CU Around
"University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill stole the work of others, twisted facts to bolster his own theories and repeatedly violated the most basic standards of scholarly research, the committee assigned to investigate him wrote in a stinging report made public Tuesday," reports Denver's Rocky Mountain News:
One of the five committee members recommended Churchill be fired. Two said he should be suspended without pay for two years; the two others recommended a five-year suspension without pay.
The report, in PDF, is here. Eugene Volokh makes an amusing observation:
Churchill is found guilty of passing off others' work as his own (plagiarism), but also of passing off his own work as others'. The latter is faulted as a general departure from "established standards regarding author names on publications" (p. 89); but it's also more specifically, and more seriously, faulted because Churchill then used the work published under another's name "as apparently independent authority for claims that he makes in his own later scholarship" (p. 89). This "permits the author to create the false appearance that his claims are supported by other scholars when, in fact, he is the only source for such claims" (p. 90).
For CU to rid itself of Churchill is a necessary act of intellectual hygiene, but this outcome has something of the feel of getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The corruption via politicization of American higher education runs much deeper than the formal transgressions of one especially noisome professor. One day perhaps academia will reform itself, but we're not holding our breath. (Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)
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