly work privileged documentary evidence over oral tradition and other, more inferential, forms of scholarship, which means that large swaths of the history of the planet were being wiped away and a narrative was created whereby the only history of any importance was that set down by white people, which led to several absurdities (for example–to use a case tangentially related to my field of biology–the “Great Man” narrative of the history of science).

I’d love to see what a similarly motivated group could do with many of the established names like Bernard Lewis (who liked to tell racist jokes in his classes about how the Arab’s idea of a revolution was to have an orgy) and was actually convicted of Holocaust denial in France regarding the Armenian genocide. And speaking of such people, how about the toady of the Turkish government, Heath Lowry, or Guenter Lewy, one of Churchill’s accusers, who devoted a whole book to downplaying the Nazi genocide of the Roma people. Of course, it will never happen because these people are the acceptable face of academia. What that says about academia can be left as an exercise for the reader.

I seem to recall his phrasing being a little less academic than “legitimate military target,” but I’m sure that had nothing to do with the hue and cry.

Oh, of course it did. “Little Eichmanns” was the soundbyte which the right wing ripped out of context, outside of any consideration of the merits of the argument offered in “Some People Push Back”. Without that, they might not have stirred up nearly as much of a shitstorm. Although they might have been able to manage it, since they’re long on reactionary emotionalism and short on any capacity for analysis.

Whatever happens, you can bet we haven’t seen the last of the king of the moonbats.

If Churchill has a second act, he will have no one to thank, and wingnuts will have no one to blame, more than O’Reilly, Malkin, Reynolds, et al, for lifting him out of obscurity.

By the way, I read this initially as “What’s Cooking At The Maliki Residence?”

It took me a while to realize that you weren’t referencing his censorship of footage of war dead and injured, or, indeed, referencing him at all. *blush*

Churchill is a great example of what happens when you violate the american taboo against discussing certain topics. It’s not that there’s a right side or a wrong side in these cases, just simply talking about them is prevented. And the most glaring example is the root causes of anti-american terror.

As long as understanding the cause is not permitted, no solution will ever be offered, so we might as well blunder around the planet in heavily armed stealthy armored weapons systems, methodically wrecking one country after the next because, hell, what other range of responses are even available to us???

mikey

Well said mikey.

And the most glaring example is the root causes of anti-american terror.

Very true Mikey. An even more taboo subject is USA State terrorism, such as Nicaragua.

Jeez Nullifidian, you’re starting to make me think I should actually read something by Ward Churchill, rather than just make wisecracks about how he’s really in charge of “The Left”.

Atheist,you should. He’s not all that moonbatty,what drives the wingnuts crazy is that he tries looking at the world from the perspective of various brown people,and how white people fuck shit up for them.

Start with Pacificism as Pathology. It’s a teeny little book,it’ll give you a little peek into what he writes. Genocide and ethnic studies/histories are mostly his thing.

The essay the wingnuts lost their shit over is in the book On The Justice of Roosting Chickens(there’s subtitles to all this books,look ’em up on Amazon)

And yes,I have bad grammar and spelling today. Sue me,I’ve been up with a spouse who had major surgery for the last few nights…

While talk about “privileging one narrative over another” parses out to so much gobbledygook in the end, plagiarism in a non-work related area is a pretty damn weak charge. It didn’t really hurt her career all that much, nor did it hurt his (although in Ellis’ case, the “plagiarism” was in verbally passing off other vets’ stories as his own, so I’m not sure what you’d call that).

But they got their scalp, and I hope they’re happy with it. Academic freedom has done a fairly good job of holding its own these last seven years, unlike every other abstract value this country supposedly held near and dear. Even with this black eye, it’s still doing better than, say, rule of law or innocent until proven guilty. It’s going to be interesting to see what foundational values remain in even a skeletal form come 2009, and how many of them we’ll be able to revive.

I’m not optimistic, and this is overall a bad sign.

