Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

CU claims to have fired Ward Churchill for “Research Misconduct” . . . What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Hank Brown and the CU Regents say they fired Ward Churchill because he engaged in “research misconduct.” Further, CU even claims its decision was based on a “unanimous” faculty recommendation.

There are a lot of things wrong with this picture, the most obvious being:

1. Only two committees directly examined evidence in this case. One was an Investigative Committee which found violations on seven counts, but only one of its five members recommended dismissal. After throwing out come of those charges, three of the five members of an Appeal Panel recommended a one-year suspension. In other words, a majority of both groups examining the evidence did not recommend firing Professor Churchill. We fail to see any unanimity.

2. CU President Hank Brown decided to override the recommendation of the Appeal Panel. In doing so, Brown—apparently now an American Indian Studies expert—decided that the Panel was wrong regarding Professor Churchill’s interpretation of the General Allotment Act of 1887 and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.

3. CU has characterized the charges against Ward Churchill as falsification and fabrication of evidence and plagiarism. In fact, the specific findings of the Appeal Panel were that he (a) failed to provide sufficient evidence on three facts relating to an 1837 smallpox epidemic; (b) cited to material he had ghostwritten (tho’ no one can point to any standard prohibiting this); (c) published an article in which a co-author’s name was deleted by the magazine; and (d) copyedited a piece (written and edited by others) which, unknown to him, plagiarized Fay Cohen.

Even if these were true, they don’t constitute grounds for firing a tenured full professor with nearly 30 years of exemplary service.

4. Brown’s recommendation to fire relies exclusively on the Investigative Committee’s Report, yet that Committee itself has been charged with research misconduct in five separate research complaints. Click here to read them:

• May 10, 2007 complaint against Investigative Committee by 11 professors, (including 2 experts in American Indian Studies)
• May 28, 2007 complaint against Investigative Committee by 5 professors and 2 attorneys (including 4 Indigenous scholars)

(Note: Ward Churchill was not involved in the drafting or filing of either of these.)

• July 12, 2007 complaint filed by Ward Churchill against Michael Radelet and Investigative Committee.
• July 18, 2007 complaint filed against Marjorie McIntosh and Investigative Committee (plagiarism)
• July 19, 2007 complaint filed against Marjorie McIntosh and Investigative Committee (falsification, fabrication, misrepresentation)

These complaints extensively document instances of falsification and fabrication of evidence, misrepresentation of sources, and plagiarism in the Investigative Committee’s Report.

5. Just before the Regents’ meeting, the University of Colorado dismissed all five of these complaints without investigation. The reason? All of a sudden, the Investigative Committee Report wasn’t “research” subject to scholarly standards.

Never mind that the Report runs 124 pages, with 254 footnotes, and was published by the University. Never mind that the professors on the committee claimed to be adhering to scholarly standards in their Report.

The Investigative Committee, apparently, can engage in plagiarism, misrepresentation, falsification, and/or fabrication of evidence with impunity, and their Report can then be used to dismiss Professor Churchill on the same charges. And we are to believe that CU fired Ward Churchill, not for his political statements, but to uphold “academic integrity”?

Firing Back - Newsweek Interview with Ward Churchill

Firing Back
By Jim Moscou
Newsweek
July 27, 2007

This week, the University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to oust controversial academic Ward Churchill, who famously called 9/11 victims ‘little Eichmanns.’ His reaction—and his defense of those remarks.

He will go down in history as the guy who called the victims of September 11 “little Eichmanns”—a reference to the notorious Nazi bureaucrat who helped ship hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps. Ward Churchill’s comment, included in a long-forgotten essay dug up by an enterprising journalism student, stirred a national debate about the power of unpopular words—and the proper consequences for those who use them.

