In the wake of Ward Churchill’s firing from Colorado University and his subsequent decision to sue for reinstatement, I’ve been thinking a lot about how (and, I admit, whether) to read Churchill’s work in the wake of revelations (or allegations, depending on your point of view) of academic dishonesty including plagiarism, fraudulent claims of Indian identity, and shoddy use of (or misuse of) historical sources. Some of the claims lodged against Churchill push to the edge of absurdity, including the use of articles ghostwritten by himself to support claims made in other articles.

For those who have been sleeping off a bender these past few years, here’s the story. Churchill is an Indian Studies professor (and chair of the department) at University of Colorado, appointed despite his lack of a PhD on the recommendation of the well-respected Indian rights activist and layer Vine Deloria, Jr. Churchill is a popular professor at UC, and easily won tenure. He is the author of several books and articles (apparently more than we suspected, given his proclivity for writing work ascribed to other scholars!) that, taken together, challenge the “master narrative” of American westward expansion as the coming of civilization and recast it as a genocide.

It is his willingness to compare America’s history against the yardstick of Nazi atrocities (and his willingness to challenge deeply-held national mythologies) that eventually landed him in hot water, though originally it was not his scholarship but his popular writing that raised eyebrows. In an essay published shortly after 9/11, Churchill described the victims of the World Trade Center bombing as “little Eichmanns”, a reference to Hannah Arendt’s coverage of the Eichmann trial and the thoughts on the “banality of evil” that arose as a result of her experiences. Eichmann, if you recall, was the petty bureaucrat who ran the trains in Hitler’s Germany, coordinating the deportations and provision of supplies to the concentration camps in the East.

Like most Indian writing, Churchill’s comments were virtually ignored by the mainstream until some time later, when a scheduled appearance at Hamilton College in New York led an enterprising conservative to dig up some of Churchill’s writings as groundwork for protesting the college’s invitation. Soon the “little Eichmanns” quote ripped through the mainstream media, the flame fanned by attention from Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, among others, who called for Hamilton College to rescind Churchill’s invitation and, eventually, for UC to dismiss him (all in O’Reilly’s usual subtle way, of course).

Not to be outdone, Colorado’s governor soon joined the clamor calling for Churchill’s dismissal and, with the backing of UC’s president, a committee was formed to explore the matter. This committee faced a terrible dilemma, however: typical standards of academic freedom draw a line between one’s role as a professor — which encompasses one’s teaching, research, and academic writing — and as a citizen — including one’s political activities and writings in the popular press. Few academics would endorse the firing of a fellow academic for the expression of his personal views outside of the academic setting (and most would object to such action even if the views were expressed inside the academic setting, freedom of speech being what it is). Thus, the exploratory committee was saddled with the task of firing an unpopular figure for reasons unrelated to the reasons why he was unpopular.

Alas, in Churchill’s case, such reasons abounded. Many in the American Indian community had been loudly objecting to his claim to be an Indian for years before the “little Eichmanns” comment brought him to the forefront of mainstream attention. Churchill’s exact tribal affiliation and the grounds for his affiliation remain mysterious — and Churchill has just as loudly objected to the notion that his claim of Indian identity is in any way contestable. Meanwhile, questions about some of Churchill’s academic work had been circulating for some time, particularly his claims about the intentional exposure of Native Americans to smallpox at Fort Pitt in 1763 and Fort Clark in 1837.; As the committee explored Churchill’s work, more and more irregularities emerged. Sources did not match up with he claims they supposedly provided evidence for. Timelines outlined by Churchill did not match up. Eventually, serious questions of plagiarism were raised when passages from his work were compared against essays by Rebecca Robins and M. Annette Jaimes in Jaimes’ edited volume, The State of Native America. When confronted with this evidence, Churchill replied that the work was not technically plagiarized because he had, in fact, written both the articles in question.

