Posted by David Kopel: Professors for Academic Fraud and Terrorism Two hundred faculty members at the University of Colorado at Boulder disgraced themselves today by signing an advertisement in the Boulder Daily Camera in support of Professor Ward Churchill. Although the University of Colorado has many distinguished professors, the advertisement makes it clear that the University also has many professors who don't know or don't care about academic and personal integrity. The Denver Post article on the ad is ([1]here; the Daily Camera ad itself is not on the web--although it would be a good idea for someone to place the ad on the web, as a permanent list of CU's anti-integrity faculty. The advertisement purports to defend "Professor Churchill's right to speak what he believes to be the truth." This statement ignores the fact--which is perfectly obvious to to anyone who has been reading Colorado newspapers over the last several weeks--that Churchill is a consummate liar. There is overwhelming evidence--which Churchill has failed to refute in even a minimally plausible way--of the following lies by Churchill. As [2]detailed by Lamar University's Thomas Brown, Churchill's writings claim that the U.S. Army deliberately caused an 1837 smallpox epidemic among the Sioux by distributing infected blankets. Yet the very sources cited by Churchill state that the epidemic was accidentally spread by travelers and that the army had nothing to do with it. As detailed by the University of New Mexico law school's John LaVelle in the [3]American Indian Quarterly and the [4]Wicazo Sa Review, Churchill has lied about the 1887 General Allotment Act (falsely claiming that the Act required proof of a certain percentage of Indian blood in order for a person to be eligible to be allotted personal land on Indian reservations) in six books and eleven essays. LaVelle further demonstrates multiple instances of plagiarism by Churchill and of citing sources for the opposite of what they really said. Churchill's academic career has also included time as Instructor of studio art and art history at Black Hills State College, and he promoted himself as an "Indian artist" until a 1990 federal prohibited non-Indians from selling their work as Indian art. As [5]detailed detailed by KCNC television, Churchill's 1981 serigraph "Winter Attack" is plagiarized from a nearly identical painting by the renowned artist Thomas Mails. Churchill merely reversed the left-to-right imagery, and colored a bush green. "Professor Churchill's right to speak what he believes to be the truth" does not protect Churchill's [6]apparently false claims that he received paratrooper training the Vietnam War, and that he served in a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit--although his military records show that he was instead in the motor pool. Mount Holyoke history professor Joseph Ellis was stripped of his endowed chair and suspended without pay for a year because of similar lies about his own Vietnam record. As detailed by KHOW's radio's [7]Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman and by the [8]Pirate Ballerina weblog, Churchill's entire academic career has been based on advancement through his bogus claim to be part Indian. The CU 200 purport to "defend an environment in which ideas may be openly exchanged." Yet Churchill himself has attempted to destroy such an environment, at CU and around the nation. Two former students have alleged that their grades were lowered in retaliation for their exercise of freedom of speech. (One student wrote a campus newspaper article reporting the evidence that Churchill is not an Indian; another student suffered retaliation for disagreeing with Churchill's statements in class that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was a good thing.) A CU administrator reported that Churchill physicially threated her because she favored naming a building after a retired administrator, rather than after an Indian tribe, as Churchill preferred. Churchill [9]called for the murder of anarchist writer Bob Black. He [10]called for the death of a student newspaper cartoonist who had criticized a racist professor in Hawaii who wrote about her fantasy of mutilating and killing a white woman. Although CU professors are required by state law to sign an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the Colorado Constitution, Churchill has href="http://www.khow.com/hosts/caplis-silverman.html";>repeatedly called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and has urged his audiences to perpetrate 9/11 type terrorist attacks in the United States. In doing so, he has provided explicit instructions about where the attacks should take place, and how the attacker should dress so as to be able to get to the target. Now perhaps Churchill has credible defenses to the above charges, but if so, we have not yet heard them. There is overwhelming evidence that the University of Colorado's current investigation of Ward Churchill's conduct is well-grounded. For the CU 200 to claim otherwise is nonsense. The CU 200 allege that to investigate Churchill undermines "the very idea of the university itself." To the contrary, the very idea of a university depends on professors who do their work honestly, rather than with fraud and plagiarism, and professors who respond to their intellectual foes by using counter-arguments, rather than by threatening and promoting violence and homicide. That 200 professors could defend a fraudulent thug and bully like Ward Churchill shows how very far the University of Colorado has fallen from the very idea of a university itself.
References 1. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2736337,00.html 2. http://hal.lamar.edu/~BROWNTF/Churchill1.htm 3. http://lawschool.unm.edu/faculty/lavelle/american-indian-quarterly.pdf 4. http://lawschool.unm.edu/faculty/lavelle/allotment-act.pdf 5. http://kcnc.dayport.com/viewer/content/special.php?Art_ID=4741&Format_ID=2&BitRate_ID=8&Co 6. http://www.pirateballerina.com/archive_2005-m02.html#standard-15 7. http://www.khow.com/hosts/caplis-silverman.html 8. http://www.pirateballerina.com/archive_2005-m02.html#standard-15 9. http://members.lycos.nl/vadercats/miscs-n-logs/BBlack.htm 10. http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?f3ea0fc6-9b55-4177-bac4-db19657f06a0 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
