CNews All Hallows' Even '07
From our What, They Couldn't Get a License To Broadcast 'The Chicken-Heart That Ate Cincinnati'? department: "Minister Faust" will interview Ward Churchill this evening. (via Drunkapigeon, who rather meanly points out "Minister Faust's" less than fleeting acquaintance with facts)
Update: Drunkavictim listens to the Minister's, um, ministrations so we don't have to.
CNews 30October07
via DBAB Central, a YouTube tribute to the valiant educators of CU
...meanwhile, Drunkasource takes a look at a Guardian article on rampant plagiarism charges at US universities.
CNews 25October07
Drunkablog has a couple of good posts covering the strutting & fretting of the various poor players of the DBAB, including Teh Glenns' Columbus Day Parade festivities, and the apparently endless saga of The Genocide of Benjie Whitmer's Hand.
Speaking of genocide, "Edmonton's 100% Independent News & Entertainment Weekly" gratuitously fellates
CNews 22October07
From Drunkablog, an RMN LttE from a self-identified Lakota repudiating Churchill, Means, Teh Glenns, et al. Our favorite quote (spelling and grammar left intact): "There is a a custom in the Lakota culture ... the custom being that we turn our backs to people and situations that we don’t support and the majority of Indian people turned their backs on Glenn Morris and Russel Means a long time ago."
Confidential to "Charley Arthur": At least he still has a paid teaching job. You?
9/11: "a subtle purge of New Yorkers" (via—who else?—our Drunkabuddy)
CNews 19October07
The Brown-Teeth Preservation Society is so certain "excessive force" was used on the Denver Columbus Day parade protesters that it links to three (count 'em, three!) sources of proof: al-Reuters (which says nothing of force, excessive or otherwise, and also has a different number of arrests), transformcolumbusday.org (with a bad link, which, when fixed, provides only news of the upcoming protest), and colorado-aim.org (another bad link, which, when fixed, has nothing, but a click on the "news" link takes us to a skimpy blog-post listing the URL of this video comprised of parade protest footage and stills set to gangsta rap, with this message at the end: "HOLD UP. This isn't the end. A message to the ndn haterz. You cannot break us. We will see you again. But... will you see us?" Permit us to be the first to say it: Oooooo!). Oh, and the BTPS uses Churchill's dog, Benjie's "Bloodbath Boy" pic for illustration, apparently to suggest the "excessive force" Churchill's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion seems otherwise unable to document.
Excerpt (bad links included, no extra charge):
Protests again halted Denver’s annual celebration of the genocidal legacy of Christopher Columbus, resulting in the arrests of 88 demonstrators. Despite the fact that the protestors only engaged in passive resistance, the Denver police used excessive force on many. For news, see here and check for updates at: www.transformcolumbusday.org and www.coloradoaim.org.
Update: The BTPS has "fixed" the bad links by simply removing them, and counting on the intelligence of its readers to figure out how to get to the various websites—pretty risky, considering the BTPS readership comprises so many critical thimkers.
From our The Mote In The Kettle's Eye department: Congressional commission want to close private Islamic school
Excerpt:
A private Islamic school [in Virginia] supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends....Before the US Government goes shutting down private enterprises that "may adversely affect the interests of the United States," it might just want to stop financing CU Boulder, UC Irvine, University of Texas, University of Nebraska....
In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools.
Particular criticism is leveled at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school serving nearly 1,000 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in northern Virginia's Fairfax County.
The commission's report says the academy hews closely to the curriculum used at Saudi schools, which they criticize for promoting hatred of and intolerance against Jews, Christians and Shiite Muslims.
"Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States," the report states.
...Speaking of cutting off funding, CU is rethinking its policy of paying a year's salary to faculty members fired with cause. Too late, of course, to make The Perfesser to miss a truck payment, but still....
CNews 18October07
Cyberjournalista & shameless publicity whore Drunkablog somehow manages to worm himself into the latest Ward Churchill imbroglio via the admirably foresighted expedient of getting one of the faithful DBAB to threaten his life a couple of months ago, said DBABster being Josh Dillabaugh, who is now apparently the subject of a multi-State police dragnet owing to his having grabbed a Daily Camera reporter's arm at Churchill's triumphal (prononunced "unpaid") CU last week. Higher education is so, um, educational.
