Ward Churchill’s assertion that he wrote five essays as a ghostwriter for colleagues has become a line of questioning in the University of Colorado’s inquiry into his alleged academic misconduct, his attorney said.
Churchill said he is prepared to defend what he called “a reasonably standard practice” in academia – a characterization disputed by some national academic leaders. His attorney, David Lane, argued that the issue should not even be considered because it is outside the parameters of CU’s stated interest in Churchill’s alleged plagiarism.
“This is something they have now stumbled upon,” Lane said Wednesday. “Whatever it takes to get Ward Churchill, that’s their mission.”
One scholar who Churchill says published an essay of his under her name denies it.
The ghostwriting issue emerged in Boulder as part of Churchill’s defense – that instead of borrowing from essays, he actually wrote them, he said. He discussed the issue with the committee auditing his scholarship Tuesday.
Churchill said he consulted CU rules and two lawyers and does not believe he did anything wrong.
“There’s not even a definition of academic misconduct in this regard,” he said. “If there’s an issue of that, fine. Let’s deal with the issue and not call it something else – plagiarism.”
Lane said the law supports Churchill’s right to write for others. A byline is a “branding choice,” according to an article in the latest edition of the Notre Dame Law Review that Lane provided.
But those who set standards for scholarship in several academic disciplines said that ghostwriting, while common in biographies of celebrities and politicians, is unacceptable in academic publishing.
Professors remain concerned that Churchill’s rights to due process and free expression remain protected, but they are not likely to defend ghostwriting, said Larry Estrada, president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies and director of the American cultural studies department at Western Washington University.
“Proper credit and acknowledgment for original scholarship and research is the essence of faculty work within the university environment,” Estrada said in an e-mail Wednesday. “That should remain inviolate, and any breach of that would have to be considered a serious matter.”
At JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, authors are required to reveal who helped with their articles and how.
Concerned by reports that some papers about drugs have been ghostwritten by agents of the pharmaceutical industry, the World Association of Medical Editors recently issued a bulletin condemning ghostwriting as “dishonest and unacceptable” in the academic sphere.
The editors of journals and handbooks published by the Modern Language Association, an influential humanities organization, consider ghostwritten work to be plagiarism.
MLA executive director Rosemary Feal believes being a party to “the false assumption of authorship” is improper, she said.
“I would imagine that authorizing someone to pass off writing as their own when you’ve done it – everyone would agree that’s an ethical violation,” she said.
Churchill said he gave away some of the papers as personal favors.
“Nobody’s name went on a piece I wrote that they didn’t know about,” he said. “They agreed with it or didn’t care one way or another or just wanted a résumé hit.”
One scholar for whom Churchill says he wrote, M.A. Jaimes Guerrero of the women’s studies department at San Francisco State University, has denied it to the Rocky Mountain News. She and Churchill were once married. Neither she nor her department head returned calls Wednesday. Members of the faculty committee reviewing Churchill’s work also did not respond.
Staff writer Arthur Kane contributed to this report.
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
