Several professors testified that the University of Colorado’s investigation of Ward Churchill was unfair during today’s continuing trial in Denver District Court.
Churchill, 61, is suing CU for firing him in 2007 from his position as a professor of ethnic studies in Boulder. He claims he was terminated while exercising his First Amendment rights and writing a controversial essay on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that prompted political outrage.
The university contends that Churchill falsified and plagiarized his scholarly writings and that his firing was solely related to academic misconduct.
Churchill was accused by CU’s investigative committee of inflating the numbers of American Indians who were decimated by the smallpox epidemic and that he wrongly cited Russell Thornton’s book, “American Indian Holocaust and Survival” as a source for his research.
Thornton, an anthropology professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, never wrote that 400,000 American Indians were affected by the smallpox epidemic, CU Counsel Patrick O’Rourke said.
David Stannard, a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii testified that he did not agree that Churchill inflated the numbers because he believes Churchill relied on additional research in another book by another author that was cited in Thornton’s book and added up the numbers to get to 400,000.
“They are saying he misused and misrepresented Thornton,” Stannard said. “He didn’t. He used his citation and counted the numbers in his citation.”
O’Rourke countered that Churchill doesn’t cite any further research other than Thornton’s work and had an opportunity to inform the investigative committee on how he came up with the 400,000 figure and was unable to.
Another professor, Philo Hutcheson, an expert on academic freedom from Georgia State University, said even if Churchill had engaged in the academic misconduct described by the university, the punishment of termination was too harsh.
Hutcheson recalled that professors from Harvard had engaged in plagiarism and only suffered time off without pay.
Hutcheson also testified that if it were true that Churchill had engaged in misconduct, docking his pay for a summer would have been sufficient punishment.
O’Rourke challenged Hutcheson’s opinion and said that CU gave Churchill plenty of opportunity to exonerate himself and that a university cannot tolerate bad scholarship.
“He had a full right for a hearing before a jury of his peers, and he could bring all the witnesses he wanted,” O’Rourke said. “He got to bring in whatever documents he wanted to. The university has not proved all of its allegations, but it has proved some of them. That is not rubber stamping is it?”
“Correct,” Hutcheson said.
Emma Perez, who became chairwoman of CU’s ethnic-studies department after Churchill resigned the position in 2005, testified she was “appalled” by the report issued by the university’s investigative committee, which found Churchill had committed plagiarism and falsification.
“In their report, they falsified and fabricated and trumped up charges to fire him,” she said.
Perez said faculty were outraged over the way CU was treating Churchill and that 10 professors signed a memo protesting the investigation to the administration.
But O’Rourke pointed out that there are more than 1,000 faculty members on campus and only 10 signed the memo.
“Yes, very disappointing isn’t it?” Perez said. “It was to me.”
