Professor Refuses Apology for 9/11 Essay - Page 3 - Big Big Forums

mesue · 02-24-2005, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

Notice that I posted two different columns from opposite ends of the issue.

**

I resent the fact that Churchill would justify terrorist actions by using examples two and three HUNDRED old. Three thousand people - mainly low level clerks & secretaries not the power brokers Churchill derides - died because "... the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood ?" That is why we call is TERRORISM.

I don't think he was trying to justify terrorism just pointing out that terrorism has been going on for sometime in different forms. What he clearly seems to be saying is that we need to look at what our policies are that are causing us to be attacked which seems pretty fundamental to me. Are we creating our own monsters by our policies with some of these other countries? The question at least seem worth looking into.

Jolie Rouge · 03-16-2005, 04:50 PM

Putting the 'Sham' in Shaman
March 15, 2005
By Rich Lowry

Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns," is a sign of our times. Not just because his error-riddled work and reflexive hostility toward American power reflect the mediocrity and stale orthodoxy of much of academia. He also belongs to one of the nation's hottest ethnic groups: the fake Indian.

Churchill has described himself as three-sixteenths Cherokee, or one-sixteenth Cree, or both. But what's a few sixteenths here or there? He has never documented his ancestry, and he gained his membership in the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians when it allowed in people who aren't Indians. Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee who has long known Churchill, told John J. Miller of National Review magazine, "Right away, I could tell he was a faker, because he refused to talk about his family."

In an article in the magazine's latest issue, Miller documents the rash of "professional imposters who have built entire careers by putting the sham into shaman."

According to Miller, "Between 1960 and 2000, the number of Americans claiming Indian ancestry on their census forms jumped by a factor of six." Churchill described himself as a "Caucasian" when he served in Vietnam. He became an "American Indian" when he was filling out an affirmative-action form at the University of Colorado to become a lecturer in Native American studies.

Churchill is part of a great tapestry of American Indian-related fraud. Non-Indian arts and crafts are marketed as "Indian made," a practice Congress has tried to discourage with the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. The possibility of opening casinos sends lily-white opportunists scouring for any drop of Indian blood. Then there are the affirmative-action hucksters, like the California contractor who got preferential treatment on account of his one-sixty-fourth Indian ancestry.

There is no marketing quite like faux Native American status. Forrest Carter wrote a book in the mid-1970s called "The Education of Little Tree" about being raised as an orphan by his Cherokee grandparents. "Students of Native American life," said the introduction to the paperback edition, "discovered the book to be as accurate as it was mystical and romantic." In 1991, the book became a cult smash and hit the paperback nonfiction best-seller list. Then it was switched to the fiction best-seller list.

It turned out that Forrest Carter was Asa Carter, a former white supremacist with a vivid imagination. A recent edition of "Little Tree" explains that it is "autobiographical if not all factually accurate. For instance, Granma is based on family memories of Carter's great-great-great grandmother, who was a full Cherokee, combined with the author's own mother, who read Shakespeare to him when he was a child." Got that?

Carter was in the same tradition as Iron Eyes Cody, the "Indian" actor who made the Keep America Beautiful TV ads so memorable in the 1970s. He had more than a hundred movie roles as an Indian, even though his real name was Espera DeCorti.

Falsified Native American ancestry and experiences are most readily rewarded by those who worship multiculturalism and conceive of Indians as near-mystical beings. Carlos Castaneda tapped into this audience with his New Age classic "The Teachings of Don Juan," a book based on his dubious meetings in the desert with a Yaqui sorcerer who taught him (conveniently for the college market) the marvels of mind-altering drugs. In response to Castaneda and his many imitators, the National Congress of American Indians has denounced "non-Indian 'wannabes' and self-styled New Age shamans."

Indian fakery is reprehensible not just because it is based on lies, but because it falsifies and cheapens the Native American experience to which it is supposed to pay tribute. Miller quotes a writer who calls this "cultural genocide," scoring the fakers for their "misrepresentation and appropriation of indigenous spirituality." The author of those words was Ward Churchill. Who knew? He is not just an apologist for mass murder, but — on his own terms — a practitioner of cultural genocide.

http://www.kingfeatures.com/0305/lowry031505.php3

Jolie Rouge · 03-16-2005, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mesue

What he clearly seems to be saying is that we need to look at what our policies are that are causing us to be attacked which seems pretty fundamental to me. Are we creating our own monsters by our policies with some of these other countries?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ward Churchill

"... the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood ?"

