Ward Churchill Solidarity Network

Call from CU Professors of Color and Allies to Defend Ward Churchill and Ethnic Studies

A group of teachers at CU call on supporters around the country to educate themselves about the attacks on Ward Churchill and on academic freedom more generally.  They specifically request e-mails to CU’s Privilege and Tenure Committee Chair Weldon Lodwick (wlodwick@math.cudenver.edu) urging the P&T Committee to reverse Interim Chancellor DiStefano’s recommendation to terminate Ward.

***Please forward***

American Indian Genocide Is Not a “Fabrication”
Defend Ward Churchill, Defend Ethnic Studies
Defend Academic Freedom Against Rightwing Onslaught

July 31, 2006

Dear Colleagues and Comrades,

We are faculty of color and progressive anti-racist white faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder who are deeply concerned about the future of Ethnic Studies here in Colorado and at every campus across the country.  As we write, our Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano has set in motion the process to fire Ward Churchill.  While freedom of speech, dissent and academic freedom in general continue to be endangered in the witch-hunt against Ward Churchill, we believe that the most recent developments in Ward’s case now also threaten the very integrity of our African American, American Indian, Asian American, Latina/o and Chicana/o histories and fields of study.  We are writing to update you, and to call on you to join us in mobilizing and organizing nationally.  Because of the racialized dynamics we have seen emerging in our organizing on this campus, we believe that the leadership of conscious faculty of color and anti-racist white faculty will be crucial. 

The New Front: Attack on the Institutions and Historical Contributions of Ethnic Studies

We should keep foremost in our minds the circumstances that occasioned the investigation into Ward Churchill: he was attacked for his radical critique of U.S. imperialism and its role in 9-11.  This was a witch-hunt waiting to happen, and that could have happened to any of us.  In this most recent phase of the Ward Churchill witch-hunt, a special investigative committee recently concluded a 4-month investigation of academic misconduct allegations–including fabrication, misuse of sources, plagiarism–and returned the expected verdict of guilty with recommendations for the most severe sanctions.  In response to this judgment, the university on June 26 moved ahead to apply the maximum sentence: revocation of tenure and dismissal.

All of the parties involved in the current firing process, including Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano, have urged that Ward’s supposed “crimes” not be generalized to his Ethnic Studies colleagues or to his field.  Some have even suggested that Ward Churchill must be fired in order to prevent the further erosion of the “public trust” and to protect the credibility of the “legitimate” scholars in our fields.  This insidious divide-and-rule tactic and its underlying messages–“Give him up and we won’t come after the rest of you;” and, “Don’t worry yourselves about this, we’re not after you; we value you, he’s not like you.”–are only too familiar.

This tactic only confirms what we know: that the case now being used to fire Ward expands the initial threat against academic freedom into a direct assault on the legitimacy of American Indian and Ethnic Studies scholarship and, in particular, the history of American Indian genocide.  No scholar of Ward Churchill’s seniority and prominence in any field can be fired in this manner without also making vulnerable his peers, his department, his university and his discipline as whole.  Indeed, the attack on Ward Churchill opened a siege of hatemails, threats and harassment (reaching a 1000 per day) directed at the students, staff and faculty of the Department of Ethnic Studies that included:

I must laugh at your so called college department.  Tell Ward, my ancestors killed a lot of Indians and I’m proud of it . . . .
*
The proper response to . . . “Chief” Ward Churchill is to shut down the ethnic studies department entirely. . . .
*
Like Hitler, were I in charge it is the pseudo-intellectuals like you who I’d put in a camp first. Muslims and Arabs.  Where is A. Hitler now that we need him?  Even gas wouldn’t handle this many vermin.
*
Commie-pinko bed-wetting left-wing long-haired faggot . . . . I say f*ck the press.  Given my way, you’d be throw into a dark cell for ten years, then execute you after that, you homo. . . . . PS: You may be interested in knowing that my god son has killed over 30 ragheads, destroyed 15 tanks and 10 Toyota pickup trucks from his F-18.

(See attached Ethnic Studies open letter below for more examples.  Examples are excerpted but otherwise unedited.)

Emphasizing that “Such overt racism is closely linked to attacks on academic freedom,” the Department demanded in an April 25, 2005 letter that the university reverse its refusal, “despite repeated requests,” to offer any public defense of the Department, or to provide any support for its already overworked staff, or additional security to faculty, staff and students under direct threat.  The Department wrote,

If you want Ethnic Studies to disappear, intend to chill the speech of all professors, and wish to actively discourage the recruitment of students and faculty of color, you need only continue on your current path.  We hope this is not the case and offer to work with you to proactively change - not “study” - the climate on campus.

More than a year later (and after another letter from the Chair Al Ramirez), the University’s only response has been to proceed with terminating Ward Churchill.

Perhaps the deepest cut of the firing of Ward Churchill would be the damning institutional confirmation that one of the most powerful arguments for American Indian genocide is based–even if only in part–on a fabrication.  If this is allowed to happen, the agenda of the once little-known scholar Thomas Brown (now become one of the media’s most cited scholarly “experts” on matters of American Indian historiography) will be stamped with the imprimatur of official truth: “Churchill has fabricated a genocide that never happened.”  These tactics of denial are only too familiar to scholars working across a range of historical studies and disciplines who are confronting forces who would deny not only the Jewish Holocaust but the genocides–whether planned or executed–against lesbian, gay and transgendered people and against colonized and oppressed peoples around the world.

Key Issues in Our Struggle

1) We must expose the new “academic misconduct” smokescreen being used to disguise the witch hunt

In its initial phase, the Right’s campaign focused on Ward’s counterhegemonic essay–“’Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens”–as the basis for firing.  In that first phase, we were able to mount enough resistance to force the administration to declare that it could not fire Ward Churchill on that basis.  In the current second round of the witch-hunt, charges of “academic misconduct” are being used as a smokescreen to continue the witch-hunt by other means.  The message is just as clear, if not more sinister: If you dare to speak up, you can’t stop us from taking you out.  If you stop us from using one method, we’ll find another.  It’s just a matter of time–we’ll tear everything up until we find something we can get you with.

It is important to note as well that in the current second round of the witch-hunt, our administration echoes David Horowitz and especially the key leadership of Lynn Cheney’s ACTA organization (more info on this important right-wing think-tank below) in attempting to cloak the investigation in codes of “accountability” and “responsibility” while it loudly declares a commitment to academic freedom.  ACTA has set the model in its recent position paper “How Many Ward Churchills?” by declaring itself a defender of academic freedom against what it calls the “Ward Churchill phenomenon” in which countless professors across the country have supposedly hijacked the liberal arts curriculum by overemphasizing “race, class, gender and sexuality” (2).  ACTA now insists that its allies should seek the firing of all such professors strictly on the basis of supposedly non-ideological, professional ethics: “Our aim should not be to fire the Ward Churchills for their views….”  Instead, these professors should be “exposed” for “not doing their jobs.”  Unlike their initial approach to the witch-hunt, this approach has found deep racialized resonance in the attitudes of the white “general public” as well as the bulk of white faculty on our campus toward Ethnic Studies.

