Jurors who will ultimately decide the future of former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill heard two very different versions of the standards for scholarship this morning as his fight to win back his job continued in a Denver courtroom.
On one hand, Michael Yellow Bird, a professor at the University of Kansas, testified that numerous sources exist to support one of Churchill’s most controversial assertions — that the U.S. Army deliberately infected American Indians with smallpox in an effort to wipe them out. And he went on to suggest that scholars can draw conclusions to fill in blanks in history, to “invent the possibility that these things happened.”
Yellow Bird, a member of the Sahnish and Hidatsa tribes, also stood by an earlier statement had made, that “a fabricated, made-up account promoted truth.”
On the other hand, Jose Limón, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that ethnic studies should be held to the same academic standards as every other discipline. And he rejected the idea that a scholar could fabricate a story in a search for the truth.
“I would not agree with that,” Limón said. “It seems a contradiction in terms, to me.”
Churchill, long a controversial figure in the ethnic-studies world, burst into the public consciousness in early 2005 just as he was to deliver a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. The student newspaper, in an article about his talk, wrote about an obscure essay of his in which he referred to some victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as “little Eichmanns” — a reference to an infamous Nazi.
Churchill came under fire, and his work underwent scrutiny it had not previously received. The university launched an investigation, and although it ultimately concluded that what he wrote about the 9/11 victims was protected by the First Amendment, it began a broader examination of his work.
The university ultimately fired Churchill in 2007 after a committee found that he had “committed serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct.” That committee concluded that Churchill’s voluminous writings were rife with problems, that he plagiarized the work of others and fabricated some material.
Churchill filed suit, alleging that he was fired for the essay in a move that violated his free-speech rights. The crux of his argument is that numerous complaints had been lodged over the years about his scholarship that were never investigated by the university; only after the essay generated controversy did CU officials look into his work.
Among Churchill’s claims that have been questioned is his repeated assertion that the U.S. Army obtained smallpox-tainted blankets from a St. Louis infirmary and sent them to Fort Clark on the Upper Missouri River in 1837 to infect Indians. There, Churchill has written, the “post surgeon” told the Indians to scatter — presumably to spread the disease across the countryside.
Today’s testimony began with Yellow Bird on the stand, and he repeatedly said that Churchill’s assertions about the spread of smallpox were supported by oral tradition of American Indians.
“The oral tradition does, in fact, support almost everything he said,” Yellow Bird testified.
Patrick O’Rourke, a CU attorney, noted that Yellow Bird said something different when he was interviewed by the Privilege and Tenure Committee during the Churchill investigation.
“Have you heard anything in the oral history about a smallpox infirmary in St. Louis?” Yellow Bird was asked at that point.
“The oral history about smallpox — no, not in the oral history we have,” Yellow Bird replied.
Robert Bruce, one of Churchill’s attorneys, had Yellow Bird look through a book that Churchill had cited as a source for the smallpox story, and the professor pointed to several passages that talked about the illness.
But then O’Rourke asked Yellow Bird whether the book, “The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian” by E. Wagner Stearn and Allen E. Stearn, said anything about a post surgeon or an order to scatter.
“That’s actually covered in other sources. It’s not covered in that source,” Yellow Bird said.
O’Rourke held up the book: “Professor Churchill cited this one.”
Limón, one of those called upon by CU to help with the Churchill investigation, followed Yellow Bird to the stand — a witness for the university who was called out of order because of scheduling constraints. Limón, who acknowledged that he believed Churchill should have been fired, agreed that scholars “connect the dots” but said they cannot make up a dot to fill in a blank spot in history.
“An assertion of fact is a claim that is grounded in some kind of empirically certain phenomenon on which a reasonable number of observers agree,” Limón said.
He pointed to the court reporter and said he could make an assertion that she was wearing a red dress but that others in the courtroom would look at it and conclude that it was, in fact, black.
Limón also noted that Churchill did not cite Indian oral tradition as a source, and he also rejected the idea that Churchill could make false statements as long as he had a “good faith basis” for doing so.
“I think that operates in everyday human interaction, but I’m not sure it works that well in scholarship,” Limón said.
On cross-examination, Bruce got Limón to acknowledge that he was the only one of the five-member investigative committee who voted to dismiss Churchill; the other four members thought he should have been suspended for anywhere from two to five years.
