A Bit More on Academia
I have tried to resist the temptation to blog much on the whole Ward Churchill situation. In part this is because it has been kicked around so thoroughly in other venues, and in part because I just knew I would get emails purposefully misunderstanding my point. I have instead tried to focus some positive attention on emerging examples of scholarship where none existed before. That said, I would like to try to add my own postscript on the whole Churchill fiasco.
First, while he has made some truly egregious statements that point to his moral bankruptcy,such as those he made about the 9/11 attacks and victims, I don't think that UC has grounds to fire him for these comments, at least based on the accepted rules and purpose of tenure. One of the reasons for tenure is to give academics the freedom to pursue scholarship in any direction, without threat of political retribution.
However, Churchill should be fired for his complete lack of quality scholarship or principled academic research. Churchill, through his poor scholarship, plagiarism, and outright fabrications have helped to set back historic studies about Native Americans and their tragic interaction with Western Civilization. Churchill has become the poster boy for one of the leading problems in academia today, that is the ability of certain individuals to substitute vocal leftist politics and minority status for intellectual rigor and true scholarship in getting tenure at major universities. A non-protected group white male of moderate politics with the same body of academic work as Churchill couldn't get a job teaching at any self-respecting university, but put the same work under the banner of radical leftist native American, and suddenly he has tenure at the University of Colorado.
Anyway, Victor David Hanson has a great piece in NRO summarizing why Ward Churchill represents what is wrong in academia today.
