Bluster's Last stand: Ward Churchill Makes a Promise

Ward Churchill describing "the one that got away."

"What happened at Fort Clark was far worse than I indicated. Far worse....And now I've got the documentation, the paper, to prove it. So next time I iterate it, it's going to be a much sharper finding on genocidal intent with Fort Clark."---Ward Churchill

Dissident Voice (9-19-05) once published an interview that Joshua Frank did with the now-discredited ex-professor Ward Churchill, who glibly assured Mr. Frank that he would be publishing two essays to defend his dishonest scholarship from attack "within the next year."

That would have been in 2006, but Churchill's promised rebuttals still have still not materialized!

Churchill declined to defend himself when he was offered a sympathetic forum on Dissident Voice. Instead, Churchill stalled for time:

I've already got a publisher for both pieces -- and I think I'd just as soon let them speak for themselves. They'll be far more thorough than anything we'll be able to go into here.

In a short, illustrative passage from the inteview, Joshua Frank asks:

Would you like to address the charge that you "invented history" when you accused the U.S. Army of deliberately infecting Indians with smallpox in 1837? There's that, and the allegation that you did the same thing when you claimed that the U.S. imposed a racial definition of their identity upon Indians in the 1887 General Allotment Act.

Ward Churchill blustered:

My response is that I was basically correct on both counts, although I probably should have said "War Department" rather than "Army" with regard to the smallpox. It's important, I think, to point out that, although I've mentioned both matters in several places, I've never done so other than in passing. [See here.] I've never really stopped to spell out why I was saying what I was saying, or to flesh out the annotation, partly because I mentioned them in the context of developing broader arguments, and partly because I considered what I was saying to be more or less self-evidently true. So, I glad-handed things a bit. Mea culpa.

I'm now preparing in-depth essays, both on what happened at Fort Clark in 1837 -- it turns out to have been much worse than I originally contended, involving not just a couple of low-ranking army officers but the Secretary of War himself -- and the identification criteria pertaining under provision of the Allotment Act (I never said the criteria were articulated within the Act itself). Those will be in print within the next year -- I've already got a publisher for both pieces -- and I think I'd just as soon let them speak for themselves. They'll be far more thorough than anything we'll be able to go into here.

To see if Churchill was telling Mr. Frank the truth, curious readers can search my blog using the terms "Thomas Brown," "smallpox," "John LaVelle," and "General Allotment Act."

Thomas Brown has published two articles in Plagiary, here and here.

Professor LaVelle has published two scholarly articles here and here.

Churchill promised in 2005 that he had publishers who would soon publish two in-depth essays to refute Professors Brown and LaVelle. I wonder who those publishers were and why they have not published Churchill's two in-depth essays.

The Rocky Mountain News also wrote a five-part series of articles about Ward Churchill's "scholarship."

Shadows of Doubt (Overview)

Confirmed: Ward Churchill is a Fraud, Part 1--The Charge: Fraud

Confirmed: Ward Churchill is a Fraud, Part 2--The Charge: Plagiarism

Confirmed: Ward Churchill is a Fraud, Part 3--The Charge of Mischaracterization

Confirmed, Ward Churchill is a Fraud, Part 4--The Charge of Misrepresentation

The University of Colorado also investigated and fired Ward Churchill for violating the ethics of scholarship all CU professors must abide by.