2) We must challenge the erosion of support among white moderates, liberals, and progressives in order to build the widest effective resistance

At CU-Boulder, we are experiencing that familiar cycle in which moderate, liberal and progressive white support vacillates and collapses.  An initially very courageous, active and campus-wide faculty opposition has now grown silent, leaving a small but important core of progressive white faculty, staff and students who have remained clear-eyed and steadfast.  We are glad that this corrosive tendency has not been as strongly reflected nationally so far, but we believe it is crucial to confront this as an emerging trend.

We have seen that the engine of this frustrating dynamic is the racialized susceptibility of so many white faculty members to the new witch-hunt rationale of “academic misconduct.”  When the witch-hunt was singularly focused on Ward’s essay about 9-11, many white faculty were willing to defend the principles of academic freedom and critical thinking.  Now that the witch-hunt has turned its focus onto Ward’s and his field’s scholarly credibility and integrity, many white faculty are hesitating, vacillating or jumping ship.  Many formerly supportive white faculty have explained their hesitations and reversals in numerous ways, and most of them amount to the same two things: (1) I find Ward Churchill and his views repugnant.  I have been holding my nose while defending him.  I’ve done my duty defending his academic freedom so now he deserves to be punished.  (2) I’ve always had my suspicions about the “PC’ work they do over there in Ethnic Studies and now I find my suspicions confirmed.  Ward Churchill did not earn his position like us–he only has an MA, he was tenured outside normal channels.  He is not one of us–they can have him.  As long as the targets of the war on academic freedom are faculty of color working in counterhegemonic fields (including, as we have seen elsewhere, Middle Eastern Studies), we will have to confront the painfully vulnerable bond of solidarity that most white faculty have with faculty of color. 

We must struggle with the best of these white faculty to rejoin us and we must remind the worst of them that we will not take their complicity lightly.  Ward Churchill is a tenured professor and one of only a handful of American Indians nationally who have achieved the rank of full professor.  He achieved this rank by earning the respect of his peers, being published, read and cited extensively, and by passing the same rigorous process of internal and external review that exists in their own departments.  Further, during this entire attack Ward has had the unanimous and unequivocal support of his departmental colleagues.  The failure of our white faculty to accord Ward Churchill the basic deference–let alone the benefit of the innocent-until-proven-guilty doubt–that would be accorded to any white colleague of similar stature in their own department or field is only more shameful because the investigation itself has been so obviously and multiply compromised.

Some will say that to raise the problem of racism will be divisive, that we should continue to emphasize the “color-blind” defense of academic freedom.  Our point is not that we should abandon this unifying emphasis on academic freedom, but rather that there can be no fight for academic freedom that sacrifices our Asian, Black, Latina/o or Native intellectuals, our institutions, our histories or our cultures.  We will welcome at any time anyone willing to fight with us on both fronts.

We believe this deeper critical unity is key to our longer term struggle for the academic freedom of all intellectuals.  When ACTA asks “How Many Ward Churchills?” it is not a question but a threat.  We all know that the next targets being lined up by ACTA will exploit similar reactionary gendered, sexualized, and class-based resonances among the white mainstream public and faculty to attack Queer/LGBT Studies, Women’s Studies and the other scholars identified by ACTA for whom “the status quo, which is patriarchal, racist, hegemonic, and capitalist, must be ‘interrogated’ and ‘critiqued’ as a means of theorizing and facilitating a social transformation” (2).

3) We must challenge the unwillingness to defend Ward Churchill against the Right’s agenda–which side are you on?

Since the beginning of this struggle, we have in various contexts encountered individuals and groups who want to defend academic freedom without having to defend Ward Churchill.  At the peak of our campus opposition last year, our faculty senate decided to join the fray by passing a resolution to make a public statement in defense of academic freedom–without ever mentioning Ward Churchill!  That statement stood in pale contrast to the courageous resolution passed by our Arts & Sciences Faculty Council to demand an immediate halt to the investigation.  But we have also heard good colleagues suggest they’d feel more comfortable not focusing on defending Ward so much and instead emphasizing “the bigger picture” of which the attack on Ward is only one part.  We have struggled with this issue among ourselves as well.

We believe it is essential to challenge this tendency at its root.  At best, it reflects how successfully this attack on Ward pits our solidarity against our individual instincts to survive within hostile institutional environments.  At worst, it reflects careerism and the more institutionalized racism and white chauvinism we discussed above.  In the end, the choice before us all is to decide which side of history we want to be on.  Yes, the attack on Ward Churchill is one part of a much larger Right-wing attack on the intellectual institutions (Ethnic Studies) and policies (tenure system, academic freedom) that were won by the movements of the 50s, 60s, 70s as part of a their broader objectives to defeat capitalism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and imperialism.  But we must be clear that the attack on Ward Churchill is now the frontline campaign of that larger struggle.  A rightwing victory in this campaign to fire Ward will enable a subsequent and more advanced set of tactical objectives.  Again, any cursory study of Rightwing “chatter” makes clear that Ward Churchill is not only a touchstone but a gateway target.  For the Right and within larger public opinion, Ward Churchill’s case is seamlessly linked to issues of feminism, civil rights, gay bashing, hate crimes, and so forth that we all work on and are invested in.  We either stand together with Ward against their entire agenda or stand by and help them advance.  There is no “middle” position. 

We reject the legitimacy of every aspect of the case for firing Ward Churchill–from the investigative committee’s composition, its findings, its method and its recommendations (see Ward’s response below).   Ward Churchill has appeared before his investigators and defended himself against every allegation.  While they point at footnotes, we stand with and among Ward’s peers who know and value his work.  While they talk about the fabrication of American Indian genocide, we stand as witnesses to that still ongoing holocaust and to the histories of all our peoples’ suffering, oppression and resistance.

CURRENT PLAN OF ACTION

Where do we stand currently?  On May 16 a special investigative committee issued its massive and problematic 124-page report that Ward Churchill be fired.  It was accepted and processed in under a month by the campus Committee on Academic and Research Misconduct and, within two weeks, the Chancellor announced intent to fire (June 26).  This rapid progression was timed to begin just after the end of classes, when the summer dispersal of faculty and students from campus drastically limits our ability to respond. 

With the Interim Chancellor’s decision, the firing process has already moved beyond our campus.  But we can still stop this from happening.  Ward currently is appealing the Interim Chancellor’s recommendation of dismissal to the CU-system-wide Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee.  This is his final internal appeal and will take 90 days, so we should prepare to make a strong push early in the fall.

To everyone reading this letter, we propose the following urgent priorities for our work for August:

* Get the word out far and wide.  Forward this email and start talking with your colleagues about what’s going on.  Start organizing in your department, your field.  Begin planning to hold meetings or to pass motions at upcoming conventions.

