CNews 30March07
Ward Churchill speaks at Southwest Minnesota State University
Excerpt:
"This land here, they call it the Upper Sioux and the Lower Sioux and even Fort Snelling," Churchill said. "This is ALL Sioux land, and I’m just explaining to you how it became otherwise. There was scalp-bountying. There was mass slaughter. Point for point, it is the same as the Nazi (genocide) against the Jews ..."
The only thing that was different was the machinery, yet while Nazis used factories and death camps, Americans had a similar mechanized and institutional approach to killing Indians — with just earlier technology, he said.
Same old, same old, you say. Well, sure, but you have to love the pic that accompanies the article:
CNews 29March07
DU professor Dean Saitta reviews the case, checks the source—then ignores overwhelming evidence to refill his mug of kool-aid (via those anonymous scamps at wardchurchill.net):
As an anthropologist I am familiar with Churchill’s scholarship. I have studied critiques of Churchill’s work (especially Professor Thomas Brown’s, as published in a recent issue of Plagiary), and consulted about Churchill’s work with colleagues who are expert in the field of Native American history.
[...]
After a summertime of interacting on various internet sites with scholars and citizens who are highly critical of, if not deeply hostile to, both Churchill and the TDS petitioners, I’m now compelled to urge with even greater conviction that Chancellor DiStefano reconsider and reverse his decision to terminate Professor Churchill’s employment.
...Meanwhile, CU's faculty organ Silver & Gold says the P & T Committee's report on Ward Churchill should be in CU President Hank Brown's hand next week. (ht Leah)
Excerpt:
after the P&T dismissal panel issues its report, CU officials and Churchill have 10 business days to submit responses, and then the report and responses are submitted to the president, who has up to 15 business days to decide how to proceed....Even our old friend Eric Cheyfitz makes an appearance in the article (he testified on Churchill's behalf during the investigation)—as a "a legal scholar who teaches federal Indian law." Amazing what English professors know these days. Maybe he studied law the same place Russell Means did.
According to the policy, if the president and the P & T panel concur that dismissal is warranted, the president would forward the case to the regents for a final decision. If the president does not believe dismissal is warranted—regardless of the P&T recommendation—the case would be closed.
CNews 26March07
Hank Brown has his "Mission Accomplished!" moment Inside Higher Education:
Tenure is to higher education what Latin is to romance languages: essential to its fabric, not widely understood by the public and in danger of becoming anachronistic.
Yet tenure is as vital to the success of higher education as Latin is to the structure of our language. But in its current form, the age-old process of promoting and retaining quality faculty members is in danger of going the way of Olde English.The first step toward an effective tenure system is examining and strengthening what exists.
[...]
Our university found itself in the midst of a crisis in 2005 when a firestorm erupted over a tenured professor, Ward Churchill. Questions about tenure were a small but important part of the controversy, causing some of Colorado’s elected leaders to contemplate intervention into and oversight of tenure.
If there was a silver lining, it was that the episode galvanized faculty leaders and the Board of Regents into action. The university in March 2005 launched a comprehensive, systematic review of all its tenure-related processes, from point of hire through post-tenure review and dismissal for cause. It proved to be perhaps the most thorough tenure review effort ever undertaken at a major American university system, and the 40 recommendations adopted from the year-long process are leading to a clearer, more robust and more rigorous tenure system.
[...]
How do we create and maintain a rigorous and competitive tenure system that best meets the needs of our students and our publics, and best positions America for long-term success? Tomorrow’s students and the next generation of Americans deserve nothing less.
Way to cut through the gordian knot, Hank! We eagerly await your impassioned defense of infibulation.
It took the Rocky Mountain News a full week to notice Ward Churchill's claim that he has black ancestry (made during the recent Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair). We don't mind orchestrating and directing the Denver media in their Churchill coverage (just doing our job, Mr. Rove), but we do wish they'd try to keep up.
OT: Washington state legislators have the perfect solution for low math and science test scores: Stop testing. (via Opinion Journal)
State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test.
The idea is to do something about the fact that so few students pass the math and science sections. But the proposed remedy is generating a lot of concern because it could mean big changes in what students are expected to learn, and how they're tested.
CNews 25March07
Here's an interesting debate, between David Horowitz and Cary Nelson, president of AAUP . This assertion by Horowitz caught our eye:
The reference that Professor Nelson made to my claim about Ward Churchill that he said he looks for evidence to support his pre-existing beliefs is something that Ward Churchill actually told the faculty panel that investigated him. Churchill actually said this; I didn’t make it up. In describing his research method, he told the panel something like “I know what I want to prove and then my research is finding the proof of it.” That’s not scholarly method. I think we all recognize that.Yes, that doesn't sound like "scholarly method" to us, either. But more importantly, where did Horowitz get his information (apparently first mentioned in his latest book, Indoctrination U) about specific testimony during the subcommittee's supposedly private deliberations?
CNews 23March07
From our burgeoning Your Tax Dollars At Work department: According to The Jawa Report, the owner of the virulently anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-terrorism website Aljazeerah.info (not affiliated with the television company), is none other than Dr. Hassan A. El-Najjar, a sociology professor at Dalton State College in Georgia. (via LGF)
CNews 22March07
Not really OT: Drunkablog takes a look at the latest from an Ethnic Studies professor he calls "the lesbian* Ward Churchill" (NTTAWWT™). We'd post an excerpt, but you really must read it all.
