The Andrea Smith
kao magahet na natibu pat kao mama'natitibu gui', issue
has been appearing all over my Facebook lately. I may or may not share
much of my thoughts on the issue, but it was interesting how much the
issue of Andrea Smith reminded me of Ward Churchill. Both are scholars
that have had a huge impact on the representations of Native Americans
in scholarly terms. Both of them have have been significant voices that
have helped in some ways "mainstream" native American issues or voices.
But both are figures who have been challenged in terms of their
authenticity. In both cases the issue persists of how questions over
their native identity will affect their theories, their legacies and so
on.
I've included below a series of articles on
Ward Churchill's case when he was fired from the University of Colorado.
His "Indianness" in terms of his authenticity as a Native American
wasn't so much questioned when he came under fire, as the non-native
world was much more interested in defaming and maligning him for his
9/11 comments. I have another post in mind for that debacle. The way in
which people became so furious over his comments about "little
Eichmanns" is a similar pointless interpassive dynamic as to those who
obsess over mentions of race in order to prevent any discussion about
race from taking place. To fixate on the one who bears the truth in order to prevent the truth from being spoken of, heard or contended with.
**************************
Jury says professor was wrongly fired
Published: April 2, 2009
NT
DENVER — A jury found on Thursday that the
University of Colorado
had wrongfully dismissed a professor who drew national attention for an
essay in which he called some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks “little
Eichmanns.”
But the jury, which deliberated for a day and a half, awarded only $1 in damages to the former professor,
Ward L. Churchill, a tenured faculty member at the university’s campus in Boulder since 1991 who was chairman of the ethnic studies department.
The
jurors found that Mr. Churchill’s political views had been a
“substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the
university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway.
“This is a great victory for the First Amendment, and for academic freedom,” said his lawyer, David A. Lane.
Whether
Mr. Churchill, 61, will get his job back, and when, was not resolved.
Mr. Churchill’s lawyers said they would ask Judge Larry J. Naves of
Denver District Court to order reinstatement, in light of the verdict.
A spokesman for the university, Ken McConnellogue, said administrators
would oppose the request. Reinstatement, Mr. McConnellogue said, would
probably draw a sharp reaction among many faculty members, because a
faculty committee was instrumental in his firing.
The verdict by
the panel of four women and two men — none of whom wished to be
interviewed by reporters, court officials said — seemed unlikely to
resolve the larger debate surrounding Mr. Churchill that was engendered
by the case. Is Mr. Churchill, as his supporters contend, a torchbearer
for the right to hold unpopular political views? Or is he unpatriotic or
— as his harshest critics contend — an outright collaborator with the
nation’s enemies at a time of war?
The jury seemed at least
partly undecided on what to think about the man at the center of the
fight, whose essay made him a polarizing national figure.
While
the panel agreed with the argument that an environment of political
intolerance for Mr. Churchill’s views was a factor in his firing, Mr.
McConnellogue, the university spokesman, contended that its decision to
deny him financial damages also sent a message — that Mr. Churchill was
not necessarily a figure to be revered, either.
“The jury’s award is some vindication,” he said.
Mr.
Churchill, wearing sunglasses in the hallway outside the courtroom,
said the size of the award did not matter. “I didn’t ask for money,” he
said, “I asked for justice.”
The case has been seen as a struggle
between freedom of speech and academic integrity, and it revived the
longstanding debate about whether hate speech deserves protection by the
First Amendment.
But the monthlong trial mostly focused on Mr.
Churchill’s academic work. The jury had to decide whether he had
plagiarized and falsified parts of his research, particularly on
American Indians, as the university contended in dismissing him. His
lawyers described the search for professional misconduct as simply a
pretext for a foregone decision to get rid of him.
On Sept. 12,
2001, Mr. Churchill wrote an essay in which he argued that the United
States had brought the terrorist attacks on itself. He said that some of
those working in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 were not innocent
bystanders but “formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of
America’s global financial empire.” He described the financial workers
as “little Eichmanns,” a reference to
Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who has been called the architect of the Holocaust.
The
essay garnered little notice at the time but gradually seeped through
the Internet, coming to light in 2005, and then creating an uproar.
In their closing arguments on Wednesday, lawyers for each side urged the jury to focus on the First Amendment.
Mr.
Lane, Mr. Churchill’s lawyer, said his client had been a spokesman
throughout his academic career for disempowered people and causes — a
trait, Mr. Lane said, that never made Mr. Churchill popular with people
in power. “For 30 years, he’s been telling the other side of the story,”
Mr. Lane said.
What the university did in firing Mr. Churchill,
he told the panel, was political payback, a rigged inquiry into his work
that was a “charade of fairness.”
