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Thursday, April 9, 2009 12:00 AM

Ward Churchill's win is scholarship's loss

The ethnic studies professor should not have been fired for speaking out about 9/11. The problem remains his slanted work on Native American history.

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  • Friday, April 10, 2009 12:38 PM

    Churchill vs Dershowitz, Lewy et al

    "Some of what Churchill did probably goes on all the time. Distorting sources to agree with you and such. But the wholesale fabrication and the lengths he went to to make it happen are just over the top. Ghostwriting sources? Are you freaking kidding me?!?

    -- Bassopotamus "

    Academia is chock full of fraud and hucksters, and these charlatans are protected by their fellow professors and administrators. Plagiarism? Let's see: Alan Dershowitz plagiarized a known fraud, and then accused the mother of the man who exposed him of being a Nazi collaborator, which is vile beyond belief and not just because it's a lie. Maryla Finkelstein's entire family was murdered by the Nazis and she was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of the guards. Harvard supported Dershowitz's smear campaign against a dead woman. Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose were also caught red-handed committing plagiarism. Neither was fired.

    Falsifying their background? Joseph Ellis claimed that he fought in Vietnam and was traumatized by the experience, when the closest he came to fighting in Vietnam was watching China Beach.

    Falsifying evidence? Guenter Lewy claimed that the Winter Soldiers were fakes, based on a document he received from the Navy. Media Matters has the rest:

    http://mediamatters.org/items/200409030004

    "Conservative historian Guenter Lewy claimed in his 1978 book, America in Vietnam, that a Naval Investigative Service report into the Winter Soldier allegations had discredited many of the witnesses and accounts, and in some cases impostors had assumed the identities of real veterans who were not present at the investigation. But no one can seem to locate a copy of it: "We have not been able to confirm the existence of this report, but it's also possible that such records could have been destroyed or misplaced," Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell told the Tribune. In a February 14 Baltimore Sun article, Lewy himself admitted that "he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative report or was briefed on its contents." Apart from Lewy's allegations, a Media Matters for America search turned up no other reports of evidence that any Winter Soldier witness was an impostor."

    Lewy also claims that the Armenian Genocide didn't happen, as well as the holocaust against Gypsies and the genocide against American Indians. He's David Irving with tenure.

    All these frauds and fakes about events that happened in living memory, and Churchill gets raked over the coals over events that happened over 170 years ago? Dershowitz commits academic fraud and other unethical conduct to foment war crimes that are taking place right NOW!

    The main thing that separates Ward Churchill from the likes Of Lewy, Dershowitz, Goodwin and the others is his political views. If he had supported the Iraq War, or was a shameless fanboy of Israel, there would have been no witch hysteria and no investigation. If he had attained some level of celebrity with the mainstream media (no, the occasional clip on Pacifica doesn't count), he could get away with far worse than anything he was ever accused of doing. Others certainly have.

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