Works for me...
Posted on 03/12/2005 9:58:07 AM PST by freespirited
Allegations that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill plagiarized and threatened a professor in Canada scuttled negotiations Friday for a financial settlement that would have ended Churchill's employment at CU.
Churchill and the university were close to an agreement that would have required the professor to give up his tenured position in exchange for a substantial payment, but several sources said a report in Friday's Rocky Mountain News disrupted those talks.
The News has also learned that a prominent American Indian artist told law enforcement authorities in New Mexico that Churchill threatened violence against him.
The Friday story detailed accusations against Churchill by a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Professor Fay G. Cohen complained in 1997 that Churchill had plagiarized an essay she wrote on Indian treaty fishing rights. After she made the allegation, Cohen says, Churchill phoned her in the middle of the night and said, "I'll get you for this."
Dalhousie officials sent CU an internal report this week about the 1997 allegations. A spokesman for Dalhousie said Cohen decided not to pursue her allegation of plagiarism after being threatened.
Churchill said he did not plagiarize Cohen's work, nor threaten the Canadian professor. In an e-mail Friday to the News, Churchill said he compiled the essay in question from the work of several people. He did not identify those people.
"On the matter of my supposedly "threatening" her, I did no such thing," Churchill said in the e-mail. "What would I be threatening her ABOUT? An end note? The closest to what she seems to be alleging - assuming what's in the paper is accurate - is my telling her during a call placed in mid-afternoon that I'd never work with her again. While the conversation was less than cordial, it involved no physical threat on my part, nor even an intimation of adverse action in a professional sense."
CU Regent Michael Carrigan said he was troubled by Cohen's claims about Churchill.
"It raised allegations about specific threats against a specific person," Carrigan said. "I don't know if they're true, but I think they merit further consideration. I will say that story raised substantial concerns with me."
Churchill's attorney, David Lane, confirmed the negotiations had been stymied.
"Everything is currently stalled," said Lane. "It wasn't stalled this morning, but it's stalled now. I don't know why."
Churchill is a tenured professor, making it difficult for the university to fire him unless CU can establish he violated codes of conduct for faculty members. However, any substantiated threats made by Churchill could be grounds for dismissal under the rules.
David Bradley, an American Indian artist who lives in New Mexico, has had a longstanding dispute with Churchill.
Bradley supported the 1990 American Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which prohibits an artist who is not American Indian from representing his work as Indian art. Churchill, who is also an artist and whose claims to American Indian heritage have been disputed, opposed the law.
Bradley wrote an essay in 1992 describing Churchill as "a white man who poses as a big bad radical Indian and gets paid very well to do so."
In response, Bradley claims Churchill threatened his life.
"He threatened to kill me on the telephone," Bradley said. "He called me and said, 'David, I'm going to kill you.' "
Bradley said he reported the threat to the Santa Fe sheriff's department, but authorities never conducted an investigation.
"I took that threat very seriously," said Bradley. "But they didn't do anything, or didn't want to do anything."
Churchill did not return telephone calls Friday seeking comment about Bradley's allegations.
Lane says the reason Santa Fe officials ignored Bradley's complaint may have been because they didn't put much stock in his story.
"Apparently there was no probable cause," said Lane. "Maybe it was because the cops didn't believe him."
According to Lane, people with grudges against Churchill are now piling on.
"Don't come crawling out of the woodwork years later, telling ludicrous stories," said Lane. "If somebody says Ward Churchill kicked his dog when he was a kid, or somebody else says Ward Churchill stuck out his tongue at her in the fourth grade, or somebody else says Ward Churchill threatened to kill me, what they need to do is call the police."
Churchill has been under fire since late January, when an essay he wrote about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks came to light.
Churchill described many of the financial service workers who died in the attack as "little Eichmanns," a reference to the infamous Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. He argued they were complicit in a financial system that was responsible for the deaths of thousands in the Third World.
The essay was widely reviled and many public officials, including Gov. Bill Owens, called for Churchill to be fired. On Feb. 3, the CU Board of Regents directed interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano to lead a monthlong probe into Churchill's writings and speeches to determine if there was cause for him to be dismissed. The results of that investigation were expected to be announced next week, but CU officials haven't said when the probe will be complete.
What the professors wrote
From the introduction to the conclusion, Ward Churchill's essay on Indian treaty fishing rights mirrors one he edited the year before by Canadian professor Fay G. Cohen:
• Cohen wrote: "The treatied people of the Northwest endured more than a century of denial of their rights."
• Churchill wrote: "In the Northwest, despite clear treaty language permanently ensuring such prerogatives, treatied people suffered more than a century of systematic deprivation of their rights to fish."
• Cohen wrote: "In recent years, the treaty tribes of the United States have moved closer to regaining their rights to harvest and manage fish and other resources. Strong legal rulings have supported their claims to harvest and manage the natural resources upon which they depended for centuries."
• Churchill wrote: "After decades of conflict, the treatied people of the United States are moving closer to regaining their rights to harvest and manage fish and other resources. In recent years, strong legal rulings have confirmed their claims to the natural resources upon which they depended since time immemorial."
Talks Snagged? Good.
Save the money for the lawsuit you know the idiot will file once you fire him.
He lied about being a Cherokee, he made up the well known story about how US soldiers gave blankets with small pox to Indians,
isn't that enough?
Good news! That bastard should not be paid one cent to leave,in fact he sounds like a very dangerous guy to me.
More evidence of the wackos running the asylum
Here comes the chickens...where will CU let them roost?
This is liberalism at it's finest. Unless he killed a whale or an owl, he's gonna be propped up for years to come.
"Bradley wrote an essay in 1992 describing Churchill as "a white man who poses as a big bad radical Indian and gets paid very well to do so."
What he said!
He will sue. They're probably trying to figure out which is cheaper; buying him off or going to court.
"...he made up the well known story about how US soldiers gave blankets with small pox to Indians,"
You're kidding! Ward Churchill made that, as you say, well known, story up? That was him?
The 60s has done more damage than even I realized.
I think that it's great justice that Churchill has been exposed to the world for what he is-- a fake, an opportunist, and and some variety of a mental case. The university has suffered in a way that will haunt it for years. Justice for it and him.
Calling someone in the middle of the night and threatening her...sounds like he's a drunk, to me.
"Calling someone in the middle of the night and threatening her...sounds like he's a drunk, to me."
Not drunk, just the typical mentality of DU.
This situation reflects even worse on the other faculty and academia at CU, to allow this shmuck to run rampant around campus for a decade and remaining silent to avoid bringing attention to their highly paid gig. There are at least ten thousand Churchills' out there who are now going to see the brighter light of scrutiny. Look for his peers to offer him up on a silver plate in order to spare themselves.
There were some occasions (in the 18th century, I reacall) when this did happen. Churchill made up new allegations that it happened again more recently.
At first glance I thought it said "Tanks hit snag". I guess that would be one way to fire him!
It's a sad story. The real problem is that our colleges have thousands of frauds like Churchill -- he's just the one who happened to get caught. If he's fired, I hope that won't give anyone the feeling that a problem has been solved.
Works for me...
Oh yes! That smallpox blanket story was a complete fabrication! And there are so many holes in the story, like how would US soldiers go about handing out smallpox infected blankets? Were they not worried about the disease themselves? How did they infect the blankets?
Yes Ward Churchill made it up, it was Churchill. He is a liar and a plagieriser. He's been caught in other lies too, I could go on and on.
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