Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

Dominic Boyer

October 3, 2006
 
Dear Chancellor DiStefano:

I write to you in strong and unequivocal support of the letters of my Cornell colleagues, Profs. Brett de Bary and Eric Cheyfitz, which urge you to reverse your recommendation to fire Professor Ward Churchill.  To the arguments their letters have already laid out, I would add my deep and frank disappointment in your administration’s resort to McCarthyite tactics in order to purge your professoriate of alternative voices.  Whatever short-term patriotic satisfaction you imagine that these actions will generate will soon be displaced, just as the original McCarthyism was, with a sense of deep embarrassment for the corruption of the spirit and principles of free expression.   Is this really the legacy that you  wish your name to be associated with as an administrator?  The negative effects on the morale and reputation of your institution will be profound — indeed I think you are condemning Colorado to third tier status for  many years to come.   I hope you have the foresight to realize that history will not treat your handling of the Churchill case kindly.

Sincerely,

Dominic Boyer
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
Cornell University

Clip From The Canary Effect - Columbus Day

The Canary Effect has played at a number of festivals and won ‘The Stanley Kubrick Award For Bold And Inovative FIlm Making’ At Michael Moores Traverse City Film Festival. It premiered at New Yorks Tribeca Festival, and will be shown at the American Indian Film Festival in San Fransisco in November.

View clip here.

Eric Cheyfitz

October 3, 2006

Dear Chancellor DiStefano:

I am writing in support of the letter of my colleague, Professor Brett de Bary, “urg[ing] you in the strongest possible terms to reverse your recommendation to fire Professor Ward Churchill.”

I have read the entire Report of the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct…concerning Allegations of Academic Misconduct against Professor Ward Churchill. While the Committee acknowledges the political context that generated the review of Professor Churchill’s scholarship, while it also acknowledges that the very scholarship now judged to be calculatedly dishonest was open to inspection during Professor Churchill’s hiring as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall of 1991 and his promotion to (full) Professor in the fall of 1997, and while it calls into question the integrity of the University’s procedures in prosecuting Professor Churchill, it, nevertheless, effectively dismisses these crucial matters and asserts its own ability to disengage its judgment from them and engage in a fair-minded review of the scholarship.

Setting aside the question of double jeopardy in this matter (the unprecedented re-review of work presumably already inspected and validated during hiring and tenure), I find the Committee’s claims to objectivity in this matter disingenuous at best and at worst endorsing a political witch hunt under cover of issues of academic misconduct.

I am a professor of American Indian Studies here at Cornell and so, having read the report in its entirety, I am perfectly capable of entering into a discussion of the charges at hand, which I think at most are matters for discussion between Professor Churchill and his department and would never have been formulated and brought to bear against him in the first place were it not for his provocative essay on 9/11, which stimulated the ire of the usual suspects on right-wing radio and the political leaders of the state of Colorado.

But clearly, having found it impossible to fire Professor Churchill for his essay on 9/11, because of the protections of academic freedom, these forces, concentrated in your office, were able to co-opt and corrupt normative academic channels of review in order to subvert academic freedom, the very basis of the integrity of our profession, by other means.

I am copying this e-mail to Professor Cary Nelson, current president of the AAUP, of which I am a member, in the hope that, should you not reverse your recommendation to fire Professor Churchill, the AAUP, which has been for the most part remarkably silent on this issue, will conduct a full review of and report on the case. Further, until such a review and report can be undertaken and published, I hope the AAUP, in the strongest possible terms, will urge your institution to act with the integrity it has so far not displayed in this matter and suspend any action against Professor Churchill.

Sincerely,

Eric Cheyfitz
Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters
Cornell University
157 Goldwin Smith Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201

Brett de Bary

October 2, 2006
 
Dear Chancellor DiStefano,

I am writing to you as a Cornell faculty supporter of the “Resolution on Issues of Academic Freedom and Due Process Raised in the Case of Professor Ward Churchill” issued by the Arts and Sciences Council of the University of Colorado at Boulder in March, 2005. At the time this statement was issued, I and a number of other Cornell faculty wrote letters to your Board of Regents and local Colorado newspapers expressing our grave concern about the Churchill matter.  In addition, we placed the ASC Resolution before our own Faculty Senate, which regarded it as highly worthy of discussion and prepared to vote on a formal endorsement of it. However, before our next scheduled Senate meeting, the University of Colorado rescinded its proposal to reinvestigate, specifically, the decision to tenure Professor Churchill. At this point, we did not move forward with the vote on the ASC’s Resolution, since the new development technically rendered its description of the case inaccurate. We learned shortly after that University of Colorado had shifted the grounds for its investigation to those of academic misconduct.

