Fwd: AAUP statement on Ward Churchill
[via Lou Proyect]
STATEMENT OF THE AAUP CHAPTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT
BOULDER REGARDING THE INVESTIGATION AND RECOMMENDED TERMINATION OF
PROFESSOR WARD CHURCHILL
The American Association of University Professors has been fighting
to protect academic freedom, faculty governance, and due process in
higher education since
1915. The newly constituted University of Colorado-Boulder chapter of
the AAUP is deeply concerned over the University of Colorado
administration’s handling of the “Ward Churchill affair.” We
recognize that Professor Churchill’s statements are often
inflammatory and that serious questions have been raised about his
scholarship. Nevertheless, we believe that academic freedom and due
process must be accorded to all faculty members, regardless of their
personalities or politics.
CU-B AAUP recognizes that the University’s credibility depends on
sound scholarship, and our membership strongly supports the
maintenance of rigorous research standards. However, faculty members
whose research results in unpopular conclusions should not be held to
a higher standard than scholars whose work is popular or
uncontroversial. CU-B AAUP also believes that serious charges of
misconduct leveled against faculty should be investigated. However,
the credibility of those charges should be investigated as well, in
order to protect faculty against politically motivated witch hunts.
Finally, we believe that a central mission of the University should
be defending academic freedom by protecting faculty members from
vindictive attacks and maintaining a presumption of innocence for
faculty members who are accused of misconduct until investigations
are concluded. This was not done in the Churchill case.
The membership of CU-B AAUP takes no position on whether or not any
of the substantive charges of research misconduct leveled against
Professor Churchill are justified. Our areas of expertise are
different from Churchill’s and we are not able to assess
independently the conclusions of the two CU-B Committees that have
investigated Churchill’s work. We have chosen not to compare the
rigor of Churchill’s work with that of other highly esteemed scholars
in the field of Native American Studies, such as the late Vine
Deloria. However, several aspects of the investigation raise
questions about the fairness of the ad hoc Investigating Committee’s
conclusions and the proportionality of the punishment recommended by
the Administration. They also raise more general worries about the
investigation’s chilling effect on critical scholarship.
No one doubts that the original charges against Professor Churchill
were politically motivated. In February, 2005, the Colorado House of
Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning
Churchill, and State Governor Bill Owens called publicly for him to
resign for statements he made regarding the World Trade Tower
disaster. These resolutions violated Professor Churchill’s First
Amendment right to free speech, as a University-appointed committee
rightly ruled. However, charges of academic misconduct immediately
surfaced–from the same and similar sources–despite the fact that
similar charges had been raised at least two years earlier, and were
never followed up by the University. In this highly politicized
context, many assert that no investigation of Professor’s Churchill’s
work should ever have been undertaken, and others argue that, in such
a context, a fair investigation was impossible. Notwsithstanding, an
inquiry was conducted, in circumstances marked by constant
inflammatory, ad hominem, and even obscene attacks, on and off the CU
campus, against Professor Churchill, anyone who appeared to support
him, and even against some members of the ad hoc Investigating
Committee, two of whom resigned soon after the investigation began.
CU-B AAUP recognizes that the initial inquiry initiated by Interim
Chancellor Distefano was an attempt to keep the investigation of
Professor Churchill in the hands of the CU-B faculty and
administrators, in the face of extraordinary pressures to cede
control to Regents, legislators, or other outside bodies. We
appreciate the service of our colleagues on the Standing Committee on
Research Misconduct and especially on the sub-committee that
investigated Churchill, who endured months of unrelenting pressure.
