3/21 Update on Ward Churchill

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 17:40:18 -0500
Subject:


Dear Friends,

As I’m sure you know, in recent weeks Ward Churchill’s substantive
critiques of U.S. policies and practices have been conveniently buried in
a frenzy of increasingly ugly personal attacks.

The local media (along with Bill O’Reilly) and the political forces behind
them have made no secret of their agenda to destroy Ward’s reputation and
career, along with academic freedom, tenure and ethnic studies at CU.

With so many allegations and so little coverage of Ward’s responses, I’m
sure you have questions as well, so I’ve included below a brief summary
which I hope provides some context and sheds a little light on the
credibility of the accusations. In addition, some of Ward’s responses and
excerpts from scholars’ statements on his work are attached.

Ward was considering a settlement with CU in the hopes that it would
forestall a more general erosion of academic freedom and allow him to
return to his research and writing. Last week this possibility was
subverted by another round of personal attacks on Ward and by political
threats against the Regents. As a result, Interim Chancellor Phil
DiStefano has now promised to issue a “report” on the “investigation” by
Monday March 28.

We have no doubt that the right wing will intensify its campaign to ensure
that the report is as negative as possible. Ward has never been
officially notified of the investigation, much less consulted, and the
local media rarely publishes his responses or those of others who attempt
to counter various allegations. We cannot force the media to fairly cover
the issues, or expect a secret “investigation” to result in due process.

A political battle is being waged in which responsible journalism and
academic integrity have precious little role. But the knowledge that this
process is being publicly scrutinized can make a tremendous difference.

If you’re willing to take the time this week to write the editors of the
local newspapers and also copy the committee that will issue the report,
it would be of great help. Letters needn’t be long or profound and can
address any aspect of this process.

Even if you can’t do that, please feel free to circulate this and to
contact me directly if you have further questions. Since there is so much
disinformation circulating, I think it’s really important to give folks
this information and encourage them to question the sources that they may
be relying on.

Your support, expressed in so many ways over the past weeks, has really
kept us going.
With appreciation,
Natsu

MEDIA CONTACT INFO:
letters [at] RockyMountainNews.com
openforum [at] denverpost.com
openforum [at] dailycamera.com
letters [at] coloradodaily.com

PLEASE CC:Phil.Distefano [at] colorado.edu
Gleeson [at] colorado.edu
Getches [at] colorado.edu
nsaito [at] gsu.edu


***************************************************************************

OVERVIEW:

1. First, a bit of background: Ward Churchill has published more than
twenty books, dozens of book chapters and over one hundred journal
articles; has received numerous teaching awards and four prestigious
awards for writing; was inducted into the Martin Luther King Collegium of
Scholars in 2004; and as of 2001 was the most cited scholar in his field.
Students flock to his classes and his public lectures are uniformly well
received.

Ward is a big guy. He speaks the truth as he sees it, forcefully and
without compromise. To some people his size and the strength of his
convictions appear threatening, and that is the image most frequently
projected by the media. Most who know him, however, understand that the
anger he can project is not personal but stems from the pain of seeing
lives and communities needlessly destroyed. They understand that the only
danger he poses is to the status quo. Even in the midst of the current
controversy he rarely goes anywhere without people * often complete
strangers * seeking him out to express their appreciation for giving voice
to their realities.

Ward’s writing focuses on the government’s failure to comply with the
Constitution and with international law, both with respect to American
Indians and in its foreign policy. In some circles he is best known for
documenting the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations and their attempts to destroy
the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (AIM). These
governmental actions, of course, included disinformation campaigns in
which bogus “news” was fed to the media by government sources, people’s
personal lives were publicly shredded, dissent was fomented within
organizations, activists were gratuitously charged with criminal conduct
and, when all else failed, those considered most threatening to the status
quo were falsely imprisoned or assassinated.

In addition to being a scholar, for over thirty years Ward has also been a
political activist. As a result, he has been under intense surveillance *
well documented by FBI and Denver police files * and has often been
attacked politically. Never, however, as intensely as at present.