I write today to express my dismay over learning that the investigation of Professor Churchill for academic misconduct has resulted in the same result intended by the original call to overturn his tenure decision. The administrative tactic of de-coupling the Churchill case from the issue of tenure (which, as we saw at Cornell’s Faculty Senate meeting, would have provoked unequivocal condemnation by university faculty around the country),  and of rerouting it through a less controversial procedure that would end with a similar result, is all too familiar. Moreover, by removing the issue of tenure as a basis for the university’s action, the University of Colorado has shrewdly sought to deflect in advance the most plausible and powerful charges that might be brought against it for  compromising academic freedom.

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reverse your recommendation to fire Professor Ward Churchill. While the administrative strategy pursued by the U of C may have temporarily deflected attention from the more powerful interests involved in this case, I do not believe it will do so forever. What is at stake are matters of procedure within the university, matters which have implications far wider than those that affect Ward Churchill as an individual. It is imperative that you recognize this situation as such. It is incontrovertible that your university has undertaken an unprecedented investigation of Churchill’s scholarship in the wake of a patently orchestrated media campaign attacking Churchill, precisely, on political issues of patriotism. This will be the context of the event that history will clarify long after the passions and fears deliberately ignited by this controversy have faded. For the University of Colorado to proceed with with its punitive policy while obfuscating, rather than making completely transparent, this context, and the political factors that so blatantly led to its investigations, will serve the future of all universities poorly. I can tell you that ACTA’s fear-mongering question “How Many Ward Churchills? ” is already being somberly echoed within scholarly communities themselves. While some might argue that Churchill’s case is an exception or an “extreme,” as scholars, we know well that it is through the exceptional cases that the parameters for freedom of expression are set. It is through the exceptional cases, and the subtle intimidation they effect, that the limits of what can and cannot be said are redrawn, and all too often reduced.

On a visit to Berlin in 1964, Hannah Arendt recalled the surprising rapidity with which collegial support for Jewish academics who were being forced to leave their posts in the early 1930’s appeared to vanish. This experience, she said, left her permanently disenchanted with intellectuals and  the academy. At the same time, in her brilliant study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt lucidly analyzed how subtle intimidation, when carried out by political forces in the realm of social and cultural life, led inevitably to conformity and passivity. While the parallels are not exact, Arendt’s insights should give us much to ponder. My own reflections upon them, among other things, has compelled  me to ask you to reconsider your recommendations.
 
Sincerely,

Brett de Bary
Professor, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature
Director, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University

Think Critically: Emergency Summit Produces Cutting-Edge Analysis, Action Plans to Defend Ward Churchill and Support Indigenous Studies

The Emergency Summit called by Dr. Michael Yellow Bird and held in Lawrence, Kansas, September 29-30, successfully examined the targeting of Ward Churchill and other academics in the context of the national and international movements to silence and discredit scholars and activists who think critically about the manifestations of colonialism and contemporary expansions of empire.

The Summit was sponsored by the Center for Indigenous Peoples’ Critical and Intuitive Thinking and the Human Rights Research Fund, and endorsed by numerous scholars and activists. The sessions included insightful presentations by:

• Ward Churchill (Cherokee), professor, University of Colorado-Boulder
• Jennifer Harbury, attorney, author, and human rights activist
• Barbara Mann (Seneca), author and lecturer, University of Toledo
• Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota), professor, Southwest Minnesota State University
• Russell Means (Oglala Lakota), activist, author and attorney
• Glenn Morris (Shawnee), professor, University of Colorado-Denver
• Natsu Taylor Saito, professor, Georgia State University College of Law
• David Stannard, professor, University of Hawai’i-Manoa
• Tink Tinker (Osage), professor, Iliff Seminary, Denver
• Haunani-Kay Trask (Kanaka Maoli), professor, University of Hawai’i-Manoa
• Sharon Venne (Cree), attorney and international indigenous rights activist, Edmonton
• Michael Yellow Bird (Arikara/Hidatsa), professor, University of Kansas

Several plans of action at the local, national, and international levels emerged to counter the attacks on Ward Churchill and other scholars who, after much struggle, have managed to make counterhegemonic perspectives accessible within mainstream education.

Stay tuned – information on emerging actions as well as recordings and transcripts of many of these presentations will be available soon.

Transform Columbus Day

Join AIM and TCD Friday, October 6, to Transform Columbus Day. Come out and bring 100 of your closest friends. The world will be watching, literally, with international media here for the Denver Art Museum Opening. This is a unique opportunity to present a different vision from “Columbush” and to say no to war and imperialism. The more people there, the stronger impression we’ll make. Come help Denver show the world that Another World Is Possible.

More information is available at www.transformcolumbusday.org