Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

An Open Letter Calling on the University of Colorado to Reverse its Recommendation to Dismiss Professor Ward Churchill

The following ran in The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007:

The militarist reflex to rely on the war option for post-9/11 security is daily proving itself disastrously dysfunctional, and as its failures become more manifest, those American leaders responsible reaffirm their extremism, relying on a brew of fear, demonization, and global ambition to pacify a nervous, poorly informed, and confused citizenry at home. And where there are expressions of significant, principled opposition, the impulse of the rulers is often repressive. In such a setting it is hardly surprising that academic freedom is menaced, but not less troubling.

The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom.  The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismissal of Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member.  Faculty across the country are encouraged to circulate this letter among colleagues; send letters of protest and concern to the new Chancellor (Bud Peterson, Bud.Peterson@colorado.edu) and President (Hank Brown, Officeofthepresident@cu.edu), as well as to the Privilege & Tenure (P&T) Committee (Weldon Lodwick, Chair of the P&T Committee, Weldon.lodwick@cudenver.edu; and in general publicize and mobilize within and beyond the academy in opposition to the attempted dismissal of Churchill.

. . .  (click here to read full text)

Signed by:
Derrick Bell, Visiting Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Juan Cole, University of Michigan
Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
Richard Delgado, University Distinguished Professor of Law, and Derrick Bell Fellow, University of Pittsburgh
Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University; Visiting Distinguished Professor (since 2002), Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Irene Gendzier, Boston University
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies; Director – Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Anthropology, Columbia University
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar, Department of Sociology, Yale University
Howard Zinn, professor emeritus, Boston University

Dean Saitta

Dear Colleagues,

As President of the University of Denver Faculty Senate—and thus as someone concerned about an administration’s adherence to principles of due process and fair play as concerns the evaluation of faculty work—I have been closely following the Ward Churchill case as it has developed at CU. As an anthropologist I am familiar with Churchill’s scholarship. I have studied critiques of Churchill’s work (especially Professor Thomas Brown’s, as published in a recent issue of Plagiary), and consulted about Churchill’s work with colleagues who are expert in the field of Native American history. My concerns about the complex contextual, procedural, and substantive issues at play in the Churchill case led me to co-author the Teachers for a Democratic Society (TDS) petition (available at http://www.teachersfordemocracy.org/) calling on the CU administration to reverse its decision to fire Professor Churchill. After a summertime of interacting on various internet sites with scholars and citizens who are highly critical of, if not deeply hostile to, both Churchill and the TDS petitioners, I’m now compelled to urge with even greater conviction that Chancellor DiStefano reconsider and reverse his decision to terminate Professor Churchill’s employment.

The equivocal review of Churchill’s work by the CU Investigative Committee is striking, and speaks volumes about the complexity of the issues at stake in this case. At the end of the day 4 of the 5 scholars on that committee–those most familiar with the quality of Churchill’s scholarship–recommended suspension rather than dismissal. This outcome is especially notable given the committee’s use of what the TDS petitioners, as well as CU professor Tom Mayer, consider an unreasonably broad and elastic conception of “research misconduct”. The conception employed by the CU Investigative Committee could certainly endanger even scrupulously honest scholars if an administration was intent on purging them from a faculty. It seems to me that Vine Deloria—another CU professor who, on the occasion of his death in November 2005, was widely and justifiably eulogized as an important contributor to the study of Native American history and culture—could certainly have been found guilty of research misconduct for work that, though flawed by Western philosophical standards, was quite useful in raising unexamined issues and encouraging new learning about the Native American past.

As noted by CU’s Investigative Committee, and as reaffirmed by the TDS petitioners, other contextual and procedural concerns are just as troubling as the substantive scholarly ones. These include (1) highly inflammatory and deeply prejudicial external political interference in the case right from the start, (2) administrative inaction as concerns much earlier rumors of Churchill’s plagiarism, (3) Churchill’s widely-known reputation—even at the time of his initial hiring by CU—as a polemicist and provocateur, and (4) the questionable legality of the complainant’s position as interim Chancellor of the university. The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct’s response to two of these concerns (#’s 1 and 2) is not particularly strong and, indeed, the 6-3 vote by that committee in favor of dismissal means that the 14 scholars involved in the Churchill investigation are absolutely split on the question of sanctions.

