'One of the things I’ve suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary.'
— Ward Churchill

CNews 21July08

From our Ward Churchill Must Be Tom Sawyer 'Cause He Gets So Many People To Whitewash For Him department: Over at The Valve, Marc Bousquet practices a little Churchillian spin on The Perfesser's upcoming court case.
Excerpt:

The “research misconduct” charge is that Churchill didn’t provide enough evidence relating to his account of the origins of a 19th century smallpox epidemic. Whether or not one agrees with Churchill’s account, I found in reading the investigators’ report that I had to share Cheyfitz’s opinion that “what is properly an academic debate about the relationship of Native peoples to United States history was turned into an indictment.... The research misconduct charges disappear when you start looking at them closely.”

The use of the “research misconduct” charges to discredit Churchill should be particularly troubling to all of us--as Churchill supporters made clear by promptly filing “research misconduct” charges against the investigating committee, using the same standards for “misconduct” that they employed against him (and which future observers may well find more convincing!)

One must hope that, in return for the sacrifice of whatever credibility he may have had, Bousquet at least got a dead rat and a string to swing it with. (We know; it's a broken analogy, we're not gonna let a little thing like that interfere with finally working into a post one of the best phrases ever written in the English language. In fact, we're gonna nominate Bousquet for PB's first annual (and already prestigious!) Cheyfitz Memorial Dead Rat And A String To Swing It With Award.)

Update: DrunkaSuspect has more commentary, including a scathing comment (and challenge) from Churchill critic (and man about town!) Professor Thomas Brown.

Excerpt (from Professor Brown's comment):

Churchill’s defenses all crumble to dust under close examination. Have a look at the four scholarly articles that accuse Churchill of research misconduct: two by John LaVelle in Wicazo Sa Review, and two by me in Plagiary. All four are readable online.

Neither Churchill nor any of his defenders have published a response to these accusations. Why? Because LaVelle and I have already eviscerated the various excuses, including the ones that Bousquet has advanced in this blog.

[...]

I challenge any of Churchill’s defenders to debate either in person or in the pages of Plagiary, but I doubt any will take me up on this offer. The more you learn about Churchill, the more obvious it is that he is guilty of serious misconduct.

Incidentally, Bousquet's whitewash is not just any old blog post; it's also cross-posted over at The Chronicle of Higher Education's laughably self-important blog, Brainfart, er, Brainstorm, which is where Professor Brown's comment originally appeared.

CNews 2July08

From our Hold Your Breath department: Like its namesake, wardchurchill.net makes many promises. (via DrunkaBlog)

[...W]e’re launching a new website (right here) in mid-July.

We’ll be featuring a column written by Ward, blogs, an updated calendar, news, and easier access to documents about CU and their corporate cronies.

CNews 18Jun08

From our Your Public Education Dollar At Work department: The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic (via boortz.com)

From our Is That Any Way For A Chief Facilitator To Talk department: Court case attracts activist Russell Means (ht Zorro Weiner)

CNews 11June08

Professor Ward Churchill takes the US and Canadian Governments to the wayback machine to find them guilty of something called "international law." (ht Zorro Weiner) We've noted before that the UN's definition of genocide is as exclusive as a rainstorm, and permits those so inclined to define as genocide the defeat of Nazi Germany.

BTW: The author blurb at the end of the article reads (bf ours):

Ward Churchill is a veteran activist of Cherokee descent. A former professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, now retired, he has written or edited more than 20 books, mostly on indigenous rights, including A Little Matter of Genocide (1997), Struggle for the Land (2002), and Acts of Rebellion (2003).

If Briarpatch Magazine operates the way most other magazines do, that blurb was provided by The Perfesser hisself.

Also BTW: DrunkaSooner had it first.

Pop Quiz

Ward Churchill is to scholar what:

a) Ted Kennedy is to statesman
b) George Bush is to orator
c) Benjamin Whitmer is to University of Colorado employee
d) All of the above

CNews 7June08

Benjie over at DBAB interviews somebody he claims is Professor Ward Churchill (and who may be the same drunk Benjie claimed wrote an illiterate diatribe he posted a few weeks ago) concerning The Perfesser's recent hospital stay. According to this somebody, the aneurysm was in The Perfesser's abdomen.

Favorite Fun-Filled Fact: The pre-Columbian Incans "perfected the necessary surgical techniques" for the stent (or as Benjie's drunk calls it, "stint")—no doubt discovered during these ancient medical procedures.

