Re: Thoughts on Ward Churchill

[bitchlab <oudeis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:17 PM 5/25/2006, Louis Proyect wrote:

> I had a brief conversation with Zinn about my idea one day when he was
> speaking at a college near Albany, N.Y. I asked him what he thought about
> the contest. I will never forget his answer. He said, "Of course there
> might be a mistake in the book". The point is this. Even the most highly
> respected authors and historians might not achieve absolute infallibility.
> Ancient history is hazy. Any author should be judged by the whole of his
> work. It would be helpful to also judge the press by the same standard.
> The accuracy of all history textbooks that are currently in use in our
> schools should also be re-evaluated.<<

This is a confusion. People don't come under charges for violating ethical
codes of conduct b/c they were wrong about facts. Being wrong about facts
means you come under attack in a journal article or something.

Ethical conduct violations ABOUT attitude, so his smarmy little whine about
not having the right attitude is an absurd denial of what's gone around him
since he joined the faculty more than 10 years ago.

People come under investigation for violating codes of scholarly conduct.
Every person working in a university comes under the same code: the one
upheld by the USG. A

In the academy, the whole point is that we _know_ we make mistakes and that
knowledge is a _social_ product. The rituals of deference and demeanor are
geared toward instilling that in you every step of the way.

That Ward Churchill tries to confuse the issue by talking about technical
errors, rather than moral errors, is a real laff-a-minute/

He fucked up, including when he wrote articles _for_ junior authors as if
_they_ wrote them. He fucks up some more by pretending that it's common
practice. It is not. It is _especially_ not common practice to use those
articles as evidence. In other words, he wrote the articles to support his
point and then used them in footnotes as independent corroboration of his
point.

That's pretty damn fraudulent Lou. Why you want to defend a guy who shat
all over the leftists and feminists who worked hard to bring about the very
possibility that he got hired at all is beyond me.

By running around calling attention to how he couldn't possibly have done
anything wrong -- and how you can deny ghostwriting is wrong is beyone me
-- he only made it worse. AND he crapped all over all the people who really
have sacrificed their careers so that the university could consider him a
serious candidate in the first place.

he has set back feminist and leftist struggles in the academy by, no doubt,
at least a decade if not more.