Michael Perelman wrote:
Very few academics will really stand up for Churchill. A precedent will be set, empowering others to go after those who voice unpopular views.
I guess the problem is that we really do not have an institutional infrastructure on the left to effectively defend ourselves at this time.
The AAUP issued a statement defending Ward Churchill's academic freedom: <http://www.aaup.org/newsroom/Newsitems/churchill.htm>.
Legally speaking, Ward Churchill's on strong grounds, according to the ACLU's statements reported in newspapers.
One worry is the question of identity. As has been posted here, some long-time American Indian critics of Churchill have been questioning whether or not Churchill really counts as "American Indian." University of Colorado regents might seize upon the controversy to fire him, so as not to look like they are firing him for his 9/11 essay, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment and which probably cannot be turned into a ground of dismissal however the media and state legislators spin it:
<blockquote>Underfire Dismissing controversial professor would set a frightening precedent By Eugene Volokh February 5, 2005
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
More important, there have been claims raised that Churchill has deliberately misrepresented himself as a member of certain American Indian tribes, presumably to build credibility as a scholar and public intellectual speaking on behalf of the American Indian community. If this is so - and this is a big "if" - then he may well be properly disciplined or fired for such deliberate falsehoods, though not for his viewpoints.
For one recent example of such discipline, consider the case of Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor at Mount Holyoke College. Ellis apparently claimed to his students that he had served in Vietnam, which turned out not be so; he also supposedly overstated his role in various political movements. This led him to be suspended for a year from his teaching post.
Ellis' falsehoods weren't in his scholarship, and I doubt that they led students to be misinformed about important historical questions. Still, the university rightly concluded that such dishonesty merited punishment. Ellis wasn't fired, but he's a Pulitzer Prize winner and, as I understand, a historian of substantial quality. Had he done less good work, he might well have lost his job.
Deliberate falsehoods are generally not protected by the First Amendment. Nor do I think there's great danger to academic freedom in enforcing basic requirements of honesty in professors' public statements, particularly ones about their own life histories. There is some risk of error in adjudicating such controversies, but much less than the risk involved in deciding which viewpoints are so heinous as to be intolerable. Again, I stress that this is relevant only if he indeed made certain explicit and unambiguous factual claims about his being Indian or a member of some tribe, and those claims were indeed false.
<http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3524622,00.html></blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