DrunkaOmniscient has more.

CNews 25May08

DrunkaAceReporter notes that The Perfesser was hospitalized Friday for an aneurysm in his leg.

CNews 13May08

From our Nope, Nothing Wrong Here department, Cognitive Dissonance In Higher Education division: The Future of Plagiarism (ht Waldo Pepper, who points out that the author of the piece is a professor of humanities and philosophy at Alfred University, which apparently frowns on plagiarizing students while handing out honorary doctorates to plagiarizing professors).

DrunkaDewd comments adroitly on a report that UC-Boulder is gonna fix its academic problems with a "Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy" chair endowment. We're thinking an endowed chair for a "Professor of Keeping Other Professors Honest By Forcing Them To Teach Without Resorting To Lies, Sophistry, And Outright Fraud" would be more appropriate, but that's probably too much to expect from a university run by a guy named "Bud".

CNews 3May08

Some drunk Benjie claims is "Ward Churchill" practices his typing over at DBAB, in what sadly appears to be a failed attempt to write "just like Benjie". Sorry, Perfesser, but Benjie sacrificed untold thousands of restroom walls to perfect his craft; leave the sneering to the expert. (ht Fred)
Excerpts (all errors left intact, bf added by us):

After all, a pronounced inability to follow a coherent train of thought has been a hallmark of the “analyses” delivered on Pirate Ballerina since day one, and, given the intellectual impairments of it’s audience, the consistently with which it has offered self-contradictory argumentation has proven to be one of the blog’s most attractive features for readers like PhD Anthro and, er, Mickey Mouse.

[...]

It gets better. Since [Hamilton College president Joan Hinde] Stewart’s check-stopping gambit was flagrantly illegal, she—or, rather, Hamilton College—did end up paying me the full and duly-contract amount. It also had to pay my attorney. And it was stuck with the tab for all costs associated with the case, which, to be sure, included a stable of sleek—and very pricey—Manhattan mouthpieces retained to try and stave off the inevitable.

That was in the fall of 2005, [Paine], about six months after the low-rent maneuver rousing all those warm and tingly sensations in your grubby little loins. So stop yankin’ on that pitifully undernourished nub you call a “luv muscle” and listen up. Your miniature woody’s already wilted, and I promise that the tale I’m about to tell will not be told in a manner too turgid for your notoriously tasteless sensibilities.

When a man (and we're only assuming the writer is a man) spends more time thinking about your penis than you do, well... Perhaps "Ward" has spent time in public restrooms, albeit in a kneeling, rather than a writing, position. Sorry, Perfesser, but we don't like you "that way."

Returning now to the maunder at hand, we find "Ward" squandering what remains of his wit on some sort of bondage fantasy involving Stewart.

By the time all was said and done, President Stewart—or “Phoney Joanie,” as she was called by those who knew her best—had taken to emitting eerie howls over her cellphone, the result, it’s said, of noticeably spastic bowels, caused in turn by an increasingly vast sense of despair and personal humiliation—dare I say “degradation and defilement”?—that seems to have grown ever deeper—maybe even worse and worse—as the weeks rolled by.

While the onset of Joanie’s malady generated much astonishment among those unversed in such things, it came as no great surpise to who bothered to examine her situation in a rational manner.

I mean, what other outcome might reasonable people have expected to obtain from the facts that she’d authorized the expenditure of roughly triple the dollar amount the college originally owed me, all to prevent my receiving a cent, only to find herself staring in the face of the ugly prospect that she could even wind up being cuffed and jailed like a two-dollar whore for her trouble?

[...]

The Great Wheel of Karmic Justice having thus begun to turn in earnest, Joanie was reduced to a frantic spate of telephonic grovelings, imploring me to please, please, PLEASE accept her supplications—not to mention a nice fresh check, certified this time and couriered to my lawyer—rather than having her publicly flogged, shorn, and placed in stocks.

How mortifying do you reckon that must have been for someone who’d figured to establish herself as a Heroine of the Right by putting me quite firmly in my place? Ho-ho.

Ho-ho, indeed.

Worse still, at the point she was compelled to figuratively assume that posture of craven submission most commonly associated with baboons (you can look that one up, too), she’d been unable even to secure the usual quid pro quo agreement that the whole transaction would remain secret.

Really, [Paine], long before her prematurely palsied hand put pen to paper, Joanie knew she’d gone and fucked the monkey, big time. Her defeat was, well, total, her bright future as an omnipotent administrator resembling a turd swirling in a toilet bowl on full flush.

