Day By Day

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

The Churchill Scandal Grinds On, and On, and On...

The Rocky Mountain News reports:
In what can only be described as good news for the University of Colorado, a subcommittee on research misconduct has reportedly concluded that all but two allegations against Professor Ward Churchill deserve further investigation....

According to Churchill's attorney, David Lane, the subcommittee kept all of the the major allegations of plagiarism and historical invention in play. But what is arguably the most notorious allegation of all, that Churchill made up his Indian ancestry, was dropped.
The article describes what it calls the ludicrously protracted process of investigation.

[T]he review process is preposterously complex and is still far from over. Even this first phase has dragged on longer than CU's rules envision. Now the allegations move to the full standing committee, which could derail the process or refer the charges to a smaller investigative panel. That panel would then have 30 days to gear up and 120 more in which to do its work. And even that timetable is not hard and fast. The committee can take yet more time if its members think they need it.

And then recommendations will be made and university officials can then begin to consider what actions, if any, might be taken and so on, and so on, to the end of time.

The decision to drop charges that Churchill invented his ethnicity is disappointing, because an investigation of those charges and the way they may have influenced hiring and promotion decisions in the university would have illuminated one of the major sources of corruption in contemporary academia.

Read the article here.


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