 |
| |
|
|
Boris Godunov
|
 |
Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:21
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by SpencerH
Since I havent followed this situation except on the periphery it's difficult to really know whats going on. Based on his rebuttal to the charges against him, I'd say that Churchill (I hate using that name in association with this burke) has some valid points with respect to american foreign policy and our attitudes toward it. In addition, what he did does not appear to be classic plagarism. It appears to be totally unethical however and may still serve the purpose of providing 'just cause' to revoke his tenure. Strange as it seems, I agree with Agathon (to some extent). |
As I said (several times), if it doesn't meet the level of a termination-worthy offense, then by all means, let Churchill keep his job. My issue isn't at all with what Churchill's opinions are--he can believe and say what he wants. I think what he says is repugnant and makes him a total *******, but that's his right.
But that's not all Aggie is saying, oh no! See, even if it were blatant, outright plagiarism, he thinks that Churchill shouldn't be fired because doing so would appease some right-wingers. No worries about whether or not he's actually guilty of the offense, but he thinks people who share his ideology should be excused of accountability for their actions if they also happen to be a favored whipping boy of the side he opposes. That's the real issue at hand that makes me ill about what he's saying. He is basically saying that Churchill's self-made status as a provacateur should grant him immunity from any repercussions for academic malfeasance.
Given this incident AND the other incidents cited against Churchill, I think it's pretty obvious that he is, at the very least, a highly unethical scholar who doesn't give a damn about honesty, integrity or the rights of his colleagues over their work. Any university would want to get rid of such a person, and they would have just cause to do so. Furthermore, the fact that said person set themselves up (purposefully) to be a pariah to the right-wing for his own glorification purposes shouldn't render him unaccountable for his misdeeds. To do so would be truly dispicable, and impugn the integrity of academic to no end. Why should anyone trust academic institutions if they give any tolerance to such behavior, regardless of the political bent of those saying it?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Oerdin
|
 |
of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:21
|
|
It seems once again our young Aggie is wrong. The extant of the plagiarism goes fair beyond a poem which he didn't site and includes coping a painting of Indians (he's an ethnic studies teacher remember). He sold 150 copies of the copied painting for $100 each netting him $1500.
quote:
As Prentup flipped through a book of illustrations by renowned artist Thomas E. Mails, he found an artwork of striking similarity.
"And I opened it up and, wham! There it was," Prentup said. "It's the exact same thing, only mirror image, virtually to every detail."
The pen and ink sketch by Thomas Mails first appeared in his 1972 masterpiece, "The Mystic Warriors of the Plains."
Compare it side-by-side to the serigraph by Churchill, created some 20 years later: the composition, the images, the placement are nearly identical.
Intellectual property attorney Jim Hubbell said it's clearly no accident.
"It's very obvious that the Churchill piece was taken directly from the Mails piece," Hubbell said. "There's just too many similarities between the two for it to have been coincidence." |
It appears a second piece of Ward's "original artwork" has also been stolen from another artist. This one show's an indian Chief. That link has pictures of all four paintings including the originals and Churchills copies.
Last edited by Oerdin on 15-03-2005 at 09:18
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Agathon
|
 |
Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:21
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
But that's not all Aggie is saying, oh no! See, even if it were blatant, outright plagiarism, he thinks that Churchill shouldn't be fired because doing so would appease some right-wingers. |
Why do you persist in misrepresenting my argument? Surely you can do better than that...
My position is that people shouldn't be fired for bad things they have done if they are really being fired for reasons that (a) have nothing to do with it, and (b) firing for these reasons constitutes a worse crime than the one the person is supposedly being fired for.
That's my position on the issue. My actual position, not the patently ridiculous argument you paint. In addition I think, with reasonable justification, that the negative consequences of Churchill being fired would be more than the appeasement of right wingers.
Your position is to allow the craven and despicable university board to fire Churchill for his unpopular opinions. The plagiarism thing is an excuse because everyone knows why he's in trouble, and it isn't the plagiarism.
quote:
No worries about whether or not he's actually guilty of the offense, but he thinks people who share his ideology should be excused of accountability for their actions if they also happen to be a favored whipping boy of the side he opposes. |
I've never said that. In fact I would be just as sick if it were a right wing professor being hounded out in a similar manner for expressing his opinions.
