Genociding Ward Churchill for over a 20th of a century

CNews 30April07

FrontPage magazine runs in toto a series of statements of support from the usual gang of idiots who want to Save Ward Churchill From The Consequences of His Own Actions, and Peter Kirstein seems mostly miffed that FrontPage didn't link to his blog post (from which they lifted the statements) correctly.

CNews 29April07

Drunkablog has posted the third (and arguably, most entertaining) part of his Emergency! National! Forum! report.

BTW: We note with barely concealable indifference that the galactically disappointing turn-out at the E!N!F! seems to have knocked the wind out of the blowhards over at tryworks as well as their anonymous comrades over at wardchurchill.net. We can only hope this is a temporary condition, and both groups will be back in the game, offering up the sort of quality thinking and incisive, soundly reasoned analysis we've come to expect.

Now I have actually met Ward, and I like him "as a person" even though I think he is about as wrong headed as a political guide as it is possible to be. To a large extent if you want to know "what not to do or say" all you have to do is look at Churchill, and how he sets himself up to be the "Ann Coulter of the left", the sort of person that those in search of "wrong-headedness" amongst leftists can point to as evidence. The latest septic tank that he has landed himself in over his comments about 911 is instructive. All that he said brought not one single more person to oppose the Americans' war. I mean it- not a single one. It plainly convinced nobody and never was meant to. All it did was land the author in shit. As politics this may stand as a Academy Award Winning Oscar of how not to do things if influencing people is the goal. Never mind that what he said was rhetorical and generalizing to the point of losing contact with reality. What in the name of Jesus was the point of his chickens roosting ? Certainly not to participate in real political debate and influence people in his own country, the USA.

The decision by the appeals committee is unacceptable! It gives credence to the whole campaign to drag Churchill's name through the mud, by saying there is something wrong with his scholarship deserving of disciplinary measures.

PSA: Your Tax Dollars Can Help

[press release 4/28/07 WCBS Foundation]

It's not discussed in the polite circles of Boulder academia, yet its debilitating presence touches virtually everyone on campus. It is silent and—though rarely fatal—intellectually and morally disfiguring. It can affect one of every ten academics. It gets worse. According to a recent study conducted by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, poorer intellects—those indigenous to the Humanities departments but primarily in Ethnic Studies—have an 87.5% risk of contracting the disease. There is no cure.

We're talking, of course, about Ward Churchill By Proxy Syndrome (WCBS). The symptoms of this horrifying disease are devastatingly obvious: an uncritical need to believe everything Ward Churchill says, coupled with a near-religious compulsion to force others to agree. Friends and loved ones tell story after heartbreaking story of their failed attempts to persuade WCBS victims that Churchill (himself, paradoxically, stricken with WCBS) is a fraud, a phony, and a plagiarizer—but their pleas and persistent offerings of often-voluminous proof fall on deaf ears. There is no cure.

But your tax dollars can help. With your support, the WCBS Foundation has successfully lobbied CU to get WCBS victims granted handicapped teaching positions (similar to handicapped parking slots, these positions offer make-work adjunct professorships for those otherwise unqualified). And as recently as this month, CU's Boulder campus—site of the first diagnosed case of WCBS—established the nation's first free-range herd of WCBS victims.

Yes, there is no cure. But your continued support ensures that those stricken with Ward Churchill By Proxy Syndrome can live out their lives in comfort, free of the social stigma all too often cruelly associated with being second-class thinkers, and hopeful in the belief that one day, a cure will be found, and they can become useful members of society.



[please send your donation to The WCBS Foundation c/o the IRS. Don't worry, it'll get to us.]

1. Extreme gullibility.
2. Advanced degree(s) is any field of study for which a useful purpose has yet to be discovered (examples: Literature, Ethnic Studies, pre-Education, Sociology).
3. Rich fantasy life wherein everything Ward Churchill says is universally accepted as prima fasciae evidence of its veracity.
4. Often find yourself supporting your arguments with "Ward says so, and Chomsky agrees."
5. Own two copies of the "Pacifism As Pathology" CD—one for home, one for the Prius.

CNews 28April07

CNews 27April07

We're envious: Drunkablog went to CU today to witness the historic Save Ward Churchill Walk-Out, and damned if he didn't get some remarkable photographs.

The right to think at all, which is in dispute—-this is what the Ward Churchill affair finally comes to: The right to a mind of one’s own, the right to pursue an argument into uncharted spaces, the right to challenge the church and its orthodoxy in the public square. The right to think at all.

CNews 26April07

According to this website, "[Friday, April 27th,] Ward Churchill will be speaking at 7:00 pm at St. John's College at the University of Manitoba and Saturday at 7:00 pm on the 3rd floor of 91 Albert St."