* Get informed about Ward’s case.  Read:
i) the report at http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/
ii) Ward’s own responses to the report (see doc below) and his statements available at wardchurchill.net and www.defendcriticalthinking.org
iii) the statements issued by the Department of Ethnic Studies at CU-Boulder.  These include the recent letter from current Chair Al Ramirez, and the Department’s open letter to University from April last year (see these docs attached below)

* The most effective action you can take right now to stop Ward’s firing and to counter the attacks on academic freedom is to communicate directly with the Privilege and Tenure Committee which will be hearing Ward’s final internal appeal.  We urge you to email the P&T committee care of its chair, Weldon A. Lodwick, to express your opposition to this investigation and to urge the Committee to reverse Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano’s recommendation to fire Ward. 

Please copy (cc) your email to the university administration and to the board of regents.  To simplify the task, you can use the following to address your letter:

TO: Members of the University of Colorado System Committee on Privilege and Tenure c/o Chair Weldon Lodwick
CC: Interim Chancellor DiStefano, Chancellor Peterson, President Brown, and the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado

The corresponding emails are as follows (cut and paste into your email address fields):

TO: wlodwick@math.cudenver.edu

CC: Phil.Distefano@Colorado.edu, chanchat@spot.colorado.edu, OfficeOfThePresident@cu.edu, Regent.Schauer@colorado.edu, Gail.Schwartz@colorado.edu, Regent.Bosley@colorado.edu, Regent.Carlisle@colorado.edu, Carrigan@colorado.edu, Regent.Hayes@colorado.edu, Tom.Lucero@colorado.edu, Jerryrutledge@adelphia.net, Peter.Steinhauer@colorado.edu

Please also send us a copy of your letter care of the Ward Churchill Solidarity Network at wcsn@wardchurchill.net.

* We also encourage you to sign onto the national petition sponsored by Teachers for a Democratic Society at www.teachersfordemocracy.org.

* Consider attending an important emergency summit being planned for September 29-30 in Lawrence, Kansas: The Latest Indian Wars: The “War on Terror” Targets Critical Thinking–Who’s Next, and How Do We Fight Back?   The purposes of the summit are:  (1) to examine the targeting of Ward Churchill and other academics in the context of movements to silence and discredit scholars and activists who think critically about the manifestations of colonialism and contemporary expansions of empire; (2) to assess the impact of these attacks on the disciplines of Indigenous, American Indian, African American, Latina/o, Chicana/o, Asian American,   Middle Eastern and gender studies, the people of these communities, and on the next generation of intellectuals, academics, and students; and (3) to develop a plan of action to counter the attacks on counterhegemonic scholars and programs.

Scholars and activists endorsing the summit include: Kathleen Cleaver, Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone Defense Project), Moana Jackson (Maori lawyer/activist), Winona LaDuke, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, Russell Means, Glenn Morris, Haunani Kay Trask, Sharon Venne (Cree lawyer/activist).

For more information contact Dr. Michael Yellow Bird mybird@ku.edu and check www.wardchurchill.net for updates.

* Finally, study our opponents: the organized Right.  Many of you were surprised to learn that the public furor over Ward’s essay did not erupt spontaneously at Hamilton College and that, in fact, Lynn Cheney’s ACTA organization (www.goacta.org) had a role in it.  As we pointed out then, Hamilton College is in New York, the governor of which belongs to the same ACTA “Governor’s Project” as Colorado governor Owens.  It should surprise no one that the chairman of ACTA served as chair of the department of philosophy at none other than the University of Colorado, Boulder before he went to work for Cheney at the NEH.  ACTA’s level of organization is formidable.  ACTA’s strategic base is primarily trustees, regents and other university governing board members, of whom they already have working in over 400 colleges and universities across the country.  ACTA’s members include regents/trustees and former regents/trustees of the University of Colorado, the University of California, Dartmouth, Harvard, CUNY, and the University of Nebraska.  In the past 2 years through its “Governor’s Project,” ACTA already has cooperated with the Colorado and Massachusetts state boards of higher education to organize conferences that provided “trustee training” to all the trustees/regents of Colorado and to university governing boards across New England.  At minimum, each of us should know which administrators and faculty on our campuses belong to ACTA, which trustees and which governors in our states. See www.goacta.org.
ACTA has been a main leader in the attack on the University but is only one unit of a much bigger formation.  We should all be much more aware of the student organizations (e.g. College Republicans, AVOT) that that function in our classrooms and within the campus student body as conduits for organizations like ACTA.  Their activities include keeping blacklists of our names, infiltrating our classrooms, writing up reports and articles about us.

Signed,

Haste and expediency have required that the following signatories cannot include a comprehensive list of our valued comrades, allies and supporters on this campus.

Arturo Aldama, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies

Ken Bonetti, Academic Advisor, Economics; member of the Steering Committee of the CU-Boulder Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom

Elisa Facio, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies

Vijay Gupta, Professor; former member of the Steering Committee of the CU-Boulder Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom

Cheryl Higashida, Assistant Professor, English

Daniel Kim, Assistant Professor, English; former member of the Steering Committee of the CU-Boulder Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom

Margaret LeCompte, Professor, Education; member of the Steering Committee of the CU-Boulder Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom; President of the CU chapter of the AAUP (affiliation given for informational purposes only)

Tom Mayer, Professor, Sociology

Emma Perez, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies

Reiland Rabaka, Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies

John-Michael Rivera, Assistant Professor, English

Brenda Romero, Associate Professor, Music

William Takamatsu Thompson

Vincent Woodard, Assistant Professor, English

****************************************

Below are
(1) Ward’s June 27 Public Statement in Response to the Investigative Report;
(2) Dept of Ethnic Studies Chair Al Ramirez May 26 letter in response to Ward Churchill Report; and
(3) Dept of Ethnic Studies Open Letter, April 25, 2005.

****************************************

Statement of Ward Churchill, June 27, 2006

It was quite predictable that Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano would recommend that I be fired from my tenured professorship at the University of Colorado/Boulder.  After all, he was effectively ordered to find some “legally-defensible” basis for doing so by Colorado Governor Bill Owens.

In pursuit of this purely political objective, the interim chancellor has at this point expended more than a year and upwards of $250,000 in taxpayer monies.

For all that, he has failed.

Certain facts about my case simply cannot be denied:

1. Interim Chancellor DiStefano joined Governor Owens and several Colorado legislators in publicly and repeatedly denouncing me on explicitly ideological grounds, thereby making his personal biases abundantly clear.

2. In direct violation of the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado concerning Academic Freedom, the interim chancellor took the unprecedented step of creating and chairing a special committee devoted to investigating the political content of my scholarship.

3. He and/or his surrogates on this special committee actively solicited allegations of “research misconduct” against me, contriving to cast the impression through the media that these allegations were independently and voluntarily submitted by the scholars involved.

4. Since this produced a “shot-gun load” of allegations but no actual complainants, Interim Chancellor DiStefano named himself complainant without, by his own admission, even bothering to read much of what  he was supposedly alleging.