Despite the evidence for academic misconduct, the committee was unwilling to recommend dismissal. A second committee was established to decide on appropriate measures to take against Churchill, and they are the ones that voted 8-to-1 in favor of dismissal last month. Churchill has, perhaps wisely, declined to justify his actions, instead defending himself as the target of an academic establishment unwilling to accept or validate unorthodox and revisionary perspectives on American history. Though his protestations may have all the earmarks of a conspiracy-minded nut’s rantings, he is on slightly more solid ground than the typical conspiracy nut; one of his early published works, one that has not been called into question, is a compilation of official FBI documents detailing the work of COINTELPRO, the covert program to infiltrate American political movements such as the American Indian movement and report on their activities — and, apparently quite often, incite illegal activity that could be used as grounds to arrest political leaders. After immersing himself in the work of actual government conspirators, it is probably not surprising that Churchill is particularly sensitive to conspiracy-like behavior.

And, regardless of the academic misconduct charges which are, in fact, quite serious, it is absolutely clear that Churchill’s dismissal is conspiracy-like; if he’d called the victims of 9/11 “fluffy Care Bears” instead of “little Eichmanns”, he’d still be employed. That is indisputable, even if you agree that the academic concerns merit dismissal. And that’s where my own concerns start to take off. Not because I’m suddenly aware that academics can become targets because of their political views — history is full of too many examples of that to be a surprise — but because it took this kind of bold statement to draw attention to the problems in Churchill’s academic work.

Few of us have the time or resources to do the kind of reference-checking and authorial cross-examination that Churchill’s review committee did. We rely on a set of institutional functions — peer review, tenure review, hiring committees, reputation, affiliation, association memberships, works cited pages, and so on — to underwrite the validity (if not necessarily the correctness of the interpretation) of academic material. Surely, we think, the kind of fraud that Churchill is accused of, the kind of (no other word comes to mind but) shenanigans that he has admitted to — surely these problems would be caught somewhere along the way? If not, why do we invest so much of our time and energy supporting this system, working our way through the numerous obstacles the academic system throws in our way?
Here’s the thing: I’m no expert on 19th century Mandan/Hidatsa history. I have no easy access to the sources Churchill (claims to have) used, nor have I read all the secondary sources. I have read a little bit by scholars that challenge Churchill’s claims about the intentional infection of the Mandan and Hidatsa — but am in no position to take a side, to evaluate their arguments. Or here’s another example: Tom Kavanagh, an Indianist whose work has focused primarily on the Comanche but who has also spent time with the Hopi, posted these notes(7/30/07; login required) on Anthro-L a couple weeks ago:

I checked out Churchill’s 2002 “Struggle for the Land” (SF: City Lights), the most recent by WC in our library.
I was mildly interested in the chapter on recent Iroquois land claims. Then I see the chapter, “Genocide in Arizona: The ‘Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute’ in Perspective.” Whose perspective, I wondered?

Since I do know something of the issues, [full disclosure: I lived at Hopi, 1980-81, was hired by Abbott Sekaquaptewa (see below), so I read more carefully].

By the fourth page, in the span of three paragraphs, came the whoopers: “… leadership of the ten-to-fifteen percent segment of Hopi society that had been assimilated into non-Hopi values via compulsory education and Mormon indoctrination–this group represented the totality of Hopi voter turnout during reorganization and in all subsequent Hopi ‘elections’– had long been the station of the Sekaquaptewa family. The men of the family–the brothers Abbott and Emory, later their sons Emory Jr. and Wayne–immediately attained political ascendency within the new Hopi Tribal Council when it was established in 1936 …

“… By 1940, the Sekaquaptewa’s and their followers had converted their alignment with the federal government into control, not only of [lots of stuff], but of the sole Hopi newspaper (QuaToqti) … However, they had still bigger plans.

“These had emerged clearly by 1943, when the council, in collaboration with the BIA … successfully consummated a lobbying effort for the creation of “Grazing District 6…”

So, let’s see, according to Churchill, “the [Sekaquaptewa] brothers Emory and Abbott, later their sons Emory Jr. and Wayne…” get control of the Hopi tribal council ca 1936.

The basic problem with this scenario is … (wait for it) … history.