“We have chosen not to concentrate on the plagiarism charges,” CU sociology Prof. Tom Mayer said. “Our intent was to show [the report] has numerous errors in it. We didn't try to address every point it made.”

...and Vince Carroll questions the motives of the Boulder Seven's demands (ht retired bill):

A last-ditch attempt to turn the tables? Of course, and from professors who in at least some cases share Churchill’s political outlook. But fear not: Even if the committee’s report were as rotten as this gaggle of Churchill defenders contends, it would still provide more than enough basis for the professor’s eventual, much-delayed firing. Indeed, the committee’s conclusion that Churchill is a serial plagiarist is not even challenged. Apparently that is now conceded by all sides.

CNews 25April07

CNews 24April07

In an open letter released Monday, seven CU professors and two professors from other institutions said the report - which accused Churchill of academic misconduct and plagiarism - is error-filled, relies on biased information and distorts other information. The group said if the university does not retract the report, it may file charges of research misconduct against the authors of the report.

"We feel that when you're making a report on which a person's job and reputation rests, you should be exceedingly careful about what kind of claims you make," said CU professor Tom Mayer, one of the scholars who signed the letter. "We feel they haven't been exceedingly careful at all, but have been quite sloppy, which is exactly what they accused Churchill of being."

• Eric Cheyfitz
  Ernest I White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University
• Elisa Facio
  Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Vijay Gupta
  Professor, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering
  Fellow, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) University of Colorado, Boulder
• Margaret LeCompte
  Professor, School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Paul Levitt
  Professor, Department of English, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Tom Mayer
  Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Emma Perez
  Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Martin Walter
  Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Michael Yellow Bird (Sahnish, Hidatsa)
  Associate Professor, Center for Indigenous Nations Studies, Kansas University

The letter references an attached "documentary evidence packet", but the DP apparently doesn't think that evidence to be germane to the story, since it doesn't provide access to it. Guess we'll just have to take their word for it. They are, after all, college professors.

Update: The Daily Camera has both the open letter as well as the summary of "violations" alleged by the Boulder Seven. Since this is an open letter (and because the Camera's archives have a habit of seeking payment for articles over a couple of weeks old), we've got a copy.

Update II: Just offhand, we note that while the Boulder Seven claim (emphasis ours) "[t]he pages cited by Churchill contain not none but six mentions of disease or epidemic", the cited text from Salisbury that contains any discussion of Indian plague reads:

[page 101] But the real destruction of Smith's New England came during the ensuing three years. From 1616 through 1618 the Indians were subjected to an epidemic, or series of epidemics, of catastrophic proportions. Attempts by medical historians to diagnose the malady have floundered on the inconclusive nature of surviving descriptions. The only first-hand European witnesses whose observations survive, Richard Vines and Thomas Dermer, agents of Gorges, both referred to the disease simply as "the plague," and the remaining evidence likewise supports [page 102] the conclusion that the epidemic represented a strain of plague.

To negotiate this difficult political terrain, Jaimes suggest that the federal government, through the Dawes Act, devised the blood quantum standard of identification specifically to delimit the Native-American population.

Of equal interest: On the page of Jaimes' The State of Native America Sturm cites for the above reference (page 116), the only occurence of "blood quantum" or "Dawes Act" is in footnote 45 (page 116 is comprised entirely of footnotes), which references without comment D.S. Otis' 1973 book, The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Land. It is possible that "116" was a typo, and Sturm meant to refer to page 126, upon which Jaimes/Churchill does discuss blood quantum.

...and speaking of page 126—this, from a new reader, hazho'ogo (punctuation slightly altered for this format):

Consider the following two quotes:

"Each Indian, identified as being those documentably of one-half or more Indian blood, was entitled to receive title in fee of such a parcel; all others were simply disenfranchised altogether."

"Native Americans living on reservations who were documentably of one-half or more Indian blood received allotments, while those who did not meet this standard were simply excluded."

The first is from Jaimes/Churchill's "Federal Indian Identification Policy," pg. 126 in The State of Native America, while the second is from Sturm, pg. 78 of "Blood Politics."

So yes, Sturm does not cite Jaimes/ Churchill (why this means she is an independent source bolstering the half-blood "hoax" is unclear, as presumably citation to a primary source should be necessary to count as such independent source), but she clearly used Jaimes/ Churchill as that source, unless the use of "documentably" and "simply" are just coincidences. Further, Sturm uses the term "eugenic" on the same page to describe the use of blood quantum; Jaimes uses the term "eugenics mechanism" on the same page to also describe the use of blood quantum.

CNews 23April07

From our King Canute Memorial department, Special Olympics division: CU reminds us all that the Boulder campus is a gun-free zone. Just like Virginia Tech.