5. Throughout this process the interim chancellor routinely violated the confidentiality rules concerning personnel matters in the CU system, issuing numerous press releases designed to sustain the media “feeding frenzy,” subjecting me to “trial by news media,” and denying my rights to privacy and due process.

6. Having thus virtually guaranteed that faculty members at the University of Colorado could not be neutral, the interim chancellor/complainant then used his administrative influence to ensure that my request for an investigative panel  composed exclusively of persons external to CU was denied.  Consequently 3 of 5 panel members, including its chair, were drawn from the Boulder faculty.  As predicted, serious questions concerning the impartiality of 2 of these internal panelists have come to light, and more can be expected. 

7. Similarly, my repeated requests that the investigative panel include acknowledged experts in the relevant subject areas were ignored.  Ultimately, 4 of the 5 panelists professed no specific knowledge whatsoever concerning either the procedures employed within my discipline or the topics under discussion. So much for the pretense that the merits of my work have been assessed by my peers.

The investigative report produced by the panel, while voluminous, misses the mark entirely.

The panelists were required by the rules to restrict their inquiry to whether I actually committed fraud and plagiarism.  Instead, they indulged in a repetition of the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” presuming to assert the “truth” of the various historical and legal questions involved, in a manner comfortable to themselves and to those they seemingly perceive as comprising the “American mainstream.”

Such enforcement of orthodoxy was plainly not within  the panel’s legitimate  mandate.

Indeed, as regards the allegations of fraud raised by Interim Chancellor DiStefano, whether what I wrote is true or false is irrelevant. The ONLY relevant consideration is whether I had reason to believe it was true.

On this score, I did, and still do, and the panel proved nothing to the contrary.  This is amply reflected in the evidence the panel left largely unaddressed in its report.  Much the same pertains to my having supposedly “invented” historical incidents, and the alleged implications of my ghostwriting.

As to the panel’s findings that by a “preponderance of the evidence” I twice engaged in plagiarism, a simple question presents itself: What, exactly, is a “preponderance” of no evidence at all?

Of course, the report produced by the investigative panel is designed to make the opposite of all this seem true.  In fact, it seems reasonable to suggest that the very length of the document was meant to obscure its lack of substance.

Two observations support this conclusion: 

1. In order to conclude that I engaged in research misconduct, the panelists, collectively, severely distort certain of their sources, omit mention of material inconvenient to their conclusions, cite themselves as the sole authority confirming many of their points, and occasionally engage in outright fabrication.

In fact, each kind of academic misconduct the interim chancellor’s carefully-selected panel claims I committed is engaged in by the panel itself in the writing of its report.  (One of the panelists even takes credit for authoring a work unquestionably written by another scholar.)

In the face of all this, it becomes apparent that the panelists arrived at their conclusions before the fact, the orchestrated their data accordingly.  In other words, to borrow the panel’s own term, their report was clearly “thesis-driven.”  Paraphrasing them again, it means they “don’t understand the difference between scholarship and polemic,” and have produced a report consisting of “propaganda rather than scholarship.” 

2. Even if the allegations at issue were true – and they certainly are not – they do not constitute offenses for which faculty members can, under any ordinary circumstances, be terminated.  The panel, the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct (SCRM) which endorsed its report, and the interim chancellor all thus resorted to the argument that I could/should be fired, not for what I did, but because I have refused to recant.  In other words, it is my “attitude” which justifies the severity of the recommended sanctions.   

This, then, is the backdrop against which Interim Chancellor DiStefano’s “news flash” that I should be fired must be understood.

From start to finish, the interim chancellor’s blatant conflicts of interest – not to mention the political nature of his biases – have been obvious to anyone who cared to view the matter honestly. So, too, the ways in which he has manipulated the process at every step in order to guarantee the outcome he announced on Monday, June 26.

The interim vice chancellor’s strikingly duplicitous comportment over the past 16 months will not go unchallenged.  I will file an appeal of the whole charade with the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Privilege and Tenure (P&T) within the next 10 days.

Far from putting the “final touches to the Churchill story,” as fantasized on Denver editorial pages, the interim chancellor’s elaborate subterfuge has merely set the stage for the taxpayers to waste another quarter-million dollars while I go through the P&T process.

Hopefully, the members of P&T who review my case will display the sort of integrity conspicuously lacking in their predecessors on the investigative panel and the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.  

That would do much to constrain the magnitude of damage sustained by the University – and consequently the taxpayers – when my case goes to court, as it ultimately will.

Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
June 27, 2006

***************************************************

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WARD CHURCHILL CASE AND ON ETHNIC STUDIES AT C.U., BOULDER.

Albert Ramirez                                                               May 26, 2006
Chair, Department of Ethnic Studies
University of Colorado, Boulder

Contextual Factors in the Ward Churchill Case

On May 16, the “Report of the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder concerning Allegations of Academic Misconduct against Professor Ward Churchill”  was made  public. The report is the latest in a series of  investigative inquiries that began in February of 2005. The findings and conclusions are serious, as are the possible sanctions recommended by each of the individual members of the Committee. As with earlier conclusions reached by different panels and  committees, the recommendations were made public and made available to the local and national media. On May 20, Professor Churchill  submitted his response to the report, entitled “Summary of Fallacies in the University of Colorado Investigative Committee Report of May 9, 2006.”  While the Committee’s assessment of Professor Churchill’s work leads to attributions of research misconduct, in his response to the report, Professor Churchill alleges that the committee’s document “contains numerous false statements, misrepresentations of fact, and internal contradictions.” Given the polarized and contradictory nature of the two sets of conclusions and interpretations concerning the work of Professor Churchill and the work of the investigative committee, there remains a high probability that this case will ultimately go to court. Consequently, this paper will not address the allegations of research misconduct contained in the May 16 report  but rather will focus on some of the contextual issues discussed in  the  report.

The Committee begins its report  by noting its  “concern regarding the timing and, perhaps, the motives for the University’s decision to initiate these charges at this time.” The Committee, quite correctly, goes on to stipulate that these external factors are beyond its charge, and that it has attempted to keep “the background and origins of this particular dispute out of our consideration of the particular allegations.”  The Committee uses the analogy of  “a motorist who is stopped 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.”  Using this analogy, the Committee sees itself as the “court” which is investigating whether or not the driver – Ward Churchill - is guilty of the specific charge of speeding – research misconduct -   and therefore views the other contextual factors as irrelevant.
 