Immediately after the check was sent, Joanie’s deterioration became much more conspicuous, or so I’m told. Her slide into the abyss was grim, amazingly swift, and apparently marked by an unremitting series of barks, shrieks, and moans, eventually subsiding into mewls, then gurgles.

Yes, it’s a savage and brutal story, [Paine], even tragic by some estimations. But, what the hell? Veni vidi vici, right?

"Veni vidi vici"... That your safe word, "Ward"? No matter. After a few more paragraphs of this, um, whatever it is, "Ward" reaffixes the penlight of his intellect on PB, concluding (cue ominous soap-opera music):

There’s a lesson to be learned from all this, [Paine], but I think I’ll just let you sit around and fester for a while, trying to figure it out. You will, eventually. You can trust me on that score. I know about such things, and I doubt you’re going to find it especially amusing.

Update: Drunkablog has more.

Yet another professor inadvertently demonstrates the the stupidity of academia's diversity policies. (ht Clayton Bigsby)

CNews 30April08

It's Spring, so we shouldn't be surprised that the Churchill Tree is bearing its first poison fruit. (ht, urk!, Snapple over at DrunkaBlog, where Drunka's already posted the news, but with funnier commentary.)
Excerpt:

Hawaiian sovereignty activists calling themselves the "Hawaiian Kingdom Government" surrounded Iolani Palace this morning, refusing to let state employees either enter or exit the historical site, saying the palace and surrounding grounds are property of the "Hawaiian Kingdom."

Talk about your coinkydink: Back in 2005, the Hawaiian Independence Blog was talking about just this sort of action.

Update: We note that the "Minister of the Interior" of the "Hawaiian Kingdom" is University of Hawaii-Manoa (professorial digs of Ward's cronies Ruth Hsu and Haunani-Kay Trask) poli-sci Ph.D. candidate David Keanu Sai. Update update: The blogmaster over at hawaiiankingdom.info tells us that Sai is with some other group calling itself Hawaiian Kingdom, and that Sai is not affiliated with the group that briefly occupied Iolani Palace. So Churchill's rabble-rousing in Hawaii incited the talk, talk Hawaiian Kingdom peeps instead of the fight, fight Hawaiian Kingdom peeps. Man, that's gotta burn his ass to a crisp.

The Myth of Ward Churchill's Scholarship

Courtesy of an anonymous correspondent, we've recently come into possession of Ward Churchill's 2007 Social Text article entitled "The Myth of Academic Freedom."* We'd publish it here, but it has a pesky copyright notice attached that seems to suggest a prohibition of same, so instead, we'll post the statements we find particularly laughable, and (of course), our reasons for finding each of them so darn funny.

Here's a taste, from Churchill's background section "On The Home Front" and covering academic freedom issues in Colorado during the past century:

[...A] “free speech” area outside the student union has been named in honor of Dalton Trumbo, a one-time UCB student and celebrated novelist/screenwriter who successfully resisted blacklisting by [Senator Joseph] McCarthy.

Pretty much everyone resisted blacklisting by Senator McCarthy for the very simple reason that McCarthy compiled no blacklists. Maybe The Perfesser is thinking of HUAC. Confidential to The Perfesser: Our Congress is bicameral. You could look it up.

In any case, as we continue slogging through prose turgid by even Churchill's standard, we'll post more hilarities. Approximately half of the entire screed is a paraphrase of chunks of Jon Wiener's Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (lucky for Churchill he's no historian), which The Perfesser was thumping as long ago as his visit to Salida over two years ago to speak to an audience comprised mostly of bewildered pensioners and backwoods conspiracy theorists.

Oh, one unexpected pleasure in reading The Perfesser's exercise in mythology is learning that Hamilton College stopped payment on Churchill's speaking fee check.

Update: Relentless PB reader Noj points out that we'd called Tail-Gunner Joe "Eugene" (now corrected; we blame the usual tainted Metamucil). Noj also points out that Social Text and its editors were the victims of Sokal's Hoax, which showed pretty conclusively that the publication's claims to peer review were as specious as The Perfesser's claims to scholarship.

* The entire article is available from Social Text's website, but the price of even a two-day single-PC access to it is ridiculously exorbitant.

nota bene: Yes, we know—The title of this post has little to do with the post itself, but Churchill's fabrication of "history" is already well-proven. We just wanted to remind everyone.