2. In late January, having successfully forced former political prisoner
Susan Rosenberg out of a teaching position at Hamilton College, right wing
activists in upstate NY turned their attention to Ward’s “Roosting
Chickens” essay, generating enough threats of violence to cancel his
speech.
3. Politicians and the media then attempted to say that Ward was
“advocating” the attacks of 9/11 rather than trying to explain their
causes. (See attached statement on 9/11.) Colorado Governor Bill Owens,
other politicians, the Denver newspapers and local radio (KHOW) talk show
hosts Dan Caplis, Craig Silverman and Peter Boyles immediately began a
campaign to fire Ward and the CU Regents initiated the current
“investigation.” KHOW, Bill O’Reilly and the local papers have kept the
issue “hot” with daily attacks.

4. To some extent the spin on the 9/11 piece was countered by Ward’s
highly publicized and extremely well-received speeches at CU and in
Hawai’i and Wisconsin. The media pundits, particularly Caplis and
Silverman, then changed their focus from the substance of Ward’s arguments
to the
allegation that he incites others to violent criminal action * a charge
prominently featured in a full-page ad, a major op-ed, and their radio
show. (Ward’s response is attached.) This, in turn, has been used by
Bill O’Reilly to denounce Ward as a “traitor.”

5. As that charge lost steam, it has mutated into inferences that Ward
“modus operandi” is to personally threaten violence. Recently the press
has featured several such claims, each unsubstantiated and heretofore
unreported, and alleged to have happened years, even decades, ago. While
both untrue and irrelevant, such charges effectively distract people from
the real issues.

6. Some people have, of course, remained focused on the substance of
Ward’s message, and many on the importance of supporting academic freedom.
Statements denouncing the attacks and/or the Regents’ investigation have
come from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the
board of directors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and
numerous other academic organizations; over a thousand professors and
several thousand others have signed petitions and/or sent individual
letters. This groundswell has forced the Regents to disregard the
Governor’s call to immediately fire Ward.

7. As it has become clear that it is politically untenable * as well as
illegal * to fire Ward simply because of his ideas, attacks on the
academic front have moved from the content of his work to allegations of
“fraud.” Ignored are the dozens of eminent scholars such as Howard Zinn,
Noam Chomsky, and David Stannard who have publicly praised Ward’s
scholarship. (See attached excerpts.) Instead, the focus has been on
three accusations from relatively unknown academics and two easily refuted
claims of “grade retribution” from among the thousands of students Ward
has taught.

8. The primary allegation of academic fraud is a charge of plagiarism
arising from a 1999 article by University of New Mexico professor John
LaVelle, a long-time political foe. LaVelle juxtaposes quotes from Ward’s
books to passages by other authors and concludes that Ward wrote all the
passages in question. The media has turned this on its head, claiming
that Ward engaged in plagiarism. (To decide for yourself, you only need
compare the writing styles; also see Ward’s attached response.) In 1996
LaVelle also published an article, since discredited by many scholars, in
which he accuses Ward of “fraud” over what is at most an interpretive
dispute.

9. The second allegation is by Thomas Brown, an apparently unpublished
assistant professor at Lamar University. Brown contests Ward’s
interpretation of the U.S. Army’s role in the spreading of smallpox to the
Mandan near Fort Clark in 1837. At best this is a disagreement of
historical interpretation, not a fraud claim.

10. And the third is from Fay Cohen of Dalhousie University, who
belatedly claimed that portions of her writing were included without
attribution in a report by a research collective published in 1992. Ward
is identified as playing a lead role in compiling the document, but was
neither its author nor the editor of the book in which it appeared. Even
assuming that Cohen’s complaint was legitimate, one has to question both
why she would raise the issue at this time and only against Ward, and why
it would call his entire body of scholarship into question.