Actually, it was his academic writing which was the problem. He wrote essays under different names with faked data, then footnoted those essays as proof in his own works. Sorry, but THAT is worth being fired.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1429470#1432194

Here is a link to the actual report. See especially page 7 which lists the times he falsified evidence.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/download/ChurchillStandingCmteReport.pdf

Is it wrong of me that I don’t care about Ward Churchill?

Is it wrong of me that I don’t care about Ward Churchill?

Look, do you want to marry a box turtle or don’t you?

Is it wrong of me that I don’t care about Ward Churchill?

I think it makes you a little eichmann…

mikey

A high school classmate of mine worked at the bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald and was killed in the WTC attack on 9/11, so I take offense at the Little Eichmans remark. That being said, I agree that the wingnuts are inflating Churchill to be more important than he actually is.

maybe someone can ask prof. churchill about ann coulter:

“ward, have you seen the beaver?”

we should all be very disturbed at the fact that a tenured professor was fired for saying something controversial.

Well, he wasn’t fired for saying something controversial.

Point 1 – It wasn’t about his speech. What happened was that he was asked to speak at some college nobody ever heard of, and someone there dredged up the fact that he published a paper SEVERAL MONTHS PRIOR in some journal that nobody ever reads where he WROTE something controversial.

Point 2 – he was fired for supposedly committing fraudulent research and plagarism. Would he have been investigated had he not been focused on because of point ? Probably not. However, if he really was doing this, its worth losing tenure for.

Point 3 – As Jillian points out Academic freedom has done a fairly good job of holding its own these last seven years, unlike every other abstract value this country supposedly held near and dear. Even with this black eye, it’s still doing better than, say, rule of law or innocent until proven guilty. If his academic peers followed the university’s due process and made this decision legitimately, I’m cool with it. Think of the hue and cry that happens all the time – see: Anita Hill – and university administrations hold fast and support the faculty member. Just like it isw ith the Rep. Jeffersons of the world, I am not interested in defending the bad apples who happen to be on our side.

Duros62:
You, sir or madame, are no Ward Churchill.

Actually, it was his academic writing which was the problem. He wrote essays under different names with faked data, then footnoted those essays as proof in his own works. Sorry, but THAT is worth being fired.

Wow, this is incoherent. Granted, it’s difficult to make sense of nonsense, which is what the original charges are, but charitably one could say that this conflates a lot of the charges while adding some which are simply false. So let’s break it down.

Actually, it was his academic writing which was the problem.

This is substantively false with respect to the plagiarism charge, which I was addressing (“The charges of ‘plagiarism’, as I understand it, stem from his non-academic writing…”). I have the greatest respect for Z Magazine, but I’m in no danger of confusing it with a scholarly journal as you are doing.

He wrote essays under different names.

He ghostwrote works under the names of fellow activists in the indigenous rights movement. This is not ‘plagiarism’ by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not even punishable by any reasonable set of scholarly standards, which is a good thing. This isn’t academic for me, because I’ve ghostwritten works before, in a more formal setting where my ghostwriting was contractually considered “work product” to which I had no rights, and furthermore I’m even barred from disclosing the names of the people for whom I did the ghostwriting. If this charge is allowed to stand in academia, then any manner of dishonesty could be imputed to me and I’d be completely unable to defend myself lest I get sued.

with faked data, then footnoted those essays as proof in his own works.

No, the data which he footnoted wasn’t faked. Sorry. The report cites two footnotes, one each in separate papers of 118 and 189 footnotes to the same paper, “The Demography of Native North America”. In both cases, this is simply used as a convenient citation to the size of the North American Native population. There is no thesis or even sub-thesis in either paper for which this demographic information is vital, so it cannot be adduced as “proof” of anything, and the data is entirely legitimate anyway.

What you are conflating with the issues of the footnotes, I would assume, are the four charges of “fabrication” surrounding such things as the Dawes Severalty Act. Unfortunately, the report itself (not just the summary you linked to) is chock full of errors of fact which, if given the uncharitable reading that Churchill’s work was subjected to, would be grounds for firing in itself.

