One Issue Triggers Firestorm of Doubt About Professor

From the moment his comments surfaced comparing the victims of Sept. 11 to Nazis, everything about professor Ward L. Churchill has been called into question.

His claim to be an American Indian, his scholarship, whether he promotes violence and how he got tenure so quickly are issues now under scrutiny. Most recently, he’s been accused of art fraud, replicating paintings by the late Thomas Mails and selling them as his own. He said Mails gave him permission.

On Monday, University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman resigned, saying the Churchill controversy -- along with scandals in the Boulder campus’ athletic department -- had made her job untenable. The university is reviewing the professor’s writings and may decide next week whether he should be fired.

But what began as an issue of free speech has become a referendum on Churchill himself.

Last month, a paper surfaced that was written by the ethnic studies professor shortly after the terrorist attacks. In it, he called the finance workers killed in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns,” comparing their efforts on behalf of American capitalism to Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann.

The remarks triggered national outrage, leading Colorado Gov. Bill Owens to call for Churchill’s ouster.

Legal experts doubt he can be fired for what he wrote, but critics insist he should lose his job for alleged academic fraud and advocating violence.

Three professors have said that Churchill reinvented history to suit his politics. In one case, he wrote that the U.S. Army deliberately infected Mandan Indians with smallpox-laden blankets in what is now North Dakota. His source for the story was UCLA professor Russell Thornton, whose own account of the incident is completely different and makes no mention of the Army.

Some of Churchill’s speeches have raised questions over his attitude toward violence.

Once when discussing the Sept. 11 attacks, Churchill asked the audience why it took “Arabs to do what people here should have done a long time ago.”

In a speech in Seattle, a man asked how to launch an attack “so they don’t see us coming.” Churchill told him to shave his beard, cut his hair and wear a suit. “You carry the weapon. That’s how they don’t see it coming,” he said.

Churchill has said his words were taken out of context, and that replaying them amounts to “terrorist speech” against him.

Craig Silverman, who co-hosts a radio program on KHOW in Denver, airs tapes of Churchill almost daily. He says they are in “perfect context” and prove the professor promotes violence.

“It’s not surprising that his supporters want to limit this discussion to the ‘little Eichmanns’ comment,” said Silverman, a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy. “As offensive and grotesque an analogy as that was, I wouldn’t be calling for his dismissal for that alone. As we have looked into this, we have found a plethora of reasons to fire him.”

David Lane, Churchill’s lawyer, said there was no chance University of Colorado would fire the professor. “He is protected by the 1st Amendment,” Lane said. “They will never be able to prove academic or artistic fraud. This will all resolve itself before the university has the chance to do something stupid.”

Churchill has vowed to sue if fired, and the university is considering the option of offering him a buyout.

“Given the legal complexities involved,” said university regent Michael Carrigan, “the university would be foolish to exclude any possible solutions to resolve the dispute.”

Churchill came to his own defense Tuesday in a guest editorial in the Rocky Mountain News, saying he has always advocated the rule of law.

“I document the systemic violence perpetrated by the U.S. government in the hope that Americans will take this responsibility to heart and use political means to change government policy,” he wrote. “I would vastly prefer that this happen through nonviolent means. However, I cannot say that nonviolence is the only legitimate response to systemic violence.”

Churchill in the past had ties to militant organizations. On his resume, under the heading “political activism,” he wrote that after returning from a combat tour in Vietnam -- Army records list him as a light vehicle driver -- he became an organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society, a radical protest group.

“Later that year I became a member of the Weathermen faction and liaison to the Black Panther Party chapter in Peoria,” he wrote. In a 1987 Denver Post story, Churchill said he taught the Weathermen, who bombed two dozen buildings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, how to make explosives.

He also worked for Soldier of Fortune, a magazine dedicated to war, guns and the adventures of mercenaries.

“He was a graphic designer for us, and that’s all I can say,” said Robert Brown, editor of the Boulder magazine.

Long before Churchill became nationally known, many Native American groups -- including the American Indian Movement -- were denouncing him as an impostor. Churchill’s claims to be Creek, then Keetoowah Cherokee, have been denied by the tribes. He has often called American Indians racist for their tribal membership rules.

“We have told [the University of Colorado] he is not an Indian and he should not be out there indicting Indian people,” said Carol Standing Elk, who heads AIM of Northern California. “How did he get into the university? How did he head a department with only a master’s degree?”

Churchill applied to the University of Colorado in 1978 and was hired to run a tutoring program for minority students. He checked Native American on his application and federal affirmative action forms. In 1991, he got a temporary job teaching American Indian studies, beating out several Native American applicants.

Later that year, Michael Pacanowsky -- then incoming chairman of the communications department -- e-mailed faculty members to say Churchill “has been offered a full professorship at Cal State Northridge” and that they had to decide whether he should receive tenure. The sociology and political science departments had rejected him; since Churchill’s master’s degree was in communications, the department was next in line.

“I confess I am largely overwhelmed by the uncertainty surrounding this and the implications of any decision we make one way or the other,” Pacanowsky wrote. Then he said hiring Churchill would be making a “contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus.”

Despite concerns that Churchill lacked a doctorate, tenure was granted.

But California State University officials said they never offered him a job.

“We have records from that time, and we cannot find a hiring offer to Ward Churchill,” John Chandler, spokesman for Cal State Northridge, said last week.

George Wayne, former vice president for student academic services at Cal State Sacramento, remembers getting a call from someone on the Northridge search committee. Wayne had worked at the University of Colorado, and the caller thought he might know Churchill.

“The next time I was at Northridge I asked how he made out,” Wayne said. “They said he was never a viable candidate. He didn’t have a Ph.D. and no scholarly writings that would meet any criteria of a serious college.”

How anyone got the idea that Churchill was offered a Cal State job remains a mystery. A University of Colorado spokeswoman did not return calls for comment.

Since receiving tenure, Churchill has received positive evaluations. His 1999 to 2000 performance rating said that he “far exceeds expectations.” Within five years, his salary went from $58,929 to $94,242.

The officials who signed off on the evaluations are among those now evaluating Churchill’s work.