The Footnote Police vs. Ward Churchill (Inside Higher Ed)

[struggle4progress]

By John K. Wilson

The University of Colorado committee investigating Ward Churchill has found him guilty, guilty, guilty. And on some level, they’re right: Churchill is guilty of occasionally shoddy scholarship and the dubious practice of ghostwriting, and perhaps even more. But we should be alarmed by the investigative committee’s report, and not merely because the committee exists only because of a concerted effort to fire Churchill for his obnoxious and idiotic comments about 9/11 victims.

By stretching the meaning of “research misconduct” far beyond its true definition, and by supporting the suspension and even dismissal of a tenured professor for his use of footnotes, the Colorado committee is opening the door to a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses that conservatives could easily exploit across the country ..

There is no reputable source for the Colorado committee’s claim that footnotes cannot include sources who disagree with the author. In order to evaluate the charge of research misconduct, the Colorado committee proclaimed that it would use the American Historical Association “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct” as “a general point of reference.” However, the AHA statement is not intended to be a basis for punishing professors. Indeed, if anything the AHA justifies Churchill’s approach by urging scholars to be “explicit, thorough, and generous in acknowledging one’s intellectual debts.” Nor does the AHA statement include anything about the proper use of footnotes which would justify a charge of falsification ..

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/19/wilson

[Hissyspit]

1. I don't even think his comments about 9/11 victims were obnoxious

and ignorant. Friggin' witch hunt.

[niyad]

2. obnoxious and absurd? all he said was that people who work for the

military industrial war machine in this country are just as complicit as those who ran the trains and provided the materials that kept the concentration camps running. that is nothing more than the truth.

and the outrage about him and his alleged "misconduct" and the whole nonsense about whether he is even native american or not, smacks of the thought police to such a blatant degree that it is a wonder more people don't see it.

[Fredda Weinberg]

5. Municipal bond traders? The waiters in the restaurant?

They were no more responsible for the "war machine" than you or Professor Churchill himself.

I never cease to be amazed by the way we dehumanize each other. I'm just shocked when I see it here.

[K-W]

8. He wasnt referring to the waiters,

something he made abundently clear in the original text and in his explenations after the fact.

He also, wasnt agreeing with the attackers that anyone in the building deserved to die, just explaining how the attackers probably saw the situation.

You seem to be responding to the right wing translation of Churchill, not his actual position.

[Fredda Weinberg]

9. I heard him the first time and you bet I have a strong opinion

I live in NY - went a couple of time to Windows on the World and thought the staff was wonderful ... so patient to my aged mother.

Churchill's remarks were ill-informed - and I was responding to a poster who ignorantly supported them. The victims of the WTC weren't employees of the Pentagon - they just happened to work in a building that was featured in a tour guide.

[K-W]

11. What part of "he wasnt referring to the waiters" dont you understand?

You are the only one displaying ignorance here.

Edit: First off aplogies for editing my post so much.

Regardless of who Churchill was referring to (and it wasnt the waiters or janitors) he wasnt saying that he agreed that anyone deserved to die, he was explaining why the WTC may have been targetted by militants. He was also explaining that the US destroys buildings full of civillians using its own dubious logic of what constitutes a valid military target. Churchill wants to stop the violence on both sides and for this he gets smeared and his job is attacked.

[Fredda Weinberg]

12. Do you have to lie to yourself?

Churchill's own words

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly

http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=print&article=9

[struggle4progress]

10. ".. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our ..

.. name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences. I am .. simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have .. said .. that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King .. said, 'Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable' ... What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world ... Dr. King's .. 1967 Riverside speech .. said, 'I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.' "

Churchill's statement
January 31, 2005
http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=2739

The object of the original essay seems to be just as described in the above statements: it is somewhat petulant in tone, certainly, which is always a convenient excuse for not noticing what was actually said ...

[pocket]

3. maybe now he'll have time to run for office.

I would like that.

[bemildred]

4. "dubious practice of ghostwriting"???

Man, half of Washington is in trouble if that is true.