Given these numerous concerns and divergent outcomes I do not see how the CU administration can justify, in good conscience, its decision to terminate Professor Churchill. I’m not entirely comfortable about registering this opinion given my inclination to respect the internal governance procedures of other institutions (and I speak only for myself and not the DU Faculty Senate). But this is a very public case, and the current threat to academic freedom on American campuses is very real. There is now a significant and growing list of faculty who have lost, or are threatened with losing, their jobs and/or directorships because of unpopular, but protected, public and classroom speech. I have heard both directly and indirectly from colleagues on Colorado campuses that many faculty, especially junior faculty, will not take a public stand against the CU administration’s intent to fire Churchill because they fear the consequences for their own careers. This goes for faculty even at a private institution like my own. This is not a healthy state of affairs, for faculty or for students. The final Churchill decision stands to set a historic precedent that will either erode or preserve academic freedom on our campuses. I hope that you will side with preservation.

Sincerely,

Dean J. Saitta
Professor, Department of Anthropology
President, Faculty Senate
University of Denver
Sturm Hall 146-S
2000 East Asbury Street
Denver, CO 80208

Faculty Assembly of the Indiana School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI)

On November 17, 2006, the Faculty Assembly of the Indiana School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) unanimously passed the following resolution:

The Faculty Assembly of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) deplores the decision of the University of Colorado at Boulder to fire tenured Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill. He is being unfairly punished for having expressed unpopular and controversial views in a book and at public forums. We view this as an attack on critical thinking, which ought to be protected on campuses everywhere, and ask that the University of Colorado at Boulder rescind this decision immediately.

This motion of support will be sent to the American Association of University Professors and to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

This resolution was sent to the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and CU Regents … who don’t seem to be having press conferences on the expressions of support for Prof. Churchill coming in from around the country.

Opposition Mounts As Showdown Approaches Over The Firing Of Ward Churchill - Open Letter From Concerned Academics

Dismissal hearings for University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill were held this past week. Ward Churchill appeared before the Privilege and Tenure Committee with many witnesses speaking in his behalf. The committee will have 30 days to issue its findings to CU president Hank Brown. Brown will weigh the findings and make a recommendation to the Board of Regents. Opposition to his dismissal is growing on campuses across the country. The firing of Churchill, a tenured professor and former head of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Boulder, is increasingly being seen by those in academia as an attack on academic freedom, dissent and critical thinking that must be stopped. In a recent statement the Colorado branch of the American Association of University Professors notes “we believe that the investigation [into alleged research misconduct] now is widely perceived to be a pretext for firing Churchill when the real reason for dismissal is his politics.” The AAUP statement raises serious questions and concerns over the handling of the Ward Churchill case, and calls for the reversal of the decision to fire him.

This growing movement of opposition to the firing of Professor Churchill includes some of this country’s most prominent scholars and public intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Derrick Bell and Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University. In an essay recently solicited by the journal of the International Studies Association entitled “On Behalf of Robust Academic Freedom” Professor Falk writes, “The relentless pursuit and persecution of Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the witch-hunting McCarthyist ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom.” And he concludes, “When academic freedom is threatened, the most sustaining response, is vigorous defense on principle”. In August, Anthropology Today published an editorial entitled “Education and the Dangerous Professor: The Challenge for Anthropology” written by University of Denver Anthropology Professor Dean Saitta. Richard Delgado’s recent review of Ward Churchill’s latest work On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, published in the American Indian Law Review, makes it quite clear that the attacks are a result of Ward’s political speech.

On September 29 –30^th “The Emergency Summit Of Scholars And Activists Defending Critical Thinking And Indigenous Studies” was convened in Lawrence, Kansas. It produced a resolution written to the P&T Committee calling on the University of Colorado Boulder to reinstate Professor Churchill because of a deeply flawed investigation.