11. In a parallel effort to discredit Ward, his identity has become a
topic of general debate. Relying on the denunciations of a small network
of political adversaries centered around a Minneapolis-based organization
that calls itself “National AIM,” the media has asserted that Ward is a
“fake” Indian, completely disregarding the determination of the Keetoowah
Band of Cherokee, his actual family history, and his longterm
participation in and support from the local American Indian community,
Colorado AIM and Indian organizations around the country.

12. It is worth noting in this context that after AIM’s leadership was
decimated by COINTELPRO operations in the 1970s and early ’80s, in order
to survive it transformed itself into a series of autonomous chapters, of
which Colorado AIM is the strongest. “National AIM” was subsequently
incorporated by one faction of former AIM members. It is a corporate
entity which, according to its own reports has received funding from both
the federal government and corporations like Honeywell.

This group has spent considerable energy attacking Colorado AIM. Recently
released intelligence files reveal an the Denver Police were informed by
the FBI in 1995 of a plan by unnamed individuals from Minneapolis to
assassinate Colorado AIM leaders Ward Churchill and Glenn Morris and wound
Russell Means. “National AIM” has for years denounced Ward as not only as
a “fake” Indian but as an FBI agent, a former cop, and a CIA operative who
supported the Contras in Nigeria (yes, Nigeria). (I can send more info on
this if you’d like.) **

Not surprisingly, a number of those now raising accusations of academic
fraud and personal threats * as well as identity * have ties to this
group.

11. Without any critical investigation of the sources, and ignoring much
evidence to the contrary, the press has reported this wide range of
allegations as if they were “news.” On the “Indian question” Ward is now
being widely denounced as having been hired, tenured and promoted simply
as a result of a false claim of ethnicity. (If it were that easy, one
has to wonder where all the Indians in academia are.) Simultaneously, he
is being barraged by virulent anti-Indian racism, most of it a variant of
“we should have exterminated all of you long ago,” complete with every
derogatory adjective imaginable. And just in case nothing else sticks,
an assortment of other claims about Ward’s artwork, his service in
Vietnam, and
relationships with former wives are being tossed in.

12. All of this adds up to a classic disinformation campaign (of the
sort documented by Ward and Jim Vander Wall in their books, Agents of
Repression and COINTELPRO Papers), one designed to “neutralize” political
dissent. Historically we have seen that such efforts only escalate.

As CU President Betsy Hoffman warned just before she announced her
resignation, these attacks are intended not simply to discredit Ward
Churchill, but are part of a concerted national campaign to undermine
academic freedom. In discussing the settlement option, the CU Regents
flatly rejected Ward’s demand that they affirm their own rules on academic
freedom. Similarly, they refused to acknowledge the validity of existing
tenure and review processes.

Governor Owens is a major player in Lynne Cheney’s American Council of
Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). At CU and across the country, attacks have
begun on ethnic studies and women’s studies, on affirmative action, and on
other professors. In recent weeks not only Ward but students of color at
CU generally have been subjected to acts of blatant racial hatred.

To accede to a “where there’s smoke” rationale without considering the
credibility of sources or their motivations legitimizes the use of ad
hominem attacks to undermine academic freedom. The targeting of Ward
Churchill is just the opening round; what is happening to him can be done
* though perhaps with less visibility * to anyone critical of the status
quo.


The widespread attempts to neutralize political dissent we currently face
will be limited only by the effectiveness of our resistance on each front.

----
**Note from Doc; There is not one national AIM. There are unfortunately
four major factions.
Minneapolis
Colorado
Oklahoma
Confedrated Chapters

Each IMHO tends to spend too much of it's effort claiming to be the
legitemate AIM and each denounces the others.
Each has some amount of truth in it's allegations against the others.
I find the entire reality juvenile and refuse to participate.
Every attack on any of the AIM chapters or personalities is an act of aid
and comfort to the enemy (FBI, CIA, WTO, BIA, FTAA, KKK, etc.).

I must judge Ward by his deeds as I have witnessed them.
I know him to be a man of honor in all of his dealings with me since
Wounded Knee'73.
Doc