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce—except in academia, where the first step is entirely optional."—Unknown
Academic Moralist & Master Grammarian Peter N. Kirstein, on Ward Churchill:
"[H]e should have resigned when he became cognizant that plagiarism is a disgrace and a blot on the good name of an individual and the institution that he or she is asscociated [sic]. I believe that the likelihood of plagiarism in my courses will be reduced since so many students were made aware of my online condemnation of this fraudulent, unethical and supremely arrogant [individual]."
Okay, so Kirstein was talking about the plagiarism scandal of Glenn Poshard (President of Southern Illinois University), not the plagiarism scandal of Professor Ward Churchill. Our bad.
Confidential to PNK: There may be a very valid reason many bloggers do not post their personal pictures on their blogs. A wink's as good as a nudge, eh, wat, Kirstein?
From our Your Tax Dollars At Work department: English-only boy stuck in ESL classes for nearly two years
Excerpt:
For more than a year, a Latino boy who speaks only English sat in his classroom confused by what his Spanish-speaking classmates were saying and falling behind in his work.
His mother complained to school officials, but they insisted he belonged in the English as a Second Language program. Complicating things, the boy was considered to be developmentally delayed.
Now the family has sued the Hillsboro School District, accusing educators at Orenco Elementary School of putting Alek Villaraldo in the English as a Second Language program during kindergarten and a portion of first grade solely because he was Latino. In the family's federal lawsuit, his parents, Indhira and Rene Villaraldo, say they were never notified or asked for consent to place their son in the program.
"Those were his first years of school, and they have gone down the drain," Indhira Villaraldo said, adding that parent-teacher meetings, homework and other notices gave no sure sign to them that the 5-year-old spent part of school time learning alongside Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency.
National ESL experts say the federal- and state-regulated learning program contains checks and balances to keep misplacements from happening. But errors still occur, especially among children with disabilities because educators are not fully trained in distinguishing learning disabilities from limited English speaking skills.
[...]
The Villaraldos say they worry about their son's education, even though he is now in a mainstream classroom at the same school.
"If that was the beginning, what can we expect later on?" the boy's mother said. "What if he doesn't catch up?"
...No sweat, Mrs. Villaraldo. Your son can always major in Ethnic Studies.
Meanwhile, Congress considers throwing more money at Political Correctitude In Higher Education
Excerpt:
During a Congressional hearing focused on the recruitment and retention of female faculty members in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields Wednesday, witnesses discussed how the federal government can combat the underrepresentation of women through targeted grants and incentives — and even the creation of a new quasi-governmental agency that would expand the enforcement of Title IX, the landmark 1972 gender equity law, to better encompass academic practices.
CNews 17October07
We've received a copy of Professor Thomas Brown's new Plagiary article, "Ward Churchill's Twelve Excuses for Plagiarism" (as yet unposted except in abstract on the journal's website), wherein Professor Brown examines the pathetic schoolboy rationalizations Professor Ward Churchill and his less-than-athletic supporters have offered in defense against the multiple charges of plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication that [finally!] got Churchill canned. [note this link to the Plagiary.com abstract of Professor Brown's essay (scroll down near bottom of page); that link should provide the full essay (or a link to it) once it is posted]
Excerpt:
Excuse Number One: I'm the real author.Update: Drunkablog (who was the first to wonder where the heck the essay was) has more excerpts
When Churchill was charged with plagiarizing Rebecca Robbins and Annette Jaimes, he offered a novel defense: He had ghostwritten for both authors, and thus is entitled to reprint that material under his own name without crediting those authors. Jaimes (one of Churchill’s ex-wives) denies that Churchill authored her work, but the passages in question do bear Churchill’s stylistic tics and topical obsessions.
Churchill argues that what he did is not misconduct: "The onus of misconduct, if any, thus resides with those who've put their names on my work" [emphasis in the original] (Paine, 2007). But the best test of a plagiarism defense in academia has to be whether or not a professor would ever accept such an excuse from a student. What if a professor catches Joe Student in apparent plagiary from his classmate Janie, and Joe's excuse is: “It’s not plagiarism because I wrote Janie’s term paper for her”? That would mean an “F” for both Joe and Janie.
While most professors would agree that Joe engaged in unethical behavior, there remains the legalistic question: If Joe merely abetted a plagiarist, is he himself still technically guilty of plagiarism or not? A strict reading of the federal definition of plagiarism may absolve Joe (National Science Foundation, 2002):Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.However, Joe's ghostwriting for Janie would still put him in conflict with the falsification dimension of the federal research misconduct regulations:Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.The federal rules are currently silent on whether ghostwriting should best be classified as falsification or plagiarism. However, due to another ongoing academic ghostwriting scandal, Congress is investigating the question (Vance, 2007, p. A35). Editors of science journals already agree that ghostwriting is unethical (WAME, 2007).