Thousands of academics have signed petitions and visited websites spawned by this movement to defend dissent and critical thinking in academia, now focused on the case of Ward Churchill, including Ward Churchill Solidarity Network, http://www.defendcriticalthinking.org/, www.teachersfordemocracy.org and more.

There is also increasing student activity in support of Ward Churchill. In December of 2006 a student group was formed at the University of Colorado called Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). On December 16, they held a press conference to protest the “politically motivated” investigation of Churchill, and to call for him to receive the UCB Alumni Association Teaching Recognition Award that he won in 2005 which was withheld pending the outcome of the investigation. An SAF spokesperson said “We are prepared to take organized action against the administration between now and the month of February to ensure that our demands are met,” “If this process goes forward, it would set a precedent that, despite the traditional peer review process, and despite tenure, professors must always censor the conclusions of their research to popular acceptance, or face harsh repercussions. This threatens the nature of academia. This precedent should send a shock wave of fear to all professors nationwide.”

Natsu Saito, Law professor at Georgia State College of Law and wife of Professor Churchill, wrote in a recent letter, “We are at a critical stage with respect to CU’s attempt to fire Ward Churchill.” Academics across the country are increasingly speaking out to say that Ward Churchill must not be fired. The Open Letter From Concerned Academics issued at the beginning of this case and signed by over 600 faculty stated: “This attack is intolerable and must stop now. The precedents already set in this case – that a professor can be publicly pilloried and threatened with dismissal for what he writes – must not be allowed to stand. The University of Colorado Board of Regents must drop any effort to fire Churchill… and repudiate its actions up to now; and all colleges and universities must reaffirm, in word and deed, their commitment to defend critical thinking.”

Media Contacts:
Ruth Hsu - e-mail: rhsu@hawaii.edu
Ph:808-595-018
Henry Silverman - e-mail:silverma@msu.edu
(517) 339-3357
Dean J. Saitta e-mail: dsaitta@du.edu
home: 303-871-2680
Fax: 303-871-243
Vinay Lal - e-mail: vlal@history.ucla.edu
Ph: 818-990-1719

Ken Bonetti – e-Mail: kenecon2004@yahoo.com
720-985-5364 (cell)
720-565-9291 (land line at home)
303-492-8291 (work)
Dana Cloud - e-mail: dcloud@mail.utexas.edu
Ph: (512) 471-1947
Matthew Abraham – email matthew.mabraha2@gmail.com
Ph: 773-682-9322

Endorsed by:

Matthew Abraham
Professor of English
De Paul University

Elizabeth Ammons
Harriet H. Fay Professor of Literature
Tufts University
Andrew Austin
Associate Professor
Social Change and Development
University of Wisconsin-Green

Bob Buzzanco
Professor of History
University of Houston
Ken Bonetti, Academic Advisor
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO

John M. Cammett
Professor Emeritus, History
John Jay College and the Graduate School - City University of New York

Dana Cloud
Professor Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas
Sandi E Cooper
Professor of History
City University of New York at Staten Island and The Graduate School

Frank Deale
Associate Professor
CUNY Law School
Flushing, New York

David Gabbard, EdD
Professor
Dept of C&I
College of Education
East Carolina University

Philip Gasper, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Notre Dame de Namur University
Belmont, CA 94002

John Gorman,
freelance journalist
author King of the Romans,

Sondra Hale, Professor
Anthropology and Women’s Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Ruth Hsu
Associate Professor of English
University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Alan Jones
Dean of Faculty
Pitzer College

Daniel Jordan, PhD
Sociology Instructor
Ventura Community College
Ventura, CA

Christine Karatnytsky
Scripts Librarian
Billy Rose Theatre Division
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Katherine Callen King
Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics
UCLA

Vinay Lal
Assoc Prof/Chair, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
UCLA

Tom Mayer
Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder

Peter McLaren
Professor
UCLA

Kerby Miller
Professor of History
University of Missouri-Columbia

Kamala Platt
Professor
University of Texas-PA

Peter Rachleff,
Professor of History,
Macalester College

Dean J. Saitta
Professor, Department of Anthropology
President, Faculty Senate
University of Denver