So the actions of those in the 1600's justifies & legitimizes the actions of TERRORISTS in the 2000's ??

mesue · 03-17-2005, 03:25 AM

No of course not, he is merely pointing out that we have a history of abuse toward the Native Americans and also that our history books tend to change or slant history to where our actions look better or are more forgivable. Take Iraq for instance there was a time when we supported Saddam Hussein and had friendly relations with him but the man was just as awful a dictator as he was when we invaded Iraq both times and we knew it and were still friends with him and selling him arms to build up his military.

Jolie Rouge · 05-16-2005, 10:47 PM

Colo. Professor Submits Report in Probe

DENVER (AP) - A University of Colorado professor facing possible dismissal after being accused of plagiarism and lying about his American Indian heritage denied those charges Monday and submitted a lengthy report to a committee investigating his actions.

Ward Churchill, who first came under fire for an essay comparing Sept. 11 victims to the Nazi bureaucrat who planned the Holocaust, offered a 50-page, single-spaced report to a university committee investigating the allegations.

His lawyer, David Lane, said Churchill also submitted his tribal membership card showing he is an associate member of the Keetoowah Cherokee band. Lane said Churchill's membership was based on an investigation by a tribal genealogist. ``Permeating the entire response is 'Look, this is motivated by my First Amendment rights being trampled on. For me to even have to answer this is a denial of my First Amendment rights, but since you asked, here is my answer,''' Lane quoted Churchill as saying.

Churchill, who Lane said was out of town, did not immediately return phone messages left by The Associated Press.

In his response to the plagiarism allegations, Lane said Churchill in one instance simply took articles written by other people and put them together for a chapter of one book, which Churchill did not take credit for. ``His name does not appear as the author of the piece. He was asked to edit it, and he did. He checked for typos, punctuation, grammar, those type of things. He never claims himself as the author,'' Lane said. ``That is not plagiarism.''

05/16/05 23:05

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...27.htm&sc=1110

mesue · 05-17-2005, 03:16 PM

Thank you for finding this and posting it. Jolie have you not noticed that in recent years the few that have said anything at all negative about the Bush Administration or our government have been attacked in every way? And it is not they are proven wrong or evidence comes forward that proves them wrong, thats only fair, but I am talking about this type of attempt to tarnish his name. They could not prove him a liar or get him to back down so they come up with a charge of plagiarism which he clearly denies and his name is not on it and so therefore there can be no plagiarism. Then they tried to say he was stealing the Native American Heritage which he is clearly not, he was recognized by the Native Americans as one of their own long before this essay was written.
I keep hearing Americans talking about freedom of speech but in the current political climate if you exercise that right in a way that the powers that be do not like they will shut you up and shut you down, not by proving you wrong but by attacking on all levels. Do we have freedom of speech in this country when just by stating an opinion, ones job is called in jeopardy, ones life is threatened, what is freedom of speech? To me it is the right to speak out on any issue without fear of retribution from the powers that be.
Whether one likes what he is saying or not this mans freedom of speech is in jeopardy and when one mans freedom of speech is in jeopardy everyone elses is too. I don't neccessarily like everything that is said on here on many issues but each of us have a right to say what we think and how we feel, and even I don't neccessarily like how Ward Churchill said what he did but the main thing was that we need to understand why we were attacked, if we don't look beyond that window of anger we will never change anything and this type of thing will continue.
I guess what I think Ward Churchill is saying is that we should each get up each day and care whether a child around the world has food to eat and we should care whether the one down the street has food also and we should all work to make the whole world better and if we allow our corporations to suck the life out of other countries while impovishing the people who live in that country by the lack of care by these corporations and government policies then terrorism will continue to happen and will never stop as long as we continue on this same path and don't change our ways. I'll get off my soapbox now again thanks for the post of the new info and I am now handing the soapbox over to you.

Jolie Rouge · 05-17-2005, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mesue

Jolie have you not noticed that in recent years the few that have said anything at all negative about the Bush Administration or our government have been attacked in every way?