* We have no evidence that Professor Dunbar-Ortiz is anything but heterosexual (NTTAWWT™), and neither does Drunkablog. He was just being funny.
The Rocky Mountain News has decided to join the ranks of the clueless, insisting that Ward Churchill has been fired (not merely informed of CU's intent to fire him, subject to endless appeals, hearings, and no doubt several slo-mo rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors). (ht Retired Bill)
Excerpt:
University of Colorado Regents are poised to adopt rules that will sharply reduce the time it takes to fire a tenured professor....Still drawing his $96,000 salary. Yup, that's got "fired" written all over it.
The new rules come as the case of fired ethnic studies professor Ward Churchil continues to drag through the appeals process, nine months after he received his pink slip for violations that included plagiarism, inventing facts and publishing essays under pseudonyms which he then quoted as scholarly sources. He remains on leave but is drawing his $96,000 salary.
CNews 20March07
According to this press release, Ward Churchill will be speaking at Southwest Minnesota State University March 28, at 7pm. According to the release, "[Churchill's] appearance is part of the Difficult Dialogues initiative at SMSU. The event is sponsored by SMSU, the Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies program, and is funded by the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues grant to the university." They must be talking about this $100,000 grant, part of which went to One Ummah Consulting, headed by Nehrwr Abdul-Wahid, a former University of Minnesota engineering student, now a "diversity consultant." A generation ago, this was called "mau-mauing the flak-catchers"; now it's called "diversity consulting." Is this a great country, or what?
...Speaking of diversity (and who isn't?), we just learned (via LGF) that there's a new documentary out called Indoctrinate U. Go here or click their snazzy logo below to watch the trailer. PS: You can also sign-up for a local screening.
CNews 19March07
More short clips on IndyBay of Ward Churchill's weekend spree at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair (first clip, second clip, third clip, fourth clip, fifth clip, sixth clip)
The fourth clip is a bunch of disingenuous bloviating about how Churchill's opinions and those of the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) differ ("I say we use a knife"; "Well, I say we just pull the skin off, like with a rabbit"—in either case, of course, the cat can quit worrying about that pesky hairball problem).
In the fifth clip (recorded during the Q&A), we learn that Churchill continues to claim to be a member of an established tribe, as well as the less-than-startling news that he also has black ancestors. Frankly, we're surprised Churchill doesn't go whole-hog and claim he was born a small black child.
In the sixth clip (also recorded during the Q&A), Churchill adds lexographer to his already long list of expertises, redefining the word ignorance to mean "to have the information and ignore it." Perhaps he's only speaking of his own condition.
From our Your Tax Dollars At Work department: The DMV, military hospitals, the US Postal Service, CU.
We couldn't resist when we saw a link to a website that promises to answer the burning question: "What Famous Leader Are You?" So naturally, we answered their 18-question test the way we would expect Ward Churchill to answer the questions (if he were being honest, you know, just this once). Here's the result:
...We're firmly convinced of the scientific veracity and validity of this test, even though the website says the test is for amusement only.
...Well, we were convinced, anyway, until we took the test as ourselves. The results:
CNews 18March07
No detailed news of the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair available yet, just this one sweetness-and-light blurb:
Ward Churchill closed the day with a passionate and articulate speech calling for unity between people struggling for justice. It was a strong reminder that although we may have our differences of opinion and sometimes not even get along personally, we need to work together. The forces of the status quo—private security corporations such as Black Water, the army, police and federal agents, to name a few—are definitely united against us. Only together can we progress towards liberation and freedom from oppression....we'll keep you posted.
Update: IndyBay has downloadable video (first clip, second clip) of The Perfesser's "passionate and articulate speech" yesterday. [
Update II: Nothing new, exciting, or even "passionate and articulate" in the admittedly brief video clips at IndyBay. In the second clip, Churchill launches into a longwinded and pointless apologia for his fellow fraud, Russell Means. In the first, The Perfesser urges the various factions of the Left to unite. We're guessing Churchill got "passionate and articulate" while they were loading fresh tape into the videocam. We also note with interest that there are no warnings or other legal sabre-rattlings from Churchill's sock-puppets about filming or taping his dearthless prose. Funny, that.
CNews 17March07
A new (and delightfully named) PB commenter, Elvis Burger, points out that The Perfesser isn't the only CU academic in the Bay Area this weekend keeping the oppressive capitalist hegemony alive by spending money buying books and other crap fashioned in the workshops of the anarcho-elves with their own tiny little brains.
From our The Difference Between Politicians and Drunken Sailors Is That Drunken Sailors Can't Print Their Own Money department: Colorado has a Poet Laureate?!
OT: Over at the Rocky, Jason Salzman mistakes justifiable schadenfreude for condescension
PB reader Leah points out that William Stewart Lawler, who we erroneously referred to yesterday as "this new guy", has actually been teaching CU Ethnic Studies classes for several years. We blame a bad reaction to expired Metamucil.