But the saga of the tenured University of Colorado ethnic studies professor grew more complicated in 2006, after allegations surfaced that Churchill had plagiarized, falsified or misrepresented some of his other scholarly work (Churchill denies any wrongdoing). An investigation was launched, and a panel of peers pored over his work. By May 2006, the panel had reached some damning conclusions, saying some of Churchill’s questionable writings fell into the category of academic misconduct. But the five-person panel was split on whether Churchill should be fired. That didn’t stop University of Colorado President Hank Brown from recommending to the school’s elected Board of Regents that Churchill, an extremely popular teacher on campus, be terminated. On Tuesday, the Board voted 8 to 1 to do just that.

Churchill calls his dismissal nothing short of a free-speech witch hunt. Brown calls Churchill’s criticism “a smoke screen.” The battle isn’t over. The morning after his firing, the professor filed a lawsuit in Denver district court, saying his dismissal was retaliatory—and a violation of his free speech. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jim Moscou about what he calls the “conspiracy” against him—and explains why he still stands by the phrase that struck hard at the country’s soul.

NEWSWEEK: Any regrets over calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”?
Ward Churchill: No. I never have any particular regrets about calling things by their right name. And it’s about time we stop pretending that Americans are in a completely different analytical category from everyone else in the world, and are somehow exempt from the consequences of their actions.

Let’s be clear for a moment: how do you define a “little Eichmann”?
Exactly as Hannah Arendt did. [Arendt was a German-Jewish political theorist whose work included coverage of the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel. She coined the phrase “banality of evil,” suggesting great evil emerges from ordinary people accepting and participating in misguided premises of the state, rather than driven by sociopaths and fanatics.]

And how do you think she defined it?
Well, that’s a scholar, a Jewish scholar … who very self-consciously (considered) the aftermath of what happened to the Jewish people in the hands of the Nazis. She attended the Eichmann trial. And she probably intimated as much that she intended in confronting a monster. And what she confronted was a little, nondescript mouse of man, a consummate bureaucrat, petty individual, who didn’t even necessarily agree with some of the policies he had been in a position to implement, but who took his identity, who took his sense of self-esteem, prestige, possibility of advancement—all which is fairly important to people—from discharging his organizational responsibilities in a superior manner.

(The public backlash) was just a visceral reaction. .…What Eichmann did was arrange train schedules, the logistic structure for the delivery of Jews and materials to the camps, and the transport from the camps, things like the gold fillings from teeth. We’re talking ugly business here. But he wasn’t handling the gold. He wasn’t killing the Jews. Not even the Israelis accused him of that. He was absolutely instrumental in a technocratic, bureaucratic, very sterile-organization sense for rendering the process efficient.

But how can you possibly compare the victims of 9/11 to that of a man shipping the gold fillings from murdered Jews?
Those (9/11 victims) who were engaged in the international-financial operations, which were the motive cause for U.S. policy … in full knowledge of what effects were on juvenile populations, sweatshops, and so forth—that’s the anchor there. Implement policy for profit, to maximize profit, to increase dividends, blah, blah, blah. Which also, by the way, increases their commission, establishes their stature, leads to their promotion trajectory, leads to their quality of life, and in full knowledge—they may suppress it—of the carnage that is induced in this profit-maximization profile. …Basically, I said you are accountable for what you do in the world. And … if you are profiting from carnage … you are the moral and philosophical equivalent of Adolf Eichmann. You don’t like that, change the behavior. That’s not who you want to be, stop acting like that.

So the behavior of every 9/11 victim is a moral equivalency to Eichmann’s support of the Holocaust?
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask what the moral equivalency would be of the half-million Iraqi children that died in Iraq from U.S. sanctions? Those children were reduced to less than no value. Now if you were the parent of one of those children … how are you going to ultimately respond? You want security from that kind of retaliation, stop killing their kids. Stop acting like your kids are important and theirs are utterly irrelevant.  Stop acting, as [former secretary of State Madeleine] Albright put it, that we have decided that it’s worth the cost of their pre-12-year-old children to convey what George Bush the first said, “What we say, goes.”

The University of Colorado Regents voted 8 to 1 to fire you. Your reaction?
Perfectly predictable.