This is not limited to the current administration. Paula Jones was audited four years in a row by the IRS as well as others who spoke against Clinton or his administration. Seems to run with the territory.

mesue · 05-18-2005, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

This is not limited to the current administration. Paula Jones was audited four years in a row by the IRS as well as others who spoke against Clinton or his administration. Seems to run with the territory.

This has gotten worse over the years continuously, I am not trying to say the democrats are better than republicans on this just that it has progressively gotten worse over the years and now with the Patriot Act they have more power to abuse. I am not anti- republican or pro-democrat I recognize that we need a balance of both in our government, too much of one party upsets the equilibrium and we get to where there is no compromise.

Jolie Rouge · 05-16-2006, 05:14 PM

Colorado Professor Cited for Misconduct
By CHASE SQUIRES, Associated Press Writer
05/16/06

BOULDER, Colo. - An investigation of a professor who likened some of the Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi found serious cases of misconduct in his academic research, including plagiarism and fabrications, a University of Colorado spokesman said Tuesday.

One member of the five-person investigative committee recommended that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill be fired, and four recommended he be suspended, university spokesman Barrie Hartman said.

Churchill, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, declined immediate comment Tuesday.

The professor touched off a firestorm with an essay relating the 2001 terrorist attacks to U.S. abuses abroad. The essay referred to some World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who carried out Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate European Jews during World War II.

University officials had earlier determined Churchill could not be fired for his comments about the terrorist attacks, but they launched an inquiry into allegations about his research. The committee's 125-page report said Churchill falsified, fabricated and plagiarized some of his research, did not always comply with standards for listing other authors' names and failed to follow accepted practice for reporting results.

The decision on his future at the university will be made by school officials later this year. Churchill has said if he is fired, he will sue.

Churchill's wife, Natsu Saito, who also teaches in the ethnic studies department, said Tuesday she had resigned her tenured teaching position at the school but said she and Churchill have no plans to leave Boulder.

In her resignation letter, Saito accused the university of reneging on promises to her and the department, ignoring racial harassment of the department and individuals, and treating Churchill unfairly. She said her decision to resign was not prompted by the pending report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060516/...kxBHNlYwN0bQ--

Jolie Rouge · 05-17-2006, 12:32 AM

While we are unanimous in finding that Professor Churchill’s research misconduct is serious and that we should express the degree of that seriousness through a recommendation about sanctions, our discussions have not led to unanimity about what particular sanctions are warranted. What follows, then, is the only portion of our report that presents multiple views.

* Two members of the Committee conclude and recommend that Professor Churchill should not be dismissed. They reach this conclusion because they do not think his conduct so serious as to satisfy the criteria for revocation of tenure and dismissal set forth in section 5.C.1 of the Law of the Regents, because they are troubled by the circumstances under which these allegations have been made, and because they believe that his dismissal would have an adverse effect on other scholars’ ability to conduct their research with due freedom. These two members agree and recommend that the most appropriate sanction, following any required additional procedures as specified by the University’s rules, is a suspension from University employment without pay for a term of two years.

* Three members of the Committee believe that Professor Churchill’s research misconduct is so serious that it satisfies the criteria for revocation of tenure and dismissal specified in section 5.C.1 of the Laws of the Regents, and hence that revocation of tenure and dismissal, after completion of all appropriate procedures, is not an improper sanction. One of these members believes and recommends that dismissal is the most appropriate sanction; the other two believe and recommend that the most appropriate sanction is suspension from University employment without pay for a term of five years.

Finally, the Committee had the following comments about its report: The Committee notes that the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado define “academic freedom” as “the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established.”

We understand and were careful to distinguish “misconduct in research,” which is addressed by the University of Colorado’s Administrative Policy Statement on Misconduct in Research and Authorship, from the issue of “truth” addressed by the Regents’ Laws’ definition of academic freedom. The Committee observes also that the allegations we were asked to investigate were initiated in the wake of the public outcry concerning some highly controversial essays by Professor Churchill dealing with, among other things, the 9/11 tragedy. While not endorsing either the tone or the contents of those essays, the Committee reaffirms, as the University has already acknowledged, that Professor Churchill’s right to publish his views was protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of free speech. Although those essays played no part in our deliberations, the Committee expresses its concern regarding the timing and perhaps the motives for the University's decision to forward charges made in that context. We point out finally that when Professor Churchill was hired as an Associate Professor with tenure in 1991 and promoted to (full) Professor in 1997, the University knew that he did not have a Ph.D. or law degree, as commonly expected for faculty at this institution, and was aware that he was a controversial public intellectual.

http://www.pirateballerina.com/

Jolie Rouge · 05-17-2006, 12:38 AM

Photo latest fuel in Churchill flap
Author says CU prof used picture of hers without permission
By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
May 16, 2006

The photograph of a child's grave in University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill's 2004 book about Indian boarding schools jumped out at Brenda Child.