The only time I have ever supported someone being removed from a university was back in New Zealand, where I publicly opposed (along with many other students, staff, locals and the NZ Jewish community) the admission of a card carrying neo-nazi who had performed bizarre medical experiments on people, who was wanted by the German police for that and various other things, who was on record as a holocaust denier, whose grades had been fiddled with and whose thesis project was based around the idea of interviewing Germans who had settled in New Zealand, who happen in the most part to be elderly Jewish holocaust survivors. All of these charges are a matter of public record. My submission is still in the archive of the inquiry that resulted. Unfortunately, I had to leave for Canada as things were getting really heated, but I did the best that I could to make my voice heard.
You can call me inconsistent if you like. But I hardly think that opposing Adolf Hitler Jr from interviewing elderly holocaust survivors and using our university as a pulpit to deny the holocaust while doing so, comes within a bull's roar of violating any reasonable definition of academic freedom.
For the record, if he'd wanted to do a PhD in physics or bio or management, I wouldn't have cared. It was the interviewing elderly Jews that I found most repugnant.
quote:
That's the real issue at hand that makes me ill about what he's saying. He is basically saying that Churchill's self-made status as a provacateur should grant him immunity from any repercussions for academic malfeasance. |
No. That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying that the university should not be allowed to fire someone for exercising their academic freedom. Since they only care about the plagiarism case insofar as it gets rid of Churchill because of what he said, they are far worse than he is. Letting them get away with it is a worse evil than letting Churchill remain.
It's exactly the same as the newspaper case I constructed in the previous post.
quote:
Given this incident AND the other incidents cited against Churchill, I think it's pretty obvious that he is, at the very least, a highly unethical scholar who doesn't give a damn about honesty, integrity or the rights of his colleagues over their work. Any university would want to get rid of such a person, and they would have just cause to do so. |
You did go to college, didn't you? Ever do graduate work?
There's basically one method that is tried again and again in universities to get rid of "troublesome" tenured faculty members, and it is the one that is being used to try to get rid of Ward Churchill.
You can't fire them for saying things you don't like, so you find something that can be used against them. For example: a trumped up charge of plagiarism, or some other fraud. Or perhaps you bribe some graduate students to complain about his teaching or supervision (don't laugh - I've actually seen that one happen). Or - my favourite - and the most popular: sexual harassment (he looks too long at girls or once touched a co-ed).
If you have enough friends in high places in the university you can make these charges stick, or at least get the person suspended or make them fight a long and expensive case against dismissal.
You'd think that other academics would leap to the defence of this unjustly accused person.... but no... they are pretty much sheep at the mercy of the administrators.
This seems to me what is happening to Churchill. They keep dragging up **** in hopes that some of it will stick. What they are doing is utterly wrong, no matter what Churchill has done, because what they really want is to censor politically unpopular beliefs - at a university.
quote:
Furthermore, the fact that said person set themselves up (purposefully) to be a pariah to the right-wing for his own glorification purposes shouldn't render him unaccountable for his misdeeds. To do so would be truly dispicable, and impugn the integrity of academic to no end. Why should anyone trust academic institutions if they give any tolerance to such behavior, regardless of the political bent of those saying it? |
What's worse? An academy where people occasionally steal each others ideas, or an academy where all the ideas there are to be stolen are effectively censored by the university administration?
Give me the former any day.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Agathon
|
|
Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:21
|
|
quote:
To quote an ill-tempered and ignorant "logician" in this very thread: "Prove it!" |
OK.
1. I'm telling you that I am really Superman.
2. At least one person has been known with certainly to lie on the internet (me.. just now by claiming I am superman).
3. My lie about superman appeared on the internet.
4. So of all the statements on the internet at least one is a lie.
5. Therefore: you cannot have absolute certainly about something that you read on the internet.
6. Life is harsh and DinoDoc still hasn't removed his Santa hat. 
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0...760059,00.html#
quote:
Sacred cow of tenure laid low?
By Kevin Simpson
Denver Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 13, 2005 -
In both shouts and murmurs, the Ward Churchill controversy has echoed through universities across the country amid the escalating clash of politics and academic freedom.
Even before the furor over the CU professor's writings - he compared some of the Sept. 11 victims to a top Nazi - some college faculty had sensed an erosion of liberty to broach provocative or unpopular views.
Churchill put a face on those concerns.
"It's like the old Dylan line - you don't need a weather vane to know which way the wind is blowing," said Robert Polhemus, English professor and chairman of the faculty senate at Stanford, paraphrasing the singer's "weather man" line. "For a generation, professors took both tenure and academic freedom for granted in a way that won't be possible in the next decade."
Legislators in at least eight states, including Colorado, have entertained bills or resolutions in the past several months reflecting the conservative push to balance what they claim is an overbearing liberal bias on campus. And tenure has long been open to attack on the grounds that it too thoroughly insulates even incompetent academics.
