Thursday, March 29, 2007

Churchill case to go to CU prez next week

In the lead of a fascinating article on the case, Jefferson Dodge of the Silver & Gold Record says CU's Privilege and Tenure Committee will make its recommendation on whether Ward Churchill should be fired to President Hank Brown "within the next week."

Dodge also exchanged e-mails with Eric Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University and a witness for Churchill in the committee's hearings, who makes the arguments Churchill no doubt will use in his (threatened) lawsuit: the political motivation behind the investigation, the academic "double jeopardy" Churchill was subjected to, the claim that the Army did so give the Mandan smallpox-infected blankets, and the absence on the investigating committee of "experts" in Churchill's "discipline."

Read the whole thing. Dodge doesn't let Cheyfitz go unanswered. Here's one vigorous quote he got, for example, on Churchill's claim that a historian had said John Smith also gave Indians infected bankies:
[W]hen asked about Cheyfitz's criticism of the report regarding the Salisbury citation, committee member Michael Radelet of UCB sociology said an early draft of the investigative committee's report referred to "epidemic spread by John Smith," [sic] but the last four words were edited out by the committee. [Radelet added that] "If there's anything . . . that says the U.S. Army intentionally introduced smallpox, I'll eat the book at the 50-yard line," he said. "I stand by the report. If there are a couple of pimples on it, big deal. Every time I read it, I'm more proud."
The man's willing to eat a pimply report. That's gotta mean something.

This is all from Pirate Pirate Ballerina, by the way, who also notes that DU professor Dean Saitta, a founding member of Teachers for a Democratic Society (Recreate 68! Recreate 68!), has posted another defense of Ward Churchill--or, as PB puts it, scarfed another brimming mug of Kool-Aid™.

Update: Every time I read the S & G R, this starts running through my head. Make it stop!

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