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Denver talk radio's Peter Boyles interviews Ward Churchill and Russell Means. The link also offers two Churchill parody songs. Scroll down and you'll find David Horowitz favoring Churchill's retention at CU. Wotf is DH to advise a research university about faculty retention?! Did Michael Jackson advise the Pentagon on the invasion of Iraq? Hat tip to Mark Grimsley at War Historian, but why is Grimsley so tolerant of Horowitz?
I think loyalty a virtue, and I certainly understand a friend vouching for the integrity of a person's actions in their dealings with that person. I don't understand how people translate that into a critique of the motivations of opposing people, especially when they don't know the field that well.
Tinker has elsewhere (RMN, Feb. 3) compared the concern for geneology to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, and then says the question should be left to the tribes themselves (I hope he's not hinting that the tribes are akin to Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa).
I'm reminded of when Argentina, during the Falklands War, announced it would never surrender. VS Naipaul then commented that a proper translation of Argentine was that they would be surrendering in a matter of days. He turned out right.
Similarly, when Russell Means shows up to declare that it doesn't matter whether Churchill is a Native American, then I know there's as much Native American blood in a cigar store Indian as you'll find in Churchill. When Tinker makes his comments about Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, I draw a similar conclusion.
In fact, the Keetoowah have made clear that Churchill is not one of them (as he claims). He was given one of several hundred associate membership cards (one went to Bill Clinton), but is not enrolled.
Personally, I don't have any trouble with the fact that Churchill has scammed Colorado-Boulder on the question of his ethnicity. If they hired him on the basis of ethnicity, then shame on them -- they deserve to be scammed. I'll bet dollars to donuts that Colorado-Boulder's submissions to the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education have consistently listed Churchill as a Native American hire, though it has no doubt been clear to them for some time that he ain't no Native American.
Ralph E. Luker -
2/10/2005
David, Brown is revising his critique of Churchill. If you're inclined to do so, you might write him at the e-mail address indicated at his website and offer any suggestions that you care to.
David Lion Salmanson -
2/10/2005
Yeah, except this isn't Arming America. Look, I've personally checked some of Churchill's footnotes, specifically from the nuclear west stuff, and everything is there and he isn't doing violence to any quotes. I've already found some pretty petty mistakes in Brown that indicate similar types of misreading as Churchhill is accused of. For starters, he confuses inoculation with vaccination, two different ways of acheiving immunity with very different results. In inoculation you actually get the disease, just a case that was less likely to kill you. Inocculation led to death in many cases (I think the number is 10%, I'll check this if requested). Vaccination wasn't developed until long after 1830s. (Incoculation was first used on a widespread basis in the US by the Continental Army after GWs direct orders to begin the project, it had to be kept secret from the British b/c had they known inoculation was going on, they would have attacked the smallpox weakend army).
Jonathan Dresner -
2/9/2005
I don't really want to start this debate again. But the key to breaking civilian resistance was getting the central government to clearly surrender. Otherwise they could have dropped the bomb on Tokyo itself.
Hiroshima was a pretty high-value target, in the terms of strategic bombing at the time, with Japan's Asian forces Command and Control HQ, and considerable industrial capacity. The newly revised Memorial Museum in Hiroshima Peace Park actually makes a really good case for Hiroshima as a legitimate target (at the same time that it makes a really good case for the atomic bombs as illegitimate weapons, of course).
Nagasaki is closer, perhaps, to the "softening up for invasion" line, but its not a strongly stated open rationale.
I'm not arguing that the US didn't realize the likely extent of civilian casualties from the bombs, or that WMD are justified even in situations of total war. Just that the rhetoric of Japan with regard to its WWII WMD use is not dissimilar to our own.
Richard Henry Morgan -
2/9/2005
Well, you certainly won't get a full portrait of the man by relying either on his opponents, nor on his friends, nor perhaps by relying on both. The link above to the Rocky Mountain News article will give you access to a whole series of articles on Churchill, though. Just put 'Churchill' in the RMN search engine at the link, and work your way through the stories. Interesting stuff.
Oscar Chamberlain -
2/9/2005
By Summer 1945, the US considered civilian resistance to an invasion to pose a considerable danger. The civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberately targeted.
Jonathan Dresner -
2/9/2005
Churchill, in the CU talk, refers to the US as the only country which has used WMD against civilian populations. That's false, on at least two counts I can think of: Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, and Japan's use of chemical weapons in WWII (not deliberately targeting civilians, but then neither did the US: collateral damage, we call it now).
Ralph E. Luker -
2/9/2005
Oscar, You can get a sense of the man by listening to the interview via the link I posted. In re your comment, I had lunch with Michael Bellesiles once or twice _after_ he was forced to resign from Emory's faculty. I find him to be a very charming and intelligent guy. I'd be glad to have lunch or drinks with him again. I don't know that that changes my opinion about what he did in the first edition of _Arming America_.