Hear the clapping for Natsu? Think I was being generous in saying there might have been 60 people in attendance. Now Natsu's telling me to ask permission of audience members before taking pictures. Then her paranoid warning about evil mini-tapers:

["]As always with these things, there are folks here who are . . . participating in the attempt to discredit Ward Churchill [noise] frequently been taken out of context but . . . if we let attempts to intimidate silence us to start with, then, the job is accomplished.["]

Bwahahah--you get the idea. Remember, she's talking about someone making a recording, generally regarded as helpful in establishing context (not to mention accuracy). Breathtaking illogic. Purely intentional.

CNews 22April07

Grant Crowell checks in with a photo of Ward Churchill taken yesterday at DePaul University in Chicago during Churchill's whirlwind tour of the Midwest. Also of interest is Grant's audio of the recent "Ward Churchill Teach-In" at CU. (on our system, the teach-inners are often unintelligible, but whether that's owing to the audio itself or to the low-wattage intellects speaking there is unknown)

I have declared my support of Ward Churchill because to defend him is to defend the principle of academic freedom, the idea that no one should lose his or her job or status in education because of factors outside of teaching and scholarship.

Excerpt from Margaret D. LeCompte, Professor of Education, CU:

Many academics also have argued that if an investigation, even one generated for motives that are questionable, nonetheless turns up evidence of serious misconduct, that misconduct must, in fact, be addressed and punished. If only the investigation had really turned up such evidence in the record of Professor Churchill! However, even a cursory examination of the investigatory report itself reveals it to be fatally flawed with error and misrepresentation.

I have been persuaded by both the AAUP C.U. president and other analyses that the alleged academic misconduct of Professor Churchill was either scant or non-existent. I have seen nothing that would suggest he should be fired.

CNews 21April07

OT: The Colorado Daily has an informative and incisive editorial on CU's Karson-Churchill hypocrisy
Excerpt:

We've got some bad news for you CU: you can't have your cake and eat it too. Following the arrest of CU student Max Karson on Wednesday after a heated classroom discussion with other students about the dreadful killings at Virginia Tech, it seems like university administration and students are trying to stuff their fat faces with high-minded social libertarianism and stay on a strict diet of political correctness all at the same time.

Sorry folks, but you can't defend Ward Churchill's right to call dead New Yorkers “Little Eichmanns” out of one side of your mouth and condemn Max Karson for saying he can identify with a mass murderer out the other.

CNews 20April07

Overheard on CU's Norlin Quadrangle this afternoon:
Dude 1: Dude! Did you say we're ousting Churchill?
Dude 2: No, dude. I said we're out of Cheetos!!
Dude 1: Bummer, dude.

On campus Wednesday, one Churchill fan told the Rocky: "He's an amazing professor ... He's the best I've had by far. He's so passionate about his subject." Passion is wonderful. But if it's unaccompanied by honesty and rigor, it doesn't deserve the privilege of tenure or the name of scholarship.

The insularity of the Academy is a serious problem and this is something ACTA has noted, but we are not alone. Larry Summers when he was President of Harvard talked often of the chasm between the Academy and the American people. And in recent books by Derek [Bok], currently the President at Harvard, Harry Lewis, former dean at Harvard, they both distinctly point out that higher education serves the public and that it receives special benefits, tax exemptions, subsidies because there is a public compact, if you will, that for these special benefits we expect our colleges and universities to do their job of imparting our history and heritage. Imparting our knowledge about general areas that are important for citizens. And in fact in order to obtain these public benefits they have to uphold their end of the bargain and that they have failed to do so in terms of curricular coherence, in terms of promoting a robust exchange of ideas and an open atmosphere in the classroom.

We'll have links to the accompanying video clips when they're posted.
Update: a reader corrects Neal's chronology: "Elena Kagan is now president of Harvard. Before her was Summers, and then Bok."
Update II: Videos are posted on youtube. follow this link to find the clips.

CNews 19April07

Newsflash to Bonetti (and Wilson, for that matter): This isn't a matter of a few typos or improperly formatting a reference to an article in a journal; Churchill admits he "ghostwrote" numerous articles for other "scholars" in the field of American Indian Studies, and then later quoted those articles extensively under his own byline as if they were independent authorities whose research supported his own claims. This is fraud, and, quite frankly, it doesn't take "an expert in academic malpractice" to recognize it as such. And BTW: Bonetti, apparently an undergraduate advisor in Economics and International Affairs at CU, erroneously claims in his LTTE that "two Native American scholars were hounded off the panel" when in fact, only one of those "hounded" scholars was Native American. Really, are facts that superflous to scholarship at CU?