For example: “The evidence indicates that during the allotment period, for a brief three-year window from 1917 to 1920, a half-blood quantum test was employed, albeit not for the purpose that Professor Churchill claims.”

The 1917 date was the date when the quantum test was specifically written into the law via an amendment. I’ll leave the last clause alone, because a panel which contains no experts in indigenous studies are in no position to assess what the purpose of the Dawes Severalty Act was in the first place (and it was supposedly beyond their scope as well–the fact that this was ignored shows the adversarial, kangaroo court nature of the proceedings).

However, it seems to be a basic issue of fact that the blood quantum test didn’t exist as part and parcel of the implementation of the Dawes Act. Is that accurate?

Sadly, no!

At that link, you’ll see that the card is marked as being a card used in the Dawes’ Roll, which was used to implement the Dawes Severalty Act (“The rolls were needed to assign the allotments and to provide an equitable division of all monies obtained.”), that it dates from 1903, fourteen years before the date claimed by the committee, and that it has a blood quantum test as part of its form. The man is a 1/4 Cherokee, his wife is “I.W.”–intermarried white–and the three children are therefore 1/8 Cherokee.

Documentary evidence like this would have caused honest scholars to say that Churchill was brilliantly vindicated, or caused a more abashed scholar to simply shut up and slink away, but they ignored this readily available data and lied instead because they had an agenda to serve.

The other charges are of the same calibre. For example, in the Fort Clark discussion, they accuse him of citing footnotes which do not prove his case when they were introduced in a context where they were serving as general background information, not as proof of any case. Which is, again, something that could be used of any scholar. Take for example, from my field, your average peer reviewed research paper. The research paper will introduce conclusions whose empirical basis are not the papers being footnoted. Why is that? Because the research data forms the basis for the conclusions, and the footnotes are there to establish the ‘sides’ of any controversy if it exists and provide general background for the experiment. Again, if this is allowed to stand, I too could be accused of “fabrication” simply by following the standard approach to research papers in my discipline.

Sorry, but THAT is worth being fired.

Not only is it not worth being fired for, the tendentiousness of the criticism shows how careful a scholar Churchill actually is. With a publication record like his, a genuinely sloppy approach to scholarship should yield dozens of malefactions. Just compare to the crap peddled by Michael Behe, another tenured professor, as a for instance. Or any of the names I mentioned in my previous post, all of whom commit far more egregious sins against scholarship than Churchill has even been accused of.

atheist:
Jeez Nullifidian, you’re starting to make me think I should actually read something by Ward Churchill, rather than just make wisecracks about how he’s really in charge of “The Left”.

He’s written some very good and influential stuff, most of it to do with indigenous history and the perception of Native peoples. For example, his Fantasies of the Master Race has changed the way (very) allegedly pro-Native films like Black Robe and Dances with Wolves are presented in film classes. Kill the Indian, Save the Man is an excellent work on the cultural genocide inherent in 19th century Native boarding schools (Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS, where I live, is one such institution rescued from its past and now serves as a locus for preserving and teaching about Native history). The other two works of his that I’ve read, aside from Pacifism as Pathology which I also recommend, are Agents of Repression and The COINTELPRO Papers, both coauthored with Jim vander Wall. I’d recommend both of them, the former for a general history, and the latter for the documentary evidence. The authorship in that one is mainly confined to setting the context for the reproduced COINTELPRO memos, so reading Agents of Repression first would be best.

While talk about “privileging one narrative over another” parses out to so much gobbledygook in the end,

Well, consider it my way of euphemistically saying that everything prior to the mid-twentieth century in any historical-cultural field within the framework of Western scholarship–so far as I have sufficient background in to make a judgment (Arab history, the history and philosophy of science, etc.)–is arrant bullshit. 😉

Ah, but now you’re just privileging YOUR narrative over MINE, you narrative imperialist, you! 😀

[…] of the boogeyman one wants to create and use them as examples of the Common Enemy. For instance: Ward Churchill. He makes a stupid comment about 9/11 victims, and right-wingers frenzy around him like piranha. […]

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