May 19, 2006

More Noted Things

by Cliopatria

It was nice of the Phi Beta Cons' slightly batty Candace de Russy to link to Cliopatria. I say"slightly batty" because she's given to posting about left-wing academic outrages that were in the headlines last week and have already been resolved in her favor before she gets around to crying out about them. But, really, Candace, when you are cutting and pasting from KC Johnson's posts at Cliopatria, you have to remember to put quotation marks around his words or else, you've committed plagiarism. Ward Churchills do, indeed, abound!

Why am I not comforted when the chairman of the House of Representative's Judiciary subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security says that he's not bothered by the wiretapping issue and that he hopes that the"war on terrorism" ..."will certainly be over in the next few months"? I am not comforted because this loon apparently can't tell the difference between"overseeing" and"overlooking" things. Thanks to Chris Bray and Eric Muller for the tip. See also: Kevin Drum at Political Animal.

Our former colleague at Cliopatria, Jonathan Dresner, has joined archy's John McKay on the administrative staff of the Carnival of Bad History. They are stepping up production from a quarterly to a monthly schedule and are looking for hosts.

Finally, in threads at Crooked Timber and Inside Higher Ed, two stalwarts of the loony left (whose names shall not be named because one of them is given to cyber-stalking his critics) continue to have difficulty with the fact that voices at Cliopatria are individual voices and that no one of us is responsible for or necessarily shares the opinions of another. Poor ol' Tim Burke and everyone else gets lumped in with those"two peas in a pod," KC Johnson and Ralph Luker.
Well, just for the purposes of starting an argument with the other pea, I'm saying that KC's left-wing lack of standards is showing when he doesn't stand up like a man and say:"Ward Churchill should be fired!" I think he should.* I suspect that, if you polled the Cliopatricians, you'd get about the same division of opinion about appropriate sanctions for him that the CU review panel reached.
*I hasten to point out that such other notorious left-wingers as Eugene Volokh and David Horowitz are also divided on the matter. Horowitz agrees with KC; Volokh, who once defended Churchill's tenured position, now agrees with me.

More Comments:

Rebecca Anne Goetz - 5/19/2006

I'm also inclined to favor terminating Churchill. I haven't followed the story with the same seriousness as KC and Ralph, but it is pretty clear to me that Churchill is a dishonest scholar. So, it's hard to see that CU has any other course of action.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/19/2006

Well, yes. CU's review committee was very clear about the point that the university bypassed ordinary procedures in offering a tenured faculty position to a person who did not have a doctorate and who had no graduate studies in the field in which he was hired to teach! Volokh has argued that, if there were any sign of remorse in Churchill, there might be a point in stripping him of tenure and requiring him to publish revised versions of the books and articles that include plagiarism, falsifications and fabrications. That might approximate some of the learning experience that we get in graduate school. In fact, Bellesiles did that kind of thing after leaving the Emory faculty by producing a revised 2nd edition of Arming America. But, I suspect, that both Bellesiles and Churchill understand the problem with publishing revisions. Every revision is an acknowledgement of prior error. And Churchill doesn't show the slightest interest in admitting to error. Like Volokh, therefore, I think he should be fired post haste.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/19/2006

I'm a former member, so I don't know if I count, but I would be inclined, given the report, to recommend termination.

Actually, my recommendation -- not at all reflected in the report -- would be to strip him of tenure, but allow him probationary standing, and subject him to the same rigorous review as experienced by those of us who got a Ph.D. and have to teach, serve and publish with distinction....

Thanks for the Bad History mention, too: I'll be back to twist arms for hosts if we don't get volunteers soon!