Churchill's employer, the University of Colorado, addresses ghostwriting more directly, by specifying "Other Violations" that constitute research misconduct, besides fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (1998):Failure to comply with established standards regarding author names on publications.Furthermore, when Churchill defended himself against plagiarism charges by claiming to have ghostwritten the works in question, he made himself vulnerable to new misconduct charges. Churchill had fabricated and falsified while ghostwriting for others (Brown, 2006, pp. 4-5; Wesson et al, 2006, pp. 23-24, 90-91). Churchill then cited his ghostwritten essays as evidence for arguments in essays that he published under his own name (Wesson et al, 2006).
Other serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing, carrying out, or reporting results from research[.]
The CU research misconduct committee observes that this behavior: “permits the author to create the false appearance that his claims are supported by other scholars when, in fact, he is the only source for such claims” (Wesson et al, 2006, p. 90). If you accept Churchill's claim that he had the right to reuse material he ghostwrote for Rebecca Robbins and Annette Jaimes without crediting them, then the plagiarism charge transmutes into a fabrication charge. Each of CU's faculty committees has unanimously found Churchill guilty of fabricating data by ghostwriting and self-citation (Wesson et al, 2006, p. 90). However, there remain the two additional charges of plagiarizing essays by Fay Cohen and "Dam the Dams", for Churchill never claimed to have ghostwritten these works.
Update II: Professor Brown's article is now available on the Plagiary.com site.
Meanwhile, Churchill coprophage and scale-model Marxist Thomas Mayer stops in on his way back to Bizarro World (where everybody just leaves him and Ward alone!) to pose a challenge (ht Leah)
TRY OUT THIS WARD CHURCHILL MATH PROBLEM
Advocates of unfettered academic freedom are in a somber mood. CU fired Ward Churchill for political nonconformity which was camouflaged as plagiarism. DePaul University denied tenure to Norman Finkelstein because he critiqued use of the Holocaust as an excuse for persecuting Palestinians. UC-Irvine has barred Erwin Chemerinsky from becoming dean of its law school because he is "too politically controversial." New assaults upon academic freedom occur almost weekly, and the response by mainstream professors is typically less than heroic.
Dismayed civil libertarians can divert themselves by considering this politically relevant subtraction problem.
BRING
-BACK
WARD
The three words above contain exactly ten different letters ( A,B,C,D,G,I,K,N,R,W ). The challenge is to assign a different digit ( 0 through 9 ) to each of these letters so that BRING minus BACK equals WARD. This can be done in at least six different ways. And after you have solved this problem, please sign the petition to reinstate Ward Churchill ( www.ipetitions.com/petition/reinstatewardchurchill/ ).
Tom Mayer
sociology
CU-Boulder
...Do you get the idea that Mayer spends his idle hours making cootie-catchers, all of which predict some sort of happy ending involving him and The Perfesser?
From our They Can't Even Get Recent History Right department (as PB reader Fred comments):
'Milo' at DBAB: “Fortunately there’s a room full of witnesses who will testify honestly that Ben never touched the guy, and that Urie was obviously trying to make a scene, as he was agitated and shouting when he burst in the room and headed for Churchill.”
Whitmer in the Daily Camera: “I put my hand on him to stop his advance towards Professor Churchill, and the gentleman I was with took him by the arm to escort him out.”
Churchill in The Campus Press: “Whitmer put a hand up to stop him and Urie ran into Whitmer's hand.”
Update: Speaking of the Tempest In A Pisspot, Westword has a rehash of all the sordid details surrounding The Perfesser's return to CU, along with a few new factoids. (via DBAB*)
Excerpt:
[...] CU campus police arrived and asked to speak with Whitmer and the other man, identified as Josh Dillabaugh, a CU sophomore who's active in Colorado's American Indian Movement. Neither were cited at the time, but Commander Brad Wiesley of the CU police department says Urie pressed charges against Dillabaugh. A CU detective arranged to meet Dillabaugh at his Boulder residence to deliver a summons, Wiesley continues, but the suspect wasn't there at the appointed time and later told the officer he'd "have to come find him." As a result, a warrant has been issued in Dillabaugh's name for misdemeanor harassment, an offense that carries a sentence ranging from a $50 fine to six months in jail.