[Igel]

7. It's not the ghostwriting.

It's the citing of what's ghostwritten as evidence of others' holding the same views.

I'd also venture that the standards for academia are, or should be, higher than the standards for politics. It's interesting that Wilson seems to think that to keep the standards higher for academia is redolent of politics.

He probably also thinks that logic that reaches a true conclusion based on false premises is false. It's a rather common assertion, strangely enough, and misleads a lot of people. But, of course, 'false implies true' is a true syllogism.

[bemildred]

14. I understand the argument.

Further, I don't think he is much of a scholar. But if the sins alleged against him on those grounds are such as to require removal of tenure, then a vast portion of academia and the political classes would require discharge. And I infer from that that he is the subject of such an investigation for reasons other than the errors of his scholarship, i.e. that this is a witch hunt.

To be sure, as I said at the time, he certainly went out and asked for trouble, so he has no complaint on those grounds.

[Igel]

15. Actually I can't speak for

his field(s). But if he did in linguistics what he's alleged to have done in ethnic studies, he'd be canned. Unless he (or she) were Chomsky; but Chomsky's problem is the inability to cite anybody he disapproves of unless he's taking them to task.

[bemildred]

16. Well, it is an interesting argument.

I just spent some time reading the posted articles and the (long) online comments that follow. Some of them are quite articulate in laying out the various arguments. It seems to be one of those cleavage subjects that split the world into violently disagreeing groups. But then it is a highly politicized issue. However, I am not interested enough in Churchill or his troubles or defending him to read and evaluate the CU report in it's entirety, as it seems to me I ought to do if I wish to spout my opinions further, so I will only say that I'm glad to be a spectator and not a participant.

[bemildred]

17. This piece, linked in the comments to the OP makes a stirring defense

of Ethnic Studies:

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=201

[Igel]

6. Wilson's silly.

"According to the Colorado committee, if you can find a factual error made by the professor with a footnote that fails to prove the contention, that scholar is guilty of “research misconduct” and can be suspended or fired."

What if I write an article that it's an Oregon committee that made the claim, and others dogmatically state that a scholar who cites a footnote that doesn't prove the contention has committed research misconduct. I have a footnote referring to Wilson's article. The clear intent is to say that if you want evidence of my statement, look at Wilson. Somebody challenges my claim, and I say it's true, nonetheless; as a scholar, I am under no obligation to actually show that my facts are true or widely held, and if somebody wanted to misconstrue my quoting Wilson, well, footnotes don't have to include only sources that agree with me.

To the extent he's right about the latter point, it doesn't matter. If I cite Wilson instead of the original source of a quote, I'm free to ignore his interpretation--it's sloppy research, but done in the interest of expediency; if I cite Wilson to mean something he doesn't mean at all, I'm twisting his words, and run afoul of academic standards. And I'm always free to cite his facts and interpret them any way I want; I'm not allowed to misquote his conclusions.

Scholars are allowed to make mistakes. They are even allowed to make some willful mistakes. They are not allowed to engage in a pattern of willful mistakes. That makes them liars, or deluded.

Scholars are also not supposed to justify their sloppiness. All scholars are, to some extent, sloppy: you can't cite all justification for your views, and need not. The borders are fuzzy between 'needed' and 'not needed'. But giving the impression of justifying your statements when it's clear that you have no idea what your sources say ... if it's not willful, it's stupid.

I've helped review articles for publication, and published in my field. Sometimes the level of scholarship I've seen is shoddy; and there's nothing like being able to return an article to the editor saying that the person obviously hasn't actually read his sources to understand what they say, he obviously read them just for support. Even better is to use his sources to contract his 'facts' or undermine his argument. Sounds harsh, but the alternative is to see an article published in which the writer is taken to task for ignoring some really common, really widely known, and really crucial evidence that means that his thesis is, well, crap. Now, publishing crap isn't always bad: I've seen some groundbreaking crap, brilliant in raising an issue that was overlooked, and making sure people appreciate just how important it is. But, at a minimum, the crap research had valid data at its core.

[paulk]

13. maybe Wilson is another of Churchill's sockpuppets.

good post, btw