CNews 16March07
Could it be that Benjamin Whitmer, understudy to Ward Churchill and proud publisher of try-works, is not teaching any classes at CU this summer (pdf, page 10)? If this is true, and not just some bureaucratic oversight, we wonder who CU will pull off the little bus to teach Churchill's classes... And also (if this is true), then it looks like Whitmer will have mucho time to split between try-works and updating his c.v. Say, here's a great time-saver, "Professor" Whitmer: Use try-works as your c.v. What college hiring committee could fail to be impressed (impressed!) with the quality of writing, vocabulary, and just damn good critical thinking try-works showcases? And one last question: Who's this new guy, William Stewart Lawler, who is teaching an Ethnic Studies class at CU this summer?
BTW: Churchill continues to draw his $90K+ salary, despite the fact that he is also absent from CU's summer schedule.
Update: PB reader Leah points out that William Stewart Lawler, who we erroneously referred to above as "this new guy", has actually been teaching CU Ethnic Studies classes for several years.
Don't forget: Ward Churchill will be Speaking Truth To Power™ tomorrow at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. Bring your chicken-hats, kiddies.
OT: While The Perfesser lout-shouts in the Bay area this weekend, some real Indians will be tracking Osama (via Winefred's Well)
CNews 15March07
According to this website, Ward Churchill will reunite with Lynne Stewart in NYC March 31st to participate in a fundraiser called "PARALLELS: The Coming War At Home"
CNews 14March07
Looks like Noj called it. Here's our first, and so far, only response from CU, recieved just moments ago:
University of Colorado President Hank Brown asked me to look into your concern outlined in your e-mail of March 14 and respond to you. After reviewing the matter, university legal counsel has determined that the postings you refer to are personal correspondence outside the purview of the university. Should Mr. Crowell be concerned for his safety, that is a matter for law enforcement. Thank you for writing.
Sincerely,
Ken McConnellogue
Associate Vice President for University Relations
Office of the President
Cornell University attempts to reassure itself that Eric Cheyfitz is not an idiot, or at least not a sock-puppet for Ward Churchill:
Excerpt (emphasis ours, refutations we leave as an exercise for the student):
Cheyfitz notes that no external sources raised the allegations. All charges were brought by interim chancellor Phil DeStefano [sic], who proceeded to serve as both judge and jury of the case.
“[This is] forbidden by Boulder’s own academic standards,” Cheyfitz said. In addition, Cheyfitz noted that the actual charges of research misconduct did not qualify as examples of plagiarism.
“You can’t call something plagiarism unless you can tell there was intent to defraud or intent to gain,” Cheyfitz said.
According to Cheyfitz, the instances of research misconduct specified in the report fell outside these guidelines.
“The most you can accuse him of is sloppiness I guess … People are looking for ways to make a case when there is no case.”
Those madcap anonymous folks over at wardchurchill.net are pleased as punch that an Open Letter calling for CU to "reverse its recommendation to dismiss Ward Churchill" is going to be published as a full-page ad in the April 12th issue of the New York Review of Each Other's Books (we may be a little off on the name, there). They're not so pleased that, while they got some sucker to pony-up a credit card to pay for the ad placement, they have to somehow cough up reimbursement to the tune of $9,000. We don't have the heart to tell them it wasn't "CU " that made the recommendation to dismiss Ward Churchill, it was five of his fellow professors, two of whom are from other universities.
CU instructor posts death threat on blog
As reported first on the Drunkablog and then here on PirateBallerina, a posting on CU instructor Benjamin Whitmer's try-works blog has threatened the life of anti-Churchill documentarian Grant Crowell:
Comes the moment of our forthcoming 1-on-1 in Chicago, Walking Eagle, we’re volunteering right here and now to administer unto you a desperately-needed hot lead enema.The post, authored and published this past Sunday by Whitmer's pseudonymous co-contributor "Charley Arthur" (who, since he began contributing to try-works well over a year ago, has demonstrated a remarkably intimate, even encyclopedic, knowledge of Ward Churchill's personal and professional history), clearly identifies Grant Crowell as the "Walking Eagle" to whom the post refers.
Two or three in succession, if need be.
[...]
Should the remedy fail, youth-in-Asia may be the only solution to your pollution.
PB contacted numerous CU administrators, including CU Ethnic Studies chairman Albert Ramirez (to whom Whitmer and Churchill are responsible) yesterday evening for comment, but as of 2:30pm today (Tuesday, March 13, 2007), no CU representative had responded.
Whitmer originally posted pseudonymously on the try-works blog for two years, calling himself "John Moredock" (historically, a notorious Indian-hater—Whitmer maintains he adopted the pen-name as an ironic gesture—and fictionally, a character in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man; the term "try-works" itself is an obsolete term for blubber-rendering facilities). Whitmer's true identity was uncovered by Crowell, who during an email exchange with "Moredock," examined the email headers and learned Moredock's emails were actually coming from Benjamin Whitmer, a University of Colorado instructor who teaches for CU's Ethnic Studies department.