You saw it coming?
Oh, since about February 2005. I was teaching when [the little Eichmann essay revelation] occurred, in the spring of 2005—the spring I was voted the best undergraduate teacher on campus by all the students. …(By spring 2006), I was placed on administrative leave.

What have you been doing since then?
I’ve been doing research and work. That’s my life, man.

Were you surprised to see a lone vote against your dismal?
Somewhat. I actually figured there may be as many as two votes of purported liberals who, in full knowledge of how it was going to turn out, could then posture. … I’m not saying that’s totally cynical on Cindy Carlisle’s part [the C.U. regent who cast the sole vote not to dismiss Churchill]. I think she actually believed what it was she believed; that the penalty was too severe. … Being a regent doesn’t qualify you for any scholarly authority and frankly being a former Republican senator and professional administrator—just like [being C.U. president and former Colorado senator] Hank Brown doesn’t qualify you for having a particular competency either.

But it was essentially a 2006 review of your work by faculty—a committee of your peers—that the regents based their decision on.
Let’s cut to the heart of this. They spent over two years building up this illusion that there is a competent, scholarly authority, which was the basis of this set of investigative findings; that I engaged in falsifying, misrepresentation, blah blah blah. … Well, it seems that there is a whole litany of research-misconduct complaints that have begun to emerge about the nature of the report itself, which begins with the fact they have not made any of the primary evidence available so it can be compared to their interpretation of it.

The committee’s review of your work was unflinching. They said they found deliberate examples of plagiarism and fabrications that were “not a matter of occasional careless error.”
They can say whatever they want. …They will not let it be subjected to scholarly scrutiny, which means it’s vacuous assertions.

Setting aside your issue with the committee, as an academic, don’t you believe the committee’s conclusions amount to a dismissible offense?
No, no, no, no, no. We’re not going to play that game. These are not my issues. … (What) they are saying … will be held to the same scholarly standard and scholarly integrity that they say they are enforcing, or it is an absolute sham. That’s not “my issue.”

So you question the scholarly integrity of the committee review?
What I’m saying is you can say whatever you want. Anybody can. Including people with PhDs. It either passes scholarly muster or not. It’s either true or its not. … If that’s true, it should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other scholarship. If not, then it’s not scholarly and it’s a sham, because they have presented it as scholarship.

Are you saying there is fraud?
I’m saying it’s fraudulent. I’ve been saying it since day one. … It’s about time someone mentions the fact they will not allow scholarly scrutiny of the supposedly ironclad positions that they have advanced as facts to the public.

Do you believe was there a conspiracy to fire you?
I believe there was literally a conspiracy within the administration, a strategy that was hatched by virtue of devising a plan to create certain appearances. … I’m not simply tossing out rhetoric when I say “sham” and “fraud.”

How could the administration control the findings of your peers?
This was as much of a jury of my peers as the (1950s) all-white juries in the southeastern states in regard to black defendants. …These were not my peers and they were handpicked. You’ve got the chair of the committee who was writing to people—and I’ve got the e-mails—referring to me as a most unpleasant individual, although we have never met; comparing me, and this is a quote, to celebrity-male wrong doers, are your ready for this, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and horror-of-horrors, Bill Clinton. …These were not peers. I’m saying the committee was handpicked.

On Tuesday’s high-profile hearing you wore an American Indian Movement T shirt. Why are you connecting your firing on misconduct charges with the Native American struggle?
Do you know anything about my work?

I do.
I don’t understand your question then. Virtually everything I write about, the whole focus of the scholarship, has to do with American Indians. I’m an American Indians professor.

Are you saying that they fired you because of your Native American work and positions?
Because I reflect a native understanding of the nature of the interactions that have occurred since a lost Italian seamen washed up on a beach in the Caribbean half a world away from where he thought he was, and was called a great navigator. We don’t say that was necessarily a great navigational accomplishment. We’ve got a different understanding in our histories, in our societies, in our communities. Those are reflected in my writings. That’s my job.

Does that also reflect in what happened to you?
Sure.

