Ward Churchill's and David Irving's self-generated problems
[Walter Plywaski lives in Boulder.]
The self-generated problems of ex-professor Ward Churchill carry an interesting parallel to those of David Irving. In 1996 British Holocaust denier David Irving sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt for alleged libel. Three courts found for Lipstadt, concluding that Irving was a Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite and a racist.
Irving, a British writer, specialized in military history of World War II, but proved to be highly controversial, due to his undue (to say the least!) sympathy for the Third Reich, anti-Semitism, and involvement in the Holocaust denial movement.
Ward Churchill, fired from University of Colorado for allegedly fabricating and plagiarizing in his published writings, sued CU "to get his job back and claims he was unfairly targeted for controversial remarks he made post-9/11. CU found him to be a plagiarist with poor academic integrity." (Daily Camera, March 3).
I believe that both Churchill and Irving exhibit the same kind of hubris: both felt, and feel, that nothing they could state, no matter how outrageous, could hurt them. Both of these two self-defined geniuses forgot the basic principle of being a successful prevaricator and that is: do not bring attention to yourself when you know perfectly well you have things that you wish to hide or at least not have generally discussed. Both of these two men used either bogus "historical research" works or, when unable to find data for their ideology, created the data out of whole cloth.
While Irving's pretensions to historical greatness have now been totally refuted in open court hearings, Churchill's pretensions to the same are being debated most fairly in a Denver Colorado court. Reading some of the reports from that court's proceedings, it becomes quite clear to me that Churchill and his attorneys don't even bother to defend their case by solid evidence against the accusations of plagiarism, subterfuge and scholastic inappropriateness made by CU. Instead, their thrust seems to be to try to disregard such charges and claim that Churchill is being persecuted because of his merely unpopular (but very shrill!) article in which he claimed that the victims of the Twin Tower attack of 9/11 were nothing other but "little Eichmanns."...
Read entire article at DailyCamera.com
The self-generated problems of ex-professor Ward Churchill carry an interesting parallel to those of David Irving. In 1996 British Holocaust denier David Irving sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt for alleged libel. Three courts found for Lipstadt, concluding that Irving was a Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite and a racist.
Irving, a British writer, specialized in military history of World War II, but proved to be highly controversial, due to his undue (to say the least!) sympathy for the Third Reich, anti-Semitism, and involvement in the Holocaust denial movement.
Ward Churchill, fired from University of Colorado for allegedly fabricating and plagiarizing in his published writings, sued CU "to get his job back and claims he was unfairly targeted for controversial remarks he made post-9/11. CU found him to be a plagiarist with poor academic integrity." (Daily Camera, March 3).
I believe that both Churchill and Irving exhibit the same kind of hubris: both felt, and feel, that nothing they could state, no matter how outrageous, could hurt them. Both of these two self-defined geniuses forgot the basic principle of being a successful prevaricator and that is: do not bring attention to yourself when you know perfectly well you have things that you wish to hide or at least not have generally discussed. Both of these two men used either bogus "historical research" works or, when unable to find data for their ideology, created the data out of whole cloth.
While Irving's pretensions to historical greatness have now been totally refuted in open court hearings, Churchill's pretensions to the same are being debated most fairly in a Denver Colorado court. Reading some of the reports from that court's proceedings, it becomes quite clear to me that Churchill and his attorneys don't even bother to defend their case by solid evidence against the accusations of plagiarism, subterfuge and scholastic inappropriateness made by CU. Instead, their thrust seems to be to try to disregard such charges and claim that Churchill is being persecuted because of his merely unpopular (but very shrill!) article in which he claimed that the victims of the Twin Tower attack of 9/11 were nothing other but "little Eichmanns."...