CNews 18April07

Right when you need some cheering up, MIM steps in with the comic relief
Excerpt:

For this episode to end, FBI is going to have to get square with Ward Churchill. If MIM finds out that Ward Churchill is going to miss another year of teaching this fall, there is no telling what MIM narcissists will do as retaliation. There will be legal retaliation of some kind. FBI's best hope is that Ward Churchill wins within the next couple months. In that circumstance, MIM would let by-gones be by- gones.

CNews 17April07

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but the analyses of Hannah Arendt and Ward Churchill define our reality much more accurately. No matter how closely an individual US American might adhere to humane principles, we are all “Little Eichmanns.” We can minimize our roles, but there is no escaping participation in our nation’s virtuoso performance of “The Banality of Evil.”

God bless America?

How about God bless humanity by cursing the American Empire?

We desperately need the heavy doses of reality, constraint, and humility that the loss of our military and economic supremacy would bring….

CNews 16April07

Ward Churchill's key demographic, Part II
Excerpt (all errors in the original):

while at the Spot, I met a celebrity and lost my mind. I usually am not impressed over celebrities, but this person is not the typical celebrity. He is not an actor, or singer, or useless tabloid-fotter trash (like Paris Hilton). I met Ward Churchill. He is an educator, author and activist. He is an advocate for the Native American population as an activist for indigenous peoples and lands, focusing on the consquences of the colonialist state. He is a celebrity in the intellectual world. It is those who change the world with their hearts and minds that impresses me and it was intimidating meeting him. HE was at another waitresses table, and of course, nobody but I knew who he was and how special it was that he was there. He was having lunch with some students that helped organize his lecture last night at Binghamton Universtiy. I approached the table and introduced myself. He is a very humble man, so I think I embarrassed him a bit by treating him like a celebrity, but I think he understood that I was just excited. He is freaking amazing, so I just had to meet him, even though I am painfully shy.

CNews 15April07

Looks like the thugs of the ironically-named "Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom" find ignoring university policies regarding "open meetings" quite useful when it's to their advantage.
From CU's "Policy on the Use of University Facilities" (emphasis ours):

Those who qualify to schedule the use of University facilities may set their own policies concerning opening or closing their scheduled activity to the public and news media, and such policies shall be stated at the time of scheduling. If such scheduled activities are closed to the public, they may be open or closed to the news media at the discretion of the sponsoring user. If such scheduled activities are open to the public, they are open to the news media. Unobtrusive use of still and motion picture cameras and recording devices is permitted during any open meeting. The presiding officer shall be the judge of whether such use is obtrusive and may, at his/her discretion, request persons to stop using their cameras or recording devices in a fashion which he/she deems to be obtrusive.

Paine starts off yowling about our taking Radelet’s quote in the SILVER & GOLD RECORD at face value, without considering the possibility that the man was misquoted. Truth is, though, that we’d thought of that. That’s why we checked. There was no misquote.

CNews 14April07

Saturday April 28, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
(lunch will be served)

Featuring:

• Derrick Bell, law professor, New York Univ.; prolific author and founder of critical race theory
• Jennifer Harbury (invited), attorney, author of Truth, Torture and the American Way
• Alan Jones, professor & associate dean, Pitzer College
• Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota), professor of Indigenous Studies, SW Minnesota State Univ.
• Dean Saitta, “dangerous” professor of Anthropology, Univ. of Denver

… and other scholars and activists

CNews 13April07

Drunkablog and Slapstick Politics got thrown out (serves them right, the scofflaws!) of the "open" Ward Churchill Died For Your Sins colloquium last night. Seems Churchill's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion prefer to keep the exculpatory evidence they keep crowing about to themselves. Guess we'll just have to wait for the court case. It is rather interesting that these "Free Speech" advocates seem to be entirely too comfortable with excluding non True Believers from their events.

Now most normal people do not look at life from within a pit of failure and despair. Our lives are measured by small successes -- like raising children, serving in the military, doing volunteer work at your church – or just doing the right thing in a thousand small but important ways, like returning money if someone makes you too much change.

These are simply the small, ordinary milestones of a life of value. They give you a sense of identity.

But if I didn’t have that sense of identity rooted in my own small achievements, I wonder how likely it would have been for me to grab onto that sense of sudden empowerment, of being an initiate in some arcane club of hidden wisdom. I wonder what might have happened to me if being the Holder of Secret Knowledge had been my only source of self-esteem…the one redeeming landmark in a life of isolation and failure. Indeed, I wonder what power such a worldview would have over me if I could believe that behind the scenes lurked vast and unknowable dark forces – forces that could topple a president and perhaps even explain why a person of my deep, vast and bountiful talents was not doing a whole lot better in life?