* Ward Churchill's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion
...and what PB post would be complete without a look at Peter "Chirreo! Pep! Pep!" Kirstein's blog? Today, the grammatically-challenged "history" professor is touting MP3s of some fascist confab masquerading as an "academic freedom conference."
Excerpt:
It were [sic] DePaul University students, in the tradition of the Free Speech Movement and Students for a Democratic Society, that [sic] galvanised [sic] and propelled the staging of this event on the campus of the University of Chicago. They are serving notice to other campuses throughout the Chicagoland area and beyond that the student voice is not merely as [sic] cheerleader or wave at an athletic event [sic] but has a more serious purpose: to demand a quality education by insisting upon critical thinking and academic freedom for [sic] their professors and themselves.
Christ, Kirstein, they make very good grammar and spelling checkers for your computer. They haven't gotten the Critical Thinking module working yet (the academic demand for it is unsurprisingly low), but in the meantime, have a seventh grader proofread your stuff, m'kay?
CNews 16October07
According to this website, Ward Churchill will be speaking at the Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair Friday, October 26th. His topic (irony included): "Organizing to Win"
Drunkablog examines the scholarly debate over the Daily Camera's genocide of Benjie Whitmer's hand.
CNews 15October07
In an essay on Vernon Bellecourt, Suzan Shown Harjo notes that Professor Ward Churchill has a history of upstaging the guest of honor:
I last saw Bellecourt in November 2005, at the public service following [Vine] Deloria's private inurnment in Golden, Colo. [Floyd Red Crow] Westerman was closing the service and invited all the AIM people to join him and sing the AIM song in Deloria's honor. Ward Churchill - who arrived late and loudly derided the family's projected images of Deloria on a back wall - started making his way to the front of the room.
Westerman cleverly called out the name of the man who had helped expose Churchill as a pseudo-Indian more than 15 years before he was fired for plagiarism by the University of Colorado: ''Vernon Bellecourt, come on up here.'' Upon hearing the name of his nemesis, Churchill threw his hands in the air and left in a huff, taking with him the gathering's only discordant note.
Meanwhile, Drunkablog reviews Stanley Fish's review of Indoctrinate U
Update: Drunka also links in his post to an apparently recent interview The Perfesser did on some gawd-awful radio station; we've been unable to get the audio to work, but it could be a problem on our end)
| Courtesy PB reader Steve Brandon, some entertaining posters touting The Perfesser's Ottawa visit tomorrow: |
 |
| Interesting note: The picture on the top poster—the Crumbian messianic figure with rays coming out from his head—is labeled "le peril blanc." How wonderful the French-speaking folk up in Canada recognize the danger that is Ward Churchill. |
From our Why The Odds Are On The Perfesser's Side department (via Avatar Briefs):
People are not good at keeping track of which information came from credible sources and which came from less trustworthy ones, or even remembering that some information came from the same untrustworthy source over and over again. Even if a person recognizes which sources are credible and which are not, repeated assertions and denials can have the effect of making the information more accessible in memory and thereby making it feel true[....]
CNews 13October07 - Part II
Vernon Bellecourt is dead.
From the New York Times obituary:
Vernon Bellecourt, who fought against the use of Indian nicknames for sports teams as a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, has died at age 75.
Bellecourt died Saturday at Abbott Northwestern Hospital of complications from pneumonia, said his brother, Clyde Bellecourt, a founding member of the militant American Indian rights group.
Just before he was put on a respirator, Vernon Bellecourt joked that the CIA had finally gotten him, his brother said.
''He was willing to put his butt on the line to draw attention to racism in sports,'' his brother said.
Vernon Bellecourt — whose Objibwe name WaBun-Inini means Man of Dawn — was a member of Minnesota's White Earth band and was an international spokesman for the AIM Grand Governing Council based in Minneapolis.
CNews 13October07
Clarification: Although The Campus Press says
CNews 12October07
Canuck writer interviews Professor Ward Churchill with predictable results
Excerpt:
"The only people upset are in fact those who would be encompassed within my meaning of the term little Eichmanns," [Churchill] says. "I'm not getting it from communities of colour. I'm not getting it from poor people."Well, yes, Ward, if your analysis is based on fraudulent scholarship, it discredits quite handily.
