It's a very rare university to hire a left-wing scholar, let alone award tenure to him, based on what he published in Z Magazine or even Monthly Review. Publications in left-wing venues are normally not considered as part of academic work. Even _peer-reviewed_ scholarly left-wing journals -- e.g., New Political Science -- aren't regarded as relevant as non-left-wing peer-reviewed journals. Since left-wing publications aren't included in the credit column of academic advancement, I wonder why they suddenly are included in the debit column. (It's possible that, in Ward Churchill's case, an exception has been made for him and his work for the general audience has been accepted as the main part of consideration in hiring and promotion. If the school hired him for being an activist and public intellectual, rather than a standard-issue academic, though, why change the criteria of recognition now?)
Also, different genres and venues of writing come with different standards -- authors, editors, and readers all understand that. What you are entitled to say in a sharp political polemic isn't necessarily an appropriate thing to publish in a scholarly journal -- e.g., take the editors of Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah:
<blockquote>Now that the "uncorrected pages" of Beyond Chutzpah are being sent out to reviewers, it's possible to see what Finkelstein's book actually says. (Disclosure: A senior editor of The Nation served as a freelance editor of Beyond Chutzpah.) The claim that Dershowitz didn't write The Case for Israel has been removed--the UC Press explained in a statement accompanying review copies that "Professor Finkelstein's only claim on the issue was speculative. He wondered why Alan Dershowitz, in recorded appearances after his book was published, seemed to know so little about the contents of his own book. We felt this weakened the argument and distracted from the central issues of the book. Finkelstein agreed." (Jon Wiener, "Giving Chutzpah New Meaning," The Nation, 11 July 2005, <http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050711&s=wiener>)</blockquote>
On the other hand, if you look into all the evidence, research methods, logic of argument, etc., etc., what's in scholarly journals and university presses may very well be less accurate, not to mention less truthful, over all than what's in general publications for the audience on the left. It would be interesting to look into that, but I don't have the time to do it now. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>