Ward Churchill and DePaul University

As regular visitors to this blog know, renowned aca-demon Ward Churchill will be returning to his native Illinois and speak at Chicago's DePaul University on October 20 and 21.

(The second event, I believe, is not open to the public.)

Information, courtesy of the DePaul University Division of Student Affairs' Cultural Center, is available here on their web site.

Here is the "Psycho" Ward stuff:

October 20, 2005
Lecture: Ward Churchill -Open to DePaul Community
5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., Student Center 314-A)

October 21, 2005
Multicultural Human Rights Education Workshop (2:00 p.m. 4:30 p.m., Student Center 314-B) -Ward Churchill– For Student Organizations Only

I sent an e-mail to culturalcenter@depaul.edu and asked them to clarify whether student or university funds were being used to pay for Churchill's presumably hefty speaking fees. Also, as for the 2nd function, I inquired whether it was mandatory for student organizations to attend this little-publicized event. I identified myself and informed them of my DePaul blogging. Anyway, they never got back to me.

Back to Ward: Armed with nothing more than a master's degree from the school now known as the University of Illinois-Springfield, Churchill parlayed that into a tenured professorship at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder, later becoming chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department at CU.

Now, to become a tenured professor without a Ph.D. is rare, and generally only artists, novelists, or renowned politicians and the like receive that honor. But Ward pulled it off. How? Largely by claiming he was an American Indian, a claim that has been quashed by this article, part of a week long series on Ward Churchill, from the Rocky Mountain News.

So Ward Churchill apparently lied to get his tenured position. Is this a lesson the administration of DePaul wants to pass on to the students there? Misrepresenting yourself gets you ahead in life?

Then there is the issue of Ward's alleged plagiarism. Churchill's "defense" on this charge, according to the Rocky Mountain News, is that he took another writers work, refashioned it as a "re-write man," then published "his" finished product as his own.

What would happen to a DePaul student who pulled a stunt like this?

Oh, then there is the charge that Ward Churchill fabricated sources to support a spurious claim that the US Army purposely spread small pox among North Dakota Indians in the 1830s. Once again, the Rocky Mountain News reported, the facts are not kind to Ward Churchill.

And if a DePaul student made up sources for a paper, what would be the consequences for that student?

There have even been charges that Ward Churchill's artwork is based on that of another artist, as CBS 4 Denver reported.

I hope my point is clear. What kind of university would allow someone like Ward Churchill to speak--at a fee--on its campus? One where I wouldn't want to send my daughter.

Okay, the rascal Churchill does have free speech rights. A Churchill essay, presumably written by Ward himself, contained passages that dramatically ended Ward's days as a relatively anonymous campus Leftist.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

In an essay titled "Some People Push Back - On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Churchill argued the attacks were retaliation for a 1991 bombing raid on Iraq and U.S. support of economic sanctions against Iraq following the Persian Gulf War.

He referred to the people killed at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers," referring to Adolf Eichmann, who carried out Adolf Hitler's systematic extermination of the Jews during World War II.

In the previous post, you can read about how little respect DePaul has for the free speech rights of the professor it suspended last year, Thomas Klocek.

DePaul celebrates and pays Churchill. But suspended Klocek.

This article from FrontPage Magazine by Joel Mowbray, puts the Klocek and Ward Churchill stories in perspective.