...and later... even better, albeit coincidental, targeting:

Is there no end to the evidence—as if more evidence was needed—that we are daily led to believe the worst about our government, our businesses and our country by self-centered psychotics who understand nothing but the absolute imperative to glorify themselves at the expense of everyone and everything they share this civilization with?

CNews 12April07

[S&G Editor's note: The following is an open letter to Professors Katherine Eggert and Daniel Kim of UCB English and Margaret LeCompte of UCB education, chair of the CU chapter of the AAUP. ]

Dear Professors Eggert, Kim and LeCompte:

I understand that the [CU-Boulder] department of English and the CU Chapter of the AAUP are among the sponsors of an event featuring Professor Eric Cheyfitz of Cornell University on Thursday evening of this week. I'm writing to you in my capacity as chair of the investigative committee concerning allegations against Professor Ward Churchill [of UCB ethnic studies]. It is not possible at this juncture for me to speak on behalf of the entire committee, as one of our number is incommunicado while traveling in Iran. I'm speaking just for myself here.

I understand from the advance notices of this event that Professor Cheyfitz is appearing to communicate various criticisms of the committee and its work. He is of course free to do so, as you are free to offer him a forum. Professor Cheyfitz has not communicated with the committee concerning his claims of error, so I have learned about them only through the media. To most of them I feel no need to reply, although by saying nothing I would not wish to be taken as acquiescing in them. We have always expected and hoped that our report would speak for itself, and that careful readers would discern in its pages the answers to various criticisms that have been addressed to it. (Concerning accusations of bias, unfairness and lack of qualification, I imagine any response would be perceived as self-serving and so I'll refrain, with difficulty, from stating my reaction to attacks on the good faith and credentials of my colleagues on the committee.)

There is, however, one claim of error brought to my attention in this indirect way with which I must agree. In our report we addressed Professor Churchill's reference to a book by Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans and the Making of New England, 1500-1643, (citing pages 96-101) in support of his claim that "strong circumstantial evidence" pointed to the conclusion that Captain John Smith intentionally introduced smallpox among the Wampanoag people of New England and thus caused an epidemic of the disease. We wrote (on page 34 of the report): "The pages referenced in the Salisbury book do not contain the words `Wampanoags' and have no discussion of any disease or epidemic (including smallpox)." In this assertion we were incorrect. There is, beginning at page 101 of Salisbury's work, a discussion of a disease epidemic that began in 1616 among the native peoples of New England. There is also at page 102 (beyond the range of Professor Churchill's citation, but still a part of the same discussion) a reference to the "Pokanoket" as one of the peoples who suffered greatly from this epidemic. Professor Cheyfitz has reportedly said that the Pokanoket are (or are a branch of) the Wampanoag. Thus our statement was literally incorrect concerning the absence of any mention of a disease, and (if Professor Cheyfitz is correct) it did not take account of the possibility that the people mentioned in the ensuing discussion were part of the Wampanoag tribe.

As the report explains, Professor Churchill's response to the committee's questions concerning his use of Salisbury as a source for his claims was not to make the points now argued by Professor Cheyfitz (who did not appear as a witness before the committee), but to disclaim any reliance on Salisbury, saying that the reference to Salisbury's work had been a mistake caused by hasty writing. Possibly he made this choice of response because Salisbury makes clear that Smith left New England in June of 1614, never to return, and that the epidemic did not begin until sometime in 1616. I encourage those who would see this error as an important factor in our findings to read the report with care.

Nevertheless, believing that a willingness to acknowledge one's errors is an important aspect of research integrity, I regret this error and wish to correct it. On behalf of the committee, I have asked the University's attorney to communicate to President Hank Brown and the Board of Regents that the committee acknowledges its mistake and wishes to correct its report in this regard. I believe President Brown and the regents will take such account of this acknowledgment as seems proper to them. I also expect that the committee will soon take steps to ensure that the error is corrected for the scholarly record, but this measure must await a moment when we are all able to correspond with one another, so that we may unanimously agree on the method and language we employ.

I believe it is fair for me to ask that you communicate the contents of this letter to those present at the event where Professor Cheyfitz is scheduled to appear. I thank you for this courtesy.

Marianne Wesson, law, CU-Boulder

A March 29 news story, "Debate over Churchill case persists," quoted Michael Radelet of UCB sociology as saying, "If there's anything in [the Neal] Salisbury [book, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans and the Making of New England, 1500-1643] that says the U.S. Army intentionally introduced smallpox, I'll eat the book at the 50-yard line." The reference in the quote to the U.S. Army was incorrect; Radelet was referring to Capt. John Smith, not the U.S. Army.

