THE REPORT ON WARD CHURCHILL
by Tom Mayer
Swans, CA
June 19 2006
[Ed. Professor Mayer of the Univesity of Colorado at Boulder wrote this
text before going on a trip. He sent it "to several local newspapers,
but they all rejected it because it was too long." Our thanks to Louis
Proyect and David Anderson who brought this valuable contribution to
our attention.]
(Swans – June 19, 2006) I have finally finished a careful reading
of the 124 page report about the alleged academic misconduct of
Ward Churchill. Often, but not always, I have been able to compare
the statements in the report with the relevant writings of Professor
Churchill. Although the report by the committee on research misconduct
clearly entailed prodigious labor, it is a flawed document requiring
careful analysis. The central flaw in the report is grotesque
exaggeration about the magnitude and gravity of the improprieties
committed by Ward Churchill. The sanctions recommended by the
investigating committee are entirely out of whack with those imposed
upon such luminaries as Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and
Lawrence Tribe, all of whom committed plagiarisms far more egregious
than anything attributed to Professor Churchill.
The text of the report suggests that the committee’s judgments
about the seriousness of Churchill’s misconduct were contaminated
by political considerations. This becomes evident on page 97 where
the committee acknowledges that "damage done to the reputation
of … the University of Colorado as an academic institution is
a consideration in our assessment of the seriousness of Professor
Churchill’s conduct." Whatever damage the University may have sustained
by employing Ward Churchill derives from his controversial political
statements and certainly not from the obscure footnoting practices
nor disputed authorship issues investigated by the committee. Indeed,
the two plagiarism charges refer to publications that are now fourteen
years old. Although these charges had been made years earlier, they
were not considered worthy of investigation until Ward Churchill
became a political cause celèbre. Using institutional reputation to
measure misconduct severity amounts to importing politics through
the back door.
The report claims that Professor Churchill engaged in fabrication
and falsification. To make these claims it stretches the meaning of
these words almost beyond recognition. Fabrication implies an intent
to deceive. There is not a shred of evidence that the writings of Ward
Churchill contain any assertion that he himself did not believe. The
language used in the report repeatedly drifts in an inflammatory
direction: disagreement becomes misinterpretation, misinterpretation
becomes misrepresentation, misinterpretation becomes falsification.
Ward may be wrong about who was considered an Indian under the General
Allotment Act of 1887 or about the origins of the 1837-1840 smallpox
epidemic among the Indians of the northern plains, but the report
does not establish that only a lunatic or a liar could reach his
conclusions on the basis of available evidence.
The charges of fabrication and falsification all derive from short
fragments within much longer articles. The report devotes 44 pages
to discussing the 1837-1840 smallpox epidemic. One might think that
Ward had written an entire book on this subject. In fact this issue
occupies no more than three paragraphs in any of his writings. In
each of the six essays cited in the report, all reference to this
epidemic could have been dropped without substantially weakening the
argument. To be sure, the account given by Ward is not identical to
that found in any of his sources, but it is a recognizable composite of
information contained within them. The committee peremptorily dismisses
Churchill’s contention that his interpretation of the epidemic was
influenced by the Native American oral tradition. This is treated
as no more than an ex post facto defense against the allegation of
misconduct. The committee also discounts Native American witnesses who
support Churchill’s interpretations as well as his fidelity to oral
accounts. The centrality of the oral tradition is evident in many of
Churchill’s writings. His acknowledgments frequently include elders,
Indian bands, and the American Indian Movement. He often integrates
Native American poetry with his historical analysis. Three of his books
with which I am familiar, Since Predator Came (1995), A Little Matter
of Genocide (1997), and Struggle for the Land (2002) all begin with
poems. As a thirty-year veteran of the intense political struggles
within the American Indian Movement, Ward Churchill could not avoid
a deep familiarity with the oral tradition of Native American history.
By addressing only a tiny fragment of his writings, the report
implies that Ward tries to overawe and hoodwink his readers with
spurious documentation. Anyone who reads an essay like "Nits Make
Lice: The Extermination of North American Indians 1607-1996" with its
612 footnotes will get a very different impression. Churchill, they
will see, goes far beyond most writers of broad historical overviews
in trying to support his claims. He often cites several references
in the same footnote. Ward is deeply engaged with the materials he
references and frequently comments extensively upon them. He typically
mounts a running critique of authors like James Axtell, Steven Katz,
and Deborah Lipstadt. Readers will see that Churchill is familiar with
a formidable variety of materials and can engage in a broad range of
intellectual discourses.
Ward Churchill is not just another writer about the hardships suffered
by American Indians. He offers a very distinctive vision of what David
Stannard calls the "American Holocaust." According to Churchill,
the extermination of Native Americans was neither accidental,
nor inadvertent, nor unwelcome among the invading Europeans. On
the contrary, it was largely deliberate, often planned (sometimes
by the highest political authorities), and frequently applauded
within the mainstream media. "[A] hemispheric population estimated
to have been as great as 125 million was reduced by something over 90
percent….and in an unknown number of instances deliberately infected
with epidemic diseases" (A Little Matter of Genocide, p. 1). Moreover,
Ward maintains that the American Holocaust continues to this day. He
thinks it is fully comparable to, and even more extensive than, the
Nazi genocide of the Jewish people during World War Two. The endemic
chauvinism and Manichaean sensibility this process has induced within
our political culture helps explain Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq, and
other American exercises in technological murder.