With all of the focus on his dismissal from university, there is a risk that people aren't listening to what he has to say about racism and imperialism, and clearly that's what frustrates him most.
"If they can discredit my scholarship they can discredit my analysis, and if they can discredit my analysis they can reinforce the status quo," he fumes.
Some detractors went as far as questioning his Native American heritage. And although there were rumblings that Karl Rove had a direct hand in his targeting, Churchill, who has written extensively about the government's illegal and corrupt Counterintelligence Program (Cointelpro) against civil rights era activists, shrugs them off....People actually questioned his Native American heritage? We're shocked. Well, in any case, the article also features a list of the places in Canuckistan Churchill will be lout-shouting:
"Cointelpro has been assimilated into the media to the point that you don't actually need intelligence agencies' involvement most of the time," he says.
OTTAWA: October 16, 7 pm
Alumni Auditorium, University of Ottawa
$5-20 sliding scale admission, nobody turned away
Tickets available at Exile Infoshop, OPIRG Carleton, and OPIRG Ottawa
TORONTO: October 17, 7 pm
MacLeod Auditorium of the Medical Sciences Building, 1 King's College Circle
University of Toronto
Sliding scale of $5-$20
Organised by:
CERTAIN DAYS calendar committee - www.certaindays.org
EXILE INFOSHOP – exilebooks.org
York GSA - www.yugsa.ca
GUELPH: October 18, 7 pm
University Centre, Room 103, University of Guelph
Suggested donation $5-20. Proceeds will go to Indigenous struggles and solidarity work
Space is limited – register in advance to guarantee a seat
OPIRG-Guelph, 519.824.2091, opirgguelphvolunteer@yahoo.ca
CNews 11October07
According to the arrest reports (pdf, 5 meg) from the Denver Columbus Day Parade & Bloodbath, Ward Churchill cronies the residence of both Glenn Spagnuolo and Professor Glenn T. Morris is 2584 State Highway 67, Sedalia, Colorado—which also happens to be the address of Woodbine Ranch, a Christian camp and school owned by the Rocky Mountain Conservative Baptist Association. As we noted in the comments section (where Monsieur Mouse first noticed the shared address of Spagnuolo y Morris), it would be a shame if it turned out the two gave false information to the cops. The only other possibility that comes to mind is that, as Monsieur Mouse hypothesized, Mssrs. Spagnuolo and Morris are, as it is sometimes said, longtime companions*.
* Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Christopher Orlet gets it
Excerpt:
The glory days of the Marxist-Leninists are mainly behind us, so if it takes a few hundred Islamofascists to undermine the imperial-capitalist system, fine. What are a few thousand lives in the big scheme? The 9/11 victims were just "little Eichmanns" anyway, guilty of working for greedy and probably Jewish capitalists. The left that found it so very easy to apologize for Stalin and Lenin's gulags, forced famines and mass murders can certainly empathize with bin Laden.
Islamofascism came along just in time to fill the void left by the collapse of the old totalitarian ideologies. And the left scarcely missed a beat. As in the good old days of Stalin, they will allow bin Laden and company to do the dirty work. All they have to do is eulogize the Islamists as freedom fighters and martyrs, then sit back and wait for bourgeois society to fall.
We're not big fans of Friedrich Nietzsche, but today we came across the following aphorism, which seems so pertinent to the
CNews 10October07
From our At Least He Has A Sense Of Humor department: Means vows lawsuit for Columbus Day parade arrest
Excerpt:
Some of the protesters said they'll sue the police.Incidentally, no mention of 'bloodbath boy' as featured in Monday's Colorado Daily (which—for some Whitmerian reason, no doubt—has disappeared the story's accompanying 'bloodbath boy' pic).
"My lawsuit is going to be on torture," said longtime activist Russell Means. He said police put him in a cell with a buzzing fluorescent light.
"I tell you, it drives you batty," Means said.
He also charges police misplaced his heart medication for several hours.
Winner of the Best Blog-Post Title, Churchill Returns To CU division: 'You can't humiliate a jackass'
CNews 9October07
Fresh from his triumphal (albeit unpaid) return to the CU campus,
 |
...Drunkablog (who actually posted about this yesterday) notes that DBAB member (and Miss Clairol 2005) Glenn Morris has also donned his kaffiyah in solidarity with the splodeydopes.
Update: Drunka also notes that Churchill's dog, Benjie, has disappeared another post over at DBAB Central, this one accusing the Denver police of specific acts of brutality during the Columbus Day parade arrests. Lucky for fans of Benjie's dearthless prose, Drunka saved a copy of the post.