The university’s lawyer,
Patrick O’Rourke, asked the jury to think about standards. The pattern
of academic misconduct, Mr. O’Rourke said, was not in doubt.
“There’s
the real university world, and there’s Ward Churchill’s world,” he
said. “Ward Churchill’s world is a place where there are no standards
and no accountability.”
Mr. Churchill, he said, was using the
Constitution as a smokescreen. “You can’t take the First Amendment and
use it to justify fraud,” he said.
Around 3 p.m. on Thursday, jurors asked the judge questions about damages.
First,
they asked whether it was possible to award no damages. A few minutes
later, they asked whether, if all but one jury member could agree on a
dollar amount, that person could be replaced by another juror. (The
answer was no.)
The jury then resumed deliberations for about an hour before returning its verdict in Mr. Churchill’s favor.
Kirk Johnson reported from Denver, and Katharine Q. Seelye from New York.
************
A Combatative Trial in Colarado as a Controversial Ex-Professor Seeks to Win Back His Job
By DAN FROSCH
Published: March 21, 2009
NYT
DENVER — A wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former professor against the
University of Colorado has been unfolding in exciting fashion in a courtroom here.
The
professor, Ward L. Churchill, was dismissed by the university in July
2007 on grounds that he plagiarized and falsified parts of his research
on Native Americans. But Mr. Churchill contends that he was fired in
retaliation for an essay in which he described office workers killed in
the World Trade Center attacks as “little Eichmanns.”
Mr. Churchill, seeking to be reinstated to his tenured position, is expected to testify on Monday.
The civil trial, which has finished its second week in district court, has been as combative and colorful as Mr. Churchill.
His
lawyer, David Lane, has sought to portray him as the victim of a
“howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media and
politicians who were “falling over themselves” to have him fired.
But
Patrick O’Rourke, a lawyer for the university, said in his opening
statement, “Ward Churchill was fired for one reason and one reason only:
he engaged in the worst kind of academic fraud that you can.”
Much
of the testimony has focused on Mr. Churchill’s extensive scholarship,
including his theory that Capt. John Smith purposefully introduced
smallpox among the Wampanoag Indians in the 17th century.
It was
after the outrage over Mr. Churchill’s “Eichmann” essay that other
scholars came forward with claims of plagiarism. In May 2006, a faculty
committee found that his academic work was seriously flawed. The
committee further concluded that he had no factual basis for his
smallpox theory.
Marianne Wesson, a University of Colorado law
professor who led the committee, testified last week that Mr. Churchill
had, in some of his work, cited writings of other scholars that he had
actually ghostwritten, creating the illusion that there was a body of
work supporting his theories.
Mr. Lane accused Ms. Wesson of
bias, pointing to e-mail messages she wrote comparing backers of Mr.
Churchill to the public support for
O. J. Simpson,
Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson.
“I
really don’t doubt that Professor Churchill was, to many students, a
very inspiring teacher,” Ms. Wesson testified. “I think he is a tragic
figure, and it makes me sad that so much talent, so much promise has
been wasted.”
**************
Fired Colorado Professor is Cross-Examined in Lawsuit
By DAN FROSCH
Published: March 24, 2009
NYT
DENVER — A former
University of Colorado
professor spent nearly six hours defending his scholarly work on
Tuesday during cross-examination in his lawsuit contending that he was
fired for an essay he wrote about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
After spending much of Monday explaining his political opinions, the
former professor, Ward L. Churchill, faced extensive cross-examination
by the university’s lawyer, Patrick O’Rourke.
A faculty committee
concluded that Mr. Churchill had plagiarized and fabricated sections of
his work on the persecution of American Indians, leading to his
dismissal in July 2007, the university says.
But Mr. Churchill
maintains that he was forced out because of the controversial essay, in
which he characterized workers in the World Trade Center as “little
Eichmanns.”
In a back-and-forth that was intermittently cutting
and congenial, Mr. O’Rourke delved into the details of Mr. Churchill’s
work, much of which focused on the spread of smallpox among Americans
Indians and assorted aspects of law affecting Indian country.
Mr.
O’Rourke said Mr. Churchill’s admission that he had ghostwritten works
for other scholars and occasionally cited them to support his own
theories clearly violated academic standards, as the faculty committee
had concluded.
“The only evidence we’ve heard from anyone other
than you about this scholarly practice is from 20 people tenured at
C.U., all of whom say this is wrong,” Mr. O’Rourke said.
Mr.
Churchill said the practice violated no academic standard at the
university. And he argued that it was acceptable for one scholar to
ghostwrite for another and then cite that work in other writings as long
as the second scholar embraced the original premise.
