Tuesday, May 29, 2007

An Oldie But Not So Goodie

Oh joy, the pretend Indian Ward Churchill is back in the news.

University president recommends firing professor:

The president of the University of Colorado has recommended that a professor who likened some September 11 victims to a Nazi should be fired, according to the professor and the school.

Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, has denied the allegations and threatened a lawsuit if he is dismissed.

CU President Hank Brown made the recommendation in a 10-page letter sent to the chair of the committee that handles tenure issues. University spokeswoman Michele McKinney confirmed published reports about the recommendation Monday but said the school would not make the letter public.

The university's governing Board of Regents would have the final say on whether Churchill is fired or disciplined. It could be several weeks before the case ends up in its hands; the tenure panel must review it first.

Churchill touched off a firestorm with an essay likening some victims in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, who helped carry out the Holocaust.

University officials concluded he could not be fired for his comments because they were protected by the First Amendment, but they launched an investigation into allegations that he fabricated or falsified his research and plagiarized.

The interim chancellor of the university's Boulder campus and another faculty committee have also recommended Churchill be fired. At Churchill's request, the Privilege and Tenure Committee also reviewed the case and recommended a one-year suspension without pay and a demotion.

Churchill said Monday the university process was biased against him and that he believes he will get a fairer hearing in the courts.

Unbelievably I have to go back to a post I wrote in March of 2005 to properly deal with this rather moronic article of the AP's.

#1 - Any article or statement you read to the effect that Churchill is being "persecuted" because of his article saying 9/11 victims were "little Eichmann's" is a lie pure and simple. Any discussion that ignores the facts that (as this article outlines):[ed. This refers to a Rocky Mountain News Story that has long ago been removed to the archives.]

Churchill stands credibly accused of ethnic fraud, grade retribution, falsification of the nature of his military service, academic fraud, plagiarism, selling other artists' creations as his own and falsely accusing Denver Post columnist Diane Carman of inventing incendiary quotations.

This doesn't even include Churchill's repeated advocation of violence against those he disagrees with.

#2 - Academia is right, there is a question of academic freedom at stake here. However, it isn't the question they are asking. The inability of academia to honestly look at the record of Ward Churchill and exert even the barest minimum of professional standards upon him bodes ill. The entire premise of academic freedom is predicated upon the principle that the academic disciplines can be self regulating. The Ward Churchill episode is pointing out that this is simply untrue. If academics are unable to appropriately handle as "no-brainer" a case as this, how can anyone have the slightest confidence in academics ability to govern themselves? I don't think you can. This invites the interference of legislatures, which is not a good thing. But academia is, to all intents and purposes, abdicating their responsibilities. If you cannot hold Ward Churchill to even minimum academic standards, like firing him for the numerous frauds he has committed, then you have fewer arguments when the legislature decides to intervene.

For those who haven't yet had the opportunity to see Churchill's fraudulent "academic" work up close, you can still find the best dissection of it here.

The fact that the AP has framed this story to read as if Churchill is being fired because of his despicable statements is reprehensible. Churchill is being fired, we hope, because he is a fraud, who lied about his ethnicity in order to benefit from affirmative actions programs he was not entitled to, who produced "scholarship" that could only be called bogus, and who advocated deadly force be applied to his political "enemies."

Why is all of this beyond the capacity of the AP to understand?

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