While we do not question the integrity or acuity of these colleagues,
nevertheless, we believe that the investigation now is widely
perceived to be a pretext for firing Churchill when the real reason
for dismissal is his politics. Our questions and concerns about the
investigation include the following:
The lack of an uninvolved arbiter is troubling. It appears to be a
violation of due process that the Interim Chancellor acted both as
plaintiff, in bringing the charges against Churchill, and as judge,
recommending dismissal. In making his recommendation, Professor
Distefano acted on the most stringent recommendations of the two
committees, even though half of the members recommended a lesser
penalty.The absence of peer investigators is also troubling. Professor
Churchill is a specialist in Native American scholarship and has
focused on historical issues regarding relationships between Native
peoples and European-Americans. However, the final investigative
committee included no scholars from Native American Studies. Thus,
there was no expertise present in Professor Churchill’s specific
areas of study. We do not believe that a mathematician, physicist,
physician or lawyer would have been investigated without disciplinary
peers to evaluate the quality of his or her scholarship.The hostile climate posed serious problems for the Churchill
investigation and surely contributed to the absence on the sub- committee of scholarly peers in Professor Churchill’s field. For
example, one faculty member was pressured to resign from the
Committee on Research Misconduct because he had signed the February
2005 faculty petition supporting academic freedom in general at CU,
and thus was viewed by some as supportive of Churchill himself. In
addition, the two Native American historians originally asked to
serve on the Investigatory Committee were so intimidated by the
“toxic” atmosphere at CU and so pressured by outsiders that both
resigned almost upon appointment.Some scholars argue that the standards of research misconduct used
in Professor Churchill’s case were elastic and that they were applied
to his work with special stringency. Others consider the recommended
punishment disproportionate. From a record of more than twenty books
and hundreds of articles, chapters, speeches, and electronic
communications, the committee investigating Churchill’s work isolated
six pages, in which they claimed to find examples of plagiarism and
one example of fabrication. If these charges are justified, they
certainly show that Professor Churchill sometimes failed to adhere to
the most rigorous standards of scholarship, but they seem relatively
small in light of Churchill’s vast opus. All scholars have points of
view, and even distinguished scholars make occasional mistakes;
however, it is highly unusual for the discovery of such errors to end
in dismissal.
The investigation into Professor Churchill’s work has been undertaken
in the context of extensive well-organized and well-funded activity
to discredit scholarship by faculty members perceived as liberal or
left-leaning and to undermine the autonomy of institutions of higher
education across the country. The University of Colorado has been a
special target of such efforts, and scholars around the country are
watching carefully to see what happens here. Insofar as the
investigation inappropriately casts aspersions on Professor
Churchill’s controversial conclusions regarding relationships between
Native Americans and the United States, it also will weaken academic
freedom across the United States. The freedom of faculty to interpret
their own data, regardless of these interpretations’ conformity to
conventional wisdom, lies at the heart of the scholarly enterprise.
In these circumstances, it is vital for the University of Colorado to
defend not only the integrity of scholarly research but also the
interlinked principles of academic freedom for its faculty and
autonomy for itself. Failure to do this will be extremely damaging to
the University of Colorado. It will injure faculty morale, diminish
the University’s ability to recruit qualified faculty, especially in
disciplines where controversies over interpretation are commonplace,
impugn the University’s scholarly reputation, and reduce our ability
to represent the best of scholarly work in research, the classroom
and the community at large.
For these reasons, CU-B chapter of AAUP calls on the University of
Colorado’s administration to reverse the decision to dismiss
Professor Churchill. The problems that beset the Churchill inquiry,
especially its highly politicized origin and context, bring into
question both the objectivity of the inquiry and the proportionality
of the recommended penalty. We recognize the possibility that lesser
sanctions may be justified for some specific acts described in the
report.More generally, we call on the University to renew its commitment
to academic freedom. This requires that the administration and the
faculty exist in a reciprocal relationship, whereby faculty engage in
resolute and rigorous scholarship in accordance with the canons of
their discipline and the administration protects this scholarship and
instruction against external political pressures. The recent “Report
of the First Global Colloquium of University Presidents,” held at
Columbia University in January 2005 and attended by U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Anan, stated clearly: “The autonomy of the universities
is the guarantor of academic freedom in the performance of scholars’
professional duties.”
–October 24, 2006