> Summary of Fallacies in the University of Colorado
> Investigative Committee Report of May 9, 2006
> Ward Churchill May 20, 2006
I finally read the committee report, which is available as a PDF file here:
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/download/WardChurchillReport.pdf
It's quite readable, fair and even-handed. Basically, Churchill seems to be a bit of hothead, which is forgiveable, but as a scholar, the problem is he makes shit up and then insists that anyone who dares criticize his lack of sources is demon-spawn. That's not the way scholarship -- especially the socially committed kind -- is supposed to work.
> Rather than assessing my work in terms of the methods and procedures of my
> discipline, the committee - which included no one with expertise in
> American Indian Studies
> Committee Composition: The committee consisted primarily of CU insiders
> and included no one with expertise in my field.
That won't fly. The committee included Jose Limon, one of the most eminent people in the world of Ethnic Studies, plus a bunch of folks outside of Colorado.
> (Witness the 40 pages of analysis it devotes to the two
> paragraphs I wrote on Fort Clark.) If this standard were to be uniformly
> applied, no scholar could engage in the sort of analysis which brings
> together apparently disparate information to illustrate fundamental
> problems with the status quo.
On the contrary, the problem with the footnotes and sources was crystal clear: there were none. Basically, Churchill got two army posts confused which were hundreds of miles apart, and then claimed over and over and over again that the US Army distributed blankets with smallpox and this caused a pandemic among the Indians. Trouble is, there's no evidence for this. None. Zero. And yet in article after article, he kept repeating and even embellishing the claim. Later version of the story talked about how the US Army was responsible for murdering 100,000 indigenous Americans - a number Churchill simply pulled out of his hat.
> * My two paragraph statement that in 1837 the army deliberately spread
> smallpox among the Mandans at Fort Clark generated 44 pages of analysis on
> the fourth allegation. While basically confirming my conclusions, the
> committee expresses displeasure with the nature, thoroughness and, in some
> cases, the sources of my citations. Although numerous scholars have made
> the same general point without any citation, I am charged with
> falsification, fabrication, and deviation from accepted reporting
> practices.
What citations? Churchill didn't have *any* sources backing up his charge. None. The historical violence done to indigenous Americans is horrible enough, without inventing facts and, worse, repeating those inventions over and over again.
> * The fifth charge involves the use of material from a pamphlet circulated
> by a long-defunct environmental group called Dam the Dams
He plagiarized the stuff. Not just once, but over and over and over again. Again, crystal clear when you look at the sources. Not cool. Undergrads do that and get slapped on the wrist. A professor should really know better.
Churchill is right about one thing, the Right will try to make hay over this, by smearing Ethnic Studies and universities. But that doesn't justify what he did. At the very least, he should have the decency to acknowledge his mistakes and fix them.
-- DRR