Continuing further with this analogy — we would hope that the judicial system in which the particular case of the speeder is embedded would at some point look at the broader issues of equal justice for all motorists. Are the scales of justice balanced or are they tilted in favor of certain individuals and against other persons who might not display the correct bumper sticker?  What if the police officer only stops speeders who display this particular bumper sticker, and does not stop or give tickets to other speeders who either do not display this particular bumper sticker, or who display a bumper sticker in concert with the police officer’s own values and ideas? What if other drivers going twenty miles beyond the legal speed limit are not stopped and ticketed, while drivers with the incorrect bumper sticker are stopped when they are driving only five miles above the legal speed limit? What if this bias extends beyond one police officer, and is a system-wide bias among police officers in general.   What if persons who otherwise might express their freedom of  speech through their bumper stickers  are cognizant of this system-wide bias, and are therefore intimidated and reluctant to express their opinions through the use of bumper stickers or through any other means, thus surrendering their right of free speech?

Whereas the Committee has the luxury of not having to address these broader, contextual questions,  the University does not. A fair and unbiased decision by the University regarding Ward Churchill must take into consideration the University’s own reasons and motives for the initiation of this investigation, as well as the outside influencing factors that impacted the University’s ultimate decision. The University’s decision will have a significant effect on the entire university community. The faculty, in particular, must remain reassured by the results of this investigative process that they will not someday be targeted because of their own “bumper stickers.”

The Committee’s “disquiet”  regarding the timing and motives regarding these allegations  “ is exacerbated by the fact that the formal complainant in the charges before us is the Interim Chancellor of the University, despite the express provision in the Laws of the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado that faculty members’ ‘efforts should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.’ ”  Now is the time for the University to reflect on these questions and to engage in a process of introspective analysis. The University needs to render a judgment on itself before it renders a judgment either for or against one of its own members of the university community.
 
As mentioned above, the Committee expressed concern about the fact that  “the formal complainant in the charges before us is the Interim Chancellor of the University.”  It should be a concern, since the administrative officer to whom the Committee and the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct  is sending its allegations of research misconduct – and who will render the final decision in this matter– is the very same University officer who made the initial complaint to the faculty committee! There is something inherently wrong, in terms of due process, with an investigative system in which the same person or office is the complainant as well as the judge and prosecutor.

Instead of sending the allegations directly to a faculty committee, the initial investigative panel consisted not of faculty, but of the then Provost of the University of Colorado at Boulder and now Interim Chancellor, and of two Deans whom he appointed to serve on this panel. The panel found reasonable grounds for sending the allegations to a faculty committee. This is problematical for several reasons, not the least of which is the question of conflict of interest, since two of the faculty members of the subsequent Investigative Committee report directly or indirectly to one of these deans, and the third member reports directly to the other dean. While there is no reason to believe that this had any role in the investigative process with respect to these three faculty, it does raise the appearance of  administrative impropriety. This could have been avoided had the initial panel investigating these allegations been a faculty panel, and not an administrative one.

Ethnic Studies at C.U. - Boulder

 Although Professor Churchill has been the primary subject of  scrutiny and of investigation, it is evident that he has not been the only person placed under the academic, bureaucratic, and political microscope. So too, have been his colleagues in the Department of Ethnic Studies. So too, have been not just the majors and minors in ethnic studies, but all students who take ethnic studies courses at the University of Colorado.  Some politicians and public officials have even questioned the very discipline of Ethnic Studies, and its legitimacy as a field of study within academia. Unfortunately, in the past 15 months since the beginning of this investigative process, the University has elected to remain silent in this regard and has failed to respond to those who have also prejudged  the department and the discipline.

On April 25, 2005, the faculty of the Department of Ethnic Studies submitted a formal letter to the Board of Regents, to President Betsy Hoffman, and to Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano informing them of the numerous e-mails and phone calls the department was receiving as a function of the media coverage regarding Ward Churchill. Many of these e-mails were racist and extremely acrimonious,  questioning not only Professor Churchill’s right to be at this university, but that of the Department of Ethnic Studies as well. In the letter, the Department requested that the University publicly support and defend ethnic studies, and indicated its willingness to work with these university administrators in order to change the racial climate on campus. After more than one year since this letter was written, the Department is still awaiting a response. One can only wonder if Professor Churchill had been a member of any another department, if that entire department would have been prejudged by the public as well. And if so, if the administration would have completely disregarded that department’s request to work with its faculty to resolve the issues created by the controversy.

Consequently, if any of the sanctions recommended by the Investigative Committee are implemented by the University, not only will the critics of Professor Churchill feel justified, but also those who have generalized from this single case to the C.U. Department of Ethnic Studies and to the field of ethnic studies as a whole. The University has a responsibility, therefore, in whatever decision it might make concerning Professor Churchill, to simultaneously indicate its support concerning the legitimacy of ethnic studies, and to acknowledge the contribution that the Department of Ethnic Studies has made to the teaching and scholarly mission of the University of Colorado. 
 
It is puzzling, in fact, that the University has not taken a more supportive role in regard to the department, since ethnic studies at C.U. has contributed significantly to the  research and teaching mission of the University. With respect to research and scholarship, for example, the current ten full-time faculty in the department have written 26 books and authored more than 280 journal articles or book chapters. This scholarly record compares quite favorably with that of the “well-developed ethnic studies programs at four major research universities” mentioned in the report of the investigative committee. In the past three years alone, the C.U. ethnic studies faculty have produced five books and ten forthcoming books, fifty articles or book chapters, and about another twelve forthcoming, and dozens of encyclopedia entries and book reviews. The ethnic studies faculty maintain membership in an array of major professional organizations, with several of these faculty holding leadership positions in most of them, as well as serving as journal editors and on advisory boards. With respect to teaching several of the faculty have won teaching awards. The average instructor rating for the Boulder campus is 3.37; the average for the ethnic studies faculty is 3.38. The average course rating for the campus is 3.21, and for the department it is 3.27. These higher ratings for the department are not due to inflated student grades, since the average student grade for the campus is 3.30, and for the department it is 3.28.

It is critical that the University affirm its support of the Department of Ethnic Studies. The University can no longer continue to  remain silent in this regard,  unless it wants to send a message to other academic departments on campus that, when they are at risk and under the bureaucratic and political microscope,  they, too,  are on their own.

*******************************

An Open Letter from the Department of Ethnic Studies,
University of Colorado at Boulder to the Board of Regents,
President Betsy Hoffman and Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano

April 25, 2005

The University of Colorado’s official policy on diversity states:

“Diversity among students, faculty, and staff is fundamental to the University of Colorado as it fulfills its mission to provide a quality education to the citizens of the state. A vision of the University of Colorado as an institution that promotes a free flow of ideas and perspectives, values diverse viewpoints and interactions, and encourages constructive engagement across racial, gender, sexual orientation and other lines of difference is central to this mission.  Diversity at the University of Colorado includes populations historically underrepresented and disadvantaged by virtue of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, and religion. To fulfill its mission, CU must develop purposeful recruitment and retention strategies for a diverse academic community.”

We in the Department of Ethnic Studies (DES) feel a particular responsibility to fulfill this mission.  The purpose of Ethnic Studies as a discipline is to introduce the diverse perspectives of historically underrepresented communities into the curriculum, and we offer interdisciplinary courses in African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicano, Comparative Ethnic, and American Studies. By definition, we must counter the standard “canon” of the humanities and social sciences, and academic freedom is essential to this endeavor.

