The smallpox blankets story has been in the Blogosphere for a few days, now it hits the Denver Post: CU prof’s writings doubted:
“If he is going to get fired, it is going to be for making up data, and that’s one thing you can’t get away with in the academic community,” said Thomas F. Brown, who holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins and is an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.Brown is one of two professors at different universities who have published or have sought to publish detailed critiques of Churchill’s work. Others have questioned his work in interviews.
University of New Mexico law professor John LaVelle in 1996 published a seven-page essay in the journal American Indian Quarterly questioning the basis of Churchill’s theories and the underlying scholarship behind them.
[…]
Even in the occasionally bare-knuckled world of academic criticism, LaVelle’s 1996 essay on Churchill stands out. LaVelle, an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Tribe, is particularly offended by Churchill’s view that the various tribes have, through the establishment of membership policies, contributed to Indian problems.
Interestingly, Churchill was originally in CU’s Department of Communicatins before transferring to the Ethnic Studies Department. (At least his MA was in Communications–although, again, this raises the question of why he was hired at a major university in the first place to a tenure track position without a terminal degree. It also raises the question of why they didn’t hire a Chair for the Ethnic Studies Department with a terminal degree in the first place).
Also: this isn’t the first time he has been in the spotlight. In 1992 he was arrested (and later acquitted) for disrupting a Columbus Day parade.