Truth told

At History News Network, Australian journalist/historian (or vice versa) Keith Windschuttle on Ward Churchill and the politicization of history:

The University of Colorado’s dismissal of Ward Churchill for academic fraud was not only a welcome decision in support of scholarly standards, it will also go some way towards discrediting one of the most depressing tendencies of our era, the politicization of history.

Optimistic, ain't he? But his conclusion is dead center:

The argument of the 1960s generation that all history is politicized and that historians can never shed their political prejudices has been the most corrupting influence to which the profession has ever succumbed. It has turned the traditional role of the historian, to try to seek the truth about the past, on its head. It has allowed historians to write from an overtly partisan position and to engage in exaggeration, selective omission and pure invention.

In indigenous and ethnic affairs, it has led some historians to justify this to themselves on the grounds that it is all for a good cause in the struggle against racism. But no cause is ever served by falsehood because eventually someone will come along and expose you. Truth always comes out in the end, and when it does it discredits those causes built on lies.

Truth always comes out in the end. These days that's a radical statement. Read whole thing.