Mr.
O’Rourke acknowledged that the university and Mr. Churchill had drawn
extensive criticism over the essay, with Mr. Churchill facing “half a
million” accusations and the university under enormous pressure to
discipline him.
But even after firing Mr. Churchill, the
university allowed him to continue lecturing when invited by students —
proof, Mr. O’Rourke said, that his dismissal had nothing to do with
limiting his First Amendment rights to free speech.
“The same
university that fired you for speaking out is the same university that
let you come back and talk on any subject that you wanted, whenever you
were asked to,” Mr. O’Rourke said.
Mr. Churchill responded, “I don’t see how the point you’re making actually changes the situation at all.”
Mr.
Churchill conceded that parts of an essay written by Prof. Fay G. Cohen
of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia on Indian fishing rights
appeared without permission in a book he helped edit and write. But Mr.
Churchill denied that he was responsible for lifting any part of the
essay, which he had worked on with Ms. Cohen.
When asked by his
lawyer, David Lane, what he hoped to gain from his lawsuit, Mr.
Churchill said: “I want my job back. I want the university to
acknowledge that the entire process by which I was terminated from the
university was fraudulent.”
Throughout the day, Mr. Churchill argued that he had done nothing wrong and that he had been railroaded by the university.
Mr.
O’Rourke questioned that premise. “All of these fully tenured faculty
members went along with a fraudulent and fictional report just to get
you out of the university?” he asked.
Mr. Churchill said he believed that outside influences had helped seal his fate. “It’s just wrong,” he said.
Mr. O’Rourke responded, “It’s just wrong to put somebody else’s name on your work and then to cite it.”
After
Mr. Churchill’s testimony, a juror submitted a question, asking him if
the accusations of academic misconduct would have arisen had it not been
for his essay.
“I think the easy answer on that one is no, they would not,” Mr. Churchill replied.
*************
Fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill loses high court appeal
By Anthony Cotton
Posted:
09/11/2012 12:01:00 AM MDT
According
to the Boulder Daily Camera, Churchill sold his home in Boulder last
month. Lane told the Camera that Churchill now lives in Atlanta, where
he continues to write and lecture.
Former University
of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, rebuffed by the state Supreme
Court on Monday, said he plans to appeal his firing by the school to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We'll see if the U.S. Supreme Court is
inclined to do any better," Churchill wrote in an e-mail to The Denver
Post, shortly after the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed two lower-court
rulings saying Churchill was not entitled to reinstatement or back
pay.
Churchill, fired in 2007 from his position in CU's
ethnic-studies department after charges of plagiarism and academic
misconduct, filed a civil lawsuit against the school for wrongful
termination. He won the suit, with a jury saying his rights to free
speech under the First Amendment were violated by the school. Churchill
was awarded $1 by a jury, but the District Court judge declined to
reinstate him.
In 2010, the State Court of Appeals upheld the
judge's decision not to give Churchill his job back. He appealed to the
state Supreme Court, which issued a 55-page opinion.
Although a
university spokesman said that "everyone in the community is ready to
move forward and put this matter in the rearview mirror," Churchill said
he will continue to fight.
"The number of factual
misrepresentations contained in the opinion is exceeded only by the
number of times the law is twisted to fit the court's preferred
conclusions," he wrote.
Churchill's attorney, David Lane, said his client has 90 days to file a petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
Churchill came under fire for
an essay he wrote that likened some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks to a World War II Nazi official. CU investigated
whether his essay was protected under the First Amendment and found
that it was. But during the investigation, academics came forward and
accused Churchill of plagiarism and fraud in scholarly writings, which
led to his termination.
Monday's ruling, affirming the two earlier court decisions, was "disturbing," Lane said.
"This
is a dangerous precedent to all free society," he said. "There's never
been a dispute that his First Amendment rights were violated, but what
they said was that the regents can't be sued. I guess that gives them
the green light to violate the Constitution any time they see fit."
In
his ruling, District Court Judge Larry Naves said the Board of Regents
acted as a "quasi-judicial" panel, which gave it immunity from
Churchill's lawsuit.
CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano issued a
statement saying the state Supreme Court's decision "upholds the high
standards of academic integrity practiced every day by our faculty, and
helps us to ensure the quality of instruction for all our students."
"It
is vital that what is published and what is taught in the classroom be
based on research and scholarship grounded in honest, accepted and
time-tested methods," DiStefano said. "This was always what was at stake
in this case for the university, and the winners today are our faculty
and students."
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292, acotton@denverpost.com or twitter.com/anthonycottondp
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