Henry Silverman
Professor and Chairperson Emeritus
Department of History
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI

Peter Spitzform
Assistant Library Professor
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405
Michael Vocino
Professor of Film Media
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
Nancy Welch
Professor
Department of English
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405
Tim Wise
Author, Anti-Racism Educator

Statement Of The AAUP Chapter At The University Of Colorado At Boulder Regarding The Investigation And Recommended Termination Of Professor Ward Churchill

The American Association of University Professors has been fighting to protect academic freedom, faculty governance, and due process in higher education since 1915. The newly constituted University of Colorado-Boulder chapter of the AAUP is deeply concerned over the University of Colorado administration’s handling of the “Ward Churchill affair.” We recognize that Professor Churchill’s statements are often inflammatory and that serious questions have been raised about his scholarship. Nevertheless, we believe that academic freedom and due process must be accorded to all faculty members, regardless of their personalities or politics.

CU-B AAUP recognizes that the University’s credibility depends on sound scholarship, and our membership strongly supports the maintenance of rigorous research standards. However, faculty members whose research results in unpopular conclusions should not be held to a higher standard than scholars whose work is popular or uncontroversial. CU-B AAUP also believes that serious charges of misconduct leveled against faculty should be investigated. However, the credibility of those charges should be investigated as well, in order to protect faculty against politically motivated witch hunts. Finally, we believe that a central mission of the University should be defending academic freedom by protecting faculty members from vindictive attacks and maintaining a presumption of innocence for faculty members who are accused of misconduct until investigations are concluded. This was not done in the Churchill case.

The membership of CU-B AAUP takes no position on whether or not any of the substantive charges of research misconduct leveled against Professor Churchill are justified. Our areas of expertise are different from Churchill’s and we are not able to assess independently the conclusions of the two CU-B Committees that have investigated Churchill’s work. We have chosen not to compare the  rigor of Churchill’s work with that of other highly esteemed scholars in the field of Native American Studies, such as the late Vine Deloria. However, several aspects of the investigation raise questions about the fairness of the ad hoc Investigating Committee’s conclusions and the proportionality of the punishment recommended by the Administration. They also raise more general worries about the investigation’s chilling effect on critical scholarship.

No one doubts that the original charges against Professor Churchill were politically motivated. In February, 2005, the Colorado House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Churchill, and State Governor Bill Owens called publicly for him to resign for statements he made regarding the World Trade Tower disaster. These resolutions violated Professor Churchill’s First Amendment right to free speech, as a University-appointed committee rightly ruled. However, charges of academic misconduct immediately surfaced–from the same and similar sources–despite the fact that similar charges had been raised at least two years earlier, and were never followed up by the University. In this highly politicized context, many assert that no investigation of Professor’s Churchill’s work should ever have been undertaken, and others argue that, in such a context, a fair investigation was impossible.  Notwsithstanding, an inquiry was conducted, in circumstances marked by constant inflammatory, ad hominem, and even obscene attacks, on and off the CU campus, against Professor Churchill, anyone who appeared to support him, and even against some members of the ad hoc Investigating Committee, two of whom resigned soon after the investigation began.

CU-B AAUP recognizes that the initial inquiry initiated by Interim Chancellor Distefano was an attempt to keep the investigation of Professor Churchill in the hands of the CU-B faculty and administrators, in the face of extraordinary pressures to cede control to Regents, legislators, or other outside bodies. We appreciate the service of our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct and especially on the sub-committee that investigated Churchill, who endured months of unrelenting pressure. While we do not question the integrity or acuity of these colleagues, nevertheless, we believe that the investigation now is widely perceived to be a pretext for firing Churchill when the real reason for dismissal is his politics. Our questions and concerns about the investigation include the following:

1. The lack of an uninvolved arbiter is troubling. It appears to be a violation of due process that the Interim Chancellor acted both as plaintiff, in bringing the charges against Churchill, and as judge, recommending dismissal. In making his recommendation, Professor Distefano acted on the most stringent recommendations of the two committees, even though half of the members recommended a lesser penalty.