The Laws of the Regents (Article5, Part D) recognize that we have not only the right but the responsibility to engage in such critical analysis: . . . “academic freedom” is defined as the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it . . .academic freedom requires that members of the faculty must have complete freedom to study, to learn, to do research, and to communicate the results of these pursuits to others. . . [Faculty members] . . . should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.

For more than thirty years the University has expressed concern about its lack of racial and ethnic diversity.   Large sums of money have been spent on cosmetic efforts and committees have repeatedly been appointed to study the problem but the recommendations of those committees have consistently been disregarded.  After all these years, only about 15% of the faculty and the student body are persons of color; and only 1% of the full professors in Arts & Sciences at CU-Boulder are women of color.

Ethnic Studies is the only department on campus with a truly racially and ethnically diverse faculty.  We offer the only institutionalized alternative to an overwhelmingly eurocentric curriculum, and have provided a safe haven for many students in what they perceive to be an otherwise hostile environment. The Department’s predecessor unit, the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA) was formed in the late-1980s and soon attracted a stellar faculty of national repute, including Manning Marable, Vine Deloria, Jr., Evelyn Hu DeHart, and Ward Churchill.  Of these only Ward Churchill remains, and the institution is making every effort to drive him out. The Department itself came into being in 1995, with an initial core of younger but highly promising faculty members, including Joy James, Jualynne Dodson, Lane Hirabayashi, David Pellow and Lisa Park.  All left, largely as a result of the lack of institutional support and resources provided the Department.  Having rebuilt the Department for the third time, we are again under siege.

Since late January, the Ethnic Studies Department and individuals within it have been publicly and personally denigrated.  At the height of the media frenzy, the Department received about 1000 e-mails and dozens of phone calls each day, many explicitly racist and/or threatening.  We have a wonderful, incredibly dedicated staff.   Already overloaded, these individuals, including our student assistant, have had to cope with this onslaught.  Despite repeated requests, the University has offered no public defense of the Department, given no support to our already overworked staff, and provided no additional security in the face of threats to students, staff and faculty.

To give just one small example, campus police were recently sent to pressure DES staff about taking down a painting created by youth in an anti-gang program in which “stop the lynchings” is superimposed on an American flag.  Shortly thereafter, the campus police simply stood by and watched while a  local resident prominently displayed a picket sign which falsely accused Ward Churchill of advocating that people “Rape B*tches” and “Lynch N*ggers.”

Our students have been subjected to racist communications and threats, as have our faculty.  After some incidents targeting students received widespread media coverage, the Regents and the Administration claimed “outrage,” yet an actively hostile environment which encourages such attacks has been fostered by the institution’s own conduct..

The University is well aware that Ward Churchill and other members of the Department have been subjected to death threats, threats of violence and overtly racist attacks.  It could have publicly condemned these threats of violence and expressions of racial hostility. Instead, its stunning silence has effectively empowered the attackers to continue.

Such overt racism is closely linked to attacks on academic freedom.  Ward Churchill is the most prolific and cited scholar in his field, an enormously popular teacher, and the recipient of numerous CU teaching and service awards. Faced with politically motivated assaults on Prof. Churchill’s speech, there are many steps that University officials could have taken to diffuse the situation. The institution could have highlighted its particular responsibility to defend free speech and to promote diversity of opinion, or noted Prof. Churchill’s scholarly achievements and his 25 years of exemplary service to the institution.

Instead, University officials violated the Regents’ own laws on academic freedom, denounced Prof. Churchill’s constitutionally protected speech, disparaged his reputation, denied him any sort of due process, and announced that his racial identity is to be determined by committee.

As you well know, such attacks have not been limited to Ward Churchill.  After working with our Department for more than a decade, Adrienne Anderson’s contract was terminated and her courses, which were cross-listed in Ethnic Studies, eliminated as a result of political pressure, without DES ever being consulted.  A senior faculty member’s sabbatical was also denied.  The obvious lack of institutional support for the Department has seriously hampered our ability to recruit new faculty, and is raising questions about our ability to retain the faculty we have.

Last week a sign was pasted on the door to our building, “warning” the public that the views expressed therein did in any way represent those of the University.  Is this true?  Are we simply being tolerated until we can be eliminated?  We have attached a small sampling of e-mails and letters which we believe illustrate that a strong Ethnic Studies program is needed now more  than ever.

As the Regents and the top administrators of this University, you have tremendous influence over the future of this institution.  If you want Ethnic Studies to disappear, intend to chill the speech of all professors, and wish to actively discourage the recruitment of students and faculty of color, you need only continue on your current path.  We hope this is not the case and offer to work with you to proactively change - not “study” - the climate on campus.

                                        Department of Ethnic Studies *
                                        University of Colorado at Boulder
                                        April 25, 2005

* This letter was approved by consensus at a faculty meeting from which two members were absent.

WHY WE NEED ETHNIC STUDIES

While we have received expressions of support from tens of thousand of people around the country, we also think it important to note the racism and intolerance that lies so close below the surface.  Following are excerpts from e-mails and letters received by the Department of Ethnic Studies, Ward Churchill and other faculty and staff between January 31 and April 15, 2005.  They are not the most hateful, threatening or obscene that we have received, but particularly reflect the racism, sexism, and lack of historical understanding that we work to counter.  Other than the asterisks inserted in bold, the spelling and grammar are from the original correspondence.     

*************************

[To the Department of Ethnic Studies:]
Greetings:
Regarding Ward Churchill’s remarks about 9-11 victims being “little Eichmanns,” it seems to me that the debate over free speech rights misses the point. . . . So let us suppose that the victims were little Eichmanns, fully deserving of their fates.  In the spirit of diversity and inclusion, I would then like to add the following:
        (1) Blacks in the UC Boulder Ethnic Studies department are little
pickanninnies.
        (2) Females in the UC Boulder Ethnic Studies department are little
pom-pom girls.
        (3) Hispanics in the UC Boulder Ethnic Studies department are little
banditos.
        (4) Asians in the UC Boulder Ethnic Studies department are little yellow
perils.
        . . . .
Mind you, I wouldn’t ordinarily write this, except that ‘diversity and inclusion” is such a compelling interest, and I feel that it is necessary to achieve “critical mass.”
With all due respect,
Robert Allgeyer

        **************************

From: David Bland <gydwb1@comcast.net>
To:        Chancellor Phil DiStefano
CC:        Ward Churchill
I am writing this letter . . . to voice my distaste and gross disappointment in your dubious judgment in hiring and retaining such a repugnant and repulsive human being as Ward Churchill. . . .  I suppose for a pathetic American Indian like himself, he sees this as some sort of payback to the United States for what he sees as injustices to the American Indian 150 years ago. . . . I implore you not to be intimidated by this pathetic excuse for a man and a human being.  Fire his sorry *ass! . . . It’s too bad that he is one Indian that got
away!