When news of Moredock's actual identity was publicized on both PirateBallerina and the Drunkablog, Whitmer erased every vestige of his blog—entries, comments, book recommendations, everything. While the blog did publish the occasional pro-Churchill essay, its notoriety was based primarily on Whitmer and "Arthur's" never-ending sophomoric fantasies of the fates they wished upon their myriad enemies, those fantasies often sexually sadistic in nature (eg: one of Whitmer's posts on try-works wished for the editor of Westword, a Denver periodical, to be "fucked [...] with a wood-rasp"; another said of Rocky Mountain News opinion-page editor Vince Carroll: "Fuck him with every ghastly medieval torture device known to humankind.... Had we our way, we'd stake his lower intestine to the ground and make the motherfucker take a half-mile walk.")
[Update: the Drunkablog has even more Whitmer & Co. quips here.]
Shortly after the panicked deletion of two year's worth of such postings, Whitmer began posting to try-works once again, this time under his own name, and for a couple of weeks, the blog was rather subdued—at least by comparison to its earlier incarnation. Whitmer seemed at first concerned only with belittling the significance of his unmasking by Crowell, then in claiming "everybody else already knew" his true identity; still later, he claimed that he had, in fact, unmasked himself.
The past couple of weeks or so, however, Whitmer's blog has returned to its former levels of sadistic vitriol, of which "Charley Arthur's" post Sunday is an excellent example. Here's a larger excerpt of that post, which includes material contiguous to the above-quoted threat:
And tell us that your next “expose” ain’t gonna be a verbatim excerpt from an exclusive interview with Snapple, explaining how Churchill really DID off Jon Benet as a cover for his orchestration of the Oklahoma oil field murders back in the mid-20s, or the transcript of a session with an institutionalized schizo-paranoid who’s “proven” that the tall guy on the grassy knoll credited with the Kennedy head-shot was actually Churchill.
Ah, but you can’t, can you, you shitlicking little cocksucker?
Your propensity to lie is no less pathologically compulsive than Ronda Kelly’s to deny, isn’t it?
Hence, a humanitarian gesture on our part: Comes the moment of our forthcoming 1-on-1 in Chicago, Walking Eagle, we’re volunteering right here and now to administer unto you a desperately-needed hot lead enema.
Two or three in succession, if need be.
It’s not really clear that your condition hasn’t already become too advanced for even such radical intervention as that to be effective, but it’s the only thing we can imagine that stands a chance of purging you of the rapidly-increasing quantity of maggot-infested excrement clogging the bowels of what, in your hyper-constipated state of delusion, you imagine to be a mind.
Should the remedy fail, youth-in-Asia may be the only solution to your pollution.
Update: Whitmer has published a response of sorts, wherein he attempts to vitiate this report through the simple (and, ultimately, ineffective) expedient of noting that he didn't write the post, but rather, "Charley Arthur" did. Since "Charley Arthur" is a pseudonym, this is tantamount (and may very well be identical) to Whitmer claiming "John Moredock" wrote it.
Update II: And "Charley Arthur" adds his response(s)—both are scenery-chewing renditions of what we'd have to guess are his impression of an ignorant old drunk.
CNews 13March07
A source that wishes to remain anonymous sends us what he purports to be the title page from the manuscript of Ward Churchill's next book. We're skeptical, but the footnoting is certainly prodigious enough to be the genuine article.
Wondering whether CU administrators shared "adjunct professor" (pronounced "part-time instructor") Benjamin Whitmer's sense of humor (as highlighted over at the Drunkablog yesterday), we emailed a request for comment to some of those administrators last night. Judging by the huge upswing in colorado.edu visits showing up in the PB logs this morning, we're guessing those administrators share at least an academic curiosity in Whitmer's unique brand of satire.
As always, we'll keep you posted. [update here]
CNews 12March07
Looks like the Drunkablog found more zany "satire" (toward the bottom of the post, labeled "Update") over at the blog of that irrepressable scamp Benjamin Whitmer. Of course, some uncharitable, humorless sorts might consider it a baldfaced threat, but us? Oh, how we laughed!
Don't forget to mark your calendars: At 5pm this Saturday, Ward Churchill is scheduled to speak at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. Always an intellectual feast (could you forgive yourself if you missed this? Or this?).
TechNote: We've added snap.com's "link preview" feature to our main page. Resting your cursor over any hotlinked text will generate a small snapshot of the webpage to which we're linking. We don't know how useful this feature will be to our readers, so let us know if it proves more annoying than edifying.
From our Mental Images Of Ward Churchill We Know You Could Have Lived Without But We're Feeling Unusually Cruel Today department:
"After I’d put [my wife, Leah Kelly] to bed when she passed out, I would later sit alone in the dark, swaying back and forth, hugging myself, weeping uncontrollably, mourning the comfort I’d last encountered as a three-year-old in the warmth of my mother’s protecting embrace."
The Rocky Mountain News uncovers what appears to be another Ward Churchill intellectual B&E (ht Retired Bill).
Excerpt:
Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?While we know we should, of course, be shocked (shocked!) at allegations Churchill might have kyped some scholar's work, we're actually pretty certain that as an addition to Churchill's long academic fraud rap-sheet this is hardly even a margin note. In pencil. Even Professor Milloy is underwhelmed:
Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.
So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?
"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise used in that movie and snuck himself into the Department of Indian Affairs at midnight, he's not seen the documents," said John S. Milloy, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
"I'm not going to spend any time on it," Milloy said.
