[lbo-talk] Ward Churchill and Left-wing Publishers

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Wed May 17 21:55:43 PDT 2006


What's noteworthy is that Ward Churchill's works investigated by the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder (cf. <http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/download/WardChurchillReport.pdf>) are those published by non-scholarly presses -- except Routledge -- and publications:

Ward Churchill, ed., Critical Issue in Native North America (Copenhagen: International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs, 1989)

"The Water Plot," Z Magazine, April 1993

Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993).

Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1994)

Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation (Littleton, CO: Aigis Publications, 1995).

A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1997)

"An American Holocaust? The Structure of Denial." Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Issue No. 33, 2003): 25-76, http://www.sdonline.org/33/ward_churchill.htm

Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003).

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003)

Perversions of Justice: Indigenous People and Angloamerican Law (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2003)

That raises questions: Is it fair to look into what gets published by Z Magazine, AK Press, etc. and hold it up to exactly the same standard as what gets published in scholarly journals and university presses? Is it common for professors to get investigated for "academic misconduct" on account of what they published for non-scholarly audiences?

As I stated in my previous postings, I try to do what I can to ensure accuracy, readability, and so on in editing pieces for MRZine, at times to the point of rewriting things nearly from the ground up, as much as my time allows. (You know me -- my habit is to footnote even goddamn LBO-talk postings.) Monthly Review, being a monthly publication, sets itself even a higher standard (e.g., when things get submitted to MR on topics in which MR editors are not well versed, they get sent to reviewers). But I don't think that other left-wing publishing outfits all do what we try to do, much less do the same as scholarly journals and university presses.

If left-wing scholars, from now on, must expect to have their popular works investigated in a way that Churchill's were, left-wing publishers would all have to change the way they do business and copy scholarly publishing procedures.



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