Posted on 02/23/2005 8:48:38 AM PST by freespirited
University of Illinois officials said Tuesday they can't locate Ward Churchill's master's thesis and aren't sure if he was required to write one.
The embattled University of Colorado ethnic-studies professor claims undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Illinois' Springfield campus, which was known as Sangamon State University until 1995. Springfield is in Sangamon County.
University of Illinois at Springfield spokeswoman Cheryl Peck confirmed that Churchill received a bachelor's degree in 1974 and a master's degree in 1975. But no thesis is on file, she said.
"We can't say for sure he didn't write one," Peck said. It is not clear if a thesis was a requirement at the time Churchill received the degree in communications, she said.
CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale said she did not know if faculty members inquired about Churchill's thesis in 1991 before giving him tenure.
Documents released last week by CU indicate some faculty members had reservations about granting tenure to a professor who lacked a doctorate.
The documents are silent on a master's thesis.
On Tuesday, Illinois faculty members described Sangamon State - in the 1970s, when Churchill attended - as focused on innovative teaching methods, including an emphasis on social issues of the day.
The campus did not have academic departments. Instead, faculty members were rostered under interdisciplinary groupings, including Churchill's major, communications in a technological society.
Students could major in traditional subjects, such as history or English, but they could also design their own majors in consultation with the faculty.
Larry Golden, a political scientist and one of the original professors when Sangamon opened in 1970, said the school was not as freewheeling as it sounds.
Proposals for self-designed majors were given extensive faculty review, he said.
The campus served only juniors, seniors and master's-degree students. They would have taken the standard courses at a two-year college before coming to Sangamon.
The program included an "applied-studies term," in which students earned credit by working off campus. Projects ranged from working with a state legislator to community organizing.
The students were required to take part in a seminar and write journals or term papers as part of the program, Golden said.
"You couldn't just go to an anti-war rally in Washington and say, 'That's my experience,' " Golden said.
LOL! Maybe they should go back and look at his undergraduate record. Hell, maybe he didn't even finish highschool!
1. Throw all resumes from University of Colorado graduates in the trash.
2. Do the same for University of Illinois graduates.
This and the varioius articles about the Harvard faculty's academic lynching of Larry Summers show the complete mess the Marxists (AKA liberals) have made of academia and their total hypocrisy, where they claim free speech and academic freedom for themselves while denying it to their mildest critics.
Churchill is and has always been an academic fraud. He falsified his ethnicity to get an AA position, lacked the essential, minimum academic credentials, published his articles in advocacy journals instead of peer reviewed academic journals, and has been persuasively accused of plagiarizing his material and faking some of his research. All of the foregoing defects in his background and scholarship would have been obvious to anyone who gave him a thorough and fair vetting. Nevertheless, he was given tenure in one year, rather than the usual six, because UC, driven by PC pressures, desperately wanted a radical, American Indian "scholar" on its faculty. Now it's learned that he slandered the 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns" without any evidence and his supporters stridently defend him on "free speech" and "academic freedom" grounds.
However, Larry Summers, a man with a brilliant background, genuine credentials for his position, and a full-fledged member of the liberal establishment, makes one speculative remark, in an professional academic context, about why women as a group do not do as well in hard sciences as men, is subjected to a full, hysterical, screeching attack and is forced to do Maoist self-criticism. Few professors, particularly at Harvard, are making any effort to defend Summers' academic freedom, although that is exactly what he was responsibly exercising in a forum specifically designed for its exercise.
Only an institution rotten to the core with Marxism could elevate and lionize an unqualified, malicious crackpot who defecates on the memory of the 9/11 victims, while simultaneously pillorying a highly qualified, responsible academic leader who maturely and thoughtfully addresses a serious academic personnel issue in a professional forum designed to deal with that issue.
These two cases show Marxist academia is rotten to the core and totally hypocritical.
No thesis required for a Masters Degree? Design your own major? I've driven through Sangamon County a few times, and I think I ate at a McDonalds there once. Maybe I have a degree from that university. I hope it's a PhD, I've always wanted to be called Doctor!
the left functions like a huge union or mafia. if you belong, you get stuff. if you don't belong, you don't get stuff.
i remember during the jimmy carter presidency looking for a job. someone said, you've a vet, go down to the county.
down at the county they were handing out pay checks from some carter program to miniorities. they didn't do anything work for the pay.
i wasn't eligible. in return the recipients vote democrat.
A Master's degree in only one year? I know it can be done, but come up with the paper trail atleast.
Insert John Belushi cough here. Bill and Ted's Excellent Graduate School.
Churchill Landed Tenure Without Usual Review Process (& he doesn't have a doctorate)
Insert John Belushi cough here. Bill and Ted's Excellent Graduate School.
Chief Moose has a doctorate. Churchill should be able to pick up one someplace.
There is nothing unusual about granting someone an MA based on coprehensive exams and not a thesis. That happens all the time all over the country.
And no one would expect some place like University of Colorado to hire such a graduate and then give them tenure unless they somehow had become a world class scholar. Churchhill became world class, it just seems it was not as a scholar.
Impossible! Especially a non-thesis masters.
Muleteam1
That a person with an MA from Sangamon State could get a full-time tenured position at Colorado U tells us a lot about standards (or lack thereof) at CU-BoulderBubble.
Think of the crappiest college in your home state and you will have a concept of Sangamon.
Dunce caps, appointed by the governor.
The moonbats at CU are once again proving that PT Barnum was correct.
I agree, but figured that a full time student could overlead the classes and be doing the prep for a thesis or oral exam at the same time. I wanted to give the benefit of te doubt to anyone that has done it. I, personally, am taking the full 2 1/2 years to complete mine. I guess I'm a slacker. LOL
both colorado and illinois have some rigorous science, medical and engineering programs.
drop into the department of astro geophysics at boulder and see how you fit in.
the problem is that all universities, public and private, have these give-away programs like ethnic studies, peace studies, conflict resolution, etc.
they are guilt programs. take money from the rich whitey and give it to the po'.
quite often the neer-do-well sons and daughters of the rich major in these programs. they graduate, and like a los angeles times article showed, the parents give them a credit card to go protest the wto. the times had an excellent in-depth study of these people at the seattle wto protest, was that 1999? i forget.
these kids don't have to work for a living. they habit college towns and the coasts. and they're cannon fodder for the ward churchills.
"The only thing I can do is to pursue a different slogan: U.S. out of America, U.S. off the planet, U.S. out of our lives, U.S. into the dustbin of history."
-Ward Churchill, Feb. 21, 2005, press conference University of Hawaii
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?c94f3fc8-0955-4341-9256-1baa1f464e9f
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