That's because Child, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwa tribe, took the picture and published it in 1998 in her own award-winning book on the same subject. "I was surprised that was there because he's never sought my permission to use it and it appeared without my knowing that it would be in his book," said Child, a University of Minnesota faculty member in American studies.

Worse, from Child's standpoint, is the caption Churchill appended to the photograph. It said that half the children at the nation's Indian boarding schools suffered the same fate as the child whose grave is pictured in the photograph.

That figure is a "tremendous exaggeration," Child said. "That is just beyond belief." No historian has an accurate estimate on the true number of deaths, she said.

The flap over the photo comes to light just as the university's standing committee on research misconduct prepares to release a report on its investigation of Churchill on seven charges, including whether Churchill falsified data or misrepresented historical facts in some of his scholarly work. The report could be released as early as today.

Churchill and his attorney, David Lane, could not be reached for comment.

CU officials investigating the research misconduct allegations contacted Child in April to ask about Churchill's use of her photograph.

Because Churchill credits Child at the end of the caption, it could be construed that she endorses the misinformation, Child said.

"I thought, 'I don't want anybody thinking that I said this in my book, because it's not true,' " she said.

CU business professor Joseph Rosse, the member of the committee who contacted Child, declined to elaborate. "I need to protect the whole process, which includes not only respondents, but complainants," Rosse said.

In fact, Child did not file a complaint with CU, and she is not pursuing the matter legally. "I looked at it, I saw it, I thought, 'That's wrong,' but it didn't seem worth pursuing," Child said.

Churchill's 2004 book, Kill the Indian, Save the Man, and Child's 1998 volume, Boarding School Seasons, go over an ugly piece of U.S. history that is not in dispute.

Beginning in the 1870s, Indian children as young as 5 years old were taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools far from their homes. The intent was to strip Indians of their culture and make them more like "Americans."

The children were given Christian names, their hair was shorn, their native clothes were replaced by European garb and they were forbidden to speak their native languages. Parents who objected were confronted by reservation police or even U.S. soldiers. Nineteen Hopi fathers were imprisoned at Alcatraz, the nation's harshest prison at the time, for eight months in 1895, according to the Library of Congress Web site.

Some of the schools exist today, but reforms begun in the late 1920s softened the harshness of the institutions.

Child's book, which won the North American Indian Prose Award, is based on letters written by students at the schools and their families, including Child's relatives.

Churchill's book dwells heavily on similarities between the treatment of Indians and the Nazi Holocaust, a major theme in all of Churchill's work.

He credits Child's book in 15 footnotes. Child said the attributions are correct and the quotations are rendered accurately.

But then there's the photo.

It shows the gravestone of a 16- year-old Chippewa boy who died at a Kansas Indian school in 1902. Child said she doesn't mind that Churchill misspelled her name as "Childs" in the caption; it's rendered correctly in the footnotes. But she doesn't understand why Churchill exaggerated the number of deaths. "If several students a year died in any particular school, that's a tragedy, especially for children separated from their families. It doesn't need to be exaggerated," she said.

"Which is kind of the whole thing on Churchill," she added. "What happened to Indians in the United States is bad enough, without making anything up."

Child's grandmother attended the Indian boarding school at Flandreau, S.D., in the 1920s. "I want to portray that history as fairly as I can and as honestly as I can," she said.

On the horizon

The University of Colorado committee that investigated research misconduct allegations against professor Ward Churchill is expected to release its findings today. Here's what happens next:

• CU officials plan to hold an afternoon press conference at the school's Coors Events and Conference Center.

• The report also will be available online.

• After Churchill and his attorney have time to respond to the findings, the standing committee will make a recommendation to the chancellor and provost about what action - if any - CU should take against Churchill.

• The final decision will be left to Chancellor Phil DiStefano. CU officials have said they would like to announce that decision within the next month.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...701982,00.html