How?
They are looking to repeal the whole interpretive line that I’ve advanced! … I’m considered—rightly, wrongly or indifferent—at the forefront of this particular line of historical interpretations of indigenous understanding. That is to be completely discredited.

Will you stay in teaching?
I’ve been teaching all my life. And I guess you can say in a way that I’m engaged in teaching right now.

Do you think you did anything wrong at all, or are you just a victim?
I’m not a victim. Never, ever call me a victim. OK? Don’t call me embattled either. I’m beginning to think that’s my first name (from its use in press reports). It’s ridiculous. I’m a target, not a victim. And you may notice, I don’t tend to roll over and get stepped on.

Ward Churchill Is Fired by the CU Regents — Summary of Developments, July 24-25, 2007

On July 24, 2007, the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado (CU) voted 8-to-1 to fire Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of American Indian Studies and former Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department.

In doing so, they overrode the recommendation of the review panel of the University’s Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee, instead endorsing CU President Hank Brown’s recommendation to fire. They also disregarded the University’s refusal to investigate the numerous research misconduct complaints filed against the May 9, 2006 Investigative Committee Report which provides the only justification for Brown’s recommendation.

Although relying on the May 9 Report to fire Prof. Churchill, the University now claims that Report wasn’t actually scholarship, and can’t be held to the same standards it applied to Prof. Churchill. (Click here, here and here to read the charges of falsification and fabrication of evidence, as well as plagiarism, against the Investigative Committee. Click here to read Ward Churchill’s response to the dismissal of those complaints.)

On July 24, the Regents convened at 8:00 am, simply to announce that they were moving into executive (i.e., closed) session. The Regents refused requests for public comment by students, faculty and community members. They denied Professor Churchill’s request that the presentations by the P&T Committee panel, the University, and Ward Churchill be open to the public. They did not seem to see the irony in citing Professor Churchill’s confidentiality rights as the basis for their decision. To read Ward Churchill’s submission to Regents, click here.

None of the Regents recused themselves from the vote, even those who had previously and publicly denounced Ward Churchill. President Brown had already refused to recuse himself, denying that he had had any involvement with Lynne Cheney’s neoconservative American Council of Trustees and Academics (ACTA) for a decade. (Brown was a founding member of ACTA, which issued its How Many Ward Churchills? report just before the May 2006 Investigative Committee Report was released. For more on the CU-ACTA connection, click here.)

The Regents were scheduled to re-open for their public vote at 4:00 p.m., but didn’t reconvene until nearly 5:30. Many speculate that they were attempting to convince the lone holdout, Regent Cindy Carlisle. Despite the 95 degree heat, hundreds of Ward Churchill’s supporters, recognizing the importance of this decision, remained in the packed auditorium. The Regents, surrounded by security, hastily took their vote and retreated to their scripted press conference. Most of the press, however, followed the Churchill supporters, led by the AIM drum and flag, to the press conference organized by CU students and faculty.

For some of the better media coverage of the day, see http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/25/145254. To get a feel for the event, see footage at http://www.dailycamera.com/video/cameratv/. (E-mail us at wcsn@wardchuchill.net if you’ve got other good video links.)

With the two and one-half year pretense that the University’s “investigations” weren’t really about Prof. Churchill’s constitutionally protected political statements finally completed, CU Pres. Brown immediately reported his accomplishment to CU donors. On the other side, David Lane immediately filed suit to vindicate Ward Churchill’s First Amendment rights.

A Denver jury will now decide have the opportunity to see if it thinks this was about footnotes and citation, or politics and money.

View Press Conference — CU Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom write:

There has been so much press coverage of the firing but almost of none of it has included our voices and the substance of what we put out there in our statements. Fortunately, our entire press conference can be seen at 9News website.