CU alumnus and director of the Independence Institute's Campus Accountability Project, a higher education policy center dedicated to free speech, individual rights and fiscal accountability Jessica Peck Corry authored a report on legal standards for inquiry in the Churchill investigation. In the report, she stated that not only does CU have the legal right to dismiss Professor Churchill, but also the legal responsibility.

“Education is about honoring truth, always and everywhere,” the report states. “Tenure is about keeping your word, a two-way contractual obligation. Hence academic freedom confers no license to lie. By this standard, and nothing less, must all our universities and all their professors be judged.”

“At this point, any defense of Ward Churchill is simply a defense of bad scholarship and bad ethics,” Corry said in an e-mail Wednesday. “While three years have passed since thousands of people across America called for Churchill’s resignation, CU is still trying to fire him at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.”

CNews 11April07

Controversial ethnic studies Professor Ward Churchill should be reinstated because his ouster was all about politics, not scholarship, two dozen University of Colorado [unemployables] said at a rally today.

After two faculty panels recommended that Churchill be fired or suspended for several years, his case is now before a tenure and privilege committee.

That committee is expected to issue a report any day now. CU and Churchill both will have 10 days to file legal responses to the report, then it will be delivered to President Hank Brown for final action.

"We've been waiting" for the report, CU spokeswoman Michelle McKinney said.

Churchill drew national attention in 2004 when his essay, written three years earlier, comparing the 9/11 victims to "Little Eichmanns" was publicized.

The students marching Wednesday said that one essay — exercising free, if controversial speech — unfairly spurred all the subsequent charges of plagiarims [sic] and academic misconduct.

"The only complaints are politically motivated," said Aaron Smith, a CU senior ethnic studies major. "We're not going to stand idly by and let them fire one of CU's most distinguished professors."

Fomite Transmission of Smallpox and Occam's Razor

by Jim Paine

First off, it is possible that smallpox-infected blankets and/or clothing were given to Indians by Europeans (and later, by American citizens) with the intention that the Indians contract the disease.

That said, proof of such heinous crimes does not exist, although guesses and suppositions do. So do 9/11 conspiracy theories. And as with any conspiracy theory, the burden of proof is on the accuser, and thus far, no "scholar" in the pro-Churchill camp (or outside it) has offered that proof.

Smallpox is spread most often by face-to-face contact (6-7 feet) with an infected person (humans are the virus's only host; animals cannot be infected with smallpox) for a period of several hours. As Eric Cheyfitz notes, the virus can survive in the environment for several years (if, according to the CDC, maintained at room temperature; survival of smallpox in aerosal form, or when exposed to ultraviolet light (a component of sunlight) is more on the order of one to two days), and fomite transmission (infection via inanimate objects such as clothing and blankets) is possible, although this form of infection has been described in medical literature as "rare"; one study of a modern smallpox outbreak notes that of all the sources of infection, fomite transmission accounted for a mere 2%.

However contracted, smallpox has an incubation period of about two weeks (7 to 17 days), during which time the infected individual is not contagious and presents no symptoms. The infected individual becomes slightly contagious, however, once the first flu-like symptoms appear, which can include high fever, headache, malaise, prostration, and vomiting. These first symptoms eventually disappear, sometimes giving the individual a brief sense of returning health, but then the characteristic rash appears.

In the case of John Smith and the Wampanoags, it seems at least as likely that, while experiencing that brief "healthy-feeling" period, some infected European accidentally transmitted the disease to the Indians. It's also at least as likely that generous Indians contracted smallpox from an infected European while attempting to cure him using their own medical traditions (which were hardly less advanced than contemporary European techniques that still used "ass milk" and "excrement of wolf" in medicinal preparations).

Like Churchill's "intentional infection" theory, these are mere undocumented possibilities, but they are equally valid possibilities, and have the advantage of being far simpler (and therefore, more likely) than one that asserts a nefarious genocidal plot (which itself implies an undeserved faith in the deadly efficacy of smallpox infection via fomite transmission). What makes these other possibilities so significant is that neither Churchill nor his Dune Buggy Attack Battalion admit to anything but intentional genocide on the part of Europeans. They don't even entertain alternate theories in order to dismiss them. A real scholar would include these (and others) among the possible causes of the 1617-1618 epidemic(s)—which real historians and epidemiologists note may not have been smallpox at all. But Churchill isn't practicing scholarship. He's practicing politics. And it's a virulently dishonest sort of politics, particularly when practiced from the bully pulpit of academia.

Addendum (22March09): As we note here (last item), Andrew Spielman, the late Harvard professor of tropical public health, is quoted in an article about Jamestown in the May 2007 issue of National Geographic as theorizing that the epidemic that killed many of the colonists (and the Indians) was malaria.

CNews 9April07

Wednesday April 11, 12:00 p.m.