"I talked to my publisher and he said, 'That's interesting. What are we supposed to do and who cares?' "
Of more interest and usefulness is the timeline the Rocky presents at the end of the article of the glacial Churchill Termination Process:
The Churchill files: an update
University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill continues to collect his $96,000 annual salary while his dismissal winds through an appeals process.
• Dismissal: Rrecommended last June after a faculty investigation confirmed academic misconduct, including plagiarism and fabricating facts.
• Appeal: Filed by Churchill with the Faculty Council's Privilege and Tenure Committee.
• Lawsuit: Churchill filed suit, claiming CU was responsible for some of his legal fees. A court turned him down.
• Report to president: The Privilege and Tenure Committee is expected to issue a report to CU President Hank Brown. If Brown disagrees, he will have 15 days to ask the committee to alter its decision, followed by another 15 days for the committee to respond. Meanwhile, Churchill's attorney and the attorney who represented CU before the committee will file briefs with Brown. Brown will send his decision to the Board of Regents.
• Reject or recommend: If Brown rejects dismissal, the decision is final. If Brown recommends dismissal, Churchill can file a written appeal with Brown, after which the regents will hold a private hearing. The regents must vote in a public meeting.
• The regents: The issue won't come up at the regents' March meeting, but might emerge by April. Churchill's attorney, David Lane, said he will go to court if the regents vote for dismissal.
CNews 11March07
The Perfesser made a brief appearance last night (free reg. required to view article) at a CU discussion called "American Indian Voices" ostensibly to introduce one of the speakers, but more importantly (in our estimation), to provide fodder for aficionados of irony:
"It's the fire in the belly that gets transmitted from one generation to the next when the education being presented is really true," said Churchill.(ht CU Ph.D. Anthro)
Here's something interesting (emphasis ours):
[English professor Eric] Cheyfitz said that the only member of the review board with any expertise in Churchill's area had long-standing academic disagreements with Churchill, which might have skewed the findings of the board.This is the first we've heard of any "long-standing disagreements" between Churchill and (we're assuming, since Cheyfitz can't be bothered to name the heretic) Law professor Robert N. Clinton. Our question to Cheyfitz is: Could you give us one example of this "long-standing disagreement"?
BTW: Just in case you, gentle reader, were thinking you might be able to judge a fraud simply by looking at the evidence, Cheyfitz has some bad news for you:
“If you're not an expert in Native American Studies, it's impossible to understand,” Cheyfitz said.
CNews 9March07
Our apologies to our readers: Our T1 connection went south this morning (our theory at the time was that one of the knots came loose and the string slipped out of the hole in the can), and cut off access to PB (as well to numerous other websites hosted on the same servers). Turns out Qwest needed to replace a bad card in their system (ours works fine).
Regular reader Noj noted in our comments section yesterday that Natsu Truthforce Saito had performed some legerdemain on her cv to disappear her perfect LSAT score and some forthcoming book publications. Here, courtesy of TDR (and waybackmachine.org), is PB's very own copy of the unaltered cv (pdf, and for the distrustful among us, here's the actual wayback copy), which appears to be from around 2003 and has a file datestamp of September 2006 . For comparison's sake, here's Truthforce's current cv (also pdf) as presented on the Georgia State University website. (apparently Truthforce took the LSAT prior to 1982, when a perfect LSAT score was 800; from '82 to '91, a perfect score was 48; since '91, a perfect LSAT score has been 180).
CNews 8March07
Cornell University professor Eric Cheyfitz defends Ward Churchill as Churchill sips from a glass of water during the entire performance! (via those wacky, misinformed folks over at wardchurchill.net)
Excerpt:
"I went over the report and the charges, and deconstructed them for the committee, going over each charge and pointing to the problems in the investigative committee's own flawed scholarship," Cheyfitz said. "The research misconduct charges disappear when you start looking at them closely. I said at the end that what is properly an academic debate about the relationship of Native peoples to United States history was turned into an indictment.Funny how Cheyfitz, an English professor who says smart things like "...let's also be clear that I do not understand alphabetic writing as in any way an advance over what were fundamentally oral cultures" and who writes the sort of neo-Marxist claptrap much in vogue among the literati these days (ex. "Many Native American cultures consider the natural environment to be a member of the collective kin group, and therefore cannot be owned or traded by any individual. Incorporation of indigenous perspectives in modern Western culture could be beneficial."), doesn't bother to provide examples of any of those "problems" or how they "disappear when you start looking at them closely." Of the several articles and papers he's written on Indian law and history, it might be instructive to see how much of Churchill's opus Cheyfitz has based his conclusions, except that we suspect reading more of this prissy, self-important twit's "alphabetic writing" would be—to steal from Maddox—like being bukkaked with stupid.
"Drunkablog attended the Ward Churchill Teach-In at CU this week (scoring a way-kewl tee-shirt in the process!), and files a report.
Update: Grant Crowell informs us that he should have audio/video of the Glorious Revolutionary Ward Churchill Teach-In posted, um, some day soon.
Update on The Campus Press article preceding the Teach-In: Unable to reach reporter Tim McAvoy via email, we posted a comment to the article in question on the Campus Press, to which he responded with a simple denial (that he had confused "Students for Academic Freedom" with "Students and Faculty for Academic Freedom"), and a repeat of the link to the Students for Academic Freedom website that was already in his article. Sigh. We've emailed Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org for clarification.
