Ward Churchill
Interesting. The University of Colorado has released a report on its investigation of Ward Churchill. And?
Among the violations that the committee found Churchill had committed were falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, failure to comply with established standard regarding author names on publications, and a “serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research.”
Uh – that’s bad. That’s what you don’t do. You know like when you go to the dentist? The dentist isn’t supposed to take the sharp things and jam them into the roof of your mouth on purpose. That’s contraindicated. Same thing with this. Academics aren’t supposed to falsify, fabricate, or plagiarize. It doesn’t matter whether they’re controversial or offensive or rowdy or longhaired; they don’t get to falsify and fabricate. They just don’t. Being controversial and offensive doesn’t mean they do get to, as some kind of compensation for the fatigue or risk of being controversial and offensive. It doesn’t work that way. Made-up social science just isn’t wanted, no matter how thrillingly controversial the maker-up is.
It’s like David Irving, again. Ward Churchill doesn’t have a free speech or First Amendment right to falsify and fabricate. It’s not a criminal offense and not an imprisonable one, but it’s not a protected free speech right, either. He doesn’t get to say ‘it’s my First Amendment right to fabricate and falsify my research’ and carry on doing it.
He doesn’t get to say his hand slipped, either. They thought of that, and said No.
The Committee found that Professor Churchill’s misconduct was deliberate and not a
matter of an occasional careless error. The Committee found that similar patterns recurred
throughout the essays it examined. The Committee therefore concluded that the degree of his
misconduct was serious, but differed on the sanction warranted.
The committee also pointed out that the controversy is one thing and the misconduct is another. Important point, that.
The Committee notes that the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado
define “academic freedom” as “the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and
teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save
the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established.”
We understand and were careful to distinguish “misconduct in research”…from the issue of “truth” addressed by
the Regents’ Laws’ definition of academic freedom. The Committee observes
also that the allegations we were asked to investigate were initiated in the wake of
the public outcry concerning some highly controversial essays by Professor
Churchill dealing with, among other things, the 9/11 tragedy. While not
endorsing either the tone or the contents of those essays, the Committee reaffirms,
as the University has already acknowledged, that Professor Churchill’s right to
publish his views was protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendment
guarantees of free speech. Although those essays played no part in our
deliberations, the Committee expresses its concern regarding the timing and
perhaps the motives for the University’s decision to forward charges made in that
context.
The timing and context are highly unfortunate. Too bad Churchill provided so much ammunition for his critics.
He called the victims of 9/11 ‘little Eichmanns’. He’s an example of how far you can get your head up your arse in American academia and still be a martyr to somebody…
GT
Ophelia has given consistent coverage of the whole Churchill saga so if you browse her archives you can catch up. It’s a sad and desparate tale.
I don’t understand why the investigators felt they had to mention Churchill’s ‘disrespect for oral Indian tradition’, especially in view of their trying to distance themselves from the row regarding Churchill’s opinions.
And we believe the University of Colorado and their reports, do we? These guys were mired in sleeze a year ago, principals resigning, graft and nepotism everywhere. Youse guys is philosphers. You can surely recognise ad hominen when you see it. No matter what skeletons they shake out of Churchill’s closets it’s attacking the man, not what he said -which was, roughly, 9/11 was Americam Foreign Policy Chickens coming home to roost. You can’t say that in free speech America, even in the blue enclave of Boulder.
But the people who did the investigating are not synonymous with the University of Colorado; they work there, but they are not the institution themselves. And they address the ad hominem aspect in the bit I mentioned, about the fact that the investigation was prompted by the political firestorm. But once they did look, they found what they found. They’re not likely to have faked the evidence, wouldn’t you say?
The linkage of the politcal firestorm with the investigation is very unfortunate; but Churchill still shouldn’t have faked up his work.
Oh, and the thing about disrespecting Indian oral tradition – I wondered about that too. What a very peculiar charge. Almost the opposite of the other charges, in a way.
Not read the full report yet – but yup, they probably found what they looked for. Just because they acknowledge ad hominem doesn’t make it respectable. They wus out to get him beacuse he nearly made them think.
What do you mean yup? What do you mean they found what they looked for? That they planted it? That they found something that wasn’t there? Or that they found something that was there but they should have kept quiet about it? What exactly is your point?
No, don’t mean any of those things. The intensive investigation of Churchill’s work was not coincidental with the political firestorm over the 9/11 essay. It was initiated by it with the intention of trashing Churchill. Does it do this? Don’t know yet, like I say, I haven’t read it. But I don’t believe it just because it’s on CU notepaper.
No of course it wasn’t coincidental. But as for its being initiated with the intention of trashing Churchill, I’m dubious. It could have been with the intention of looking into allegations that had already been made (which they had been) before someone else did it first.
As a practising historian, I resent the implication that “falsification, fabrication, plagiarism [etc]” could be found in anyone’s work if someone decided to ‘trash’ it. Some of us have standards. If people want to reduce the world to one bunch of liars shouting ‘liar’ at another bunch of liars, they will find their handbasket-ride to you-know-where going even faster than it does right now.
Steve M needs to check his chronology. The details of Churchill’s plagiarisms and falsehoods came out in various blogs and media sources looking into his background as a result of his disgusting post 9/11 remarks.
Only later did CU launch a formal review, so allegations that they either made it all up or were deliberately looking around for stuff to hang on him are ludicrous.
As for the timing and motives behind the investigation, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
>>>
The investigative committee emphasized that it was uncomfortable with the timing and the motives of the accusations against Mr. Churchill, noting that several of them had been well known by scholars years before but had not been brought up formally until after the professor became publicly reviled.
Nevertheless, the committee wrote that its analysis had not been colored by how the charges came about, and that Mr. Churchill’s free-speech rights could not be used as a defense for research misconduct.
“To use an analogy,” the committee wrote, “a motorist who is stopped and ticketed for speeding because the police officer was offended by the contents of her bumper sticker, and who otherwise would have been sent away with a warning, is still guilty of speeding, even if the officer’s motive for punishing the speeder was the offense taken to the speeder’s exercise of her right to free speech. No court would consider the improper motive of the police officer to constitute a defense to speeding, however protected by legal free-speech guarantees the contents of the bumper sticker might be.”
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There. Thank you, committee (and ‘Justin’). Good analogy.
That clarifies the David Irving matter, too. The fact that he has a free speech right to give his opinions, and repel people with them, doesn’t mean he has a free speech right to falsify the evidence. In other words we’re not required to defend his free speech right to falsify evidence in order to be consistent defenders of free speech.