Ward Churchill

Commentary on Ward Churchill Reinstatement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From Angelique EagleWoman (posted with her permission):

Ward Churchill has hurt Native American communities, Native American academics and Native American education.  He has claimed to be someone he is not and used that as a platform to fuel his career.  As Native American people, we have the right to say who is a member of our Tribes, our governments, our organizations and our peoples.  He is not, has not been and the most he can claim is that in an act of generosity at one point the United Kootewah Band of Cherokee gave him an award which we call “honorary membership.”  An award that he has used in completely
unexpected and unprecedented ways to claim that he speaks on behalf of the Native American community as a Native American intellectual.

There is no doubt that his 9/11 article spurred on the investigation in Colorado.  However, to many in the Native community this day was a long sought after day.  Often when we raise concerns over those using our identity falsely (a very common phenomenon in this country by non-Indians), we are ignored.  This is evidenced by all those who
contacted CU and complained that Ward Churchill should be investigated prior to the 9/11 speech.

If you choose to view this as only an “academic freedom” issue, do so knowing that you are ignoring Native Americans in the process.  That you would be turning a blind eye to our on-going struggle to be represented in the academy, to our on-going struggle that state educational institutions follow tribal membership standards for counting and reporting Native Americans, to our on-going struggle to represent ourselves accurately in historical respects, political respects and as academics.  His reinstatement would be a further slap in the face to the Native community showing that our concerns are still not legitimized in our own homelands.

Pidamayaye,

Angelique EagleWoman

Salon on Ward Churchill Verdict

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Salon:

Last week, a Denver jury found that Ward Churchill, the former head of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado, had been improperly fired and awarded him $1 in damages. A judge must now decide whether Churchill should be reinstated in his job or receive back wages. The verdict was justified, but Churchill’s victory offers scant cause for celebration. To put it mildly, Churchill was not an ideal poster child for the cause of academic freedom. If right-wing critics of the university had set out to create a perfect caricature of a tenured radical who sacrifices scholarship for advocacy, they couldn’t have come up with a better one than Churchill. The Churchill case was a train wreck pitting the First Amendment against academic standards in a zero-sum game.

The debacle began the day after the 9/11 attacks, when Churchill, a widely read and influential activist scholar who specializes in American Indian issues, published an essay, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” Churchill argued that the 9/11 attacks were payback for America’s ongoing “crusade” against the Arab-Muslim world, an onslaught manifested in such actions as the decade-long sanctions against Iraq that are estimated to have cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children.

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Jury Finds in Favor of Ward Churchill — Awards $1 in Damages

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the NYTs:

DENVER — A jury found on Thursday that the University of Colorado had wrongfully dismissed a professor who drew national attention for an essay in which he called some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks “little Eichmanns.”

But the jury, which deliberated for a day and a half, awarded only $1 in damages to the former professor, Ward L. Churchill, a tenured faculty member at the university’s campus in Boulder since 1991 who was chairman of the ethnic studies department.

The jurors found that Mr. Churchill’s political views had been a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway.

“This is a great victory for the First Amendment, and for academic freedom,” said his lawyer, David A. Lane.

Whether Mr. Churchill, 61, will get his job back, and when, was not resolved. Mr. Churchill’s lawyers said they would ask Judge Larry J. Naves of Denver District Court to order reinstatement, in light of the verdict.

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Ward Churchill Trial — Finally Some Indian Law

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

The trial in a Boulder court over whether the University of Colorado was legally justified in firing Ward Churchill is ongoing. Here is the trial blog. Interestingly, the trial is mostly about Chuchill’s First Amendment rights, and whether CU fired him because of public statements he made about 9/11. However, part of CU’s defense is that Churchill committed acts of academic malfeasance, including some of his work in Indian law, that justifies his dismissal.

While the trial has been going on for a while, yesterday it appears that the dispute over whether Churchill got the Allotment Act all wrong in some of his writings finally reached the trial on Monday. The dispute is not new — something that probably does not help CU, which could have acted years ago. Now-UNM prof. John LaVelle had written pieces in the mid to late 1990s disputing Churchill’s views of the Allotment Act, and raising other questions as well. Here are his key writings on Churchill, from his profile page:

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Neocolonial Inscription and Performance of American Identity in American Indian Higher Education — Conference Announcement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The conference website is here and registration starts soon!

Here is the law panel, hosted by the MSU Indigenous Law and Policy Center:

Law: Who’s Legal and Why Should or Shouldn’t That Matter?

Panelists: Andrew Adams III, General Counsel, St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin; Trent Cable, Makah Nation; Colette Routel, Atty Jacobson, Buffalo, Magnuson, Anderson & Hogen in St. Paul, Minnesota.

John Petoskey, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, and Kate Fort, MSU Indigenous Law and Policy Center, will be sitting on panels as well.

The rest of the panels are listed here.

Article on Academic Frauds

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Ethnic Fraud?
Tribal scholars say some faculty are falsely claiming American Indian heritage to boost their job prospects.

By Mary Annette Pember

From Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

For American Indian scholars, securing a job in higher education can sometimes be as simple as checking a box. Most of the country’s colleges and universities do not require proof of tribal enrollment from faculty or staff who identify themselves as American Indians. Students looking to receive financial aid, however, must submit proof that they are members of federally recognized tribes. The question of American Indian identity can be an incendiary one.

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