CNews 8October07
From our Tempest In A [Mad Hatter's] Teapot department: Campus Press 'interviews' Churchill's dog, Benjie, concerning the ah who really gives a shit (ht TDR)
While we're on the subject, Slapstick Politics now has video of the Denver Columbus Day Parade as well as the CO-AIM protest with its traditional drums and chants ("Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Columbus Day has got to go!")
Clive Staples Lewis must have had Churchill, Morris, Mayer, Kirstein, and (let's not forget) Churchill's dog, Benjie in mind when he said:
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence—moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's [of the same age] attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers—or should I say nurses?—will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men."...imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance—Churchill's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion really should adopt that as their official motto. Once they look up the big words, that is. (via Boortz.com)
CNews 6October07
Slapstick Politics has a pictorial (part 1, part 2) of today's protests at Denver's Columbus Day parade.
|
| How sweet. Words of "truth" from Che, totalitarian killer and hero of louts everywhere. |
Another Che quote that somehow never seems to make it onto those professionally-lettered protest posters is: "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary... These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." |
Update: 83 people arrested at Columbus Day Parade (via Slapstick Politics—who else?)
CNews 5October07
From our Truth In Advertising department: Natsu Truthforce Saito, Ward Churchill, and Derrick Jensen are among those scheduled this weekend to "expand historical perceptions of Columbus" in Charlottesville, Virginia... Kind of like lobotomy expands one's facility for critical thinking.... (ht GLO)
CNews 4October07
As Noj points out in our comments section (we've been away on business this week), Professor Ward Churchill is offering some fine "teaching" at CU.
Money quote:
Churchill plans to teach the class his own way, which, he says, doesn't always include the truth.
"Truth is something you aspire to," said Churchill. "It's not something that can be simply taught."
From our All The Fun Stuff Happens When We're Not Watching department: Apparently, the DBAB gets huffy when reporters try to give their activities some exposure. (via Slapstick Politics)
Excerpt:
Heath Urie and Joshua Lawton, a reporter and photographer from The Daily Camera, have filed a police report against two of the event's organizers after they say they were physically removed from the classroom....Well Benjie would know all about elaborate fantasy, wouldn't he.
"We're gonna let the police report speak for itself," Urie said when asked to comment on the incident.
CUPD is currently investigating Urie's allegations, but no charges have been filed.
Benjamin Whitmer, an instructor for the ethnic studies department and one of the organizers accused by Urie and Lawton, posted a scathing review of Urie's story on his, blog, calling Urie's accusations an "elaborate fantasy."
CNews 1October07
Via El Presidente, filling in for Drunkablog (who's bravely daring rattlers to sangre his cristo ths week), Professor Ward Churchlll says of his free "lecture series":
This course is an entirely voluntary exercise for all parties involved. It carries no credit, fulfills no institutional requirements, involves payment of no tuition, entails no paycheck to its instructor . . . The sole purpose of the course is to provide those desiring it a critical and comprehensive alternative to the triumphal narrative upon which the eurosupremacist orthodoxy of scholarship has been constructed, refined, and is currently being (re)imposed with increasing rigidity on campuses across the United States. . . .
...so, it's more of a religious meeting than a college level study series. Will Churchill's dog Benjie and miniature Marxist Tom Mayer finally be able to take Communion? You know, to get that taste out of their mouths?
Speaking of El Presidente, over at his own blog (Slapstick Politics), he's not so sure Denver's 100th celebration of Columbus Day is going to be all picnics and parades, not with posters claiming "This year, we will end it." On the other hand, Churchill and his DBAB have made empty promises (not to mention idle threats) before.
Keith Windschuttle mulls the effects of The Perfesser's dismissal in "Discrediting the Politicization of History"
Excerpt:
The argument of the 1960s generation that all history is politicized and that historians can never shed their political prejudices has been the most corrupting influence to which the profession has ever succumbed. It has turned the traditional role of the historian, to try to seek the truth about the past, on its head. It has allowed historians to write from an overtly partisan position and to engage in exaggeration, selective omission and pure invention.
In indigenous and ethnic affairs, it has led some historians to justify this to themselves on the grounds that it is all for a good cause in the struggle against racism. But no cause is ever served by falsehood because eventually someone will come along and expose you. Truth always comes out in the end, and when it does it discredits those causes built on lies.
