Reaping What You Sow

A couple of long years ago I did a couple of items here on “Professor” Ward Churchill at UC/Boulder. He provoked outrage when he declared quite vocally that the victims, those men, women and children that died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 were the guilty parties, deserving of their fate and likening them to Adolph Eichmann and the Nazis. That would certainly be a warped opinion if put forth by a deluded, drug-addled street person. From a tenured professor at a major university it seemed ill-advised at the very least.

First Comments On Ward Churchill

The Circus Comes to Town

The incident brought the case of Churchill under the lens of public scrutiny. In fairly short order it was revealed that he received his education from a somewhat questionable college that catered to extreme left wing views and wasn’t accredited. He was hired to teach a single course on Native American issues and based on that experience he was offered, first a full professorship and almost immediately a department chairmanship—all of this without possessing a PhD!

Credentials lacking, further checking uncovered clear evidence of plagiarism in his writings and very questionable sourcing of his research. In short, he was demonstrably a fraud. Not only was his willingness to appropriate other’s writing as his own apparent, he also was uncovered as posting art work under his own name which was simply an image reversal of another artist’s painting.

In short order, Churchill became a cause celebre for the extreme leftists on the Boulder campus (who are the majority by a large margin) and the academic apologists of the nation as they rallied to his cause. Academic freedom, they shouted. He has a right to spout whatever drivel he wishes to promote intellectual curiosity in his students. Whether right, reasonable, accurate or not, he should not be muzzled. TV cameras followed his every appearance and provided a forum for his agony. He would fight, he would stand up for Native Americans, and he would prevail.

But, then it was discovered that even his Native American-ness was very questionable. He was it seems the recipient of sort of an associate membership in some miniscule tribe. You have to be an Indian to be an authority on Native American studies apparently, so he bought himself an ethnicity.

Now, after researching the allegations and conducting in-depth discussions the Board of Regents has finally canned this fraud.

Standing Up for Truth

Naturally the defenders of the twit continue to obfuscate the issue with First Amendment pronouncements. That clearly isn’t the issue. The issue is that the guy is a liar, a cheat, a loon and a fraud. He isn’t qualified to teach at a pre-school. He’s a throw-back to the revisionism of the ‘60s when guys like Timothy Leary were confusing research with recreational mind-blowing drugs.

University of Colorado/Boulder has done the right thing. It took them long enough, but eventually they got around to it. Now we can look forward to Churchill’s posturing in court and hopefully it will cost him a lot of money and strongly confirm his unsuitability. One can only hope.