Letter from Professor Margaret D. LeCompte, PhD
April 19, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing in response to the refusal of many of my
academic colleagues to look carefully at the firing of
Professor Ward Churchill at the University of
Colorado-Boulder. It is true that many people disagree with
some of Professor Churchill’s stances, and others find his
controversial statements to be offensive. However, even the
University of Colorado found that his statements were, in
fact, protected under the United States Constitution.
What I find profoundly disturbing is the fact that people
do not seem to be able to distinguish between supporting a
principle and supporting a person. It is our ethical
obligation to support principles of integrity, objectivity,
due process and academic freedom, even if we detest the
individual whose acts are under consideration. Further, I
find it appalling that many of my colleagues who refuse to
support Professor Churchill are doing so in ignorance of
what really has actually transpired here at the University
of Colorado and with a profound lack of information about
the facts of the case on the ground. Let me explain, and
let me assure you that I am not a "Churchill groupie!!" I,
too, once had serious misgivings about Professor
Churchill’s scholarship, given the media firestorm that
surrounded this case and the nearly total blackout on any
alternative perspectives on the matter.
It is critical to realize that one very important fact of
academic life has haunted this entire process: Faculty
naively have come to trust that the procedures governing
reviews, due process, academic freedom and faculty
governance are, in fact, fair, appropriate, and duly
constituted. The University of Colorado administration has
capitalized cynically on that trust in ways that has
allowed said administration to put together what looks like
a fair process, but which, in fact, has been totally
hijacked. What has happened at the University of Colorado
makes a mockery of both due process and academic freedom
protections, AND what faculty believe. It is a cruel
violation of the delicate balance between faculty rights
and administrative responsibilities. What happened at CU
has allowed the CU administration to argue that “the
process worked” and that faculty themselves found that
Churchill should be fired. Unfortunately, that isn’t what
happened.
Many scholars refuse to question the outcomes of the
Churchill case on the grounds that duly constituted faculty
and administrative bodies have found serious misconduct on
Churchill's part. If only this were true. The truth is that
the special investigating committee only appeared to be
duly constituted. In fact, some of its members were biased
against Churchill from the outset and the body itself did
not constitute an appropriate investigative body. Its chair
already had preconceived negative opinions about Professor
Churchill. It did not include anyone from Churchill’s own
specific area, and thus, he was not judged by a jury of his
disciplinary peers. The one person with expertise in Indian
Affairs was an expert in Indian law only, not the only area
in which Churchill writes. Most egregious, the committee
inappropriately relied on very limited information from
sources known to be biased against Professor Churchill and
his perspectives in American Indian scholarship to create
their report. Even the charges of plagiarism, those most
disturbing to competent scholars, do not hold up. The
entire process was a sham---imitating the form, but not the
intent, of due process and fair, objective, scholarly
investigation. The actions of the committee violated the
intent of laws of the CU Regents, and both the intent and
the form of AAUP guidelines on due process and academic
freedom, guidelines which CU says they uphold. Clearly, CU
did not uphold these guidelines in the Churchill case and
others on campus. Clearly, the hijacking of once-revered
procedures poses a danger to all of us. Ward Churchill
could be any of us. This could happen to ANY of us.
Many academics also have argued that if an investigation,
even one generated for motives that are questionable,
nonetheless turns up evidence of serious misconduct, that
misconduct must, in fact, be addressed and punished. If
only the investigation had really turned up such evidence
in the record of Professor Churchill! However, even a
cursory examination of the investigatory report itself
reveals it to be fatally flawed with error and
misrepresentation. One of these errors was admitted by the
chair of the investigatory committee on April 9, just days
after it had been revealed to the press by Dr. Eric
Cheyfitz of Cornell University, a distinguished scholar in
both Indian studies and Indian law. Dr. Cheyfitz, in fact,
argues that the investigatory committee's report should be
rescinded as a disgrace to scholarship--an opinion with
which I concur. I urge fellow academicians to read Dr.
Cheyfitz's analysis of the facts of the report, as well as
the investigatory committee's report itself. They are
revelatory. The actions of the committee are far worse than
any of the charges leveled against Churchill; at least his
“errors”—even if they were true—did not stand to ruin a
human being’s reputation and a scholar’s career. This could
happen to ANY of us.
I do urge you to look a bit more deeply into this important
case. It is not limited to Colorado. In fact, it is a test
case by the US right wing to emasculate faculty rights in
US universities. It is spearheaded by ACTA, the Association
of College Trustees and Alumni and other similar
organizations. Should you feel that I am exaggerating, I
simply refer you to ACTA's own publications, including "The
Colorado Model: Any State Can," "How Many More Ward
Churchills?" and most recently, "Friends in High Places."
It is very important that all of us who value academic
freedom and the integrity of the university stand up and
support the campaign to prevent witch hunts such as have
occurred with Professor Churchill from ever occurring
again.
Margaret D. LeCompte, PhD
Professor of Education
University of Colorado-Boulder
