Nationally, the furor over Ward Churchill may have died down and people may have assumed that the embattled University of Colorado Professor had been run out of town, or had lost his tenure, or had maybe quit. But, oh no, the battle is ongoing!
CU has surrounded the alleged Native American Professor, and so has the Denver press, and we could be looking at Churchill's Last Stand here in the Rocky Mountains. Now, the concern is not over his ludicrous essay, but about whether he is making facts up in regards to his books and essays!
In the beginning of this situation, I hated what Churchill wrote in "Concerning Roosting Chickens", which was probably his intention for the reader, but I didn't have a problem with him writing the essay as speech is free, but the consequences of that speech come with a price sometimes.
He's starting to pay that price now with the current investigation into his scholarship. In an article today in the Rocky Mountain News it certainly seems that Prof. Churchill is the king of fabrication. The News' detailed report shows that the sources he has used in regards to a smallpox epidemic in the late 1830's that decimated an entire nation of native Americans were at best inaccurately reported, and at worst completely made up by Churchill.
It is obvious that an example is being made of Ward Churchill. But is this a bad thing? At first you have to question the precedent that this would set by going to such lengths to challenge tenure, but this precedent could be good for academia. Good in that it could get rid of some "teachers" who are in the university system simply to hide from the real world.
I always prefer to believe in people, and trust that they are inherently good. And while this may be naive, I'm willing to be naive in order to keep my faith in humanity. But when I find that a person has willingly been deceitful, I find it hard to be forgiving. Challenging tenure may not be something we see a lot, or this Churchill situation may be the spark that sets a fire of challenges, if it is the latter I welcome it as a chance to divide the cream of the crop from the chaff. It is about time we find out who are real scholars are, don't you think?