Van L. Hayhow -
2/9/2005
Oh, I agree. Given his efforts to promulgate his views beyond the classroom, I think it is very unlikely that he hasn't used a claim of being a Native American in the classroom to add to his impact as a professor. I was just making the point that to use Ellis as precedent, the university would have to make that connection.
Oscar Chamberlain -
2/9/2005
Whenever a person is made an example of some trend he or she is reduced, is made less human. It's inevitable and probably unavoidable sometimes.
So we have Ward Churchill, martyr of McCarthyist oppression, exemplar of ethnic studies stupidity, hounder of the 9/11 martyrs, defender of the lonely truth of American atrocities.
I wonder what the man is like.
Richard Henry Morgan -
2/9/2005
Tinker hasn't read Brown, and isn't expert in the area, but he's sure Brown is wrong, since after all, Churchill's prior work is eavily annotated. On the basis of this, Tinker offers that Churchill is the victim of right wing character assasination, though Thornton agrees that Churchill misused his work. Where have I seen this before?
David Timothy Beito -
2/9/2005
I don't disagree with you. It is really a matter of priority for me. Right now, however, I would emphasize defending academic freedom against attack....since that was, and still is, the main thrust of the "fire Churchill" campaign. I agree, however, that it is become very difficult right now to "decouple" these issues.
If the critics of Churchill had *started* by emphasizing the issue of academic fraud, I would be much more sympathetic to their cause.
Ralph E. Luker -
2/9/2005
a) I don't appreciate being called on my prevarication by a lawyer; and b) would there be any doubt that Churchill represented himself to his students as a native American and that his claim to being such was a source of his authority in the classroom?
Ralph E. Luker -
2/9/2005
I'm inclined to disagree with you on all scores, David. If inquiry finds that Churchill has committed fraud in research and publication, I'd say he's subject to dismissal. If inquiry finds that he's misrepresented himself, I'd say he's subject to substantial penalty short of dismissal. If he's misused his academic freedom either to commit fraud or misrepresent himself, then there must be consequences -- up to and including the loss of it. In any case, investing authority in the recommendations of a David Horowitz is dangerous. What substantial academic credential or qualification does he bring to the table -- other than his demand that politicians pay attention to him and that academics cowtow to him?
Van L. Hayhow -
2/9/2005
a)Come on, the real reason is you never sleep and b) don't forget that Ellis used some of his fictional autobriography in the classroom to render authority to his teaching in the area of Viet Nam. I think Colorado would have to make a similar connection.
David Timothy Beito -
2/9/2005
Horowitz, who deserves kudos for refusing to join the fire Churchill campaign, is probably right that Churchill might be fired for lying about his ethnic background. The problem is that the attacks on Churchill had an entirely different origin e.g. his views on 9-11, etc. For this reason, I would put a greater emphasis right now on the need to defend his academic freedom which I think is the most critically important issue generated by this controversy.
Ralph E. Luker -
2/9/2005
a) I'd say that I'm up at this "ungodly hour" reading War Historian, in part because War Historian posts at "ungodly hours" and his work is just that good; and b) I'm _not_ saying that Churchill might or should be fired on grounds of false claims to a native American ethnicity. I _am_ saying that the Joe Ellis precident is sufficient reason to believe that a faculty member (in Ellis's case, a tenured, endowed chaired, former dean) _is_ subject to severe penalty (probably not firing) for a misrepresentation of the self. All of that assumes that Churchill can be proven to be guilty of misrepresenting himself. As I've said before, it would be a little ironic if he were saved from penalty by the New South's racist "one drop rule."
Richard Henry Morgan -
2/9/2005
I think Mr. Grimsley is right on this count. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth to fire Churchill for "ethnic" fraud. Reports from the Rocky Mountain News, and Churchill's own refusal to document his claims, suggest that he's about as much a Native American as I am the Sultan of Oman. But Prof. Campos goes too far. It can hardly be said that Churchill "bullied" his way into academia with his claims of ethnicity -- rather, Colorado-Boulder prostrated itself before him.
Mark Grimsley -
2/9/2005
I am certainly not enamoured of the general thrust of Horowitz's enterprise--Campus Watch, etc.--which is essentially a species of thought control. But I do make an effort to treat what people say on the merits, and in this case Horowitz is making sense. My only caveat would be the business of firing Churchill for "fraud" if he turns out not to be an Indian. Who could make this determination? By what criteria? And what constructive purpose would be served? This has the potential for being a way to do via a turning movement what cannot be done by front assault, namely, get rid of Churchill.
PS - What the hell are you doing awake at such an ungodly hour? :-)