The elder Sekaquaptewa, Emory, was born ca 1900 in Hotevilla. But although he did serve as a tribal judge under the IRA council, was not particularly involved in tribal politics and was apparently not a member of the council. Moreover, he did not have a brother Abbott.

He did have a bunch of kids, though, including the eldest Wayne, and then in order, Eugene, Emory Jr., Abbott, followed by several others. I can’t find absolute birth dates for most of these, but their mother Helen Sekaquaptewa, in her book _Me and Mine_ (1969 UA Press), says they were born about three years apart. Emory Jr. was aged 73 in 2003, so was born ca 1930. Abbott therefore was born in ca 1933 (and died in the 1990s). It must have been a pretty good trick for Emory Jr. and Abbott, three and six year old kids, Mormon or not, to gain control of the tribal council in 1936.
Then, “by 1940 … the Sekaquaptewa’s gained control … of the sole Hopi newspaper… Qua Toqti.” Well, yes, Qua Toqti was founded by the Sekaquaptewa’s, but that was in 1973, not 1940.

Finally, “… by 1943, … the creation of ‘Grazing District 6’…” The
Hopi-Navajo grazing districts were drawn in 1936.

The errors Dr. Kavanagh highlights here are not the kinds of errors the UC committee investigated, nor the errors Churchill’s enemies — in the mainstream right wing or in academia — have focused on. This is a much different case than his contention that the Mandan were deliberately infected with smallpox by the US Army, when in fact the evidence (other than that which Churchill himself seems to have fabricated) suggests otherwise. It’s a series of smaller, less significant false steps, yet all the more troubling for it, as they are so seemingly insignificant to raise the question of why anyone would deliberately make them.

The mistakes outlined above are so insignificant in their effect that one would have to think they were simply shoddy scholarship — poor comprehension of the source material by a scholar working in a field he didn’t quite grasp yet. But they’re so far removed from the reality — people taking control of the trial council at age 3 and 6! — that it seems unlikely they’re just a misreading. And yet, again, there seems little to be gained from deliberately falsifying this stuff and much to be lost — even a cursory glance by someone with experience in the area would (and has) exposed them.

I’ll admit, I’m baffled. But what really worries me is that, absent Kavanagh’s comments, I’d have no way of knowing this stuff, and I suspect that’s true of most of you. And that raises serious concerns about not just Churchill’s scholarship, but about everybody’s, especially in anthropology where quite often there are only a handful of folks with specialized knowledge of a particular area. The rest of us rely on the mechanisms I outlined above — tenure committees, peer review, scholarly critique, etc. — to assure the trustworthiness of our colleagues’ work. If these mechanisms have failed so egregiously in Churchill’s case, how can we trust them in everyone else’s case?

I’ve been pretty harsh on Churchill in this essay (though not nearly as harsh as many others have been), which doesn’t necessarily reflect my overall stand on his work. Churchill’s strength has always been, it seems to me as a polemecist and gadfly, rather than as a scholar. While the details of his wok seem to be questionable, his overall impact has been, I think, positive — forcing historians and others scholars to grapple with the implications of an American genocide, exposing and documenting the history of government spying and provocation within the American Indian Movement and the Left in general (a fitting warning for today), and spurring one of the only significant debates about the meaning of 9/11 in a time of intellectual laziness and burly-man chest-thumping. I have not yet come to the point of throwing out the three or four of his books that grace my shelves, and doubt I will, though their usefulness as references will obviously be seriously curtailed.

But Churchill’s scholarship aside, what do we do about the rest? Even as the Right has gone after Churchill with the ferocity they once reserved only for Clintons, I hear the same voices raised in support of abolishing tenure. From other quarters come questions about the need for peer review; from still others (and I count myself in his camp) a clamor for open publishing models that would bypass most of the current mechanisms that offer some sort of “quality control”. Perhaps, riddled as these mechanisms are with faults, these voices are right, but what could, or should, take their place? Is the coming order one that’s going to catch more Churchillian fabrications, or is it one that’s going to facilitate them?