April 6, 2007
Ward Churchill and Hamilton College II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 05:00 PM EST I’d like to make one point regarding Fredric Smoler’s post, with which I largely agree, although I would have disinvited both Churchill and Paulin on the simple grounds that new information had shown them to be unworthy of being invited. Seems like a good reason to me. He writes, “Josh Zeitz quite correctly observes that allegations about Churchill’s mendacity, fraud, scholarly misconduct, and plagiarism have nothing to do with this question. For one thing, these allegations surfaced after the Hamilton controversy, not before it, so they cannot retrospectively justify Hamilton’s decision, even if they have all proved to be true.” In fact, members of the Hamilton faculty had evidence of Churchill’s scholarly malfeasance and used it to argue against having him speak. The evidence was later turned over to the University of Colorado at Boulder and formed the basis of the charges against him there, charges of which Churchill was later found guilty and dismissed from his professorship.
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