Ward Churchill: News Stories

Ward Churchill/Tenure: University of Colorado regents want to know how ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill was granted tenure without going through the usual process. Once the immediate issue of Churchill's future is settled, the discussion of how he received tenure will take place"big time," Regent Pat Hayes said Friday.

Ward Churchill/Plagiarism Charges: Ward Churchill says he didn't write the essay at the center of plagiarism allegations against him by a Canadian professor. University of Colorado regents last week were set to offer Churchill a buyout when they received a 1997 internal report by Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, detailing the accusations. Churchill says the essay in question was a" collectively authored piece." He refused to name any authors of the essay, which appeared under the name Institute for Natural Progress in a 1992 book edited by Churchill's former wife.

Ward Churchill: The Denver Post says that a report from a three-person committee investigating the scholarship of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is not expected as scheduled today and could be pushed back as much as two weeks, university sources said Sunday night. The delay raises the possibility of restarting negotiations to buy out Churchill's contract, this time using private rather than university funds, say sources close to the university. The Rocky Mountain News reports that a majority of CU regents said Sunday they oppose any financial settlement with Ward Churchill, aborting an attempted buyout of the controversial professor's contract.

Ward Churchill: An attorney for Ward Churchill, the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi leader, said today he expects to reach a settlement with the University of Colorado “within the next day or so” on the embattled professor’s future. David Lane declined to discuss specifics, including the size of any agreement and whether it would mean the university would buy out the contract of Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies. 9News said today it had learned that the proposed settlement amount is in the range of $300,000 to $400,000. It did not cite a source for its report. A member of the CU Board of Regents confirmed today that negotiations are taking place.

Ward Churchill: The Leadership Council of the Colorado American Indian Movement has endorsed a petition backing Ward Churchill.

Ward Churchill: The Colorado professor who described September 11 victims as"little Eichmanns," continues to grow. Now questions are being raised about how he earned tenure and even about his claims of American-Indian heritage. Newly released documents show that a vice chancellor at Boulder urged other administrators to hire Mr. Churchill in 1990, even though he did not have a doctorate. He earned tenure the next year, bypassing the usual six-year review.

HAW Historians Against the War (HAW) deplores the current effort by the Governor of Colorado and some members of the University of Colorado's Board of Regents to dismiss Prof. Ward Churchill, apparently for an essay that Prof. Churchill wrote regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001. HAW defends Prof. Churchill's right as a citizen and a member of his university community to speak his mind on issues of public concern without endangering his employment. HAW believes that the very notion that the opinions expressed in a faculty member's works might constitute grounds for dismissal constitutes a form of McCarthyism. We ask the Chancellor and Regents to immediately shut down this"investigation." And we urge our members to contact the following officials, to politely, but firmly express their views on this matter. Two scholars say Churchill's work strayed from facts on two issues. University of Colorado officials reviewing Ward Churchill's writings and qualifications will find questions about his scholarship and accuracy dating back at least eight years."If he is going to get fired, it is going to be for making up data, and that's one thing you can't get away with in the academic community," said Thomas F. Brown, who holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins and is an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Brown is one of two professors at different universities who have published or have sought to publish detailed critiques of Churchill's work. Others have questioned his work in interviews.

A University of Colorado professor at the center of a national controversy over free speech and a person's right to criticize the United States stepped forward to defend himself Tuesday night as college administrators consider firing him. Churchill said Tuesday that the"one phrase out of one sentence in a 20-page essay" applied to the"technical cadre that make this system hum," not the janitors, service workers and other innocent victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Tuesday's speech in which Churchill defended himself almost didn't happen. Campus officials postponed it Monday for security reasons. Student organizers of the lecture said they had received threats.

Thomas Brown, a sociologist at Lamar University, says his research demonstrates that Ward"Churchill has committed research fraud, and very possibly committed perjury as well." In an article he is writing he"analyzes Churchill’s fabrication of a genocide. Churchill invented a story about the US Army deliberately creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan people in 1837 by distributing infected blankets. While there was a smallpox epidemic on the Plains in 1837, it was entirely accidental, the Army wasn’t involved, and nearly every element of Churchill’s story is a total invention. My goal here was to show how and why Churchill engaged in such blatant fraud, and why no one has challenged him on it until now."

Churchill has said at various times that he is either one-sixteenth or three-sixteenths Cherokee, yet genealogical reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and others has failed to turn up any Cherokee ancestors - or any other Native Americans - in Churchill's family tree.