Join Students and Faculty for Academic Freedom at the UMC Fountain, University of Colorado at Boulder, to march on the regents, demanding the CU administration stop its political witchhunt.

Thursday April 12, 7:00 p.m.

Ward Churchill Must Not Be Silenced: Critique of CU’s “Investigative Report”

Featuring:

• Eric Cheyfitz, professor of American Indian Studies, Cornell Univ.
• Michael Yellow Bird (Hidatsa/Arikara), professor of Indigenous Nations Studies, Univ. of Kansas
• Emma Perez, professor of Ethnic Studies, Univ. of Colorado-Boulder

Saturday April 28, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
(lunch will be served)

National Emergency Forum to Protect Dissent and Critical Thinking: Why Ward Churchill Must Not Be Fired

Featuring:

• Derrick Bell, law professor, New York Univ.; prolific author and founder of critical race theory
• Jennifer Harbury (invited), attorney, author of Truth, Torture and the American Way
• Alan Jones, professor & associate dean, Pitzer College
• Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota), professor of Indigenous Studies, SW Minnesota State Univ.
• Dean Saitta, “dangerous” professor of Anthropology, Univ. of Denver

… and other scholars and activists

CNews 8April07

"I've been to every demon state -- every (so-called) totalitarian regime, meaning oppositional" to US interests [sic], [Churchill] said. "In not one of them is jaywalking a number one crime."

CNews 6April07

Ward Churchill's key demographic.
Excerpt:

if you knew what i know about how fucked things really are - about how people don't realize that, much less care, and what it feels like to despise the people, the culture, and the civilization i was involuntarily born into, maybe then you can begin to understand why i am so angry.




but i also think i'm one of the most positive people i know too! i'm hardly ever in a bad mood, much less genuinely mad! what the fuck!

A COLLOQUIUM:
Re-examining the Academic Case Against Ward Churchill

7:00pm Thursday April 12th
G1B20 Duane Physics, CU-Boulder

KEYNOTE:
"Framing Ward Churchill: The Political Construction of Research Misconduct"

by
Eric Cheyfitz
Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies & Humane Letters,
Cornell University

Abstract: A nationally recognized, independent expert in American Indian law, history and culture will walk the audience through the academic misconduct charges, explain how they do and do not hold up, and discuss how the investigative report “turns a scholarly debate into an indictment.”

DISCUSSANTS:
Emma Perez
Associate Professor and Past Chair,
Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder

Michael Yellow-Bird
Associate Professor and Past Director,
Center for Indigenous Nations Studies,
University of Kansas

***********************
Sponsored by CU-Boulder Chapter--Defend Critical Thinking Initiative, Department of English, Students for True Academic Freedom, CU-Boulder Chapter--American Association of University Professors

CNews 5April07

OT: Looks like the Rocky Mountain News picked up the same old MIM news we did yesterday, and ran with it today. From the RMN's Extra! April 5th column:

MAOISTS JOIN FIGHT

The Maoist Internationalist Movement has organized four rallies to "Stop the Witch-Hunt against Ward Churchill," the embattled University of Colorado professor who is "facing firing . . . for a speech he made about 9/11." Speech, essay, whatever.

Rallies will be in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Cambridge, Mass.; and, well, Huntington, Ind. - where it will not be held at the United States Vice Presidential Museum at the Dan Quayle Center.

Sources: etext.org; quaylemuseum.org

CNews 4April07

CNews 3April07

As we noted a few days ago, DU professor Dean Saitta wrote a another letter to CU calling for a reversal to the slow-motion Ward Churchill termination process. Professor Saitta has just informed us via the magic of our comments section that he received a response from a CU flapper the same day (September 6, 2006), to whit:

Dear Dr. Saitta:

Your defense of Ward Churchill is very well done, and I will personally make sure that both Phil DiStefano, now our Provost, and Bud Peterson, our newly installed Chancellor, see it. We're getting lots of pro and con letters, but not many carrying the substance that yours does. Frankly, I doubt seriously if either Phil are [sic] Bud will reverse the decision, but I think they need to be aware of what scholars like you are thinking.

Sincerely,

Barrie Hartman
Spokesperson, CU-Boulder

Hello,

I’m co-host of a Denver media watchblog called the Try-Works, which, I’m proud to say has drawn a little blood here and there amongst our locals. One of our primary foci has been the Denver media’s neo-Stalinist smear of CU Professor Ward Churchill. You’re getting this email because you’ve shown some interest in either the Try-Works or Ward Churchill. If I’ve misjudged and you’re interested in neither — my apologies.

As you know, though Ward Churchill drew the right-wing’s ire for questioning American exceptionalism, it was understood that attacking him for exercising his right to free speech might raise some uncomfortable questions. As such, the local media’s coverage immediately took on a viciously personal bent, the main charge being that Professor Churchill wasn’t a “real Indian.”