Update: Sara Dogan, the National Campus Director for Students for Academic Freedom (so she oughtta know), got back to us fast. Her comment: "It's not us, it's a different group calling themselves Students and Faculty for Academic Freedom. The reporter got it wrong." So, the only question we have left is one we posed earlier: Did McAvoy just take sloppy notes, or did the several people he interviewed purposely mislead him as to their affiliation? Incidentally, the two people McAvoy quotes as "Students for Academic Freedom" are Kimberly Collins and Aaron Smith. There's only one Kimberly Collins in the CU directory, listed here, but there's five "Aaron Smiths" at CU—four of whom are at CU to study either engineering, geography, or computer science. We're gonna take a SWAG here and say that those four were too busy studying, and that the Aaron Smith quoted by McAvoy is the fifth one.
From our Move Along, Nothing To See Here department: A visit today to the profile page of amazon.com customer "Truthforce" aka nsaito aka Natsu Saito revealed that Truthforce no longer exists (unless she's changed her name to "NoProfile", that is.) Actually, after we encountered the NoProfile profile, we searched for Truthforce on amazon, and discovered that her new name is in fact "NoProfile" (nickname noprofile123). At first we thought this was amazon's default display for a customer who had disappeared, but we discarded that theory when we realized that amazon probably didn't possess the prescience to build a leftist wishlist identical to that of Truthforce (speaking of which, Natsu, you missed a spot). In any case, as we noted before, all three of Truthforce's epenetic reviews still exist in the google cache.
CNews 7March07
According to this Campus Press article, the "Students for Academic Freedom" (SAF is associated with David Horowitz and his Academic Bill of Rights) sponsored the recent "Ward Churchill Teach-In", but according to the event's flyer, it was a different organization entirely, one calling itself "Students and Faculty for Academic Freedom" (no website), that actually organized the event (and in fact appears to have been organized solely for that purpose). We wonder if this is just a case of journalistic bumbling (or simply poor note-taking) on the part of the reporter, or deliberate obfuscation on the part of the event's organizers. We'll keep you posted.
Update: We've attempted to email the Campus Press reporter, Tim McAvoy, for clarification, but the email account listed at the end of the article does not appear to be valid.
(l-r) Natsu Saito, Thomas Mayer, Ward Churchill,
and Benjamin Whitmer share a sadly anagnoretic moment.
CNews 6March07
Speaking of undercover agents (and who isn't?), one increasingly plausible (at least to us) explanation for Natso Saito's apparent pseudonymous praise of her own book is that someone we presume to be her daughter, Akilah Jenga (Davidson College '04) aka Akilah Kinnison aka Ward Churchill's step-daughter, used Mama Natsu's amazon.com account to write the review; it's even possible Natsu was unaware of the review.
In any case, Jenga certainly shares the same political philosophy (second letter, the one entitled "Is that the smell of decaying democracy?", which she co-signed with CU student organizer and Churchill supporter Jed Kinnison (BA, Ethnic Studies '06)), and shares the same cities of residence.
Another interesting fact about Akilah is that she signed the TDS "Unfire Ward Churchill" petition—as did Jed—using the Kennison surname. Sigh. And just when we were seriously considering joining the International Society of Solipsists....
Like Drunkablog, we've noticed a rash of "Ward Churchill has been fired" posts dotting the web, and so, again like Drunkablog, we hasten to point out that Ward Churchill has yet to be fired. He is, in fact, still drawing his paycheck, although he is no longer teaching classes at CU. At this point, he has merely been notified of CU's intent to terminate his employment. One may only hope the Perfesser proves less interminable than CU's termination process.
OT: From our Reading Comprehension department: We note with passing interest that newsbusters.org appears to think Ace of Spades broke the (admittedly minor) "Truthforce/Saito" story, despite Ace's post very clearly linking to the PB post that did (thanks to PB reader Waldo Pepper, who tipped us off). Our thanks to Ace of Spades, BTW, for the traffic and the proper attribution.
CNews 5March07
From our GWGTDSTSOPBJ!* department, Phonies Fêting Frauds division: CU's faculty organ Silver & Gold highlights the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the university's Ethnic Studies Department (ht Leah):
At the [reception held February 22nd], Elisa Facio of ethnic studies said the department has much to celebrate, despite the "rabid conservative fervor" that has subjected the department to "academic harassment," especially during the controversy over former department Chair Ward Churchill. She lauded the department's faculty, staff and chair, Al Ramirez, for withstanding such attacks.
Ramirez thanked [CU Chancellor G.P. "Bud"] Peterson and College of Arts and Sciences Dean Todd Gleeson for attending, saying the two are "committed to ethnic studies and the maximization of what ethnic studies represents."
Peterson thanked Ramirez for his efforts to "help this department through very difficult times," and said ethnic studies "contributes to the university in many, many ways," including giving students skills in critical thinking and presenting their ideas verbally and in writing. He said opportunities for positive change are enhanced when different views are brought together, and ethnic studies "helps us view things through a different lens."
