Thanks for the summary.
One wonders if , by their silence, the University Professors approve of this academic plaguarizing ?
By their silence, are these common and approved practices in the University that are only now being exposed ?
The Professors should publically ask Ward to resign. They took out big newspaper ads and marched in support of Ward earlier.
"Churchill made up many of his references and misrepresented many others. He would write a paper and have one of his students publish it under their name. Then he would refer to the paper in one of his own writings as a reference to back up his work."
Firing Churchill for what he has done and setting up a new standard to prevent new Churchills would eliminate a very large % of so called professors across America.
It would be similiar if every Dinosaur Fishwrap would fire any writer/editor who wrote a story based on lies, deceit, spins like the TANG/GW bs by Blather and Mapes. There wouldn't be many so called journalists and editors left in America from the current crop of liars.
I don't think they are approved practices, but how common they are is definitely worth checking.
I think the basic problem is that in Ethnic Studies you are trying to find support to a pre-determined conclusion, and so any evidence in support of it is not generally questioned unless there's a pre-existing controversy.
Let's say I write a Physics paper and cite a source to prove Newton's Laws. Is anyone going to question that the source is correct? Everyone knows Newton's Laws are valid, so there's no need to check the source ... right?
Let's say Ward Churchill writes a paper where he says that a certain document says that a specific "blood quantum" is required - that is, to be an Indian, you have to have some Indian blood in you. Does anyone check? Of course not! It all sounds perfectly reasonable.
Actually, the document says nothing of the kind.
Also, understand that Churchill lied about his Indian blood and nonetheless some consider him a member of a tribe, at least by marriage. But others think he's an obnoxious fool who does not speak for Indians at all. So the blood quantum requirement, which he would flunk, is an enormously emotional issue for him.
To you or me it may seem that there is nothing wrong with requiring that someone be an "Indian" in order to receive Indian benefits, but of course he does not. He claims in his papers that to require the blood quantum means extinguishing Indian tribes as they intermarry with non-Indians and the "blood quantum" decreases.
So he had a big emotional stake in this issue and I think that caused him to muddy the waters.
The cold truth is that unless you have severe critics, nobody's going to check your sources. It's easy to simply believe him unless someone on the other side has a similar emotional stake.
D