{"id":912,"date":"2007-07-25T16:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T16:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=912"},"modified":"2007-07-25T16:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T16:50:00","slug":"the-fall-of-an-intellectual-thug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=912","title":{"rendered":"The Fall of an Intellectual Thug"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Colorado has fired Ward Churchill, plagiarist, pseudo-American Indian, and intellectual thug<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In case you have not guessed, I am happy about that.<\/p>\n

If a student had committed as much plagiarism as Churchill did, he would flunk the course. (My course, at any rate.)<\/p>\n

Some people will try to argue that Churchill was fired for political speech, but he was not. Yes, as some of Ann Althouse’s commenters note, the political speech may have caused his other behavior to be investigated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is sort of like being stopped for speeding after you robbed a bank.<\/p>\n

I learned about Churchill’s methods when I was a graduate student at CU-Boulder in the 1980s. He led the lynch mob against a religious-studies professor whose work on Native American religion displeased him, and he played the race card every chance that he had. What an irony that he was faking it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Churchill wanted to be the dictator who could declare whose scholarship was politically acceptable and whose was not. I suppose that is why Russell Means<\/a> and some other Indian activists are supporting him<\/a>–they would like to have that power too.<\/p>\n

More recently, the American Indian Movement has given Means the shove<\/a>. And they have an interesting Web page on Ward Churchill<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of Colorado has fired Ward Churchill, plagiarist, pseudo-American Indian, and intellectual thug. In case you have not guessed, I am happy about that. If a student had committed as much plagiarism as Churchill did, he would flunk the course. (My course, at any rate.) Some people will try to argue that Churchill was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10,4],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-eI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":917,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=917","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":0},"title":""Chutch" – now on DVD?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"When I mentioned Ward Churchill, I forgot the TV series that he inspired. But I have forgotten a lot about the Seventies.","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":1},"title":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World's Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.This year's parliament in Melbourne listed \"Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples\" as one of its key topics.Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the \"indigenous card\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1639,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1639","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":2},"title":"In which I am not the expert after all","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago, a university student in Australia copied me on an email to an American Heathen reconstructionist: Hail! I sent the following to [name] seeking advice; perhaps you could offer some advice as well? It was about wishing to set up an Australian branch of the group, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":962,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=962","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":3},"title":"Is This a Nation of Only Monotheistic Believers?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Under the United Blogging Act of 2005, I should have said something about Mitt Romney's speech about how being a Mormon does not make him unfit to be president.Hrafnkell picked up on a news release from Americans United, a group that did a lot for us during the pentacle grave-marker\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":251,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=251","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":4},"title":"Almost pagan Thanks to Nick\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Almost pagan Thanks to Nick Freeman, whose paper, \"The Shrineless God: Paganism, Literature, and Art in Forties England,\" will appear in the next issue of The Pomegranate, I have been watching and reading some classics of literary, if not self-consciously religious, small-p paganism. One was the film A Canterbury Tale,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2307,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2307","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":5},"title":"Trademarking Your Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"At the Washington Post's \"Under God\" blog, a story about how the Seventh-Day Adventist church guards its trademark\u2014even against other Adventists. This has got me thinking: will all religions end up trademarked? Do you need intellectual-property lawyers and copyright lawyers to be a \"real religion\"? Imagine trademarking \"Witch.\" Someone in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}