I don’t know how long it will last up there so please fwd it to friends, especially to those who were not able to be inside during the press conf.

http://www.9news.com/news/top-article.aspx?storyid=74224
–Look in the left-hand sidebar under “9News Video”

Here are the direct links:
http://www.9news.com/video/player.aspx?aid=38135&bw=
http://www.9news.com/video/player.aspx?aid=38132&bw=

CU Regents Dismiss Professor Ward Churchill; Churchill Files Suit

On July 24, 2007, the Regents of the University of Colorado voted to fire Professor Churchill - for inaccurate footnotes and citation, they say, not for his politically controversial speech … Ward Churchill’s attorney David Lane filed suit against the University and the Regents on July 25, charging them with retaliatory termination in violation of Professor Churchill’s First Amendment rights.

Some of the better coverage of this issue can be found here.

Churchill Press Release on CU’s Refusal to Investigate Charges of Falsification, Fabrication, and Plagiarism Against Investigative Committee

Based on the May 9, 2006 Report of a University of Colorado (CU) Investigative Committee, President Hank Brown has recommended that I be dismissed for “research misconduct.” From the beginning, it has been clear that going through my scholarship with a fine-tooth comb was simply a pretext to fire me for my constitutionally protected speech.

The fraudulent nature of CU’s “investigation” has been clearly documented by 5 sets of research misconduct complaints filed against the Investigative Committee. Two sets of these complaints were filed in May 2007 by 9 CU professors, 6 outside professors and 2 attorneys. I have since filed three additional sets of research misconduct charges. These 5 complaints document, among other things, falsification and fabrication of evidence and plagiarism by the Committee in its Report on my scholarship.

Today I was informed that the University of Colorado will not investigate these charges against the Investigative Committee because its activities “did not constitute research.” This is astonishing, given that the Committee members were purportedly selected on the basis of their scholarly credentials and claim throughout the Report to be engaged in scholarly research and analysis.

The May 9 Report is 124 pages long, with 254 footnotes and 5 appendices. It was immediately published and disseminated under the University’s imprimatur. Investigative Committee Chair Mimi Wesson has publicly acknowledged at least one “error” in the Report and stated that in the interest of “research integrity” the Committee will “take steps to ensure that the error is corrected for the scholarly record.”

President Brown claims that I should be fired to preserve “academic integrity.” Yet he relies on a Report which the University refuses to investigate against credible and well-documented charges of falsifications, fabrications, and plagiarism.

The University cannot have it both ways. If the Investigative Committee’s Report is scholarship, it must be held to the same standards to which it claims to be holding me accountable. If it is not, President Brown’s recommendation is based on no credible evidence at all.

The Regents will vote on President Brown’s recommendation on July 24. We will see if they simply rubber stamp this charade.

Professor Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
July 21, 2007

ACLU to Regents: Don’t Fire Ward Churchill

The Executive Directors of the National ACLU and the ACLU of Colorado write:

To the members of the University of Colorado Board of Regents:

Later this month, the Board of Regents will meet to consider a recommendation, made by University of Colorado President Hank Brown, that Professor Ward Churchill’s employment be terminated.

We write on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union—an organization long dedicated to preserving the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom—to urge you to reject this recommendation.

The investigation of Professor Churchill’s scholarship is the result of widespread publicity in early 2005 about certain unpopular views Professor Churchill expressed several years earlier in an essay about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Prominent public officials, including members of the legislature and the then-Governor of Colorado, quickly called for Professor Churchill’s termination. The Board of Regents called an emergency meeting, at which the Chancellor announced his plan for an immediate investigation of all of Professor Churchill’s writing and speeches to determine whether they provided any grounds for dismissal.

It is undisputed, however, that Professor Churchill’s views are protected by the First Amendment and cannot serve as a legal basis for any adverse employment action. Nevertheless, the University soon launched the investigation of Professor Churchill’s scholarship in an effort to find more defensible grounds for sanctioning him.

The investigative committee found six charges of research misconduct to be sustained. The Appeals Panel of the Privilege and Tenure Committee concluded that only three of those were valid. Only one member of the five-member investigative committee believed that dismissal was an appropriate sanction, and a majority of the appeals panel concluded that termination was not warranted. Despite these conclusions, the University President has recommended termination, thus urging the same result as the elected officials who publicly called for Professor Churchill’s termination in 2005. The current Governor of Colorado has now added his voice to those clamoring for Professor Churchill to be fired.