2. The absence of peer investigators is also troubling. Professor Churchill is a specialist in Native American scholarship and has focused on historical issues regarding relationships between Native peoples and European-Americans. However, the final investigative committee included no scholars from Native American Studies. Thus, there was no expertise present in Professor Churchill’s specific areas of study. We do not believe that a mathematician, physicist, physician or lawyer would have been investigated without disciplinary peers to evaluate the quality of his or her scholarship.

3. The hostile climate posed serious problems for the Churchill investigation and surely contributed to the absence on the sub-committee of scholarly peers in Professor Churchill’s field. For example, one faculty member was pressured to resign from the Committee on Research Misconduct because he had signed the February 2005 faculty petition supporting academic freedom in general at CU, and thus was viewed by some as supportive of Churchill himself. In addition, the two Native American historians originally asked to serve on the Investigatory Committee were so intimidated by the “toxic” atmosphere at CU and so pressured by outsiders that both resigned almost upon appointment.

4. Some scholars argue that the standards of research misconduct used in Professor Churchill’s case were elastic and that they were applied to his work with special stringency. Others consider the recommended punishment disproportionate. From a record of more than twenty books and hundreds of articles, chapters, speeches, and electronic communications, the committee investigating Churchill’s work isolated six pages, in which they claimed to find examples of plagiarism and one example of fabrication. If these charges are justified, they certainly show that Professor Churchill sometimes failed to adhere to the most rigorous standards of scholarship, but they seem relatively small in light of Churchill’s vast opus. All scholars have points of view, and even distinguished scholars make occasional mistakes; however, it is highly unusual for the discovery of such errors to end in dismissal.

The investigation into Professor Churchill’s work has been undertaken in the context of extensive well-organized and well-funded activity to discredit scholarship by faculty members perceived as liberal or left-leaning and to undermine the autonomy of institutions of higher education across the country. The University of Colorado has been a special target of such efforts, and scholars around the country are watching carefully to see what happens here. Insofar as the investigation inappropriately casts aspersions on Professor Churchill’s controversial conclusions regarding relationships between Native Americans and the United States, it also will weaken academic freedom across the United States. The freedom of faculty to interpret their own data, regardless of these interpretations’ conformity to conventional wisdom, lies at the heart of the scholarly enterprise.

In these circumstances, it is vital for the University of Colorado to defend not only the integrity of scholarly research but also the interlinked principles of academic freedom for its faculty and autonomy for itself. Failure to do this will be extremely damaging to the University of Colorado. It will injure faculty morale, diminish the University’s ability to recruit qualified faculty, especially in disciplines where controversies over interpretation are commonplace, impugn the University’s scholarly reputation, and reduce our ability to represent the best of scholarly work in research, the classroom and the community at large.

1. For these reasons, CU-B chapter of AAUP calls on the University of Colorado’s administration to reverse the decision to dismiss Professor Churchill. The problems that beset the Churchill inquiry, especially its highly politicized origin and context, bring into question both the objectivity of the inquiry and the proportionality of the recommended penalty. We recognize the possibility that lesser sanctions may be justified for some specific acts described in the report.

2. More generally, we call on the University to renew its commitment to academic freedom. This requires that the administration and the faculty exist in a reciprocal relationship, whereby faculty engage in resolute and rigorous scholarship in accordance with the canons of their discipline and the administration protects this scholarship and instruction against external political pressures. The recent “Report of the First Global Colloquium of University Presidents,” held at Columbia University in January 2005 and attended by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan, stated clearly: “The autonomy of the universities is the guarantor of academic freedom in the performance of scholars’ professional duties.”

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

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

Shareef Aleem Trial Postponed

Shareef Aleem’s trial on charges arising out of the CU Board of Regents meeting in February 2005 has been postponed again, and is now scheduled for January 2007. Check back for updates.

Shareef Aleem Retrial - August 21 at Adams County Justice Center

Denver activist faces 16 years for asking the CU Board of Regents to allow students to speak at a public meeting concerning Ward Churchill. Come and show CU your support for freedom of speech … details here.