[2 articles] Churchill takes stand in his civil case
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_11977426 By Felisa Cardona and Kevin Vaughan The Denver Post Posted: 03/23/2009 3:29 P.M. Churchill is discussing why he resigned in 2005 as chair of the ethnic studies department. "If you had not done anything wrong, then why resign?" Lane asked. "The nature of the publicity, the developing circumstance of media frenzy which was bound to distract me from dealing with things as chair," Churchill said. 3:20 P.M. Court is back in session 2:55 P.M. Judge Naves has called a recess for 15 minute afternoon break. 2:55 P.M. "If the country wanted to avoid a repeat performance, maybe they should stop doing what it was that prompted the attack in the first place." Churchill said people did not understand that Eichmann was a "bureaucrat, a desk murderer" and his mistake was assuming people understood Eichmann's role when they read the essay. "When you bring your skills to bear for profit for yourself and your clients, you are the moral equivelant of Adolf Eichmann," Churchill said. "He never killed anyone, but without him the killing would have taken a very different or inefficient form." 2:43 P.M. Churchill is putting the meaning of his 9/11 essay in context for the jury. "I am not in favor of terror," he said. 2:30 P.M. Lane asked Churchill about awards he has won. Churchill responded that he won the President's University Services Award from CU. "What year was that?" Lane asked. "1987, but I don't want to be called on research misconduct if the year is wrong" Churchill said, inspiring laughter from the courtroom audience. 2:19 P.M. "Do you wish to be called Prof. Churchill?" his attorney David Lane asked. "I prefer professor, but doctor will do," Churchill said 2:18 P.M. Ward Churchill is now on the stand 2:15 P.M. Russell Means, facilitator of the Republic of Lakota, is now on the stand testifying on behalf of Churchill. He's known Churchill for years and wrote a chapter in one of his books and also served in the American Indian Movement together. Means testified Churchill is "writing the wrongs of history literally." Means choked up on the witness stand and said "to take a small phrase and besmirch him and try to ruin his reputation among the people who know what he writes. It is a scholarly massacre it's what I call it. It's not right and it's full of holes...they do not treat white professors at CU the same way." Noon: One of the five members of an investigative committee who looked into Ward Churchill's scholarship was a strong supporter of the ethnic studies professor and said today he would have resigned if he saw any evidence of unfair treatment. Michael Radelet, the chair of the sociology department at the University of Colorado Boulder, testified this morning that when Churchill's conduct first came into question in 2005 he feared that he would be "railroaded." And Radelet joined other professors in writing an e-mail in support of Churchill's free speech rights. But later, during his four months of work looking into Churchill's scholarship, he saw no unfair treatment, he testified as the controversial former ethnic studies professor continued his fight in a Denver courtroom to win back his job. "We leaned over backward to give professor Churchill the benefit of the doubt, to give him all the due process we could, to give him a break where a break was needed," Radelet said. "I feel my work in prisons, with people who had been falsely accused, made me lean over even further." Later, Radelet testified that he would have "blown the whistle, objected, raised hell and perhaps resigned from the committee" if anyone had been in "any way unfair" to Churchill during the four-month investigation. 2005 Churchill, long a controversial figure in the ethnic studies world, burst into the public consciousness in early 2005 just as he was to deliver a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. The student newspaper, in an article about his talk, wrote about an obscure essay of his in which he referred to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as "Little Eichmanns" a reference to an infamous Nazi. Churchill came under fire, and his work underwent scrutiny it had not previously received. The university launched an investigation, and although it ultimately concluded that what he wrote about Sept. 11 was protected by the First Amendment it began a broader examination of his work. The university ultimately fired Churchill in 2007 after a committee found that he had "committed serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct." That committee concluded that Churchill's voluminous writings were rife with problems, that he plagiarized the work of others and fabricated some material. Churchill filed suit, alleging that he was fired for the essay in a move that violated his free speech rights. The crux of his argument is that numerous complaints had been lodged over the years about his scholarship that were never investigated by the university; only after the essay generated controversy did CU officials look into his work. Churchill is expected to testify, perhaps as soon as this afternoon. Radelet, a witness for CU who testified out of order, was suggested by Churchill himself for the investigative committee. But during his work on the committee, he concluded that Churchill committed numerous acts of academic misconduct. Radelet himself examined one of Churchill's smallpox claims that "strong circumstantial evidence" existed to show that explorer John Smith intentionally spread the disease among the Wampanoag tribe in the early 1600s. But when Radelet examined the book Churchill cited as a source he found nothing to back the claim, except that Smith was in New England and disliked Indians. "We felt that allegations was simply made up, simply false," Radelet testified. After more than an hour on the stand, Radelet faced cross-examination by David Lane, Churchill's lead attorney. Lane attempted to show that Mimi Wesson, a CU law professor who headed the investigative committee was biased, pointing to an e-mail she wrote in which Lane said she referred to Churchill as "yet another celebrity wrongdoer the likes of Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton." Radelet said "no" when asked whether that showed bias, but Lane cut him off when he attempted to explain his answer. Radelet did not back down on the question of whether Churchill could claim