Embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill faces a new round of research misconduct allegations, he revealed Saturday evening at a race and ethnicity conference at the Boulder university.
Brandishing a letter from CU’s investigating committee, Churchill belittled the allegations, saying they were yet another attempt to persecute him for his controversial opinions.
But the man whose research led to the new investigation was in attendance and confronted Churchill before the audience of approximately 60 people.
The exchange quickly became heated and included Churchill yelling: “Yo. Shut up and I’ll answer.”
Churchill said he stood by his work and any error was minor.
Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies, was brought to national attention over an essay he wrote comparing some Sept. 11, 2001, victims to Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
There ensued calls for Churchill’s removal as a tenured professor, and the university launched an investigation into his academic activities.
Ernesto Vigil, an author and well-known activist, had brought to the race and ethnicity conference a copy of a letter he received from the investigating university committee dated April 17.
It detailed three allegations of misrepresentation of genocide in El Salvador in Churchill’s work titled “A Little Matter of Genocide.” And it included three allegations of fabrication in another of Churchill’s works, “Agents of Repression.”
The letter acknowledged Vigil’s part in bringing the allegations to the committee and that the body had decided to pursue the matter.
Vigil said outside the conference that he has personal knowledge of many of the events and people Churchill has written about and believes Churchill is wrong on some points and fabricated others.
Before the crowd, Churchill said the discrepancies detailed in the letter are inaccurate or minor.
At one point in his book on genocide in El Salvador, Churchill is said to have described people being massacred as “Indians” when the original source material referred to them as “Salvadoran peasants, villagers and civilians.”
Churchill mocked the criticism, asking who else would they be? Norwegians?
Churchill used the letter and the criticism to make a point about the application of academic standards. He said that when a professor is in good standing politically, the standards are applied very loosely.
But all that changes when a professor says or does something unpopular.
“When you want to get rid of somebody you apply them (the standards) with absolute, ruthless precision,” he said.
He warned the crowd, which included many from the university community, that the process was grinding away and would eventually roll over anyone with an unpopular viewpoint.
“So much for the sanctity of standards,” he said. “It’s a charade.”
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or at acaldwell@denverpost.com.
