Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

Scott Michaelsen

Scott Michaelsen, Associate Professor and Co-Editor of the New Centennial Review, Michigan State University, says:

I’m writing this statement to acknowledge and highlight the significance of Professor Ward Churchill’s scholarship in the area of the Humanities, where he has written outstanding and highly original books and articles over a number of years. 

In particular, Ward’s book, Fantasies of the Master Race (published by Common Courage in 1992, and available in an expanded edition from City Lights as of 1998), is a profound and thoughtful set of interventions regarding the representation of American Indians in literature, film, and scholarship. . . .

Professor Churchill also sets out a more particular historical context regarding American Indians in the Southwest, U.S. mismanagement and malfeasance of the reservation system, and the rise of U.S. Army-sponsored, American Indian “police units.”  (One thing is always worth mentioning regarding Professor Churchill’s work: it is massively documented.  Anyone who has ever traced their way back through the notes of one of Professor Churchill’s articles will be amply rewarded by his encyclopedic knowledge of both published and archival source materials.) 

. . . .[Professor Churchill’s] abilities and achievements as a Humanities scholar are, I believe, unimpeachable.  He’s a brilliant analytical thinker, and has made a mark in this profession that will not be washed away.  In a professional where most of what one reads is “business as usual,” one can always count on Professor Churchill’s work to dig a little bit deeper, to think more clearly about contextual and historical problems in relationship to literature, and to nail precisely the parameters of conventional, cultural narratives.  He is (though he might not want to admit it) something of a national treasure in academia.