"If there is one crucial pattern that most affects our assessment,"
writes the committee, "it is a pattern of failure to understand the
difference between scholarship and polemic, or at least of behaving
as though that difference does not matter" (p. 95). Taking away the
negative imputation, I can agree with the latter observation. Ward
believes we are all in a race against time. Thus the main point of
historical scholarship is not to recount the past, but rather to
provide intellectual ammunition for preventing future genocides now
in the making.
Like most scholars, Churchill practices an implicitly Bayesian
(a statistical term) form of analysis. That is, he evaluates the
plausibility of assertions and the credibility of evidence partly on
the basis of his prior beliefs. That government officials connived in
generating the 1837-40 smallpox epidemic seems far more plausible to
Ward than to the investigating committee precisely because he thinks
this is what American governments are inclined to do. He discounts many
of the so-called primary sources cited in the report because their
authors despise Indians or wish to conceal their own culpability in
spreading the epidemic. And contrary to what the report says (p. 96),
many first rate scholars focus on proving their own hypotheses rather
than considering all available evidence even-handedly. Einstein,
for example, spent the last three decades of his life trying to
disprove quantum mechanics while largely disregarding evidence in
its favor. This is not research misconduct.
Virtually all the mass exterminations of recent times have evoked
amazingly divergent historical assessments and numerical estimates.
This is true of the Armenian genocide, Stalin’s collectivization
campaign and purges, the Nazi holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
the Great Leap Forward, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Rwanda. In some cases
there is dispute about whether the extermination even happened, and
even when mass killing is acknowledged, numerical estimates sometimes
differ by a factor of ten or even more. These differing interpretations
are almost never politically innocent but, when honestly advanced,
they do not constitute research misconduct.
Neither do Ward Churchill’s assessments of genocidal activities by
John Smith or by the U.S. Army at Fort Clark.
The operational definition of academic misconduct used by the
investigating committee is so broad that virtually anyone who writes
anything might be found guilty. Not footnoting an empirical claim is
misconduct. Citing a book without giving a page number is misconduct.
Referencing a source that only partially supports an assertion is
misconduct. Referencing contradictory sources without detailing their
contradictions is misconduct. Citing a work considered by some to
be unserious or inadequate is misconduct. Footnoting an erroneous
claim without acknowledging the error is misconduct. Interpreting a
text differently than does its author is misconduct. Ghost writing
an article is misconduct. Referencing a paper one has ghost written
without acknowledging authorship is misconduct. No doubt this list
of transgressions could be greatly expanded. I strongly suspect that
many people who vociferously support the report have read neither it
nor any book or essay Ward Churchill has ever written. Perhaps this
should be deemed a form of academic misconduct.
If any of the sanctions recommended by the investigating committee
are put into effect, it will constitute a stunning blow to academic
freedom. Such punishment will show that a prolific, provocative, and
highly influential thinker can be singled out for entirely political
reasons; subjected to an arduous interrogation virtually guaranteed
to find problems; and then severed from academic employment. It
will indicate that public controversy is dangerous and that genuine
intellectual heresy could easily be lethal to an academic career. It
will demonstrate that tenured professors serve at the pleasure of
governors, political columnists, media moguls, and talk show hosts.
Most faculty members never say anything that requires protection. The
true locus of academic freedom has always been defined by the
intellectual outliers. The chilling effect of Ward Churchill’s academic
crucifixion upon the energy and boldness of these freedom-defining
heretics will be immediate and profound.
The authors of the report on Ward Churchill present themselves as
stalwart defenders of academic integrity. I have a quite different
perspective. I see them as collaborators in the erosion of academic
freedom, an erosion all too consonant with the wider assault upon
civil liberties currently underway. The authors of the report claim
to uphold the intellectual credibility of ethnic studies. I wonder
how many ethnic studies scholars will see it that way. I certainly
do not. Notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary, I see
committee members as gendarmes of methodological and interpretive
orthodoxy, quite literally "warding" off a vigorous challenge to
mainstream understandings of American history. Confronted by the
evidence presented in this report, the appropriate response might be
to write a paper critiquing the work of Ward Churchill. Excluding him,
either permanently or temporarily, from the University of Colorado
is singularly inappropriate.
Ward Churchill is one of the most brilliant persons I have encountered
during my 37 years at this university. His brilliance is not
immediately evident due to his combative manner and propensity for
long monologues. Whenever reading one of his essays I feel in the
presence of a powerful though hyperbolic intellect. The permanent
or temporary expulsion of Ward Churchill would be an immense loss
for CU. In one fell swoop we would become a more tepid, more timid,
and more servile institution. His expulsion would deprive students
of contact with a potent challenger of accepted cognitive frameworks.
The social sciences desperately need the kind of challenge presented
by Ward Churchill. His most strident claims may be rather dubious, but
they stimulate our scholarly juices and make us rethink our evidence
and assumptions. One of his main objectives, Ward has often said, is
"to bring consideration of American Indians into the main currents
of global intellectual discourse." In this endeavor he has been a
splendid success.
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