Gleeson noted that the number of ethnic studies majors has grown by 20 percent since 2000. "I'm very proud of the department and what it has accomplished, and for the University to have supported the department in its growth," Gleeson told the audience.
Yup. Love & Sincerity so thick you could cut it with a knife.
* "Gentlemen! We've got to do something to save our phony-baloney jobs!"
BTW: the same issue of Silver & Gold notes (news briefs, fourth item) a student panel discussion to be held on March 13th in preparation for CU-Colorado Springs' upcoming 8th annual White Privilege Conference. Whether the conference will offer any helpful tips on acquiring or increasing White Privilege is unclear. Among the scheduled speakers are AR-15, headRush, Destiny Arts, Joe-Joe McManus, Ph.D., and Boots Riley, so you know it'll be edumacational. Word.
 | Members of the group headRush ask the socially empowering, politically relevant, and culturally diverse question: "Is that dogshit on my shoe, or do I just need a Tic-Tac?" |
According to this webpage, panelists appearing at the Ward Churchill Teach-In tomorrow evening at CU will be: Natsu Saito, Tom Mayer, and Benjamin Whitmer.
According to this webpage, Ward Churchill will be speaking at the 2007 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair at 5pm, Saturday, March 17th. (ht TDR)
| Completely OT: A hilarious (and excellently designed) blog you must visit is the Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer |
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The Easy Way Out
by Jim Paine
At this point in the Ward Churchill saga (and it would be wildly optimistic to imagine it as the nadir), it's become obvious to me that there is only one real solution to the Perfesser's situation: He must announce publicly that he is a deep-cover US government operative whose 30-year mission has been to disrupt, discredit, and destroy leftist organizations.
Whether this confession is true or not is immaterial; even given Churchill's present non grata status, it would be believed. In many respects, it would be among the least unbelievable of his conceits.
If Churchill truly believed in the righteous ascendancy of Turtle Islanders, he would reasonably conclude that the best action he can now take on their behalf is to throw himself upon the grenade of his ruined career. Such self-fragging (an act so sweetly ironic as to be bathetic) would simultaneously throw his enemies into mad confusion, while permitting Indians throughout North America to breath a vast collective sigh of relief and get on with the business of building their lives.
It would give the moronic academics (not to mention the myriad "independent scholars") whose support of Churchill has been remarkably impervious to both argument and logic a golden opportunity to purge their reading lists of Churchillian polemics and their syllabi of his historical fiction. Not in order to repudiate Churchill's conclusions, mind you. Since it appears that only two people (Deloria, and—under various pen names—Churchill) have authored most of the literature integral to American Indian studies, a purge of Churchill's fiction would open the field for the publication of new screeds, new scholarly permutations of Marxist bromides, perhaps even new venues for pseudo-scholarly stupidity—in one supremely sacrificial moment, Churchill could breathe new, vibrant life into a justly moribund subfield of study, and at the same time, he would escape the gravitational pull of his self-created intellectual black hole, finally attaining the enigmatic, larger-than-life status that has thus far eluded him.
It might even inspire his support cadre of ersatz academics (who unanimously swear fealty to "critical thinking," while nevertheless demonstrating a conspicuous lack of it in their own) to quit pretending Churchill's polemics are received wisdom, and move on to deny the existence of some other black swan.
Yes, of course, Leonard Peltier would still be in a cage. And Washington's professional football team would still have a genocidal name. And Columbus would still be a slave-trading, aborigine-slaughtering imperialist. And George W. Bush would still be Chimpy McHitlerBurton. But did Churchill and his odd demographic of young white louts and willfully-self-deluding academics really think they were going to change that? As the great philosopher Denis Leary points out: "Life sucks. Get a fucking helmet."
There never was going to be a putsch in Churchill's future; his revolution was never going to pull an 81 share. The best he can hope for now is to salvage his rotting career by simply abandoning it and writing one last work of fiction—his confessional.
CNews 4March07
From our All In The Family department: On amazon.com, "Truthforce" in Atlanta has some fine compliments [see Update III below for additional info] for the writings of both Natsu Taylor Saito and her husband, Ward Churchill. For example, about Saito's latest book, From Chinese Exclusion to Guantanamo Bay: Plenary Power And the Prerogative State, Truthforce says
This is far and away the best book ever written on racism and plenary power. Startling.And about Ward Churchill's Pacifism As Pathology, "Truthforce" waxes orgasmic:
It's about time somebody laid this one out the way it is. Churchill is to be mightily commended for exposing the hegemonic politic of white "progressive" privilege for exactly what it is. Thanks are also due to several previous reviewers -- all of them fitting the description just offered -- for having illustrated his points so well. Keep it up, Ward!!!Okay, de gustibus non est disputandum, you say. True dat, except for one niggling detail: Truthforce's nickname, according to the critic's profile, is "nsaito." Is this merely a coinkydink, or is a Yale graduate really that inept at covering her tracks? We've emailed Professor Saito about "Truthforce" and as always, we'll keep you posted.
(big ht to Waldo Pepper)
Update: Professor Saito responds to our emailed question "You don't by any chance write reviews on amazon.com under the name 'Truthforce', do you?" thus: "No, obviously I don't. Do you?"