Only two pieces of evidence have ever been offered that Churchill is an “ethnic fraud” — whatever that means.

1. A genealogical study in a June 8 Rocky Mountain News article, performed by an incredibly unqualified team made up of two anti-Churchill bloggers and a New Jersey cop. (http://tinyurl.com/byp32)

2. The word of several people affiliated with a splinter offshoot of the American Indian Movement — primarily Suzan Shown Harjo, Vernon Bellecourt and Carole Standing Elk — who have a longstanding feud with Professor Churchill. Professor Churchill (along with Russell Means, John Trudell, Robert Robideau, Glenn Morris, George Tinker and others) have earned their lifelong enmity by contending that members of this group brutally raped and murdered a young American Indian activist. (http://tinyurl.com/3av3sp)

Professor Churchill, on the other hand, has videotape of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee council discussing his membership application and affirming his every word. Videotape tape the UKB mailed Professor Churchill along with his enrollment card. Videotape which the Denver media knows of, and has chosen to ignore as inconvenient.

But we have made a copy. And we have posted relevant clips to the Internet, accompanied by a breakdown penned by Try-Works member Charley Arthur.

Just click here: http://tinyurl.com/36uat6

For those of you who support Professor Churchill (or who just have a passing interest in journalistic integrity), enjoy.

For the inveterate liars among you — especially among the Denver local media — we’re going to be having a lot of fun at your expense. Do drop by.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Whitmer
www.tryworks.org

We've already covered this ground, so we're not going to bother searching our archives (but feel free; we've never needed to erase our entire blog), but note that once all ad hominem argument is removed, the letter consists of undocumented assertions which even the "proofs" Whitmer links to do not support. We also note with interest Whitmer is now "co-host" of try-works. And for the record, we said over two years ago that Churchill might have Indian blood, but the claim is just not borne out in the geneology. It's a moot point, but for some reason, it certainly makes Churchill's academic Dune Buggy Attack Battalion squirm.

CNews 1April07

This year's award for the Most Anemic April Fool's Joke goes to Benjamin Whitmer's posting of video clips (along with some pathetically unconvincing commentary from Churchill doppelganger "Charley Arthur") that allegedly prove Ward Churchill's claims of Indian blood; he alleges they also refute various secondary claims. (ht Leah)

• Clip One: Whitmer claims Keetoowah Band membership legitimates Churchill's claim, but the clip itself merely features testimony from a Churchill adversary who pleads that giving him membership will legitimize it. This proves nothing.
• Clip Two: Whitmer claims this clip proves associate members are full members (or, to be more correct, there is no difference between the two designations), but the clip itself is clearly a warning to the council that granting applicants such membership "gives the appearance that they have some status in the Band. And they go out and broadcast far and wide that they are United Keetoowah Band members. And in fact, they are members—they're associate members."
• Clip Three: Whitmer purports this to be proof that then-Chief John Ross agreed with Churchill's acceptability to the UKB, but Ross is talking about associate membership (which Ross later described as "basically honorary"), and which no one but figments of Whitmer's overactive imagination seems to have denied. (BTW, the UKB more recently repudiated The Perfesser's membership, noting "Mr. Churchill was never able to prove his eligibility in accordance with our membership laws, but was to be honored because of his promise to write our history, and his pledge to help and honor the UKB. To date, Churchill has done nothing in regards to his promise and pledge.")
• Clip Four: A request that Churchill's application documentation be reviewed a second time. Whitmer manages to origamize this into further verification that Churchill is an Indian.
• Clip Five: This is an irrelevant explanation of how Churchill was invited to apply rather than vice versa, and appears to have been included solely to massage Churchill's ego.
• Clip Six: Irrelevant testimony from a man who's read two of Churchill's books. This is Whitmer's proof that Churchill's work "resonates with grassroots Indian[s]".
  

We believe the word is underwhelming. The clips hardly even raise the defense to "reasonable doubt"; they offer far more proof that even then the UKB was skeptical of Churchill's authenticity. One can only hope the release of additional clips currently withheld by Churchill will be less eminently dismissible. One aside: If this is what convinced Denver Post "reporter" Amy Herdy that Churchill's claim to Indianhood was legitimate, she's an even bigger sap than we initially imagined.

Update: In his comments section, Whitmer reveals that bigger, better clips that really no kidding this time prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ward Churchill is a bona fide Native American are... well, they're forthcoming, courtesy of those anonymous cut-ups over at wardchurchill.net. You can bet that when we see this final irrefutable proof, all of Churchull's detractors are gonna be so sorry they ever doubted him. You'll see.