CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano has announced his decision to dismiss Ward Churchill after an investigation exposing academic fraud:
I have carefully reviewed the Report of the Investigative Committee, Professor Churchill’s responses to the Committee, and the Recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. I have met with and obtained the separate input of Provost Susan Avery and Todd Gleeson, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. I met with Professor Churchill and his attorney, David Lane. After conducting the due diligence I felt was necessary, I have come to a decision regarding the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct pertaining to Professor Ward Churchill. Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The Ward Churchill case as been interesting to follow. I've agreed with Steve Bainbridge and Glenn Reynolds who both think he shouldn't be canned but rather rigorously criticized because of his screed praising the deaths of the 9/11 victims (This line applauds the deaths: "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it"). Bainbridge wrote:
This is one of those occasions when those of us on the right need to suck it up and echo the line famously attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." We do not remain true to our values if we are willing to say "free speech for me, but not for thee," even if that is what Churchill likely would say if the shoe were on the other foot.
He's right. If we start firing the Ward Churchill's of the academic sphere for speech, than there is nothing holding the left-wing faculties back from firing right-wing professors for much less offensive statements. Protecting Churchill from termination for his speech is good principle and good practice.
But this all speaks to his views and comments about September 11. The charges of academic fraud (pdf alert) and falsifying his ethnic background take this discussion of termination to a new realm. He lied about his scholarship and his racial affiliation in an attempt to build credibility as a scholar and public intellectual speaking on the behalf of American Indians. With this being the case, he ought to be disciplined or fired. A lot of this reminds many historians, including myself, about the Joseph Ellis affair a few years ago at Mount Holyoke. Ellis is the author of several books about the Founders, but fabricated the fact that he was a high school football hero, a paratrooper in Vietnam, and embellished his role in the civil rights and antiwar movements. He was suspended from Mount Holyoke for a year without pay and stripped of his endowed chair. Check out Peter Hoffer's Past Imperfect which covers the controversy. Of course, none of this really misinformed his students on important historical events, but he was rightly disciplined for reprehensible behavior in a scholar.
The same standard must apply to Ward Churchill, which DiStefano has decided is the correct path. It would seem to me that the charges against Churchill are much more serious than those brought against Ellis (Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a first-rate historian, with no charges of plagiarism on his record but does share a fabricated background). As I stated above, this standard must apply across the board regardless of a professor's viewpoints since academic dishonesty is culpable whether it's done by left-wing or right-wing ideologues.
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