        **************************
From:         Chuck McGrory <chuck@mcgrory-glass.com>
To:        Natsu Saito
CC:        Ward Churchill
Subject:          How squaw bitch . . .
tell um Chief Ward Wigwam:  Look like pale face who want um to be um red  face is um disgraced. Why don’t you BOTH come on a tour of the east coast when u do your little stop in NY. We’d love to see both of you crazy mutherf*ckers! We’re looking forward to seeing you w/ no reservations. We’ll go out and have some fire water. On an unrelated note, Is it possible for “indian givers” to give “indian burns.” ?

        **********************

From:         Dennis McDonald <DennisHMcDonald@worldnet.att.net>
To:        Emma Perez
After viewing your comments last night, it appears that American Indian “wannabe” Churchill and his wife are not the only *ssholes in the Ethnic Studies Dept. You are a disgrace to the teaching community and are probably just like Churchill - a person who never held a real job and spent years as a radical in college and eventually got some half *ss degree from some crumby little school.
. . .
. . . . let me give you a few phrases that may help in your next job; “Would  you lie fries with that?”, “Sir, can I supersize that order?”

        **********************

From:        HuMikhu@aol.com
To:        tomdreyer@shaw.ca
CC:        Ward Churchill
[tomdreyer@shaw.ca writes:]
I wonder what practical use there would be for a graduating student with a degree in Ethnic Studies, oops Victimology

[response:] It comes in handy when calculating reparations – or settlements in the countless lawsuits that seem to plague their lives.

        ****************************

From:        Nathan Utt <nathanutt@yahoo.com>
To:        Ethnic Studies
The proper response to . . . “Chief” Ward Churchill is to shut down the ethnic studies department entirely. . . . it has no legitimate function, but instead is merely a forum for disaffected pseudo-intellectuals who use the mask of ethnicity to disquise their own personal dysfunctionability. . . . How about getting real jobs instead of leeching off the taxpayers with your pc thuggery?

        **************************

From:         Rob Ebright <rebright@sportsimports.com>
To:        Ethnic Studies
Subject: Ward Churchill is a d*ckhead
I must laugh at your so called college department.  Tell Ward, my ancestors killed a lot of Indians and I’m proud of it . . . .

        **********************

From:        david owens <res08hao1@mac.com>
To:        Ethnic Studies
what a collection of f*cking faggots and victocrats.  No wonder “ethnic” studies
is a universal joke. . . .

        *******************

From:        Chance Chamberlain <coloradochance@comcast.net>
To:        Ethnic Studies
Subject: Enjoying the exposure?
. . . . This has got to be one of the most useless departments in the CU system.
. . . “Ethnic Studies” perhaps should be renamed “The Department for Militant
Liberalism, Hate Speech against all Whites, Doctored Resumes and Anti-Americanism” Good idea?

        *************************

 Fax received in Ethnic Studies Office from Westboro Baptist Church
(www.godhatesfags.com):
WBC to picket Univ. Of Colorado Prof. Ward Churchill at the fag-infested Kirkland Project of Hamilton College . . . .  God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Hamilton College, the sodomite whorehouse masquerading as The Kirkland Project. . . and Arminian heretic Ward Churchill . . . .

        ***************************

From:         Dave <david@mattheisen.com>
To:        Ethnic Studies
Dear Ward. . . .
Why don’t you take a silly-*ss muslim name like Mohammed Mohammed Mohammed and wear a diaper on your head. . .
        ***********************

From: TwinDadRay@aol.com
To:        Ward Churchill
I’ll keep this brief, one - too bad you weren’t in the cockpit of one of those
jets.  And two, with a comment like that, I’m glad the Indians were wiped out.
That is all.

        *************************

From:        Don McCurdy <mccurdydm2@earthlink.net>
To:        Ward.Churchill
. . . .  Your people are a lazy bunch of scum!
The Native American, without intigrating himself into the modern world, has
become a burden on society. . . .
I can prove to you that the Native American is nothing more than a blip on the
radar screen on the over all realm of the world. . . . they are just a mole on
the body of the planet.
I am a 52 year old son of the people that have made this miserable patch of
ground called America, the greatest force of good in the world!  Your sorry
ancestors could not have created in their wildest dreams a force that which has
such wide spreading ideals.
We The People Have given Freedom to all of Europe and Japan, and we are . . .
trying to bring fredon to the middle East.
THESE ARE THE HISTORIC FACTS.
. . . . as a native of Colorado I will force you to become a piece of trash in
the dust bin of history with the rest of your “ancestors.”

        ************************

From:        Ralph Lancaster <tulipsangel@earthlink.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
You, sir, are about as much American Indian as my dog. . . .

        *****************************

From:         Davsch@aol.com
To:        Ward Churchill
You’re finished Cigar Store. . . . ..
I’ll be marching in the coming Columbus Day Parade as an honourary Italian for a day.

        ****************************

From: Gerald McCawley <GmcCawley@gentexcorp.com>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . It is a sad day in American education when a “man” with your views can
head anything more than a janitorial crew.  Of course that is why so many of
our kids come out of college with useless degrees in Native Studies, Diversity,
or the like instead of useful, productive ones in science or mathematics.  They
are hard to earn while all you had to do is make a career of whining and
complaining and contributing nothing to society. . . .

        ***************************

From:         Katy Roberts <chas614@yahoo.com>
To:        Ward Churchill
I am working on article about you and want to verify that your Indian name is
“Colostomy Bag That Walks.”

        *************************

From:        Irv Yaffa< hobdeer1@webtv.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . .put a feather on your head and leave this wonderful country that I fought
for. . . .

        *************************

From:        goldmineman@hotmail.com
To:        Ward Churchill
Hey Chief - the “7th Cavalry” is coming after your worthless *ss. . . .

        **********************

From:        Greg Fountain <gregfountain@sbcglobal.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . Move away from the United States.  It’s people like you that always seem
to forget what it cost our forefathers to give you a place to be free to be such
an *ss. . . .

        ***************************

From: sassy <sassy1965@cox.net>
To:        Ward. Churchill@Colorado.EDU
. . . . What I would like to know is why you liberal commi scumbags in this
country hate it here so much . . . WHY THE F*CK ARE YOU HERE. . . .
WE ARE SICK OF YOU LIBERALS RUINING THIS COUNTRY.  We have our problems, mostly due to liberal mental disease, but there is no where else I’d rather live. . . . YOU’RE A SICK MF AND HOPE YOU FRIGIN GET ANAL CANCER FROM YOUR HOMO STUDENTS.

        **************************

From:         Tay Weinstein <tayweinstein@yahoo.com>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . I feel like I am owed a personal explanation by whoever wrote this
bullsh*t, i.e. fake injun, aka Ward Churchill. . . .  I wouldn’t expect a
f*cking squaw pussy like you to understand . . .  Move to Canada, they’d love
you there, and for all you know, thats where your ancestors are from.  F*ck
you, goto hell.

