CNews 24July08
From our My How Time Flies When You're Genociding Ward Churchill department: It's the one year anniversary of The Great Shitcanning of Ought-Seven, and UC-Boulder's faculty house organ has two (count 'em, ONE,TWO) articles about The Perfesser's fall from grace (and into richly deserved ignominy). (ht Leah)
Excerpt:
A jury trial for Ward Churchill's lawsuit against the University has been scheduled for March 9, 2009.
"I'm really looking forward to these people being on the witness stand," Churchill told S&GR in a recent interview. "This is going to be fun. ... Wouldn't it be fun to subpoena [former Colorado Gov.] Bill Owens?"
Another Excerpt:
Taking a drag from his cigarette and cracking a defiant grin, Ward Churchill says his life hasn't changed a whole lot since he was dismissed by the Board of Regents one year ago today.
He still collects a paycheck that he says is nearly as much as he received after deductions as an ethnic studies faculty member at CU-Boulder, thanks to retiring with more than 25 years of service in the Public Employees' Retirement Association, which he joined in the 1970s as a Boulder Valley School District employee.
He says he was still teaching a course, called Revisioning American History, at CU-Boulder this past year, although it was at the behest of students and not sanctioned by the university.
He says he is still publishing his research and booking speaking engagements around the country, collecting as much as $11,000 per talk.
[...]
He said he has been working on book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, including works published by ABC-CLIO and the American Historical Association. "What does this tell you?" Churchill asked with a smile. He claimed CU officials set out to attack not just him personally but his whole line of thought, and they did not succeed in "this mission of total obliteration. ... They were trying to do more than they managed to do."
What with writing all those peer-reviewed articles and teaching unsanctioned classes three hours a week, it's no wonder The Perfesser hasn't had time to produce that video proving he's got Indian blood.
Wow. We barely mentioned our nomination of Marc Bousquet for PB's first Cheyfitz Memorial Dead Rat And A String To Swing It With Award when another of The Perfesser's pals, Richard Delgado, makes a surprise bid for supremacy in the contest. Remember, boys, it's an honor just to be nominated. (ht Leah)
Excerpt:
In deciding to comb through "every word he has written," the university made plain that it was looking for grounds to bring charges against him personally, not, for example, against all plagiarists or all historians who accuse the U.S. Army of providing the Indians with smallpox-infested blankets. Like racial profiling, singling out an individual for special attention is unlikely to even out over time. Unlike a cop who stops a motorist for speeding, it is not spontaneous and isolated, but concerted-the university focuses its full investigative resources on one individual. And the social risk of a careless footnote or failure to give credit to another's work is scarcely as serious as driving too fast on a crowded street. Moreover, it sends a message to the scholarly community that if they address controversial topics they had better be prepared for a searching examination of their entire body of work.We prefer to think of it as a warning to the scholarly community that if they ghost-write articles and then cite them in their own research to support otherwise insupportable claims, plagiarize the few articles on the subject they haven't actually (provably) ghost-written themselves, use the resulting pile of bullshit to fabricate complex historical theories without a shred of evidence they haven't cut from whole cloth, and then stand back and spend a couple of decades shouting "Fuck you!" at the world, then yeah, they're gonna get "a searching examination of their entire body of work." Deal.
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.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.
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.
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.