CU is just the latest skirmish.
At the University of Iowa, the faculty senate parried what it fears to be a politically charged challenge to free speech in academia by rattling off a resolution urging the CU regents not to use Churchill's controversial essay to damage his academic career.
"I think (the controversy) is being seen across the country as an effort to use ideas that very few people would agree with, and the expression of those ideas, as a wedge issue," said Katherine Tachau, professor of medieval history and president of the faculty senate.
Churchill, a tenured professor and then-chair of CU's ethnic studies department, recently came under attack for the essay he wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks. Several legislators and Gov. Bill Owens have called for his removal.
Churchill subsequently stepped down as department head but retained his $94,000 annual salary. Meanwhile, CU initiated a review of his academic work scheduled to conclude this week, but a financial settlement to ensure the professor's departure remained possible.
"But that leaves the problem that a politically motivated attack from outside the university resulted in somebody being treated in a manner that explicitly attacks their ability to say and publish what they want," said Tachau. "A best-case scenario would be for the university and governor to affirm that we do not like what he says, but we defend his right to say it."
But Polhemus said that settlements in conflicts like this are "what universities do."
"Universities hate to have huge rifts or conflicts because they depend upon donors, and people have to work together," he said. "If they can possibly solve it amicably so people's interests aren't run roughshod over, they'll do that."
Not a hot topic at ASU
Although academics from coast to coast have followed the headlines, faculty at Arizona State University haven't found the Churchill matter a hot topic at the water cooler, said Doug Johnson, chairman of the personnel committee of ASU's academic senate.
The subject hasn't come up at meetings on tenure or faculty governance, and Johnson figures most professors might regard the CU circumstances as an extreme case of pushing the rhetorical envelope.
"I don't see that this is such a hot button that people immediately respond," he said. "We don't feel our ability to speak on an issue is threatened. It's more of an anomaly than anything else."
CHURCHILL CONTROVERSY
Essay & statements
Click here to read Ward Churchill's essay, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," as posted by a third-party political website. (The Denver Post does not endorse the website or views it expresses; the link is provided only as a reader service.)
Click here to read Churchill's Feb. 1 statement on the controversy.
Click here to read the University of Colorado Board of Regents' Feb. 3 resolution on the controversy.
Click here to read the Colorado House of Representatives' Feb. 2 resolution condemning Churchill.
Click here to read Gov. Bill Owens' letter on Churchill.
Click here for Churchill's academic webpage on the CU Department of Ethnic Studies website.
At Boise State University, civil engineering professor George Murgel said he senses a similar attitude, but while immediate reaction to the Churchill controversy has been somewhat muted in Idaho, Murgel doesn't minimize the possible ramifications - particularly where the touchy issue of faculty tenure is concerned.
"If he has problems in his work, and it's been glossed over for years in evaluations, that would be a more stinging indictment of the overall system than just him," said Murgel, also president of the faculty senate. "It could trigger a look all around the country at review systems, and could push the argument to do away with tenure altogether.
"That could be your worst- case scenario in all this."
Questioning motivation
But some question the motivation for the review of Churchill's work and wonder if such a politically influenced move - particularly one advanced from outside the university itself - can be trusted.
"We're not trying to eviscerate tenure of having responsibilities," said Iowa's Tachau. "But the way there's been political pressure brought to bear on the university, and (opposition to tenure) has been taken up as a cause célèbre outside of academe, we're suspicious of the fairness of any process he's going through."
The Churchill drama has captured rapt attention in some corners, such as the nationwide law school faculty e-mail group to which Judith Wegner subscribes.
Wegner, a former dean of the University of North Carolina law school and current chair of faculty, said most people in her field are watching developments closely and fitting them into a larger context.
"I'd say there's a pretty broad awareness, a concern not just about that, but put together with the David Horowitz 'academic bill of rights,' the Patriot Act, the difficulty of foreign students to engage in research or travel, constraints on grants in some places - it's a worrisome time, honestly," she said.
Whatever the outcome, most professors agree that the Churchill controversy touches on one facet of academic freedom that isn't going away any time soon.
"Maybe Ward Churchill is a con man or loony, or maybe the people against him are other kinds of loonies who just want to shut down discussion and force their own monolithic view on the world," said Stanford's Polhemus. "I don't know, but I know the issue about what professors say, and who they offend in the classroom, is going to be an issue in the coming years." |
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:21.
Apolyton Time is 00:21. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
15-03-2005 07:45
Attachment: 
|
