[Marxism] U. of Colorado sociologist comments on Ward Churchill findings

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The Report on Ward Churchill

Tom Mayer
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder

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 celebre. 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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