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In reporting the situation before President Hank Brown's decision at the University of Colorado, the media has twisted the situation with the charges against Ward Churchill, so now MIM summarizes the charges too.
*Three cases of alleged plagiarism, of which two cases have no "plaintiff" including one with a dead man, and one case where the committee has the wrong "defendant"--can you say "desperate"?
*"Allegation A" charge that the Dawes Act was not about blood quantum, an allegation by one scholar which ended up with a University of Colorado admission "there is more truth to part of Professor Churchill’s claim than Professor LaVelle is prepared to credit" and "the Committee finds that no general hoax of the type suggested by some of Professor LaVelle’s broader claims was perpetrated by Professor Churchill, since the core of his broad point (i.e., that the General Allotment Act of 1887, as implemented, required—albeit by implication—some Indian blood quantum to be eligible for an allotment) is correct, or at least clearly arguable," 'nuff said. The whole argument is about one persyn named LaVelle attacking Churchill.
*"Allegation B" about understanding a 1990 law on native arts, a law which University of Colorado also botched in its charges according to native scholars. The bottom line is that the University of Colorado committee making charges against Churchill does not understand the creation of federally recognized tribes and what that means and it admits he revised his work in 2003.
*"Allegation C" about smallpox in New England retracted almost a year later by the committee chair making the accusation, with MIM the first to argue in writing the reasons it would be necessary.
*"Allegation D"'s only substance has been whittled down to about which whites in the Fort Clark area spread smallpox among natives. There's no dispute that they did spread smallpox and the whole argument originally centers on footnotes. Can you say "trivial"? The relevant text says it was in "battles" that the natives faced their current predicament of dying with "faces all rotten."
The committee asking for punishment of Churchill says a scholar should have "preponderance of the evidence" or be fired. What this is really all about is Ward Churchill's speech about 9/11 and the U.$. share of the blame in the Mideast. Lynne Cheney speaking from Halliburton money wanted 9/11 to be sacrosanct as a reason for the Iraq War.
More than a month after the University of Colorado on April 12 retracted its accusation Churchill "fabricated" evidence about New England smallpox and the Wampanoag people,(1) the New York Post and Newsmax were still repeating it as gospel via the Associated Press.(2)
Marianne Wesson should have explicitly retracted "Allegation C" in its entirety and clearly and instead made excuses about part of her committee being off in Iran. Even reading Thornton, smallpox clearly was a possibility for the discussion and so half of "Allegation C" was wrong from the beginning. Her continuing focus on individuals covers up the truth. Whether or not the timing of John Smith appearances is known correctly, it would not change the argument about whether smallpox killed the Wampanoag.
In May, 2007 the New York Post is still claiming that Ward Churchill is an ethnic fraud;(3) even though, all the arguments for that were known decades ago and Ward Churchill received his lifetime contract called tenure nonetheless. Remarkable timing the New York Post has--maybe it should have been on the ball back in the day for its argument about Churchill's tenure.
We all know that the real reason the New York Post is attacking is support for U.$. imperialism in the Mideast. The owner of the New York Post Murdoch is also behind the making of prime minister John Howard in Australia. The New York Post in February 2007 was still supporting the Iraq War and quoting Howard against Obama to do so.(4)
Perhaps Murdoch should loosen the reins a little and let his 175 newspapers talk about recent news since others have moved on from Ward Churchill's ethnicity and the alleged link of 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. Many have figured out that Ron Paul and Ward Churchill were closer to the truth than the majority of Amerikans when the ground invasion of Iraq started. Murdoch was a key factor in the ground invasion of Iraq:
"Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too."(5)
What we are seeing as a general pattern is that the reactionaries issue a flood of accusations, most of which do not stand. Yet they cling to individual points of their accusations when their report has been whittled down to a small percentage of possibly arguable points. When we look at it, we see that the people still opposing Churchill are supported by rubes who brought us the Iraq War.
Notes:
1. https://www.cu.edu/sgrecord/
2. http://www.nypost.com/seven/05172007/news/nationalnews/nutty_prof_dodges_ax_nationalnews_.htm2.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/5/17/92807.shtml
3. http://www.nypost.com/seven/05212007/postopinion/editorials/freedom_for_a_fraud_editorials_.htm
4. http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2007/02/07-02-13_nyp.shtml
5. "Their master's voice," 12Feb2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,897015,00.html