Saturday, May 12, 2007

Where's That Apocryphal Document from the War(d) Department?

In November 2005, Ward Churchill twice told the Winnipeg University student newspaper The Uniter (pages 10-11) that he never developed his idea that the U.S. Army deliberately infected the Mandan with smallpox "in any depth," but according to the University of Colorado investigation, Ward Churchill has made this claim in six articles he published between 1994 and 2003. These articles are listed in the CU Report on pages 40-41. In 2005, Ward Churchill told The Uniter that he had evidence that the apocryphal Mandan genocide was "an actual war department policy;" but it is now 2007, and he has never produced the evidence.

Ward Churchill has published two remarkably contrasting accounts of how he uses footnotes.

In his 1997 book A Little Matter of Genocide, Ward Churchill demonstrated not only his cynical hypocrisy but the fact that he knows perfectly well what the rules are for footnotes:

"[I]t is a matter not just of courtesy, but of ethics, to make proper attribution to those upon whose ideas and research one relies."
[page 10; Cited from page 11 of the Report of the Investigative Committee of the standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder concerning Allegations of Academic Misconduct against Professor Ward Churchill]

In 2005, Ward Churchill told the University of Winnipeg student newspaper The Uniter (11-17-2005; see pages 10-11) something a bit different:

"...[W]ith regard to my so-called academic misconduct or regarding fabricating historical events...

[I]n 1837...the U.S. Army [deliberately gave smallpox- infected blankets] to the Mandan at Fort Clark in the upper Missouri river. I never developed it in any depth, it is self-evident that it happened by what my people have told me. I put a couple citations behind it for people to look at and draw their own conclusions, the citations don’t say what I said, which is not unusual but in this case this is considered fraud. I never considered an in-depth treatment of it, but I am now. And guess what? Not only what I said was true but it was far worse than what I said. They should have left it alone. It turns out there was an actual war department policy, not a couple of lonely officers at an outpost that could be an anomaly."

It is now May 2007, and Ward Churchill still has not produced evidence that infecting the Mandan smallpox was "actual war department policy." He never showed this proof to the University of Colorado scholars who investigated him for his dishonest scholarship.

Even if Ward Churchill were to produce some document from the War(d) Department, he still would have misrepresented what the scholars he cited wrote, because he dishonestly attributed his claim that the Mandan were deliberately infected with smallpox-infected blankets to these other scholars, and the scholars he cited never wrote that the Mandan were deliberately infected with smallpox-infected blankets.

Churchill claims that it is "self evident" that the U.S. Army deliberately gave the Mandans smallpox because of "what my people have told me." This is a lot like Ward Churchill's apocryphal evidence that he is an Indian because his grandma told him so.

Ward Churchill twice told the Winnipeg University student newspaper The Uniter (pages 10-11) that he never developed his idea that the U.S. Army deliberately infected the Mandan with smallpox "in any depth," but according to the University of Colorado investigation, Ward Churchill has made this claim in six articles he published between 1994 and 2003. These articles are listed in the CU Report on pages 40-41.

The C.U. Committee has damned Ward Churchill's "scholarship" right out of his own mouth!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home