Update II: As reader Noj points out, "Truthforce's" Amazon Wishlist page says "this wishlist is for: Natsu Saito." And yet, Professor Saito (the one married to Ward Churchill) tells us she does not write reviews under the name Truthforce... So, apparently, Truthforce is also named Natsu Saito, and just happens to find her namesake's book "startling", and breathlessly calls one of her namesake's husband's books "His Best Ever." Same name, same town, same political philosophy. The mind boggles.
Update III: Seems "Truthforce's" review of Saito's book has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the list of reviews linked to in our first paragraph. Lucky for us we've always wondered what that weird "PrtSc" key was for, so we pressed it to see what would happen—and inadvertently saved a screen-copy of the review. (and for the distrustful among us, there's always the google cache of the review)
Update IV: We should note that it has occurred to us that it's theoretically possible the "Truthforce" reviews were written by an enemy of Churchill/Saito to further discredit them. Precluding that is the fact that the first two Truthforce reviews (lauding two of Churchill's books) were posted on amazon.com in October of 2004—long before anyone outside CU's incestuously idiotic ethnic studies department had heard of Churchill or his then-future fourth wife. To believe a Churchill foe waited two and a half years to spring the punchline on such a shabby little subterfuge as the Truthforce reviews requires a credulity beyond human attainment.
...incidentally, we never suspected amazon.com had a sense of humor until we took a look at the main description page for Saito's From Chinese Exclusion to Guantanamo Bay and noticed this:
Better Together
Buy this book with The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner today!Buy Together Today: $31.83
The word of the day is saxifrage.
From our Thus Spake Churchill department: Urban Infidel has posted video of the Lynne Stewart-Ward Churchill Gloatfest last December. Our favorite part is when Professor Irwin Corey (
Wildly OT (but nevertheless interesting): US Cherokees vote overwhelmingly to expel descendants of slaves (via the professional appreciator)
CNews 3March07
Say what you will about Ward Churchill, he's been very successful at making CU look exceedingly foolish (and did CU really need the assistance?). When asked about the status of his client's case on Bill O'Reilly's The Spin Factor recently, David Lane, Churchill's legal sockpuppet, noted:
The status is it's in the committee looking at the last committee's work to see if the future committees need to take another look at the committee.
Later, discussing the Kent State jihadi professor Julio
LANE: Please. These are college kids, and [Pino's] not exercising his power in an arbitrary way, according to all accounts. Nobody is saying he's grading people poorly.
But he has a right to put his ideas out there. The appropriate response is not to fire him or punish him. But you put your ideas out there to counter him.
O'REILLY: You may — you may have another client coming on. We appreciate your time.
LANE: Give him my number, will you, Bill?
(ht TDR)
CNews 2March07
Like Michael Jackson, it appears the Perfesser just can't seem to keep away from the kids. (via those zany anonymous folks at wardchurchill.net)
CNews 1March07
According to this article, it'll be another two weeks before CU President Hank Brown will get a recommendation from the latest Churchill review committee. Excerpt:
A faculty committee reviewing Churchill’s conduct is expected to make a recommendation to Brown in about two weeks, [CU Chancellor G.P. “Bud”] Peterson said. Then, Brown will make a recommendation to the school’s Board of Regents.A couple of lines down, we learn that CU's Ethnic Studies department managed to dodge a bigger bullet:
“I don’t think he’ll have to deliberate a terribly long time” over what he’ll recommend to the board, Peterson said of Brown.
During the scandal, Peterson said university officials briefly re-examined the need for and the value of the school’s ethnic studies department.
But voices in favor of the department and diversity at the school prevailed, he said.
Here's an informative story with background on Kent State's Julio "Assad" Pino, the latest "jihadi professor" on the state's permanent payroll.
Update: For those who want even more info on this guy, the Marked Manner blog gives "Assad" the ole PB treatment. (via LGF) Included in Marked Manner's links is this LtE (published 4/7/05), which we excerpt here:
One masterful fencer, with the help of the courageous student body at the University of Colorado-Boulder, managed to out-maneuver the most powerful nation on Earth. Professor Ward Churchill faces losing tenure under the unusual charge of publishing something unpopular. The real reason the UC Board of Regents (a bunch of old, bored white men) is eager to fire him is his righteous obsession with European and American genocide and terrorism against peoples of color all over the world, from 1492 to 2001. Churchill, in appraising what happened on Sept. 11 that year, calling it a case of “some people push back,” merely reiterated what Malcolm X had to say on the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963: “chickens coming home to roost.” Incidentally, had JFK’s planned genocide against the Cuban people during the missile crisis of 1962 came to fruition, I wouldn’t be writing this letter; instead, my ashes would be buried in Havana. No doubt this would please a few professors on campus, but not my beloved Taliban (students) in History of Civilization and Modern Latin America.
Those who claim to be horrified by Churchill’s remarks should ponder that more than 500,000 Iraqi children were killed by President William Clinton and his Madame Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who boasted about it on national television. In a moral universe and university, it would not be Ward Churchill being demonized, but the cocaine cowboy, George W. Bush, who has added an extra 100,000 corpses to the pile of brown colored corpses, collected like Indian heads in the Old West.
In an America rapidly descending toward Christian fascism, we need more Ward Churchills.