that his assertions about smallpox were merely opinion, arguing that claims that are footnoted should stand for something in the academic world. Lane also attempted to show that Churchill's statements about Smith and smallpox constituted only a few lines in a much larger 40-page essay, but Radelet disagreed with the assertion that it wasn't that big a deal. "It is a big deal when a centerpiece of the theme of the essay is built on a false assertion," Radelet said. That theme, he pointed out, was the systematic genocide perpetuated by Europeans and white Americans against American Indians. And he argued that Churchill's claims about Smith and smallpox were "girders" in his argument, and therefore important. Radelet said by Churchill's way of thinking, he could be a suspect in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey because he was in Boulder in 1996 and he hated the Miss America Pageant. "It's the same amount of evidence, the same amount of circumstantial evidence that the Boulder police have on me for killing JonBenet Ramsey," Radelet said. Radelet also rejected Lane's argument that Churchill did not even need to use footnotes in his work. In making a claim, "then you need to explain that, and the way you do that is by citation," Radelet said. Later, under Lane's questioning, Radelet did acknowledge that the investigating committee had "concern" about the timing and motive of the investigation. -------- Controversy involves Indian issues in a professor's firing appeal http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/41568627.html By Carol Berry, Today correspondent Story Published: Mar 23, 2009 DENVER A battle over academic freedom moved from campus to courtroom March 9, when a controversial Indian rights advocate vowed to fight to regain his professorship. Ward Churchill, 61, was fired from the University of Colorado's ethnic studies department in 2007, two years after public attention was drawn to an essay he wrote that seemed to blame 9/11 victims for furthering U.S. government policies that led to the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. After the essay came to light, a former Colorado governor and prominent others called for Churchill's dismissal and an investigation was begun into his background and publications. Following several levels of review and appeal, he was fired from his tenured position because of findings of research misconduct, triggering a firestorm of controversy over the limits of protected speech and tenure security in academia. Now Churchill is asking a Denver District Court jury to find that he was wrongfully terminated, should be rehired and receive damages. A distinctively Native thread runs through the protracted argument surrounding Churchill, who has been affiliated with the American Indian Movement and whose writings often center on the North American genocide, the legacy and structure of colonialism, the limits of peaceful protest, institutional racism, blood quantum and related topics. "I think history is written by white guys in suits," observed noted civil rights attorney David Lane, lead counsel for Churchill. "Ward Churchill gives a different aspect that affects and frightens white guys in suits." There is a controversial side to the man himself that has been used to color views about his scholarship. Despite his claims, Churchill has been unable to substantiate a family belief that he has Native ancestry to the satisfaction of his critics, and after the public furor over his essay, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee said his associate membership with the band was honorary and did not confer enrollment. CU officials said his alleged "misrepresentation (of his ethnicity) might constitute research misconduct and failure to meet the standards of professional integrity," a charge that was not included in the formal reasons for his dismissal. Although Churchill was initially regarded publicly as Indian and his writing attacked on that basis, later it was charged that he was not Indian and his views were therefore not those of most Native people as a whole. "There was a lot of purposeful confusion they (university officials) fostered the confusion in an attempt to drive Ward out, hoping he would just leave," said Bob Bruce, co-counsel for Churchill. "They asked around to other American Indian scholars 'If it turns out he is non-Native, does that make his scholarship less?'" Bruce said, noting "they couldn't find any, so they dropped it as a formal attack." "The University of Colorado obviously disrespects American Indian studies," he said, and one can draw one's own conclusions as to whether "that means they disrespect Native people." CU policy permitted ethnic self-identification at the time Churchill was hired, officials said, but some of his writings about Indian history were called into question by the university's Investigative Committee and its Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. The committees contended, among other charges, that Churchill misrepresented circumstances surrounding smallpox epidemics among the Mandan in 1837 and among Wampanoag tribal members in 1614, and also that he erroneously attributed a blood quantum requirement to the General Allotment Act. A notice of intent to dismiss Churchill in 2006 from Phil DiStefano, the university's interim chancellor, said that academic freedom carries with it the responsibility for accuracy, among other things and that committee findings "have been focused on the research misconduct of one faculty member only," according to a CU news release. The fact that Churchill alone was singled out for intensive scrutiny may lend weight to a defense argument that his firing was politically motivated and contrary to guarantees of protected speech in academia. During the complex controversy, some have expressed that Churchill's Indian stance fueled the initial furor over his 9/11 remarks, while others have condemned him as a careless scholar, a "wannabe," or simply unpatriotic, while still others have seen him as a gifted educator, a strong advocate for Native people, and a victim of political and academic repression. The predominantly non-Anglo jury of four women and two men is expected to hear testimony from as many as 30 witnesses, including the former state governor who called on Churchill to resign, CU regents, a former CU president and other university officials. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
