43 Facts About Ward Churchill

Ward LeRoy Churchill was born on October 2,1947 and is an American activist and author.

Ward Churchill was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 until 2007.

In March 2005, the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Ward Churchill had engaged in research misconduct.

Ward Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment.

Ward Churchill was born in Urbana, Illinois, to Jack LeRoy Ward Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen.

Ward Churchill grew up in Elmwood, Illinois, where he attended local schools.

In 1966, Ward Churchill was drafted into the United States Army.

Ward Churchill claimed to have spent time at the Chicago office of the Students for a Democratic Society, and provided firearms and explosives training to members of the Weather Underground.

Department of Defense personnel files showed that Ward Churchill was trained as a film projectionist and light truck driver, but they do not reflect paratrooper school or LRRP training.

In 1978, Ward Churchill began working at the University of Colorado Boulder as an affirmative action officer in the university administration.

Ward Churchill lectured on issues relating to Native Americans in the United States in the ethnic studies program.

Ward Churchill received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Alfred University in 1992.

In 1996, Ward Churchill moved to the new Ethnic Studies Department of the University of Colorado.

Ward Churchill was selected as chairman of the department in June 2002.

In 2005, the University of Colorado's Research Misconduct Committee conducted a preliminary investigation into whether Ward Churchill misrepresented his ethnicity to "add credibility and public acceptance to his scholarship".

On July 24,2007, Ward Churchill was fired for academic misconduct.

The quality of Ward Churchill's research had been seriously questioned by legal scholar John LaVelle and historian Guenter Lewy.

Additional critics were sociologist Thomas Brown, who had been preparing an article on Churchill's work; and historians R G Robertson and Russell Thornton, who said that Churchill had misrepresented their work.

On May 16,2006, the university released its findings; the Investigative Committee unanimously concluded that Ward Churchill had engaged in "serious research misconduct", including falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism.

The next day, Ward Churchill filed a lawsuit in state court claiming that the firing was retribution for his expression of politically unpopular views.

Ward Churchill appealed, but Judge Naves's decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals and by the Colorado Supreme Court.

In 1986, Ward Churchill wrote the essay "Pacifism as Pathology: Notes on an American Pseudopraxis" criticizing pacifist politics within the US left as being hypocritical, de facto racist and ineffectual.

Ward Churchill is particularly outspoken about New Age exploitations of shamanism and American Indian sacred traditions, and the "do-it-yourself Indianism" of certain contemporary authors.

Ward Churchill discusses American policies such as the Indian Removal Act and the forced assimilation of Indigenous children in American Indian boarding schools operating in the mid-1800s to early 1900s.

Ward Churchill has called manifest destiny an ideology used to justify dispossession and genocide against Native Americans, and compared it to Lebensraum ideology of Nazi Germany.

Ward Churchill argues that the United States instituted blood quantum laws based upon rules of descendancy in order to further goals of personal enrichment and political expediency.

For decades in his writings, Ward Churchill has argued that blood quantum laws have an inherent genocidal purpose.

Ward Churchill says: "Set the blood quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed as it [has] and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence".

Ward Churchill has been accused of using his interpretation of the Dawes Act to attack tribal governments that would not recognize him as a member.

Ward Churchill wrote an essay in September 2001 entitled On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.

Ward Churchill described the role of financial workers at the World Trade Center as an "ongoing genocidal American imperialism" comparable to the role played by Adolf Eichmann in organizing the Holocaust.

Ward Churchill's subjects are often American Indian figures and other themes associated with Native American Culture.

Ward Churchill uses historical photographs as source material for works.

Ward Churchill printed 150 copies of Winter Attack and sold at least one of them.

Ward Churchill says that, when he produced Winter Attack, he publicly acknowledged that it was based on Mails's work.

Ward Churchill later married Marie Annette Jaimes, who worked at the University of Colorado.

Ward Churchill has written that Kelly's death left a "crater" in his soul.

Two days later, the United Keetoowah Band replaced its earlier statement with the following: "Because Mr Churchill had genealogical information regarding his alleged ancestry", and because he was willing "to assist the UKB in promoting the tribe and its causes, he was awarded an 'Associate Membership' as an honor".

The Band clarified that Ward Churchill "was not eligible for tribal membership due to the fact that he does not possess a 'Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood ", and added that associate membership did not entitle an individual to voting rights or enrollment in the tribe.

Ward Churchill has never asked for CDIB certification, and has said that he finds the idea of being "vetted" by the US government offensive.

The newspaper's research "turned up no evidence of a single Indian ancestor" among 142 direct ancestors [of Ward Churchill's] identified from records.

Nevertheless, numerous members of Ward Churchill's extended family have longstanding family legends of Indian ancestry among ancestors.

Ward Churchill has been a leader of Colorado AIM's annual protests in Denver against the Columbus Day holiday and its associated parade.