We believe the poisoned atmosphere in which this investigation was launched, and the circumstances under which it was initiated, have irretrievably tainted the process. The investigation of Professor Churchill’s scholarship cannot be separated from the indefensible lynch-mob furor that generated the initial calls for his termination. Firing Professor Churchill in these circumstances does not send a message about academic rigor and standards of professional integrity. On the contrary, it sends a warning to the academic community that politically unpopular dissenters speak out at their peril.

Accepting President Brown’s recommendation in these circumstances poses too great a risk that other members of the academic community will respond by choosing to silence themselves or temper the public expression of their views out of fear that they, too, will be subjected to detailed fishing expeditions and censure. Such a result not only undermines academic freedom, it also diminishes the range and breadth of public debate that is vital to a flourishing democracy. We urge you to reject President Brown’s recommendation.

Sincerely,
Anthony Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

Cathryn Hazouri
Executive Director
ACLU of Colorado

Think they’re Firing Ward Churchill for Research Misconduct?

The committee which wrote the Report (on which the recommendation to fire Prof. Churchill is based) now has five sets of research misconduct charges pending against it. Two were filed in May by 15 professors and 2 lawyers against the CU Investigative Committee and its Report. Prof. Churchill has now submitted three additional complaints against the Committee for its fabrications, falsifications and plagiarism. Click here, here and here to read the charges.

July 24: Regents To Vote on Firing Churchill

From CU Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom:

Main Rally at 3:30pm – CU Boulder
UMC South Plaza (Broadway at Euclid St.)

D-Day in the struggle to defend free speech and Prof. Ward Churchill is Tuesday July 24.

On that day, the CU Regents will vote after an all-day meeting, most of which will be closed to the public. But the Regents must come out to face us when they make their vote and explain it. So, be there with us at 3:30pm for our main rally. We will observe their vote and make our voices heard.

If you can join us for more of the day, we will hold a small rally in the morning (7:30am, UMC South Plaza) to show our presence and we will maintain a vigil while the fight goes on behind closed doors.

Here are 5 reasons why you should join us on July 24th:

1) Our enemies are watching — this attack on Prof. Churchill is a key rightwing “test case” for a much broader national assault. The easier they think it is to fire Ward Churchill on bogus charges of research misconduct, the more attacks we’ll see on professors, staff, and students, on ethnic studies and women’s studies programs, and on critical thinking.

2) Our friends and allies across the country and around the world are counting on us to represent them. In just the past month, 100’s of people have written to urge the Regents NOT to fire Prof. Churchill.

3) This is your last chance to weigh in—this is the final step in firing Prof. Churchill.

4) The University is counting on you not to come—why else schedule it during the summer?

5) It’s never too late to do what’s right, as Michael Meeropol, economist and son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg realized two weeks ago: “I have hesitated to voice my support for Professor Ward Churchill as his case was being adjudicated… These charges were (I thought) substantive and went to the heart of our profession’s integrity – relating to intellectual honesty. I have been moved, however, to finally raise my voice in protest after reading the detailed analysis by Professor Tom Mayer…. To be frank and blunt, the charges against Professor Churchill are bogus and represent a fig-leaf of cover for a politically motivated firing….”

The Regents may change their plans/location at the last minute, so, spread the word, stay tuned, and check out last minute developments at: www.wardchurchill.net, where you can also find background and analysis.

Finally, we are students, faculty and staff at the CU-Boulder who have been carrying on the struggle here since the beginning. Please respect our gameplan of holding a strong, peaceful rally and vigil.

July 24: Regents Will Vote — Write the Regents; Attend the Meeting

CU Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom ask you to join them on the Boulder Campus on July 24 to attend the Regents meeting. Public portions are scheduled at 8:00 am, and again at 4:00 pm.

7:30 a.m. - meet on the south plaza outside the UMC (student center), Broadway & Euclid.
Stay tuned for more details…