        **************************

From:        stelbt28 <stelbt28@mail.buffalostate.edu>
To:        Ward Churchill
Subject: Info regarding class…
Hey buckwheat. . . . I despise you and your redskin tactics. . . . go find your
reservation and sit on welfare, you worthless scoundrel.

        ************************

From: JOHNBEA882@cs.com
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . according to the Bell Curve you are a prime candidate for having a low
IQ and I do not doubt that one bit, kid.  I can’t believe you get paid to do
anything.  You should be on a reserve harvesting corn and huffing fire water!

        ***********************

From: Scott.Langer@colorado.edu
To:        Ward Churchill
Subject: PLEASE READ
Dear Squanto/Crazy Horse
. . . . IF AMERICA IS SO EVIL WHY DON’T YOU GET THE F*CK OUT OF HERE? . . . .
YOU CANNOT SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT THEN JUST SAY FREEEE SPEECH ITS FREEEEEE NOTHINGGGGG HAS CONSEQUENCESSS IM NATIVE AMERICAN LOOK AT ME I’M NOT GOING TO LET ITALIAN AMERICANS EXPRESS THEIR FREEDOM ON COLUMBUS DAY!  I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE THIS CAMPUS, LEAVE THIS COUNTRY AND GO PREACH YOUR BULLSH*T IN SAUDI ARABIA OR WHERE ELSE THERE ARE “SAND N*GGERS” BECAUSE YOU WILL BE PUT TO DEATH. . .AND MANY PEOPLE WOULD BE HAPPY.

        **************************

From: Nnewyork91101@aol.com
To:        Ward Churchill
You are an absoulute moron.  You have a stick up your *ss about the whole thing of the whites kicking you out of your “land”.  Get over it. . . . You show this country how you and your people are. . . .
       

      ************************

From:        Harold Liles <hrliles@nc.rr.com>
To:        Ward Churchill
I don’t giva e F^$#, ME AND YOU, MY MAN, LETS GET IT ON.  THERE WILL BE NO HATCHETT BURYING, F$*# THE SPELLING, CHEROKEE WANT A BE, “YOU CAN COUNT ON SEEING ME, IN YOUR DREAMS, IN THE SMOKE, IN YOUR SPEACHES YOU WILL HOPE, THE SNATCHER DOES NOT STOKE THE FLAMES OF A RED MANS FEARS” .  (LOOK IT UP B*TCH) WHITE MAN COMETH . . . . IT WILL BE JUST LIKE OLD TIMES WATCHING YOU SKUIRM LIKE THE LITTLE BROWN f*6$@ FROM PANAMA. . . . . . . . ISNT IT GREAT HOW YOU
BRING OUT THE K IN US.  L ER RED MAN ME AND U M/F.  JUNGLE KNOTS COMMING YOUR WAY, SWEETIE PIE. 40 CAL, 9 MIL, AK47, 50CAL, H TO H, HOW U WANT IT, IT WILL BE SHOVED UP YOUR RED *SS THE WORLD TO SEE.

        *************************

From:  American <patrioticcitizen@comcast.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
Subject: I am a concerned Native American
. . . My parents are of European descent, but having been born here, they are
Natives.  I was born here, and I am therefore also a Native American.  However, I suffer along with hundreds of millions of other American who are discriminated against because of simple chronology. . . . [I]t vexes me every time I hear the  term Native American used to describe a tiny fraction of the American population. . . .

[From the same source:]
You are nothing but an Asian-American. . . . [Y]ou never mention the fact that
before the Europeans ever went “abroad,” pseudo-indigenous peoples around the world behaved no differently than Europeans. . . .  There is as much barbaric behavior among the Indians and other ‘natives” around the world to equal any heinous acts, real and alleged, perpetrated by Europeans.

[And again:]

I do not doubt your Indian heritage.  I can see it in your face and ears. . . .
Just because Indians were on the losing side, it does not absolve them of their
own sins. . . .

        *************************

From:         Dennis Tedder <datedder@sify.com>
To:        Ward Churchill
Subject: Commie-pinko bed-wetting left-wing long-haired faggot
. . . . I say f*ck the press.  Given my way, you’d be throw into a dark cell for ten years, then execute you after that, you homo. . . . .
PS: You may be interested in knowing that my god son has killed over 30 ragheads, destroyed 15 tanks and 10 Toyota pickup trucks from his F-18.

[From the same source:]
. . . . I’ve had enough of buck-teeth, genetically inbred, backwood cretins from de souf.  You may also be interested in knowing that in ‘83 I was personably responsible for the death of over 80 Syrians. . . .  Like Hitler, were I in charge it is the pseudo-intellectuals like you who I’d put in a camp first. Muslims and Arabs.  Where is A. Hitler now that we need him?  Even gas wouldn’t handle this many vermin.

        ******************************

From: Michael Groves <michaelgroves@sbcglobal.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . I had a brother who . . . was a professor, and he once said there are very ignorent people teaching in the campuses around the country.  People who shouldn’t be allowed near a person so there garbage garbage dosn’t rub off on people.  Your one of the people he was talking about.  I”m not a man of violence, but I can see things that might happen. . . .. Opinons are like *ss holes, everyone has one, some just stink more then others, then I think some will wipe yours clean.  You Creep.  I’d like to see someone punch you right in the big fat loaud moth.  You ignorent white man.  Your not Native American, you’re a wanna be.

        ********************

From: John F Marrinan <jfmen5@optonline.net>
To:        Ward Churchill
. . . . I only have a BA, MBA, JD . . . I make $650,000 a year. . . .
Maybe you should go back to school and obtain a PhD in world history and you might understand that we fried the Japs because they bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. . . .
I served two tours in Viet Nam . . . and I just love the good old USA. . . . .

        *********************

From: Arnold Giannetta <arnoldg@optonline.net>
To: Ward Churchill
ward, you such big buffalo d*ck, you c*cksuker ingine motherf*cker

        ***************************

From:         NavyHomer@aol.com
To:        Thom1s@aol.com, . . . .
CC:        . . . . Ward.Churchill
[Thom1s writes:]
Personally I’d like to see a resurrection of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and a new set of alien and sedition laws aimed at the domestic pro-terrorist enemies in our midst. . . .
[Response:]
Hallelujah!!  I agree with you 100%! . . . . I’m sending your above recommendation for the “resurrection” of an oversight committee to thwart further expansion of the mind destroying “Churchill-Kent’isms” to my two
Senators. . . . . NEGOCRATS, Robert C. BYRD and John ROCKEFELLER!!!!!
. . . . I encourage you and Salena to persevere and continue your “fight for the “right” as I and others undertake a serious effort to get rid of the nasty/smelly dropppings left on the floor of the Senate by a pathetic, strutting, cocky, BYRD! We are working to rid the national scene of our state’s embarrassment on Capitol hill, the decrepit BYRD in 2006 and the carpet bagging ROCKEFELLER in 2008!
Jim Wright
Huntington, WV